Software development

Plenty of useful software is small. A tool that replaces a spreadsheet which has grown too big to trust. A utility that turns a forty-minute weekly task into a single step. A screen showing the handful of figures someone checks every morning.

Tools like these rarely justify a large project and are rarely anyone’s job, so they tend not to get built. That’s a pity, because they are often where the quickest return lies.

Repetitive, rule-based work, such as copying data between systems or producing the same report every week, is one of the cheapest things in a business to improve. We start by measuring the task as it stands: how long it takes, how often it runs and how often it goes wrong. That tells us whether automating it is worth the cost. Some jobs look tedious but take ten minutes a month, and are better left alone.

We build automations to fail loudly. If an expected file is missing or a figure is out of range, the job stops and tells someone instead of quietly producing a wrong answer.

Online shops, accounting packages, CRMs and older systems tend to hold the same information in different places, kept in step by hand. We connect them so the data moves on its own. Where a system has a proper API we use it. Where it doesn’t, we choose the approach that will be easiest to maintain and tell you what it will cost to keep running.

Mobile is an area we’re developing, with apps we intend to publish under the Quantuity name. Our interest is in apps that do one practical job well.

Software is only cheap if it’s cheap to keep running. We keep code under version control, automate deployment and write documentation for whoever maintains it next. You aren’t dependent on us to make a change, and a problem a year from now can be fixed quickly by someone who has never seen the code before.

To discuss a project, email enquiries@quantuity.com.