n.b.Most transformation projects are not delivered the way they were envisioned. It is an industry-wide problem. It is also avoidable.

Know the business before you change it.

Bontology turns stakeholder interviews into a traceable transformation model: work, systems, issues, requirements, and user stories in one source of truth.

See the Model Run a Transformation Assessment

Built from your own people’s words. No event logs required.

Fig. 1 · Follow the threadSample model: Hartwell Fabrication Co. (fictional)

specimen · interview evidence
“I re-key every packing slip into the ERP by hand. When the count does not match the purchase order, I chase it over email.”
Warehouse role · receiving

activityRe-key packing-slip datacaptureddaily · ERP + email
issue$38,700/yr · manual re-entryestimated · 82%
problem$112,400/yr · exposure · intake re-entry✓ verified
solution → storyOCR intake · 4.2x ROI · 7-mo paybackCERTIFIEDuser story with acceptance criteria, sprint-ready

Every output walks back to a sentence someone actually said.Walk this thread ›

Fig. 2 · the record

Transformation breaks before implementation begins.

If a project you funded landed late, over budget, or short of the vision, you are in the majority, and it was probably not your team’s failure. The record across industries says the damage starts early: decisions get locked in before anyone truly knows how the business works today. That part is fixable.

Every figure below is traceable to its primary source.

30%

of transformations met or exceeded their target value and produced sustainable change. The other 70% fell short.

BCG, survey of 825 senior executives, 2020

1 in 6

IT projects becomes a black swan: 200% over cost on average, nearly 70% over schedule. The average overrun across all 1,471 projects studied was 27%.

Flyvbjerg & Budzier, Harvard Business Review, 2011

47%

of unsuccessful projects fail to meet their original goals because of inaccurate requirements management.

PMI, Pulse of the Profession, 2014

$260B

is what unsuccessful software development projects cost the US economy in 2020.

CISQ, The Cost of Poor Software Quality in the US, 2020

Fig. 3 · the reframe

The missing piece is not another document. It is a model.

Notes, maps, decks, and spreadsheets describe the business in fragments that quietly disagree. Bontology reconciles what your people know into one connected model: who does what, in which process, on which systems, at what cost. Documents go stale. The model stays current and answers questions.

seven artifacts · zero agreement

Interview notesProcess map v3 (stale)Requirements.xlsxWorkshop photosSlide deck, final_v7Org chart (2023)Meeting transcript

Who are you?

Built for the people who carry the change.

One engagement, four seats at the table: consultants run it, executives decide from it, analysts work in it, and your people feed it. Pick your seat.

§1

Executives

Decide from a model, not scattered opinions.

For executives ›§2

Consultants

Turn discovery into a repeatable engine.

For consultants ›§3

Analysts

Requirements with the evidence attached.

For analysts ›§4

Implementation partners

Scope the business before the system.

For partners ›

Also here for operations leaders · ai automation teams · business users · investors.

Fig. 4 · the method

From interviews to implementation context.

Walk one answer through the model ›

01
Capture
Stakeholders explain their work in plain language, in parallel, on their own schedule.
02
Structure
Answers become structured objects: activities, processes, systems, issues, and their costs.
03
Reconcile
Conflicts, duplicates, and gaps are surfaced for human review, never silently guessed.
04
Generate
Architecture, priorities, requirements, and user stories generate from the model.
05
Trace
Every output walks back to the sentence that produced it.

Fig. 5 · the deliverables

One model. A full deliverable set.

Everything below generates from the same reviewed model, so the documents agree with each other, and every line in them traces back to source evidence.

Business architecture

Functions, processes, roles, and systems as one connected map.

Dollar-ranked issues

Every issue priced from hours, incidence, and loaded rates.

Prioritized solutions

ROI, payback period, and benefit estimates on each fix.

Requirements & stories

Build-ready, with acceptance criteria and business context attached.

Sourcing evaluation

Vendor options scored against a competency coverage grid.

Delivery tracker

Build, test, and train status against the same model.

Sample data throughout: Hartwell Fabrication Co., a fictional manufacturer. Screens are the product’s approved design surfaces.

Fig. 6 · the trust layer

Fast, because it can prove itself.

Bontology is fast for a structural reason: interviews run in parallel, and the analysis, costing, requirements, and stories generate from the model instead of being rewritten by hand. Speed like that is only useful if you can defend it. So every figure carries its receipts.

Confidence scoring: The AI states how sure it is. Low-confidence items route to a human review queue, never into your numbers.
Human certification: A consultant verifies and certifies findings. Disagreements are logged with their reasoning.
Audit trail: Who changed what, when, and why, on every record.
Your model is yours: Client-owned and isolated. Never commingled, never exposed, never used for anyone else.

Every claim climbs the same ladder

Estimated · 82%✓ VerifiedCertified

Estimated means modeled from capture and awaiting review. Verified means a human confirmed it. Certified is the consultant’s signed word, and exports carry it.

The product admits what it does not know

Exception queue · 3 openawaiting human review

Conflicting descriptions of the approval step · 2 stakeholders disagree
System owner missing · finance reporting tool
Low-confidence root cause · quality-check rework

Low-confidence classifications route to people, never silently into your numbers.

Fig. 7 · the category

Not another AI interview tool. Not a process map generator.

Interview tools collect answers. Mining tools watch clicks and system logs. Architecture tools manage the systems you already know about. Bontology models the business itself: the work, what it costs, and what to build next, with every claim traceable to source. Other tools turn requirements into code. Bontology turns a business into requirements, and hands you a business architecture, not just a backlog.

See the full comparison ›

§5

Before the build