Web app development
Custom software for the one process nobody else runs your way, and that you are currently holding together with spreadsheets.
Read more →Spreadsheet or web app: when has the spreadsheet run out?
Every company runs on at least one spreadsheet that has become too important. The question is not whether that matters, but when.
The short version
A spreadsheet is an excellent piece of software. It is free, everybody can use it, and for working out a process you are still discovering there is no better tool. Many companies never need anything else, and that is fine.
The problem is not the spreadsheet but what grows around it. First there is one file. Then it contains formulas nobody dares touch. Then there are three versions with nearly the same name and nobody knows which is real. At that point it is no longer a tool but a place where your company keeps data with nobody supervising it.
Stay with the spreadsheet if
- One or two people use it and not at the same time.
- The process is still changing.
- Mistakes are visible and recoverable.
- The file holds no data whose loss would be a problem.
Build a web app if
- More than two people want to be in the same file at once.
- Versions are floating around and nobody knows which is correct.
- One wrong entry silently leads to a wrong invoice or delivery.
- It holds customer data — at which point it is a data-protection question too.
- Somebody spends hours a week retyping into it from another system.
- There is one person without whom nobody knows how it works.
What gets overlooked here
What people forget is that the spreadsheet itself is the valuable part. The formulas in it are years of accumulated knowledge about how your business calculates, and that knowledge is written down nowhere else. So building a web app does not start with design but with reading that spreadsheet and writing down what is in it.
Second: the move does not have to happen at once. Often the sensible first step is taking out the riskiest part — the data entry, or the calculation where the errors come from — and leaving the rest for now. That costs a fraction and removes most of the risk.
Once you have decided
Off-the-shelf or custom
There is almost always a package that handles eighty per cent of your process. The question is what the last twenty per cent costs you.
Read more →WordPress vs custom
WordPress runs roughly four in ten websites. That is neither coincidence nor recommendation — it depends entirely on what the site has to do.
Read more →Rebuild or improve
A new site is almost never the answer to "we get too few enquiries". Finding out why first is cheaper and works more often.
Read more →Frequently asked questions
Does my existing data come across?
Yes, and it gets cleaned on the way. That cleaning is often the most useful part of the whole project, because it exposes what has been wrong for years.
Can people still get at it in Excel?
Exporting to Excel is almost always part of the solution. People want to do their own analysis, and you do not have to take that away.
Do we have to replace everything at once?
No, and we usually advise against it. Start where the errors or the manual work are, and extend once that works.
Not sure which way to go?
Send a short brief with what you have now and what needs to be better. You get an honest answer, including if that answer is that you do not need us for it.