What does a custom system like this cost?

Honestly, it depends on the scope, and we will not quote a headline number we cannot stand behind. Every engagement starts with a short, fixed-price diagnostic from £3,950 that defines exactly what to build, in what order, and what it is worth to you before you commit to a build. You leave the diagnostic with a scoped plan you own, whether or not you build with us.

How long does it take to see something working?

We build the one part of the system that hurts most first, and aim to have it in real use in weeks rather than months. Because the same senior people scope and build the work, there is no discovery phase that produces only slides. You get working software you can judge, then we iterate.

Who owns the code and the intellectual property?

You do. The source code, the data and the documentation are yours, contractually, from the outset. You are never locked into us to keep the system running, and you can take it to another team if you ever choose to.

Do we have to replace the tools we already use?

No. We build only the gap — the system your business actually runs on — and connect it to the accounting ledger, field or project tool and CRM you already have. Ripping out working tools is expensive and rarely necessary.

What happens after launch?

The system is yours to run, and it is documented so your team understands it. We can support and extend it on a light retainer, but that is your choice, not a dependency we engineer in. Governance, audit trails and handover notes come with the build.

Custom software development

You don’t need an ERP. You need the one system your business actually runs on.

Lean, high-value businesses run their whole commercial engine on a heroic spreadsheet and a handful of disconnected tools. Too specialised for off-the-shelf, too small for a heavyweight ERP. We build the system that fits how you actually work — and connect it to the ledger, field tool and CRM you already have.

Book a 15-minute call See how a diagnostic works

The spreadsheet you’ve outgrown

It got you here. It will not get you further.

The workbook that ran the business at ten people quietly becomes the thing holding it back at thirty. The symptoms are always the same.

Taxonomy drift

The same client, product or job is spelled three ways across four tabs. Every report starts with a reconciliation nobody trusts.

Version chaos

“Final_v7_actual_USE_THIS.xlsx” lives in someone's inbox. Two people edit two copies and both are wrong by Friday.

No audit trail

A number changed, margin moved, and there is no record of who touched it or when. You cannot answer a simple “why”.

No single source of truth

Finance, delivery and sales each keep their own version of reality. The disagreement surfaces at exactly the wrong moment.

No forward view

The workbook tells you what happened. It cannot tell you what is committed, what is at risk, or what next quarter looks like.

Re-keying errors

The same figure is typed into the ledger, the job sheet and the quote. One transposed digit and the error propagates silently.

Who this is for

Few clients, large deals, a lean expert team.

Established businesses of roughly ten to forty people, no internal IT department, running high-value work through general-purpose tools that were never built for it.

Specialist installers and contractors

Renewables, M&E, fit-out and similar trades running high-value jobs through spreadsheets, a field app and an accounting ledger that never quite agree.

Niche and bespoke manufacturers

Make-to-order and low-volume production where every job is different and off-the-shelf MRP assumes a factory you do not run.

Specialist engineering firms

Project-based work with committed cost, staged delivery and long lead times that a generic project tool flattens into a to-do list.

Brokers and intermediaries

Pipeline, commissions and counterparties tracked across tools that were never designed to talk to each other.

High-value professional practices

Few clients, large engagements, and a commercial engine that lives in one person's head and one enormous workbook.

What we build

One system, built around your actual process.

Not a generic platform bent to fit. The specific capabilities a high-value, project-based business needs — and nothing it does not.

A single source of truth

One record for each client, job and quote that finance, delivery and sales all read from — so the reconciliation meeting disappears.

Staged workflows with hard gates

Work moves through defined stages, and a stage cannot advance until its conditions are met. The process is enforced by the software, not by memory.

Committed-vs-actual money logic

What is committed, what is spent and what is still to come, tracked per job — so margin is a live number, not a year-end surprise.

Forecasting

A forward view built from your real pipeline and commitments: what lands when, and where the cash and capacity pressure sits.

Offline-first field tools

The people on site capture what happened once, on a phone, with no signal — and it flows back to the office without re-keying.

Audit trails

Every material change is recorded: who, what, when. The evidence a board, an auditor or an insurer asks for is already there.

AI where it earns its place

Applied only where it removes real drudgery under human review — extracting a figure, drafting a document — never as decoration.

Build only the gap. Connect the rest.

You have probably already paid for good tools. The accounting ledger works. The field or project tool works. The sales CRM works. What does not exist is the layer above them — the single system that holds your real process, your money logic and your forward view, and keeps the others in step. That is the part worth building, and the only part we build from scratch.

We integrate what you already run rather than replace it, so you keep the tools your team knows and lose the re-keying, the reconciliation and the version chaos between them. Less to build, less to maintain, and a system your people actually adopt because it fits the way they already work.

Governance engineered in, by a senior team that ships.

Most firms sell you either advice or code. We do both, under one engagement: we design the governance and write the software, so nothing is lost between the person who scoped it and the person who built it — because they are the same people. Audit trails, approval gates and a defensible record are part of the build, not a later project.

And we have shipped. Our product blueprints show the pattern in production: an agent operations platform, an invoice automation system and a costing platform. See the wider approach on why we are AI-native, the range of work in our case studies, and the productised builds under products.

How an engagement runs

Short diagnostic. Fixed-scope build. Iterate.

No open-ended discovery, no runaway scope. You know what you are getting and what it costs at each step.

Diagnostic

A short, fixed-price engagement from £3,950 that maps your process, finds the part that hurts most, and produces a scoped plan you own — build with us or not.

Fixed-scope build

We build the highest-value component first to a defined scope and price, and get it into real use in weeks. Governance and audit trails are built in from the start.

Iterate

With the first component earning its keep, we extend the system in priced increments — the next workflow, the field tool, the forecast — only as each proves its worth.

Related reading: from spreadsheets to custom software and custom software for small UK businesses. Need senior technology leadership alongside the build? See our fractional CTO service.

The questions people ask first

Show us the spreadsheet.

Fifteen minutes with the people who would build it. Tell us how the business actually runs and where the workbook is buckling — you will leave knowing what the one system you need looks like.

Book a 15-minute call or see what we have shipped

No obligation · no pitch.