1. Start with the firm’s actual bottleneck
Sterling Heights is a municipality in Macomb County with a 2020–2024 ACS 5-year population estimate of 133,573 and a margin of error of 37. That figure describes the city’s population; it does not establish legal demand, lead volume, competition or revenue. It does provide geographic context for a firm deciding which operating workflows need to serve people in Sterling Heights and the broader county relationship represented in its records. Custom software should begin with the work your team performs repeatedly, not with the city name or a list of fashionable features. A useful starting sentence is: “Someone at the firm has to do this manually.”
Recommended approach
Bring one process to the consultation and describe who performs it, what information they use, where it is entered, what can go wrong and what a satisfactory result would look like. If the problem is already handled well by an existing product, keep that product and investigate a narrower improvement instead of commissioning unnecessary software.
