Custom Software Development

Software that fits the work

Every organisation has a process that lives in someone’s head, a spreadsheet nobody is allowed to touch, and a step where data gets retyped from one system into another.

Custom software is worth building when that process is genuinely yours and worth protecting. It is not worth building when a product on the market would do. Our first job is to tell you honestly which situation you are in.

Discovery comes first, and it is a deliverable

We do not quote a build from a conversation. We run a discovery engagement, and you get something concrete out of it whether or not you continue with us:

  • A map of the current process, including the parts that only exist informally
  • A written specification of what the system must do, in language your team can check
  • The technical approach, with the significant trade-offs named
  • A cost and time estimate that is grounded in the specification

If you take that document to another firm, it will still be useful. That is the point.

Built to be maintained

Bespoke software has a specific failure mode: it works perfectly for four years, then the person who understood it leaves, and nobody dares touch it.

We build against that. Mainstream technology rather than clever choices, architecture decisions recorded with their reasoning, automated tests around the logic that matters, and documentation aimed at the engineer who arrives two years from now knowing nothing.

Rollout is part of the build

The system going live is not the same as the system being used. We plan the migration, train the people who will use it daily, and roll out in phases so that a problem affects one team for one day rather than everyone at once.

Deliverables
  • Discovery, process mapping, and written technical specification
  • Internal tools, operations platforms, and line-of-business systems
  • Data migration from spreadsheets, legacy systems, and paper processes
  • Integration with ERP, accounting, payment, and government systems
  • Reporting, dashboards, and scheduled exports
  • User training, documentation, and phased rollout
  • Long-term maintenance and support agreements
Typical stack
TypeScriptPythonPostgreSQLNode.jsDockerAzureAWS

Questions, answered.

When is custom software the right answer?

When the process is genuinely yours and it is a competitive advantage, when the off-the-shelf option would need so much configuration that you are effectively building anyway, or when the tools you need do not talk to each other and the gap is being filled by a person copying data by hand. If a product on the market fits, we will tell you to buy it.

How do you price this kind of work?

Discovery is a fixed-price engagement that produces a written specification and an estimate you can take to anyone. Delivery is then either fixed-price against that specification or time-and-materials in sprints, depending on how well defined the scope is. We do not quote a build price before discovery, because a number invented that early is a guess with a decimal point.

What happens to our existing data?

Migration is part of the project, not a footnote. We profile the existing data, agree what is authoritative, write the migration as repeatable code, and run it against a copy until it is clean. Then we run it for real, with a rollback path.

Will we be locked in to you?

No. You own the code and the infrastructure accounts. We build on mainstream, well-documented technology specifically so another team could pick it up, and we write the documentation that would let them.

Do you build software for government and enterprise clients?

Yes. We are used to procurement processes, security reviews, formal acceptance testing, and phased rollouts across departments.

Related work

Custom software we have shipped.

Need custom software?

Tell us what you're working on. We'll tell you how we'd make it real.

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