One industry. Two products. No plans to spread ourselves thin.
TutoConsulting set us up to build software for funeral services specifically, not to be a general software shop that happens to have a client in this space.
Backed by TutoConsulting, run on our own
TutoConsulting backs a small number of focused companies rather than trying to be everything to everyone. Funeral services turned out to be worth a dedicated team, so that team is us, with full ownership of GraceVault and Orion, not a side project someone checks in on once a quarter.
In practice that means we move at the pace of a small, accountable team, but we're not starting from zero on things like infrastructure and security practices. TutoConsulting's experience running other products backs that up.
What we're actually responsible for
- Deciding what GraceVault and Orion should do next, and what they shouldn't
- Writing, testing, and shipping the code for both
- Answering support tickets from parlours, and from families using Orion
- Keeping the servers up, the data safe, and the backups actually working
A few things we keep coming back to
It matters who's on the other end
Every screen we ship might be opened by someone on the worst day of their life, or by a driver who just wants to finish their shift. We try not to forget that.
No shortcuts on the boring parts
GPS tracking, audit logs, payment status: nobody notices these until they break. We'd rather they never do.
Trust has to be earned line by line
Verification badges and permission levels aren't marketing checkboxes for us. They're the reason a parlour we've never met signs up.
We talk to the people using it
Call centre staff, drivers, families mid-decision. A lot of what's in the product came from a conversation, not a spec doc.
The short version of the story
The problem
Paper, spreadsheets, and phone calls
Funeral services in South Africa mostly run the way they did twenty years ago. TutoConsulting kept running into this and decided it was worth building something rather than just writing a report about it.
Getting started
Etra becomes its own thing
Rather than bolt this onto an existing team, TutoConsulting spun up Etra with one job: build software for this industry, and own it end to end.
GraceVault
The back office gets built first
Cases, fleet, mortuary, inventory, staff: the day-to-day of running a parlour, digitised branch by branch.
Orion
Then the front door
Orion Marketplace came next, so families searching for a parlour could actually compare prices instead of calling around blind.
Now
Still one team on both
Same people build and support both products. No separate teams handing things off to each other, so if something's wrong, whoever built it fixes it.