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Web applications and customer portals

The spreadsheet everyone shares, turned into a proper system.

When a job has outgrown spreadsheets and email, a web application gives everyone one place to do it, from any device, with the rules built in. We've been designing, building and hosting them for businesses since 2006.

Two men talking a job through over a laptop in a stockroom

It started as a spreadsheet. Now the business depends on it.

Quotes, bookings, job tracking, stock, customer orders. It began as a shared spreadsheet and a few emails, and it worked until there were too many people, too many versions and no way of knowing who changed what.

Off-the-shelf software fits most of the job and makes you bend for the rest. A web application built around how you work fits all of it.

What you get

  • Internal systems for quoting, job tracking, stock, scheduling and reporting
  • Customer and supplier portals: orders, documents and account details behind a login
  • Dashboards showing current figures from every system
  • Works on a desktop, a tablet and a phone
  • Logins and permissions, so people see only what they should
  • Connected to your accounts, stock and other systems
  • Hosting, backups and updates looked after

How a web application gets built.

  1. Map the job

    We sit with the people who do the work and follow it from start to finish, including the exceptions no spreadsheet shows.

  2. Show it early

    You get working screens to click through before the build is far along, while changes are still cheap.

  3. Build in checkpoints

    Each piece is shown working before we move to the next, and every release is tested by hand.

  4. Host and look after it

    We run it on managed cloud hosting with backups and monitoring, and add to it as the business changes.

A job like this one.

DistributionReporting

One view of sales across three countries.

The problem

A parts distributor trading in three countries ran each country on its own database. Seeing the whole business meant pulling figures from three places and stitching them together by hand.

What we did

We built a scheduled report that brings sales from all three countries together, a one-page purchasing dashboard drawn up from the purchasing manager's own sketch, and a page for each sales rep showing their own figures, refreshed overnight inside the system they already use.

The result

Management, purchasing and the reps each open one page and see current figures. The numbers arrive on a schedule instead of being compiled by hand.

All case studies →

What people ask first.

Based in Derbyshire, working with businesses across Nottinghamshire, Leicestershire, the wider East Midlands and the UK.

Should we buy a package or have something built?

If a package fits the way you work, buy it, and we'll say so. A build makes sense when the job is particular to your business, or when you're paying for a big system and using a corner of it.

Can it connect to the systems we already have?

Almost always. Accounts, stock, eCommerce and older in-house systems can all feed it or be fed by it.

Where is it hosted?

On managed cloud services with backups and monitoring. If you have your own hosting or IT provider, we can work with that instead.

Who owns it?

That's agreed in writing before work starts, and it's your call. The detail is in our FAQ.

What does it cost?

Each job is priced at a no-obligation meeting, once we've seen what's involved. As a guide, it will probably come to less than half of what a traditional software house would quote.

Outgrown the spreadsheet?

Tell us the problem. We'll tell you what's possible, how long it takes and what it costs.