Custom solutions
Software built around how your organisation already works.
Every organisation has work that no product quite fits: the process that grew up around your clients, your regulator and your people. We design and build applications and tools that follow that process as it is — automating the repeated steps, reducing the errors that come from doing them by hand, and giving your staff their time back for the work that needs a person.
What we build
Applications, tools and the automation between them.
The size of the build follows the size of the problem. Some organisations need a system; most start with one piece of work that costs too much time or goes wrong too often.
Applications
A system of record for a process the off-the-shelf products do not cover — the intake, the file, the approvals and the reporting, built around the steps your people actually follow rather than the steps a vendor assumed.
Tools
Smaller, single-purpose pieces of software: a calculation your staff repeat every day, a form that feeds the right place, a report that is assembled by hand every month. Built once, used by whoever needs it.
Automations
The work that happens between systems — copying figures from one place to another, checking a record against a rule, sending the same document at the same point in every file. Done by software, on the same rule every time.
Built to fit
It fits the organisation, rather than the organisation fitting it.
Off-the-shelf software is written for the common case. The work that makes your firm what it is usually is not the common case, and that is where a custom build earns its place.
It follows your process, not the other way round
We start by watching how the work is done today: who touches a file, in what order, and where it waits. What we build follows that. You should not have to change how the firm operates to suit a piece of software.
It takes over the repetition
Anything a person does the same way each time — re-keying, reconciling, collating, chasing — is a candidate. The software does the repeated step and a person keeps the judgement.
It reduces the errors that come from doing things by hand
Most errors in an office are transcription and omission: a figure typed twice, a step skipped on a busy day. When the step is done by software it is done the same way every time, and when it needs a person it says so.
It gives staff their time back
The point is not fewer people. It is that the people you have spend their day on the work that needs a person — a client, a decision, an exception — rather than on moving information from one screen to another.
Where to look
The signs that a piece of work should be software.
You do not need to know what to build. You need to know where the time goes and where the mistakes come from, and these are usually where.
- A spreadsheet that one person maintains and everyone depends on.
- Information that is typed into one system and then typed again into another.
- A checklist that lives in someone's head, or in an email that is forwarded each time.
- A monthly report that takes a day to assemble from three sources.
- A hand-off between two people that works when both are in and stalls when one is away.
- A check that is meant to happen on every file and is done on most of them.
How it works
From the way the work is done now to software that does it.
- 1
Tell us how the work is done now
A conversation, and usually a look at the spreadsheet or the folder the work lives in. We want to understand the process as it is, including the parts that only work because of one person.
- 2
We propose what to build and what to leave alone
Not every step should be automated. We come back with what we think is worth building, what is better left as it is, and why — in writing, in plain terms, before anything is started.
- 3
We design and build it with the people who will use it
The people doing the work today see it as it takes shape and tell us where it is wrong. Software built for a process nobody checked against is how organisations end up with a second spreadsheet beside the new system.
- 4
It goes into use, and we stay with it
A process changes, and the software has to change with it. What we build is meant to be kept working, not handed over and forgotten.
What we will not tell you
Three things this kind of page normally claims.
How long it will take
Nobody can estimate a build honestly before they have seen the process. We will give you a view once we have, and we will tell you which parts of it we are unsure about.
That it will replace everything
Some of what your firm does by hand should stay that way, because the judgement in it is the job. We will say so when we see it, even when building it would be more work for us.
Who else we have done this for
We have no customer names or case studies to show you on this page, and we are not going to invent placeholder ones. When there are some to name, they will be real.
How we handle the information you give us is on the security page, including what we have not been assessed against.
Questions
Asked before most builds
Does it have to be a whole application?
No. Some of the most useful things we can build are small — a single tool that removes an hour a day from one role, or an automation that stops one class of error. Start with the piece of work that costs the most time or goes wrong most often.
What do you need from us to start?
Someone who does the work and can show us how, and whatever the work currently lives in — the spreadsheet, the folder, the inbox. We do not need a specification. Writing down what should be built is part of what we do.
Our process is unusual. Is that a problem?
It is the reason to build rather than buy. Off-the-shelf software is written for the common case, and an organisation whose process does not match it ends up working around the product. A custom build follows the process you actually have.
What does it cost?
It depends entirely on what is being built, so we quote after we have understood the work rather than publishing a figure that would be wrong for you in one direction or the other. The conversation that leads to a quote costs nothing.
How is this different from the CloudVersa apps?
The five apps on this site are finished products for a defined kind of business — a lender, a law firm, a brokerage. A custom solution is built for one organisation, around its own process. If one of the apps already does your job, use it; if the job is specific to how your firm works, talk to us.
Start with the piece of work that costs the most.
Tell us what your people do by hand that they should not have to, and how it is done today. We will tell you what we would build, what we would leave alone, and why.
Or email info@cloudversa.io — a person reads it.