Bespoke systems
Bespoke system design for organisations.
Private and public sector. The system your organisation actually runs on, built around how the work really flows.
Off the shelf software is written for the average of a thousand companies. A bespoke system is built for one of them, yours. Everything in it is there because you actually do that thing, and it fits the way you already work like a glove, instead of your team bending their day around software that was never really about them.
What it looks like from the inside
A business that grew out of its own system.
Here is the one I see most. A company goes from a few million in turnover to somewhere north of twenty, still running on the system it set up at the beginning. Nothing is broken exactly. It just was never built for a business this size.
The senior team cannot get what they need to make decisions quickly, so decisions get slower or get made on instinct. The people doing the work are being inefficient through no fault of their own, because the system makes them be. And money is going out of the bottom line fixing things late that should have been caught early.
None of that shows up as a software problem. It shows up as margin.
The board cannot get a straight answer quickly
The numbers exist somewhere, but pulling them together takes two people and a day, so decisions get made on a feeling instead.
The system you started on has stopped fitting
It was right when there were six of you. There are sixty now, and everyone has quietly built a workaround in a spreadsheet.
Mistakes surface far too late
The problem was visible in week one and nobody saw it until week nine. Fixing it costs many times what catching it would have.
The same information is typed in three times
Nothing talks to anything else, so people spend their days moving data between systems instead of doing the job.
Why this is possible now
Bespoke used to mean six figures.
For most of my career, having a system built around your organisation meant a large agency, a long project and a number with a lot of noughts. That is why everyone ended up renting something that nearly fits.
That has changed. Modern tooling means one experienced person can now do in weeks what used to take a team months, which puts a bespoke system within reach of budgets that could never touch it before.
Who I build for
My clients are SMEs and local authorities, all under NDA, so there are no logos here. On a call I can walk you through a build that looks like yours.
Ask about a build like yoursWhat it costs
Three sizes of build, and where each one starts.
All prices exclude VAT. Hosting and support packages from £50 per month, plus VAT.
The stages of a build
Discovery comes before code, and it is the part that saves the money.
The expensive mistakes on a business system are all made before anyone writes a line of code. So discovery is spent sitting with the people who do the job, mapping how the work actually flows rather than how the process document says it does. That is where we find the exception everyone works around and nobody thought to mention.
- 0Scope and costs
We agree what we are setting out to do and what it costs, you sign the scope, and the deposit books the work in.
Scope signed and deposit received
- 1Business discovery
I sit with the people who do the job and map how the work really flows, not how the org chart says it does. This is where we find the things nobody thought to mention.
How the business really runs, written down and agreed
- 2Front end
The screens take shape first, with sample data, so you can click through the real thing early and steer it while changing it still costs nothing.
You have clicked through a working system
- 3Back end
Real accounts, real data, the engine under the screens, and the connections to whatever you already run on.
Live accounts running on real data
- 4Test, fix and launch
Your team uses it, we find the rough edges, I fix them, and it goes live under your name.
Launched and handed over
From the moment the scope is signed you get your own tracker page on this site: which stage your build is in, what happened this week, and the scope you agreed, without having to ask anyone.
Start with a quick chat about what you want to do.
Fifteen minutes. Tell me where the work gets stuck and I will tell you honestly whether a system fixes it, roughly what it would take, and whether it is worth doing at all.
Or write it down
Tell me where it gets stuck
Describe what your organisation is running on now and where it stops fitting. I will come back with an honest read on what I would build and what it would take.