CASK Software
Inherited complexity → international SaaS
Legacy specialist engineering software, a highly technical domain and an unclear commercial future.
The situation
CASK started with specialist engineering software created by my father. I inherited the business — but not his 40 years of geotechnical knowledge.
The customers were offshore energy and geotechnical engineers. The software was genuinely good at what it did. Everything around it — the licence model, the proposition, the way it was sold — belonged to another decade.
The actual problem
The software worked.
The proposition didn't.
Engineers understood it instantly. Buyers, procurement and new markets did not.
What I changed
- Complex.
- Expensive.
- Hard to change.
- Simple.
- Flexible.
- Easy to scale.
- Learned the domain properly instead of abstracting it away
- Interviewed users to find what actually created value
- Simplified the proposition without simplifying the engineering
- Moved legacy software toward a SaaS model
- Rebuilt pricing so it scaled with value
- Opened new international markets
- Built an enterprise sales motion for technical buyers
Result
Growth came from making the same engineering value legible and buyable, not from rewriting what engineers already trusted.
“What Richard saw was not the problem we initially thought we had.”
What this taught me
“You don't need to become the engineer to commercialise engineering software. But you do need to understand the engineer well enough to know what shouldn't be simplified.”
More thinking →Principles at work here
Comprehension is a commercial feature.
Repetition is a product waiting for a decision.