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Services

Custom business applications

The flagship. A custom application brings the important parts of your daily operations into one system. We map the way your team works, then build a system that supports it without relying on undocumented steps or individual memory.

A custom business application is one system, built for your business, that holds the work your team does every day. Not a template with your logo on it, and not a platform you bend your process to fit.

When a business is ready for one

Off the shelf software is the right answer far more often than people selling custom software admit. It is cheaper, it is faster to start, and somebody else maintains it. You should stay on it for as long as it fits.

What we typically build

  • Quoting and estimating
  • Job and project management
  • Inventory and stock control
  • Purchasing and supplier management
  • Production scheduling
  • Dispatch and freight
  • Customer and supplier portals
  • Approvals and sign off workflows
  • Reporting and dashboards

What you get, and what you own

Ownership is the question small businesses forget to ask, and the one that costs them most when the relationship ends. Our position is plain.

  • The source code is yours, held in a repository you have access to.
  • Your data is yours, exportable in full at any time in a standard format.
  • The written specification from discovery is yours, including the right to take it elsewhere.
  • Documentation is written as the system is built, not promised afterwards.
  • Hosting is your choice. On our infrastructure, on yours, or with a third party.
  • There is no licence from us and no fee that makes leaving expensive.
  • Replace important spreadsheets and disconnected tools
  • Give staff access to the same up-to-date information
  • Support the parts of your process that standard software does not handle well
  • Add new modules as the business grows and changes
A systemised process
1 of 5
Start of day for a bookseller. Work queues as counts, and the express cutoff at the top.

Signs you have outgrown off the shelf software

The point where off the shelf stops fitting is usually not dramatic. It shows up as workarounds: a spreadsheet beside the system, a step that has to be done twice, a report someone rebuilds by hand every month.

  • A spreadsheet sits beside your main system and holds something important.
  • The same information is entered into two systems by two people.
  • You pay per user for a product where most users touch one screen.
  • A report that matters takes more than half a day to produce.
  • New staff take months to learn a process that only exists in someone's head.
  • You have been told that what you want is not possible in your current system.
  • Your process has been changed to suit the software rather than the customer.

How we decide between FileMaker and Laravel

Most firms sell the one platform they know. We work in both, so the choice is made against your problem. This is roughly how it goes.

FileMaker
Laravel
Best suited to
Internal operational systems with complex business logic
Public facing systems, portals and high concurrency
Users
A defined team, typically 5 to 200 named users
Unlimited, including customers and suppliers
Speed of change
Very fast. Changes land in days
Moderate. Changes follow a normal development cycle
Licensing
Per user licence payable to Claris
No licence cost. You pay for hosting
Access
Desktop, iPad and browser
Any browser, any device
We choose it when
The logic is complicated and the audience is your own staff
The audience is outside your business, or scale is uncertain

How we build it

Read the full process
1

Discovery and scope

We meet with the people who use the current process and document how the work is really being done. You receive a written specification, a delivery plan and a fixed price for the first build stage.

2

Design and prototype

We create a working prototype of the main screens and review it with your team. This gives people a chance to test the proposed workflow before development begins.

3

Build in phases

The project is divided into useful stages, usually based on a department or part of the workflow. Each stage is tested, delivered and paid for separately.

4

Go live and training

We migrate your data, train staff using their real day-to-day tasks and stay available while everyone becomes familiar with the new system.

5

Support and improve

After launch, we can continue to support the system and add improvements as your business changes. Support commitments are published and changes are quoted before work begins.

The part that surprised me was how much of the first month was spent on our process rather than on software. By the time anything was built, they understood our business better than some of our own staff.
Mia Chen, General Manager

Wholesale distribution, Sydney

CASE STUDY

Monthly stock reconciliation cut from three days to four hours.

Read the case study →

Book a discovery call

Thirty minutes with the person who would build your system. We will ask about how your business runs today, where the manual work sits, and what you have already tried. You will leave with a view on whether custom software is worth it for you, and a rough range for what it would cost. There is no charge and no obligation.

Book a discovery call

Or call 02 9100 0168 during business hours.