1. Start with the bottleneck, not the product category
Homewood is a municipality in Jefferson County, Alabama. The 2020–2024 ACS five-year population estimate for Homewood city is 27,829, with a margin of error of 33. That figure describes the city’s population; it does not establish legal demand, lead volume, competition or revenue. For custom software, the more relevant local decision is operational: define which work your Homewood practice performs repeatedly and where that work stalls. A local firm may serve clients beyond the city, so the software boundary should follow the firm’s actual workflow rather than the city line.
Recommended approach
Bring one sentence to the conversation that describes the manual task without prescribing the solution. Examples are illustrative: “Staff re-enter consultation information,” “someone checks a shared inbox manually,” or “clients call for routine status updates.” Then document who performs the task, what information they need, which systems they touch and what happens when the step is missed.
