VoIP Software: Complete Traffic Management
Voice traffic pulled out by hand into an Excel sheet, with customers going from 400 to 2,000.
How custom software is built
How custom software is built, phase by phase: design on site, development and integration, delivery to the department, and what stays with you at the end.
Where we have already done it
Fleet management software: fifteen vans, hundreds of spare parts
Fifteen vans carrying hundreds of spare parts, and nobody knew what was on which one.
Verbal transcription software, while the meeting is under way
Hand-written transcripts lost details, and whoever wrote them missed the meeting.
How is custom software built?
In phases, and the first one is not code. You start from a prototype that the people who will use the software try out, so problems surface while changing them is still cheap. Then development in phases, each with a date, and delivery: code, documentation and environments stay yours, even if one day you change supplier.
This page explains how custom software is built, phase by phase. If you are looking for which of our projects looks like yours, the list is in what we build.
A custom software solution is for those who have a piece of work that no market software covers, and want to solve it well once. They are projects that last months.
Apps, web apps, portals, management systems
Mobile apps, for your customers or for technicians who work on the move, even where the network does not reach. Web apps for the work no management system follows, designed for the people who spend their day inside them. Portals for customers and suppliers: orders, documents, delivery status, without phone calls and attachments. Management systems and shop-floor tools, connected to the systems you already have: ERP, MES, warehouse, line machines.
Why custom
The exceptions in your work are the part an off-the-shelf product does not know: the extra steps, the department rules, the cases that only happen at your place. They surface while working, and that is why the scope is decided at short intervals.
Faced with those exceptions an off-the-shelf product leaves you two roads: change the way you work, or pay for customisations the vendor had not planned and that stay theirs. Custom software follows your work, and the code is yours.
The three parts of the work
Design
Before designing screens we go and look at the process: who runs it, with what, in how much time, and which shortcuts they have taken to fit it into the day. It is the shortcuts that tell you what the written process does not cover. From there come the screens, which we test with the people who will use them before writing the code.
Development
We write the software and connect it to the systems you have: ERP, MES, warehouse management systems, CRM, line machines. We look at the integration first.
Delivery
Go-live, migration of the data that was there before, training for the people who will use it, and the period when we stay close while the department runs into it for the first time. This part too has its time and its cost, and has to be accounted for from the start.
How we deliver it
In phases, each with its own date and the scope decided together, and each phase is decided on the results of the one before. How long a phase lasts, what it costs and how the decision to go on is made is explained in how we work.
Where to go next
- If you have to decide on the investment: tailored software.
- If you run a department: apps for companies.
- If you have to assess how it integrates with your systems: web apps.
Frequently asked questions
Custom software or an off-the-shelf product?
An off-the-shelf product, as long as your process looks like everyone else’s. When it stops looking like it, you pay for every adaptation to a vendor who then keeps it.
What do you build to measure?
Mobile apps, web apps, portals for customers and suppliers, management systems and shop-floor tools, integrated with ERP, MES, warehouse and line machines.
Who owns the code?
You do. If one day you choose another supplier, you hand them the source and the documentation.
Tell us about the project you have in mind.