Why does every vendor quote roughly the same number?

Because the number is quoted for one process rather than a whole system, and in that sense many of them are being honest. The difference is not the figure, it is what sits behind it. For some, two to four weeks means sign-in, roles, permissions, notifications and invoices are already written and debugged on earlier work, so the whole stretch goes to your subject matter. For others it means a finished template they will try to fit you into, and the estimate holds exactly until the first place your process does not match. For a third group it is a ceiling produced before anyone looked at your actual requests. The question worth asking is not how long, but which of this have you already written and which part will you write again for us.

What counts as subject matter, and why does it not transfer?

It is your objects and your process: what you sell or service, and what happens to it between the first contact and the close. A rental business has a unit of equipment, a booking and a dispatch. A property agency has a property, a listing and a deal. The words look alike and the rules inside are not, and it is the rules that cost time. We measured this on ourselves: we built a rental platform, then a real-estate platform, adjacent industries, and of 113 business concepts 7 were shared. About 6%. Which is why a vendor saying we already have this, we just need to configure it is not describing your project.

Where do four weeks go if the base is ready?

About half goes to the subject matter: writing down your objects, your process and the rules for moving between stages, so the system makes the same decisions your employee would and refuses the ones they are not allowed to make. Another share goes to connecting what you already run - mail, warehouse, accounting, calendar, telephony. Automation with no access to your systems can only repeat what is already published. The rest goes to the edge cases that surface on real requests rather than in a demo. The first week almost always goes not to code but to agreeing what counts as a request and when it is closed.

How do I know my case will not fit in four weeks?

Four signs, and any one of them is enough to plan for more. First: your process is written down nowhere and three employees describe it three different ways. Second: the next step is decided by a person weighing the circumstances, and the rule is not stated even out loud. Third: the data sits somewhere no program can read it - in a mailbox, in someone's head, in another department. Fourth: you have a requirement nobody else in the industry has, and it is not up for discussion. None of these makes automation impossible, but each moves work out of weeks of building and into weeks of finding out, and finding out cannot be inherited from an earlier project.

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Operations

Where four weeks comes from, and when you will not get it

Why every vendor quotes two to four weeks, what that number actually rests on, and the signs that your own project is not going to fit inside it.

Mikhail Savchenko·August 14, 2026·4 min read

OperationsImplementationVendor selectionStrategy

Why the number alone tells you nothing

You are quoted two to four weeks. You will hear the same number from everyone else.

On its own it means nothing, because the estimate rests not on the speed at which code gets written but on the volume of work nobody will be doing on your project. That volume is the thing worth asking about.

What you are not paying for

In any system with staff and customers the same parts repeat. Someone signs in under their own account, they have a role, the role permits some things and forbids others, notifications go out to someone, an invoice goes to someone else, and the whole correspondence has to sit in one place and be findable.

None of that has anything to do with whether you rent out excavators or book physiotherapy. It was written once, debugged on earlier work, and that is why it takes none of your weeks.

There is one exception worth knowing even if you are not the one building. Separation between customers is laid in first or it is never laid at all. Retrofitting it into a system that assumed a single client is the most expensive rework in this business, and it is what turns a four-week project into a three-month one.

What has to be built either way

What is left is the thing you came for: your objects and your process.

A rental business has a unit of equipment, a booking and a dispatch. A property agency has a property, a listing and a deal. From the outside it sounds like the same thing. Inside there is almost nothing in common.

We measured it on ourselves and the figure was inconvenient. We built a rental platform, then a real-estate platform. Adjacent industries, both about an object handed to somebody for a while or for good. Of 113 business concepts, 7 were shared.

About 6%.

That number is here so you know what you are buying. "We already have this, we just need to configure it" is a sentence about the other 94% - the ones the vendor does not have, because they are yours.

When four weeks will not happen

Sign	How it looks at your end	Where the time goes
Process undocumented	Three employees describe it three ways	Into weeks of finding out before anything starts
Decisions made case by case	The rule is not stated even out loud	Into cases that never came up in the demo
Data unreadable by a program	A mailbox, one person's spreadsheet, memory	Into the integration, or into giving it up
A requirement nobody else has	"We have always done it this way"	Into building with nothing to build on

None of these makes automation impossible. Each moves work out of weeks of building and into weeks of finding out, and finding out does not transfer: somebody else's earlier project does not know what counts as a request at your company.

If even one matches, four weeks stays a fair estimate of the build and a poor estimate of the project. That gap is usually what the argument with the vendor is about a month later.

What to ask, to check any of this

One question separates a verifiable estimate from a nice one: which of this have you already written, and which part will you write again for us.

"We build everything from scratch for you" means months, because sign-in, roles and permissions have to be written again. "We have it all ready, we just need to configure it" means a template, and you find out where it does not match in week three. The answer worth hearing names both parts separately and shows where the line runs between them.

Then ask them to lay that line across your own process. Working through it takes a few hours and, before a quote is signed, is worth more than any presentation: how to read an automation quote starts from exactly that split.

What it looks like on real requests is in the rental write-ups: where four hours go in a rental request and what we measured in the week before. If it turns out you are too early to automate, that is a result too: five signs list when waiting is the better call.

Frequently Asked Questions

01Why does every vendor quote roughly the same number?+
Because the number is quoted for one process rather than a whole system, and in that sense many of them are being honest. The difference is not the figure, it is what sits behind it. For some, two to four weeks means sign-in, roles, permissions, notifications and invoices are already written and debugged on earlier work, so the whole stretch goes to your subject matter. For others it means a finished template they will try to fit you into, and the estimate holds exactly until the first place your process does not match. For a third group it is a ceiling produced before anyone looked at your actual requests. The question worth asking is not how long, but which of this have you already written and which part will you write again for us.
02What counts as subject matter, and why does it not transfer?+
It is your objects and your process: what you sell or service, and what happens to it between the first contact and the close. A rental business has a unit of equipment, a booking and a dispatch. A property agency has a property, a listing and a deal. The words look alike and the rules inside are not, and it is the rules that cost time. We measured this on ourselves: we built a rental platform, then a real-estate platform, adjacent industries, and of 113 business concepts 7 were shared. About 6%. Which is why a vendor saying we already have this, we just need to configure it is not describing your project.
03Where do four weeks go if the base is ready?+
About half goes to the subject matter: writing down your objects, your process and the rules for moving between stages, so the system makes the same decisions your employee would and refuses the ones they are not allowed to make. Another share goes to connecting what you already run - mail, warehouse, accounting, calendar, telephony. Automation with no access to your systems can only repeat what is already published. The rest goes to the edge cases that surface on real requests rather than in a demo. The first week almost always goes not to code but to agreeing what counts as a request and when it is closed.
04How do I know my case will not fit in four weeks?+
Four signs, and any one of them is enough to plan for more. First: your process is written down nowhere and three employees describe it three different ways. Second: the next step is decided by a person weighing the circumstances, and the rule is not stated even out loud. Third: the data sits somewhere no program can read it - in a mailbox, in someone's head, in another department. Fourth: you have a requirement nobody else in the industry has, and it is not up for discussion. None of these makes automation impossible, but each moves work out of weeks of building and into weeks of finding out, and finding out cannot be inherited from an earlier project.