built to order
Custom software development: from spreadsheet to system in 18 days
There is a process in your company that moves real money and lives in an Excel file, an Access database from 2011, and one person who knows which order to press the buttons in. We replace it with a service that has a schema, migrations and an append-only log, wired into whatever you already run: SAP, Dynamics, Salesforce, an AS/400, a warehouse system with a SOAP endpoint from 2006. Eighteen days to a first working version.
18 days to a first working version
Shadow IT is struck through because it does not get ported. Once the process has an owner and a log, the private copies stop being worth maintaining.
Spreadsheets
Excel, an Access file, and a reconciliation someone does by hand each morning.
- spreadsheet + emailExcel · Outlook
- access.mdbAccess
- manual reconciliationpeople
- shadow ITunowned
A service
One domain service, one web client, a schema with migrations, an append-only log.
- domain serviceGo
- web clientTypeScript
- postgresschema + migrations
- audit logappend-only
18 days to a first working version
How the work goes
- 01days 1–2
Watch the work happen
We sit with the people doing it and read the formulas in their spreadsheet. The exceptions they handle without thinking are the ones that break a build on day fifteen.
- 02days 2–5
Model the data and settle the rules
Schema, states, who is allowed to change what. This is where the arguments happen, and having them here costs a fraction of having them the day before you go live.
- 03days 4–12
Build one path end to end
A complete path from input to report, in production, used by people who do the job. A demo environment tells you nothing about whether the thing is usable.
- 04days 11–18
Migrate and turn the old file off
Import the history, run both for a period, then remove write access to the spreadsheet. A system nobody is required to leave never gets left.
What the platform does, what a person does
| What the platform does, what a person does | Who does it | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Reading the existing Access queries and Excel formulas | Platform | They come out as readable rules a person can disagree with in a meeting. |
| Deciding which rules are real and which are habits | Engineer | Only your people know that the Tuesday exception exists because of one supplier. |
| Service, schema and migrations | Platform | Generated from the agreed model, then reviewed line by line before it lands. |
| The screens people live in | Both | The daily path gets designed by a person. The admin forms around it do not need one. |
| Importing and reconciling the history | Both | Loading is mechanical. Deciding what to do with rows that never balanced is not. |
| Cutover plan | Engineer | Which date, who is on call, what the rollback is. |
The team that builds it
More than ten years on other people's systems and dozens of migrations delivered: Access and Excel processes, VB6 and Delphi clients, PHP monoliths, AS/400 policy administration, plant floors held together by macros. Scheduling, claims, billing, inventory, dispatch, reporting. We have built all of it before, and the shape of the work repeats far more than anyone expects.
The assessment is the cheap way to see this for yourself. Bounded work with a written output: the data model as we understand it, the rules we pulled out of your spreadsheet, and a phased plan with prices against it.
Questions we get from engineers
- What stack, and can our team maintain it?
- Go on the server, TypeScript in the browser, Postgres underneath. Deliberately dull: a competent team picks it up without a course, and nothing in it depends on a vendor being in business next year.
- Who owns the code and the data?
- You do, from the first commit. Repositories, deploy pipeline, database, all yours. If you take over after phase one, the handover is part of the phase rather than a negotiation.
- How do you price it?
- Fixed per phase. The assessment produces the scope and the number arrives with it, usually within two days of getting access.
- Can you work alongside our developers?
- Yes, and it usually goes better that way, because your engineers hold the domain knowledge and end up owning the code. We staff around whatever your team already covers.
- How fast can you start?
- Within about two days of a signed statement of work, and the assessment can run while contracting finishes. Most projects have a first working path in front of real users inside three weeks.
Show us the spreadsheet
Send the shape of the process and roughly how many people touch it. We come back with what the assessment covers, how long the build takes and what it costs.
The first reply comes from an engineer, usually asking who owns the process today.