CRM & Web Applications

Custom CRM &
Web Applications

Internal tools for businesses that have outgrown spreadsheets - dashboards, record keeping and the workflows around them. Whether custom is the right call depends on your situation, and often it isn't.

Custom Isn't Automatically the Right Answer

Most businesses reach a point where the shared spreadsheet stops coping. Several people edit it, there's no record of who changed what, everyone can see everything, and reporting becomes a manual exercise each month.

The obvious response is to build something custom, but that isn't always the sensible one. Established tools like Zoho and HubSpot are mature, inexpensive to start with, and perfectly adequate when your process resembles what they were designed around. Building from scratch makes more sense when your workflow is genuinely unusual, or when the tools available don't connect to something you depend on.

Which of those situations you're in is worth establishing before anyone writes code - and it's a short conversation, not a long one.

What This Usually Involves

A general outline. What actually applies to your project is worked out together, before anything is agreed.

01

Understanding how you work now

Looking at the actual process - who does what, in what order, and where it currently breaks down.

02

Deciding custom versus existing tools

An honest assessment of whether something off-the-shelf would serve you better and cost less.

03

Designing before building

Agreeing how it should work and what people see, before development starts.

04

Building and rolling out

Developing it in stages you can review, then introducing it to the people who'll use it daily.

CRM & SaaS Development FAQs

Quite possibly, and I'll say so if that's what your situation suggests. Off-the-shelf tools are capable and much cheaper to start with when your process fits how they work. Custom becomes worth considering when it genuinely doesn't. Worth a call to work out which applies to you.
It varies too widely with scope for a published figure to mean anything - the number of record types, users and connections all change it substantially. Describe how your team works and where it's breaking down, and you'll get a proper answer rather than a range.
Usually, yes. Existing spreadsheets, exports from another system or an older database can generally be brought across. How straightforward that is depends on the state of the data - worth looking at early rather than assuming.
That's something to agree clearly at the outset, and I'd expect you to want it in writing. It's a reasonable question to ask any developer, and worth raising on the first call.

Other Services

Outgrown Your
Spreadsheet?

Describe how your team works today and where it's causing friction. I'll tell you honestly whether custom is worth it - including when an existing tool would do the job for far less.