FoxPro. Access. VB6. Green screens. The in-house ERP someone wrote in 1999 that still runs the business. With AI reading the code and drafting the build, and forty years of manufacturing experience deciding what it should become, we take the application nobody wants to touch and turn it into a modern, bespoke system with a workflow built for how the work actually flows — module by module, reconciled at every step, so the business never stops running on software it trusts.
For twenty years the honest advice to a manufacturer running a 1990s in-house system was: don't touch it. The rewrite cost more than the company could justify, the vendor pitch was a seven-figure ERP, and the person who knew the old system was still in the building.
Two of those three things are no longer true. The person is retiring. And AI has collapsed the cost of the part that made rewrites expensive — reading thousands of lines of undocumented code, mapping the schema, drafting the specification, generating the first cut of the new module, writing the tests. What took a bench of six now takes a small senior team and an overnight build cycle.
The third thing hasn't changed, and it's the part that matters. Somebody still has to decide what the system should become — which workflow to keep, which to kill, what the number has to tie to. That's judgment, and it comes from having run the P&L, walked the floor, and administered the ERP. AI supplies the leverage. We supply the judgment. You get a modern system that fits your business, at a cost that used to buy a requirements document.
The method is boring on purpose. It's the same one that has kept a 25-year-old ERP running through its own replacement.
Before any migration code: the legacy system is read end to end — code, schema, reports, the workarounds in people's heads — and documented. AI does the reading; we verify it against how the business actually uses the system. Most clients get the first real documentation of their system out of this step alone.
Where does the operator re-key the same number? Where does approval live in an email? Where is the exception hunted for instead of surfaced? The new module is designed around the answer — barcode capture, role-based screens, the right action made the easy action.
AI-accelerated build on a modern web stack, then the part that decides everything: the new module runs beside the old one on real data until every difference has a root cause. No demo on unvalidated data. Ever.
The old module is retired only when the new one has earned it. Each cutover pays for the next. Documentation, tests and a runbook ship with every module, so your team — or anyone — can maintain it after we're gone.
Role-based screens, barcode and scanner capture where the workflow demands it, approvals in the system instead of the inbox, exceptions surfaced on a dashboard instead of discovered at month-end.
The legacy data migrated with every record traceable to its source, duplicates and orphans resolved on the way in, and the schema documented — so reporting finally reads from one truth.
Any API you have, or one we build. ERP, CRM, PLM, EDI, e-invoicing, corporate feeds. The integration discipline →
TypeScript, React, Node, SQL Server or Postgres, containers. On-prem or Azure — your IT policy decides. Nothing proprietary to us; any competent shop can maintain it.
Logging, alerting, backups that are proven to restore, and a runbook — shipped with the system, not bolted on after the first outage. How we keep systems running →
A clean canonical model means Clairvient can sit on top: the morning digest, ranked exceptions, the "Why?" drill to source. Clairvient →
Decades ago our principal wrote a foundry consumables manufacturer's ERP in FoxPro. It has run their business ever since — a testament to fit, and a growing liability. They needed a path to a modern web platform without betting the company on a rip-and-replace, from a partner who understood every quirk of the system. Fortunately, one was available.
The conversion is piece by piece: each module replaced only when its successor is proven, so the business never stops running on software it trusts. AI-accelerated development makes an incremental path economical that would have been unaffordable at consulting rates a few years ago. Twenty-five years of institutional knowledge conserved instead of discarded — the Ship of Theseus, rebuilt plank by plank while it sails.
Read the problem-led case: the app nobody can maintain anymore →
What it's written in, what it runs, who still understands it, and what happens if it stops. That's enough for a straight read on whether it's a modernization candidate and what the first module would be.
You'll get a straight answer and a tight scope. If we can't help, we'll tell you that too — and usually who can.
