When is a custom application worth it?
It usually pays off when one of these happens:
- You type the same data into two or three different programs every day.
- A spreadsheet has become the company system and nobody dares to touch it.
- Several people (customers, staff, suppliers) need to see different information about the same process.
- The standard software you use forces you to work its way instead of yours.
And when it is not worth it: if a standard program already does almost everything you need, adapting to it is usually cheaper. I tell you so in the first conversation.
Examples of what can be built
These are types of project, to give you an idea of the scope:
| Need | What gets built |
|---|---|
| Let your customers check their own information | A portal with a login per user, where each person sees only their own data |
| Run the operation from one place | An internal dashboard with the day's data, alerts and tasks |
| Appointments, bookings or orders with your own rules | A booking or ordering system shaped to the way you work |
| Stop copying data by hand | A link between your programs (Microsoft 365, your ERP, your payment gateway) |
| Reports you put together by hand today | Reports that build themselves from real data |
Real work: a portal with three profiles
For Centro Moreau I built a patient portal with three profiles: patient, doctor and insurer. Each one sees only what concerns them. With health data there is no room for error, so permissions and the access log are designed from day one, not at the end.
How a project in phases works
This way you never pay up front for something you have not yet seen working:
- Analysis: I understand the current process, who uses it and what fails.
- A proposal and a closed quote by phases, with the essentials first.
- A first version with the essentials, to use as soon as possible with real data.
- Go-live: server, certificate, backups and a plan to roll back if something fails.
- Improvements in later phases, based on what real use has shown.