An ERP salesperson calls with an offer of a free audit. The conversation lasts forty minutes and ends with a product demo and a proposal to implement the system for well over a hundred thousand zlotys. Nobody in that conversation asked how much downtime on the shop floor actually costs, what margin a typical order carries, or whether the company's real limit is a lack of customers or a lack of production capacity. That is not a digital business audit, it is a product pitch dressed up as a diagnosis. A real digital business audit starts with numbers, not a demo, and ends with a price, not an offer to sign on the spot. In this article we show what that kind of diagnosis looks like: 39 KPIs across 7 dimensions, a result in the form of a named company bottleneck and a locked implementation plan, and how it differs from a free audit from a salesperson.
Digital Business Audit vs. a Free Sales Audit: A Difference That Costs Money
A free audit from an ERP vendor has one built-in flaw: the person running it earns money on selling a specific system, not on the accuracy of the diagnosis. The conversation inevitably revolves around product features, not around where your company is actually losing money. The result is predictable: every company, regardless of what is really holding it back, walks away from that conversation with the same recommendation, namely implementing whichever system the salesperson happens to sell.
The Digital Growth Diagnosis works the opposite way. It is a paid product in its own right, 3,500 EUR net, a fixed price, independent of whether any implementation ever happens. Since nobody earns money on which recommendation you hear, the diagnosis can say things a free sales audit never will, for example that the real problem is not a missing system but a lack of leads, or that implementation should start with a single module, not the whole ERP at once. For this kind of ERP pre-implementation analysis to mean anything at all, it has to end with numbers and a price, not a slogan about digitalisation.
Digital Company Diagnosis: 39 KPIs Across 7 Dimensions
At the core of the product is a structured measurement of the whole company, not just the IT department or the accounts. The digital company diagnosis covers 39 indicators spread across seven dimensions of the business:
- Operations and Processes, meaning what the flow of an order looks like from order intake to shipment, and how much manual, repetitive work sits inside it.
- Technology and Systems, meaning how many applications and spreadsheets have to talk to each other just to keep the company running.
- Sales and Pipeline, meaning what the funnel looks like from first contact to signed contract, and where along the way most opportunities disappear.
- Finance and Economics, including LTV and CAC, two numbers that many family businesses cannot state on the spot.
- Marketing and Acquisition, meaning where new customers actually come from and what it costs to acquire them.
- Offer and Positioning, meaning whether the price list and the way services are packaged support margin or quietly eat it away.
- Digital Stack and Visibility, meaning whether customers who are already searching for you online can actually find you.
The diagnosis runs on the same Odoo that would later run the implementation, so you see your own numbers on a live dashboard before you have paid for any system at all.
The Growth Constraint Diagnosis: Is Demand or Capacity the Limit
The single most important sentence the diagnosis says about your company is the Growth Constraint Diagnosis, the answer to whether growth is limited today by demand, not enough enquiries and customers, or by capacity, not enough ability to deliver more than the company delivers today. Many owners of manufacturing companies guess this answer wrong and spend years investing on the wrong side: adding salespeople when the real limit is the shop floor, or investing in machinery when the real problem is not enough enquiries.
This one decision, demand or capacity, determines what the next zloty is even worth spending on. Without it, every further investment, whether in marketing or production, is a shot in the dark.
The Result: Bottleneck #1, a Priced Top 3, and a Locked Implementation Plan
The diagnosis does not end with a list of 39 numbers for you to interpret on your own. It ends with one specific answer: which area is today's company bottleneck number one, plus a Top 3 list of the next problems, each with its own price tag in zlotys or hours per month, what it costs you that this problem still exists. On that basis a locked implementation plan is built: exactly which modules to implement, in what order, and at what price, set before any coding begins. The table below shows how this differs from a typical free sales audit.
| Criterion | Sales Audit (Free) | Digital Growth Diagnosis (Paid) |
|---|---|---|
| Who pays | Nobody directly, the cost is hidden in the future implementation margin | The client, 3,500 EUR net, fixed price |
| Goal of the conversation | Sell a specific system | Diagnose the company, the choice of system comes second |
| Scope of measurement | The owner's statements from one conversation | 39 KPIs across 7 dimensions, data from the whole company |
| Output | An implementation offer ready to sign | Bottleneck #1, a priced Top 3, a locked implementation plan |
| When the system does not fit the company | You usually get an offer anyway | The Fit Guarantee: the audit is allowed to say "no" |
| How the audit fee is settled | Not applicable, the cost is hidden | Credited in full toward the implementation |
The Odoo Dashboard and a Project File Ready for a Grant Application
The diagnosis produces two artefacts that stay with you regardless of any decision you make afterwards. The first is a working Odoo dashboard built on your own data, the best possible product demo there is, because it shows your company, not a vendor's sample data. The second is a ready-made project file: a described scope, a cost estimate, baseline indicators and a milestone schedule, exactly what a solid grant application requires. A micro, small or medium enterprise from industrial processing or production services, operating for at least 5 years, may qualify for support from the Dig.IT programme (ARP, FENG 2.21), subject to the programme's rules, with a grant of 150,000 to 850,000 zl and co-financing of up to 50% of eligible costs. The status of the currently open call always has to be checked directly on digit.arp.pl, and we describe the full logic of combining the diagnosis with the application on the digital funding page. In manufacturing companies it is often the Operations and Processes dimension that shows the sharpest signal: we write more about typical manufacturing bottlenecks on the solutions for manufacturing companies page.
The Fit Guarantee: An Audit That Is Allowed to Say Odoo Is Not for You
The diagnosis ends with a recommendation, but that recommendation does not always read "implement Odoo". If the analysis shows that an ERP-class system is not today's right answer to your bottleneck, we say so plainly and we do not push an implementation you do not need. This is the Fit Guarantee: a guarantee that the recommendation is independent of whether we happen to have something to sell. Whatever the result, you are left with the full diagnosis, the 39 KPIs, the named bottleneck and a project file you can use anywhere, including with another vendor. A recommendation only means something when the person giving it could just as easily have said no.
Frequently Asked Questions
How is the Digital Growth Diagnosis different from a free ERP sales audit?
A free audit is run by someone with an interest in selling a specific system, so the conversation revolves around the product, not around your company. The diagnosis is a paid, independent product: 39 KPIs across 7 dimensions, a result in the form of a named bottleneck and a price, with no assumption in advance about what the recommendation will be.
How much does the audit cost, and does it count toward the implementation price?
The Digital Growth Diagnosis has a fixed price of 3,500 EUR net. If you decide to implement with us after the diagnosis, the full amount is credited toward the project, so you pay it once, as the first instalment of the implementation, not as an extra cost alongside it.
What happens if the audit shows Odoo is not right for my company?
We say so plainly, in line with the Fit Guarantee, and we do not sell an implementation your company does not need today. You are left with the full diagnosis, the 39 KPIs, the named bottleneck and the project file, whatever the recommendation turned out to be.
Can the diagnosis result be used in a Dig.IT grant application?
Yes, that is one of the elements of the diagnosis: a ready-made project file with a described scope, cost estimate, indicators and schedule, exactly what a grant application requires. A company may qualify for Dig.IT support under the programme's rules, but the actual award of the grant is always decided by the programme operator, not by the diagnosis.
Before you pay for the first stage of any implementation, check whether you actually know what you are fixing. The Digital Growth Diagnosis is a digital business audit built on 39 KPIs across 7 dimensions, with a named bottleneck, a priced Top 3 list and a locked implementation plan, which we credit in full toward the implementation, if one happens.