Proposed Agency Commercial Model & Go-to-Market Strategy
A boutique software engineering firm replacing manual spreadsheets and legacy operations for Philippine businesses. The company sells through two acquisition doors — a fast commercial build that lands clients in weeks, and a paid validation sprint that opens enterprise operations work — and both terminate in recurring monthly retainers. Build revenue funds the business; the retainer base is the asset being built.
The Two Practices
Two practices, each a complete path from first sale to recurring revenue. Neither is a level above the other — they answer to different budgets: Operations to opex, Commercial to growth. All figures in Philippine Peso. The validation sprint is a sales instrument inside Operations, not a third product.
Core Enterprise Systems
Also: Custom Business Systems
High-contract builds. Three-step commercial path.
A clickable, interactive preview (HTML / UX flow) that validates the real workflow and aligns stakeholders before any production code is written. 100% credited toward the build. Required for new Operations clients — waived only for an existing retainer client or one arriving with a validated spec, in which case discovery folds into milestone 1 at full rate. The work is never skipped; only the separately contracted stage is.
Bespoke web applications, internal admin panels, relational databases with multi-branch and multi-role isolation, API and payment integrations, and cloud staging plus deployment. Milestone-funded: downpayment, staging sign-off, deployment.
SLA guarantees, active database monitoring, security patching, and reserved sprint hours — continuing engineering capacity, not passive maintenance.
Commercial advantage. Milestones keep cash flow positive through a 16-week delivery, and the paid sprint filters unqualified buyers before engineering time is committed to them.
Presence & High-Velocity Engines
Also: Corporate Web Platforms
Rapid cash flow. Two-step commercial path.
Polished, high-performance corporate sites, single-practice clinic portals, and bespoke event coordination engines — assembled from a modular component library.
Managed cloud hosting oversight, uptime monitoring, SSL and DNS renewal, and content updates.
Why no validation sprint here?
A sprint de-risks workflow uncertainty. A commercial site has none — and at 2–4 weeks the finished build answers the question faster and cheaper than a preview of it would. Commercial is itself the entry funnel.
Commercial advantage. A 2–4 week turnaround produces steady cash flow while enterprise deals are still in negotiation, and every delivery compounds the component library that makes the next one faster.
Infrastructure & Hosting Strategy
Two operating models. The choice between them is a deliberate trade of balance-sheet exposure against lifetime value — not a client preference we accommodate by default.
Client-Owned Infrastructure
The client registers their own cloud provider account — AWS, DigitalOcean, Cloudflare — on their corporate credit card. The application runs in infrastructure they own.
We bill purely for technical management: security patching, CI/CD pipelines, uptime monitoring and SLA-backed support, at the listed base retainer.
Commercial advantage. Zero infrastructure and bandwidth liability, and no working capital tied up in cloud spend we have to collect back. The retainer is clean service revenue — its margin comes from engineering utilisation, not from a hosting spread. The client keeps full data and account ownership, which removes the single most common objection in enterprise sales.
Agency-Managed Infrastructure
We provision, isolate and host the application on agency-controlled droplets or clusters. This is the only model where true cross-client multi-tenancy exists.
A hands-off, turnkey experience for non-technical clients who want one consolidated invoice and will not hold a cloud account.
Base Fee + (Cloud Cost × 1.3–1.5)
Cloud cost is re-billed with a 30–50% margin. It is marked up, not passed through at cost — the two are different products and should not be described as one.
Commercial advantage. Higher lifetime value and materially deeper lock-in, bought by accepting infrastructure liability and carrying cloud spend on our balance sheet between invoices.
Selection rule. Default to Model A. Offer Model B only when the client refuses to hold a cloud account or demands a single consolidated bill. Model B has the higher LTV, and that is precisely why it is not the default — we take the liability deliberately, in exchange for a client who would otherwise not close, rather than as a matter of course.
Target Market & Economic Rationale
Verticals are sorted by the practice that serves them. A vertical sits in Operations only if the deliverable is an operations system with a database behind it — a corporate presence for the same industry is Commercial work and is priced as such.
Core Enterprise Systems
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01
Logistics, Warehousing & Supply Chain
Fleet dispatch, inventory track-and-trace and B2B ordering portals, replacing paper dispatch and lost-cargo risk.
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02
SME Workflow Automation & Operations Hubs
Ending multi-sheet Excel chaos for trading, wholesale and distribution firms by centralising transactions and reporting.
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03
Healthcare Networks & Clinical Operations
Multi-branch patient records, appointment queues, treatment tracking and doctor billing. Multi-branch only — a single practice is Commercial.
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04
Education & Institutional Backoffice
Admissions pipelines, enrollment queues, student intake and website asset management behind a public portal.
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05
Property Management & Real Estate
Tenant portals, automated billing collection and maintenance ticketing.
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06
Construction Project & Bidding Operations
Bid management, project tracking and subcontractor coordination. The marketing site for the same firm is Commercial.
High-Velocity Verticals
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01
Single-Location Practice & Medical Brand Presence
Dental clinics, aesthetic practices and professional portals that establish patient trust and act as low-friction entry accounts.
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02
High-Touch Events, Hospitality & VIP Coordination
Bespoke RSVP engines, automated attendee workflows and high-conversion event platforms for coordinators and premium productions.
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03
Corporate & Industrial Web Presence
Digital authority platforms, project showcases and automated B2B lead capture for construction, manufacturing and corporate infrastructure firms.
Commercial accounts are the primary source of Operations pipeline. A client already on a retainer has a payment history, a working relationship and a visible operations problem — the cheapest enterprise lead available to us.
The Economic Rationale
Payback is quoted net of the retainer. The retainer is a real ongoing cost to the client and is not excluded to improve the headline.
Replacing two to three manual data-entry staff, or preventing the orders lost to a spreadsheet handoff, recovers roughly ₱50,000–100,000 per month for an established business. Against a representative Operations engagement:
| Recoverable cost per month | ₱75,000 |
| Less Operations retainer | −₱50,000 |
| Net monthly benefit | ₱25,000 |
| Build cost | ₱600,000 |
| Payback period | 24 months |
Qualification gate
Operations is only opened where the client can document ₱75,000+ per month of recoverable cost. Below that threshold the honest recommendation is Commercial. We do not sell operations systems that cannot pay for themselves — churned enterprise clients cost more than they ever returned.
Twenty-four months is an unremarkable payback, and that is the point: it survives scrutiny in the room. After payback the client keeps the net benefit permanently and we keep the retainer — which is why the retainer is priced as reserved engineering capacity rather than as a maintenance fee against a finished asset.
Track Record & Demonstration Assets
Existing codebases and live references, mapped to the practice each one actually evidences.
School Operations Hub
PROTOTYPETwo prototypes for the same problem. A public institutional portal, explored as four distinct design directions, and a separate back-office CMS covering website asset management, admissions, events, downloads and student intake — with role-scoped editors and link provenance on uploaded files. They are independent explorations rather than one integrated build, and are branded as different institutions accordingly.
View interactive prototypeWhat this does not yet prove
We have no delivered Operations system in production at the ₱600k–1.2M contract value. The assets above demonstrate the front half of that work — workflow design, CMS architecture, intake modelling — and the live sites opposite demonstrate delivery discipline. Landing the first Operations production reference is the primary objective of the first funded quarter, and is stated plainly here rather than left for diligence to find.
Event Guest Management
PROTOTYPEBespoke RSVP and guest coordination engine explored as four structurally different approaches — narrative, conversational, stationery and itinerary-led — each with a distinct guest record model behind it. Built for weddings. What transfers to corporate events is the engine, not the skin: the guest record, the branching party-level flow and the arrival logistics capture. A purpose-built corporate set is planned rather than a re-skin of these.
View interactive prototypeNation Builders Corp
LIVECorporate and industrial web presence for a commercial construction firm — digital authority platform and B2B lead capture.
nationbuilderscorp.comHiraya Dental Clinic
LIVESingle-practice healthcare presence — service directory and localised patient trust.
hirayadentalclinic.comExecutive takeaway. These are working codebases, not mockups. The shared component library they produced is what makes a 2–4 week Commercial delivery possible at a fixed fee, and every delivery adds to it — so gross margin on Commercial improves with volume rather than staying flat.
Client Lifecycle & Financial Flywheel
Two independent revenue engines. Path 2 feeds Path 1 as accounts mature.
Enterprise Operations
Credited in full against the build
Milestone-funded over 8–16 weeks
Reserved engineering capacity
Because the sprint fee is credited, contract value for this path is build + retainer — not sprint + build + retainer. The sprint is recovered acquisition cost, not incremental revenue, and should not be double-counted in pipeline models.
Commercial Fast-Track
Fixed fee, 2–4 weeks
Hosting oversight and content
Qualified against the ₱75k/mo gate
Discussion Points & Next Steps
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Capital allocation & runway
Headcount required to run one Operations build and two Commercial builds concurrently without missing milestones.
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Initial sales pipeline review
Named accounts by practice, with each Operations opportunity scored against the ₱75k/month qualification gate.
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Pricing gates to approve
Operations floor at ₱600k, validation sprint flat at ₱150k, and the 100% credit applying to Operations only.
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Model B exposure ceiling
Maximum aggregate cloud spend we are willing to carry on the balance sheet before Model B is closed to new clients.