Business software
doesn't join up.
People do.
In a one-person studio, it's the owner at 10pm. In a company of hundreds, it's an operations team. In the largest, it's whole departments and budgets spent joining systems together. The bigger the business, the bigger the bill.
The average large organisation runs 897 applications. Only 29% are connected, and IT teams spend 39% of their time building custom integrations. MuleSoft Connectivity Benchmark 2025: 1,050 IT leaders.
We start where it hurts most per person
A dance teacher wants to teach dance, not run eight platforms.
For example: TeamUp · Squarespace · Mailchimp · Canva · Google Drive · Xero · WhatsApp · ChatGPT
AI can only work on what it can see.
54%
of UK small and medium businesses now use AI, up from 35% a year earlier. Mostly generic tools such as ChatGPT and Copilot.80%
of IT leaders say data integration is their biggest obstacle to AI. The largest companies have the same problem, with bigger budgets.AI needs two things a tangle of tools can't give it: context, the whole business in one place, and a platform, the tools themselves to act in.
What it actually takes today
- 1Export the class history from TeamUp
- 2Export the mailing list from Mailchimp
- 3Paste both into ChatGPT, and hope the names match
- 4Copy the draft back into Mailchimp and send it
- 5Next week, do it all again
The AI didn't do the work. The owner did the joining, again.
What each kind of AI gets
| Contextwhat it can see | Platformwhere it can act | |
|---|---|---|
| ChatGPT on its own | Only what's pasted in | Nowhere: the owner copies the answer back |
| AI inside one tool | That tool's data | Inside that tool |
| AI add-ons across tools | What each connection lets through | Through each connection, one at a time |
| One record | The whole business | Everywhere the business works, with the owner's OK |
On one record, it's one question.
54% and 35%: British Chambers of Commerce, March 2026, as reported by Simply Business. 80%: MuleSoft Connectivity Benchmark 2025, 1,050 IT leaders. Even companies with data teams struggle: Gartner expects organisations to abandon 60% of AI projects that aren't supported by AI-ready data (a forecast for large organisations, February 2025).
The owner is the integration.
The customer's details live in the booking tool, the mailing list, the invoices and the chat, and nothing keeps them in step. So the owner does: bookings copied into invoices, customers into mailing lists, the same question answered in three inboxes.
Every system needs a line to every other. None of them draws it, so the owner is the line.
Four costs, and only one comes with an invoice.
The subscriptions are the part the owner can see. The time, the joins and the customers who give up don't show up on any invoice.
11hours a week
On admin: about six working days a month.
UK small-business owners spend almost twice as long on admin as on winning customers. More than half say paperwork gets in the way of running the business, and one in five works 60 hours a week or more. Every job is a different login, a different screen, a different password.
American Express and Small Business Saturday UK, SME Business Barometer: 1,000 UK business owners, published July 2026. All admin, not only the joining-up.
69%
Have given up on a booking because it was too hard.
They couldn't reach anyone, or couldn't book online. And people book when the owner is off the tools: 81% of regulars sometimes need to book or change an appointment outside business hours. The ones who do book hear from the business in four different places:
- TeamUpYour booking is confirmed
- WhatsApp"Is Thursday still on?"
- MailchimpThis month's newsletter
- XeroInvoice INV-0042 is due
Zenoti 2025 consumer survey. Zenoti sells salon and spa software, and its respondents are salon and spa customers, not our first market.
10pm
Working out how to join it all up.
Exports, imports and "connect your account" screens. A whole industry (Zapier, Make) exists because these tools don't talk to each other. When a join quietly breaks, nobody notices until a customer does.
No reliable figure exists for this one, so we don't quote one.
~£60a month
For four of the eight tools, before the booking app and card fees.
A website (Squarespace Core, £17), email campaigns (Mailchimp Standard, from about £15), design (Canva Pro, £100 a year) and AI (ChatGPT Plus, £20). The booking app, accounts and card fees (1.5% + 20p a payment on Stripe) come on top.
List prices on each vendor's UK pricing page, checked 25–26 September 2026; Squarespace billed annually.
- 21:02The evening enquiry nobody answers.
- paperThe booking taken on paper and never invoiced.
- 3 monthsThe client who quietly never comes back.
They built the booking. The owner still runs the rest.
Every industry now has a good booking app, and the best of them take payments and keep a customer list too. But the website, the brand, the documents, the team, Google and the AI still live somewhere else.
10logins
Cheap to start, one tool per job. Nothing shares a customer record.
8logins
The front desk in one place, and still eight logins. Swap TeamUp for Fresha, Tradify or ResDiary and the picture is the same.
1login
The whole business on one record. Accounts still go to Xero or QuickBooks when the accountant wants them.
Examples are illustrative, taken from each product's own website, September 2026. Some Simma areas are still being built: see Status. The full area-by-area comparison is on the Competition page.
Every industry has its own booking app. They all have the same tangle.
Already tangled.
Years of customers spread across eight tools. The owner knows it's a mess, but switching feels like moving house in the middle of term, so the tangle stays.
About to be tangled, unless it starts on one system.
A new business has no tools yet, and its first week goes on choosing and joining them. It's the one moment a business can get one system without switching anything. Why this group is growing →
We start with instructors (dance, pilates, driving, swimming, coaching): one-person businesses where the founder's time is the whole company. The front desk changes from one industry to the next; the tangle behind it doesn't.