1. Start with the process your team repeats
Marion is a municipality in Williamson County, Illinois. The 2020–2024 ACS five-year estimate records 16,836 residents, with a margin of error of 34. That geographic fact helps define the service area, but it does not establish demand, case volume, competition or revenue. For custom software, its practical value is narrower: it gives you a precise location boundary for deciding which office processes and service relationships belong in scope. Begin with a task that happens inside your firm, such as moving an inquiry between systems, collecting documents, assigning follow-up or answering a recurring status question. Describe what happens now, who performs each step and where the process stops being reliable.
Recommended approach
Bring one manual process to the consultation in plain language. Record the systems touched, the people responsible, the information entered more than once and the point at which a missed action creates risk. Do not select a build because it sounds useful; select it because the current process is specific enough to examine.
