Service · Internal tools
Internal tools and custom software.
The back office nobody sells you, because it only makes sense for your business.
- Typical timeline
- 4–8 weeks
- You receive
- 12 deliverables
- Built for
- Teams outgrowing a spreadsheet
- Ownership
- Yours, in your name
What is included.
12 deliverables
Every engagement includes all of it. Nothing here is an upsell.
The tool
- Admin dashboards
- Approval workflowsWith a record of who said yes
- Roles and access control
- Internal reporting
Connecting things
- Integration between existing tools
- Entered once, everywhere updated
- Migrations off spreadsheets
- History preservedNot left behind in the old file
Handover
- Code and accounts in your name
- Written documentation
- Training session
- A month of changes included
Every business past a certain size has a spreadsheet doing a job a spreadsheet should not do. It works right up until it does not.
How it goes.
4 steps
Sit in the mess
The spreadsheet and the shared inbox, where the real requirements are.
What actually happens
Scope the smallest useful thing
One painful process replaced completely, not all of them partly.
Scope and price
Ship it narrow
Live, in front of the people who do the work.
Working tool
Hand over the keys
Code, accounts and documentation in your names.
Handover doc
Whether this is for you.
Working with us
A big software house
Weeks to something usable
Months to a first demo
One process replaced properly
A platform nobody asked for
We will say if you do not need it
Every problem needs software
Code and accounts are yours
Licensed back to you
You talk to whoever builds it
A delivery manager
Questions.
If yours is not here, ask it on a call. We would rather answer it than have you guess.
Whether to build at all
How small is too small?
If it saves one person an hour a month, it is probably not worth building. If it saves a team an afternoon a week, it usually is. We will do that arithmetic with you before quoting, and we have talked people out of projects on exactly that basis.
Is this not what a spreadsheet is for?
Often, yes, and we will say so rather than take the money. It stops being true when more than one person edits it at once, when a mistake is expensive, when you need a record of who changed what, or when the formula nobody dares touch has become a business risk.
Does something off-the-shelf already do this?
Sometimes, and we will tell you when it does — including when the answer is Doughy, which is ours. Buying a product that already exists beats commissioning one nearly every time. Custom is for the part that is genuinely specific to how your business works.
Building and after
What happens if we want to take it in-house?
You can, and it is a decision rather than a rescue. The code, the accounts and the documentation are in your names from day one, so a developer you hire later can pick it up without an extraction project first. We would rather build something you could leave than something you cannot.
Will it work with the systems we already pay for?
That is usually the point. Most of these projects are less about a new screen and more about making two things you already own talk to each other, so information is entered once instead of three times. Where a system has no way in, we will find out early and tell you.
What if our process changes?
It will. That is why the first version replaces one process rather than encoding the whole business, and why we spend the first week watching how the work actually happens rather than how a document says it does. Changes after handover are quoted like any other work, or covered if you keep us on.
Tell us what is eating your week.
The other three