Custom business tools

Custom applications and internal tools — from proposal generators to systems tailored to one process.

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Who this is for

Companies with a unique workflow that off-the-shelf software cannot handle.

Problem

Ready-made tools impose someone else's process. The problem arises in companies whose way of working is so unique that no off-the-shelf software can handle it.

What We Do

We build custom applications and tools — from proposal generators to internal systems.

What's Included

Four stages, the last is continuous:

• Analysis
• Prototype
• Implementation
• Development

Timeline

We calculate the timeline individually and provide it with the estimate before starting work. It depends on the same things as the price: tool scope, number of integrations and support model. But the work order is fixed: analysis, prototype, implementation, development — and each stage gets its own date so there's not just one deadline at the very end.

Cost

Individual quote. The price consists of scope, integrations and support model.

What You Get

A tool that's 100% tailored to the company, not a process tailored to the tool.

How to calculate the break-even point for a custom-built tool

Pricing is individual, so the break-even point has to be calculated individually too — but the formula is the same regardless of scope.

• Monthly savings = (hours of work currently spent working around the lack of this tool — manual retyping, drafting offers in Word, keeping the process in one person's head) × hourly rate
• Break-even point (in months) = cost of building the tool ÷ monthly savings, after subtracting maintenance cost
• Calculate the cost of not having the tool a second way too: by the number of mistakes or missed opportunities that come from the process living in one person's head instead of a system

Without that second number, the break-even point looks worse than it actually is — because it ignores the risk that the process stops working when that one person is on leave or leaves the company.

A custom tool, off-the-shelf software, and manual work — three routes

Before ordering a custom-built tool, it's worth comparing it to the two alternatives you already have.

• Manual work (Word, Excel, one person's memory) — zero tool cost, but every step depends on a specific person being available and doesn't scale with the number of clients
• Off-the-shelf software — a fast start, but it forces someone else's process on you: the company adapts to the tool instead of the tool adapting to the company, and whatever the software didn't anticipate still ends up back in manual work
• A custom-built tool — covers your process exactly, exceptions included, but costs more upfront and requires analysis time before the first line of code exists

This third route makes sense where the process is specific enough that the first two have already failed — not as a first step, but as a decision made after trying those two.

When a custom-built tool doesn't pay off

Four situations where it's more honest to talk you out of building your own tool than to sell you one.

• The process the tool is meant to support hasn't settled yet — it changes weekly because the company itself is still finding its way of working; building anything on that ground ends in a rebuild within a month
• An off-the-shelf tool covers 90% of the need, and the missing 10% can be worked around manually without much cost — the price gap between off-the-shelf software and a custom tool rarely pays for itself then
• The company has one person who'll use the tool, and that person already has a workflow that suits them — a tool built alongside them gets opened once and forgotten
• The budget doesn't allow for a full Analysis stage — a tool built without identifying the process's exceptions costs more in fixes than an honest analysis would have cost upfront

What you need to have on your side

Building the tool starts with your knowledge of the process, not ours.

• Someone who knows the process from the inside and can describe the exceptions — not the manual's version, but what actually happens when something goes wrong
• Access to the data and tools currently handling this process manually — spreadsheets, templates, email, and the existing systems the tool needs to work with
• One person deciding the scope of the first version — without them, the Analysis stage drags on, because every decision waits for another person
• Acceptance that the first version won't cover everything — the Development stage is ongoing precisely because it's rare to anticipate the whole process the first time around

How to check after a month whether the tool paid off

You measure this yourselves, from your own data, without logging into anything of ours.

• Hours of manual work the tool now does for you, compared to the time before implementation
• The number of cases where the process worked without one specific person's involvement — a test of whether the knowledge actually moved from a head into a system
• The number of errors or skipped steps found after the fact, compared to the period before the tool
• The number of people who actually use the tool, not just the one person it was built for — if the process was meant to scale, this is the best proof that it does

Compare the same type of period — a quiet month with a quiet month, not with a month when half the team was on leave.

What a custom-built tool does not do

The tool does exactly what was designed during the Analysis stage — no more. If it adds up totals, generates documents from a template, or enforces the order of steps, that's arithmetic and rules, not artificial intelligence, and we say clearly which is which — because an offer generator pulling prices from a price list isn't the same thing as a language model writing the offer's text. The tool doesn't decide on its own what the process should look like — that decision belongs to someone at your company during the Analysis stage. It also doesn't fix data entered incorrectly by a person at input, because it doesn't know it's wrong — it just processes what it was given.

The most common mistake when ordering a custom tool

The most expensive mistake is ordering a tool built around an imagined process instead of what actually happens at the company. The client describes how work SHOULD go, we build exactly to that description, and on day one of real use, exceptions surface that nobody mentioned because to the team they were obvious — 'well, of course that's what we do when a client calls after hours.' Fixing a finished tool costs more than an honest Analysis stage upfront, which is why that stage in our scope of work isn't a box to check — it's where the exceptions come out before the first line of code exists.

Code, data, and access stay yours

The tool is built on your own infrastructure or on an account set up in your company's name — the data it generates stays physically on your side. The source code isn't locked inside our system: if you change contractors or end the collaboration, you take the tool with you, data included, instead of starting the build from zero. Administrative access belongs, from day one, to a person you designate; we work from an account with limited permissions.

What you get

• Process discovery and prototype of the core scenario
• Dedicated application covering the agreed functional scope
• Integrations, deployment and a maintenance and growth plan

When the problem lies elsewhere

If your problem sounds different, neighbouring areas of the same system stand right next to it — AURA connects them to each other rather than selling them separately:

• Lead forms — Forms and quizzes that people want to fill out: several short steps with conditional logic instead of one long list of fields.
• Cost Calculators — Interactive cost calculator on the website: the client calculates the approximate price themselves and leaves a contact.
• Admin panels — A dedicated panel for running your company: leads, clients, content and statistics in one place.
• Booking Systems — Online bookings with confirmations and reminders. Client books themselves, calendar keeps itself in check.