Platforms
The spreadsheet nobody can replace
Somewhere in your business there's a spreadsheet, a whiteboard, or one person who just knows how everything works. It's fine until that person takes a vacation, or two versions of the file show up.
You've probably looked at software. It almost fits, so you bend how you work to match it, and a year later there's a spreadsheet sitting next to the software you're paying for.
Sometimes a spreadsheet really is fine. If that's you, I'll say so and you'll keep your money.
What the work is
Web application development
A web application is software your team opens in a browser, on a laptop at the office or a phone on the job. There's nothing to install.
Before we build anything, we sit with the people who do the work and watch how they do it. The shortcuts they invented to get through the week tell us what the software has to do.
Every screen gets tested against your real records before you sign off, so it works on day one with years of your data inside it.
Internal platforms
This is the tool your team lives in all day: quoting, scheduling, dispatch, inventory, approvals. It follows the process you already run, so your people don't have to learn a new way of working.
Someone will use it for hours at a time, so it's fast, uncluttered and plain on purpose.
Client portals
Every call asking where an order is, or whether the paperwork arrived, pulls someone off real work. A portal lets your customers check status, find documents and pay invoices on their own, whenever they want.
Mobile app development
If your people work away from a desk, an app can carry the part of their day that still lives on paper: job notes, photos, checklists, signatures.
If a web page would do the job just as well, we'll tell you. That happens more often than most app sellers admit.
Software consulting
Maybe you don't need anything built. You need someone who has built this kind of thing to look at what you have and tell you what to do with it.
We start with the software you already pay for. Can it export your data? Does it have an API, the door other software uses to talk to it? Those two answers decide most of what's possible.
Often the answer is to set up the tool you have properly, or buy one that fits. Building comes last because it costs the most. If someone else sells the right product, we'll name it.
What it costs to run
Before you build, you'll know what it costs to keep running for three years, not only what it costs to launch. That number often decides whether building makes sense at all.
I can give you that number because I've built and run six products of my own, and paid for the hosting, the updates and every unexciting part.
Questions people ask
- How do I know if we need custom software?
- When your process is genuinely yours and every tool you've tried makes you change how you work to fit it. If a tool fits, buy the tool. Building what you could have bought is the most expensive mistake in this line of work.
- Do we own the code?
- Yes. The code, the repositories and the hosting accounts are yours. No license, no per-seat fee, and nothing that stops working if we stop working together.
- What happens when it needs changes later?
- It will need them. Software keeps running, so it keeps needing care. We can handle that month to month, and if you'd rather hand it to someone else, the code is written so they can pick it up.
- Can you work with the systems we already have?
- Usually. A lot of this work is connecting things that were never designed to talk to each other. The systems page covers that.