Bespoke software

An internal app for a spreadsheet-run company

10 weeks Representative project

A growing team was coordinating jobs, stock, and people in twelve spreadsheets. It worked until it didn’t: version conflicts, missed handovers, and a founder who was the only person who understood the system.

The problem

Buying a big operations platform would have meant bending the business to the software. The team needed the opposite: software bent to the way they already worked, with the messy edges designed in rather than ignored.

The approach

We sat with the people doing the work, then built a focused internal app: job records, assignments, stock levels, and a daily board. No unused modules. Permissions matched real roles. The founder could still see everything; nobody else had to.

The result

The business now has a system that survives holidays. New staff can be shown the app instead of the founder’s head. Spreadsheets remain for analysis, not as the operating system.

More work

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