TECHNOLOGY,WITHOUTTHENOISE

Almost every company we talk to runs on a mix of spreadsheets, an old management system and a few manual steps holding it all together. We build the software that takes the place of that mix, starting from how that company actually works, and over time we extend it module by module.

Often the job is getting existing systems to talk to each other: the management software with e-invoicing, the online shop with the warehouse, email with the archive. We write the APIs and automations needed, and imports, reports and notifications stop being a Friday afternoon chore.

We build showcase sites, portals with a private area and e-commerce. Before designing anything we ask what the site is for, because one that has to bring in phone calls and one that lets customers manage their orders are two different things. Either way it has to load fast, show up on Google and be usable by anyone, including from a keyboard or with a screen reader.

For apps we first look at what it has to do and what the budget is. In most cases a progressive web app or a cross-platform app in Flutter or React Native is enough, with one codebase for iPhone and Android. Native only when it's really needed, for instance if it has to work offline a lot or use the phone's hardware.

If your systems need to move to AWS, Azure or Google Cloud we do it in stages, while the company keeps working, and with a way back at every step. Sometimes we advise against it: for many small companies a well-run server costs less and is enough.

Releases go through an automated pipeline: every change is tested, goes to a staging environment first and only then to production, and if something's wrong we roll back to the previous version in minutes. Monitoring sends us an alert when something slows down or stops, often before anyone at the company notices.

The data is usually already there, spread across management software, spreadsheets and email. We bring it into one place and build the dashboards you need to answer the questions that come up in meetings: how much did we sell this month, which customer pays late, where does the time go.

We're careful with AI. We use it where it saves real work: reading and sorting incoming documents, drafting replies to customers, estimating next week's orders. If a well-written rule is enough for a problem, we use that instead.

Sometimes a company already has a piece of software and doesn't know whether to keep it, fix it or rebuild it. In those cases we look inside, code and data, and write down what can be saved, what is worth redoing and what it would cost. The same goes for a new project: a week spent drawing it on paper saves quite a few months of fixes later.

We design interfaces first as a clickable prototype and have the people who'll use them every day try them out, in the warehouse or at the front desk, because that's where you find out what's missing. We make them accessible according to WCAG and AgID guidelines, which is a requirement for anyone working with the public sector.

Delivered software needs looking after, otherwise after a couple of years nobody dares touch it anymore. We update the libraries, apply security patches when they come out, check that backups are actually happening and keep an eye on performance. It's a monthly fee, and most of the time you forget it's there.

We also take care of the GDPR side, of users and permissions, and of training the people who'll use the software. For support there's a direct channel with response times written into the contract, and on the other end you find the people who built that software, so there's no need to explain everything from scratch.