Bespoke software development in Tamworth, built around how you work.

The spreadsheet test

If a spreadsheet is being emailed back and forth, or somebody is retyping the same information into two different systems, or a job only moves forward when one particular person remembers to do something — that is what custom software is for. It is nearly always a process problem rather than a technology problem.

If nothing in your week is actually painful, don't build anything. Plenty of businesses are better served by tidying up what they already do than by commissioning software.

Try the off-the-shelf answer first

I will tell you if an existing product does ninety per cent of what you need for a few pounds a month. That is a better outcome for you than a bespoke build, and I would rather say so than take the work.

Bespoke earns its place when your rules genuinely don't fit anyone's product: the pricing nobody else does, the approval step that is specific to your trade, the three systems that need to talk to each other.

Build the smallest version that helps

Start with the one part of the process that wastes the most time, get it working, use it for a few weeks, then decide what's next. You find out what you actually needed by using it, which is not the same as what you thought you needed when you wrote the list.

It also keeps the first invoice small, and it means you stop when the pain stops rather than when the spec runs out.

The unglamorous half is most of the job

Who can see what. What happens when somebody forgets their password. Whether the emails actually arrive. What the system does when a payment fails, or when two people click the same button at the same moment. Where the backups are, and whether anyone has ever tried restoring one.

None of that demonstrates well, and all of it is what separates something you can run a business on from something that works until the first odd Tuesday.

Who owns it, and who could maintain it

Built with standard, widely-used tools rather than anything exotic, documented well enough that another developer could pick it up, and yours. The question worth asking anyone who builds you software is what happens if they get run over, and you should get a straight answer.