Skip to content
21 Solutions

Is your technology holding your business back?

See where your systems waste time, people, and growth — and what to fix first.

In about 5 minutes you’ll get a Systems Friction Score showing where you may be losing time, hiring extra people, or relying too much on manual work and one key employee.

Take the Free Assessment

No sales call. No cost.

Proof, not promises

Different businesses. Same reason they called us.

They needed one team to understand the business, make technical decisions, do the work, and keep improving. Every engagement below is still running.

“I don’t see you as a vendor. I see you as part of my team.”

Daniel Beightler, Apex Trash

How we start working together

It starts with a free Fit Call, not a contract.

Three steps. You choose whether to go on after each one.

  1. Step 1 · Free

    Fit Call

    30 minutes · no cost

    Tell us what is slowing growth and where technology gets in the way. We will say honestly if we can help and if a Technical Diagnostic makes sense. Sometimes the answer is no.

    Book a Fit Call
  2. Step 2 · Paid

    Technical Diagnostic

    $5K · two weeks

    In two weeks, we map the software, connections, and manual work in one core operation. We show where time and money are lost and give you a clear build-or-buy plan. The fee applies to your first month if you continue.

    Only if the Fit Call says it is worth doing. See what is included.

Step 3 · Paid

Your Ongoing Technology Team

From $20K/month

We set technical priorities, build and improve software, connect systems, automate work, and support one core operation over time. One senior team. One person to hold accountable.

  • ~$475K/year

    Excelin Health. Half the people doing clinical review, with quality measures unchanged.

  • 90%+ lower

    Cadence. Monthly hosting costs after a six-week rebuild.

  • 8 states

    Apex Trash. One platform lets new markets open without a dedicated local manager.

Not a step. Just free help.

Not ready to talk to anyone yet?

Take the free Systems Assessment instead. You get your Systems Friction Score in about five minutes, and you can add a Free Systems Review where our senior team goes through your results and tells you what we would actually do about them. It sits outside the three steps above: no Technical Diagnostic, no proposal, no obligation, and you keep the advice whether we ever work together or not.

Your company grew. Your systems didn’t.

Most leaders who call us describe the same five problems.

If several of these sound familiar, you may not need more developers. You may need a technology team.

Developers are not the same as a technology team.

Good developers still need someone to set priorities, make technical decisions, and connect the work to the business.

Development help

  • Waits for requirements
  • Does the tasks they are given
  • Builds one piece of the system
  • Needs someone to set priorities
  • Finishes the project
  • Hands the work back

Your 21 Solutions technology team

  • Learns how the business works
  • Helps decide what is worth fixing
  • Makes the big technical decisions
  • Coordinates the whole system
  • Executes the work
  • Stays responsible after launch

We understand the business, make the technical decisions, do the work, and stay involved.

The goal is not to make you better at managing technology. It is to leave you less technology to manage.

Once we are working together

One team from the first decision through long-term support.

This is how we work. You do not need a new vendor every time the business changes. We learn how you operate once and keep that knowledge on our team.

  1. 01

    Understand the business

    We learn how work flows, what systems you use, who does what, and where things get stuck.

  2. 02

    Decide what matters

    We decide what to fix, automate, connect, buy, build, or leave alone.

  3. 03

    Build and improve

    We build software, connect systems, automate work, update older applications, and use AI where it actually helps.

  4. 04

    Stay involved

    We support, fix, and improve systems as the business changes.

We work best with a certain kind of company.

We take on a few clients at a time, so we are honest about fit early.

Strong fit

  • An operations-heavy business with real operating complexity
  • Software or manual work directly affects how the business runs
  • Senior leadership feels the problem and owns it
  • There is real cost or risk if nothing changes
  • You want one team to make decisions, execute, and stay involved
  • The problem is expensive enough to justify a serious investment

Probably not a fit

  • A cheap MVP or an early-stage product idea
  • A marketing website
  • Extra developers to do assigned tasks only
  • Shopping for the cheapest hourly developers
  • One small feature, or a generic AI chatbot
  • You already have mature product and engineering leadership and only need more coding capacity

Questions we get before the call

Do we need custom software?

Not necessarily. We figure out the problem before we say you need custom software. The right answer may be connecting tools you already have, automation, a platform you own, a process change, a rebuild of something too expensive to change, or nothing yet. We are paid monthly, not by the project — so telling you to do less work does not hurt us.

We already have developers. Can you still help?

Often, yes. Good developers execute well and still need someone to decide what is worth building, how the systems fit together, and what needs attention next. We can fill that role and work alongside internal developers, IT teams, IT providers, and software vendors.

Why wouldn’t we just hire a CTO?

Sometimes that is the right answer. The real question is whether you want to find, manage, keep, and build a whole software team around that person. A strong engineering leader takes months to find and can leave with everything they know about your systems in their head. Here a senior team is in place from week one, and that knowledge lives with the firm.

What does an engagement cost?

The first step costs nothing: a 30-minute Fit Call to see if there is a real problem and if we are the right team. Next, most companies do a $5K Technical Diagnostic. It takes two weeks and gives you a clear build-or-buy plan. An ongoing technology team for one core operation starts at $20K/month. See engagements.

Is the Systems Assessment the same as the Fit Call?

No, and neither one commits you to anything. The Systems Assessment is a five-minute self-scoring tool, and the optional Free Systems Review that follows is us walking through your results with nothing to buy at the end. The Fit Call is a separate 30-minute conversation for people who want to know whether we should work together. You can do either one first, or only one, or both.

What happens after launch?

We stay involved. We fix, improve, support, and keep making technical decisions as the business changes. Every client engagement shown on this page is still running. See how we work.

If this sounds like your problem, pick a time.

Take the Free Systems Assessment