Custom Software Development

Most companies don't need custom software. The ones that do usually already know it — they just haven't found anyone willing to be straight with them about the cost.

So let's start there. Building something is the most expensive of your three options, and it's the right one less often than the people selling it will tell you.

Three options, and only one of them is building

Buy off the shelf Connect what you have Build it Your process is ordinary Systems exist, don't talk The process is your edge Cheapest by far Days, not months A real project, a real budget You adapt to the software Limited by what they expose It fits exactly
The dashed row is the trade-off you accept. We'll tell you which column you're in before you spend anything.

If an off-the-shelf package does ninety per cent of it, buy the package. If your systems already exist and just don't talk, workflow automation or RPA will get you there in days for a fraction of the price.

Build when the process is the thing that makes you money, when no vendor sells it, or when the "solution" you've been quoted would force you to work the way somebody else does.

What we build

  • Line-of-business applications. The system that runs scheduling, quoting, inspection, compliance or production — the thing your business actually does, which no package does properly.
  • Integrations between systems that won't cooperate. ERP to CRM, shop floor to accounting, a customer's portal to yours. Usually the highest return per dollar of anything on this list.
  • Replacing the spreadsheet that runs a department. You know the one. It has macros nobody understands, one person maintains it, and the business stops when they're on holiday.
  • Modernising legacy applications. Old VB6 and early VB.NET client-server apps still running critical work in Northwest Ohio plants. We can bring them forward rather than throw them away.
  • APIs for systems that don't have one. Which is what turns an RPA problem back into an integration problem — and makes it cheaper forever.
  • Reporting and dashboards. Built on the real database, not on a nightly export someone has to remember to run.
  • Customer and vendor portals. Giving the people outside your business a way to self-serve the things they currently phone you about.

What we build it with

What we build with Application .NET (C# / VB.NET) Java Node.js Python Ruby on Rails Data PostgreSQL MySQL SQL Server Oracle Runs on Servers, backups, monitoring and security — already ours
The bottom row is the part most development shops don't have, and it's where custom software usually dies.

The database is not an afterthought

We administer PostgreSQL, MySQL, Microsoft SQL Server and Oracle. Almost nobody in this market does, and it changes what we can build.

Most business software is a database with a user interface on top. When the application gets slow, the honest answer is usually in the query plan, the indexing or the schema — not in the front end. A development shop with no DBA will rewrite the screen. We'll look at the database.

It also means we can build against your existing systems properly, instead of scraping or exporting from them.

How we work

  1. Understand the work before the software. We watch how the job is done now and write down the rules, including the exceptions everyone knows but nobody has documented.
  2. Agree the smallest version that's genuinely useful. Not a prototype you throw away — the first real slice, in production, with real users.
  3. Build it in the open. You see it as it goes, not at the end. Software projects fail quietly when nobody looks for six months.
  4. Ship, watch, adjust. The first weeks of real use tell you more than any amount of specification.
  5. Decide who owns it. Before we start, not after.

The question to ask any developer

"What happens in three years?"

Custom software is a commitment, not a purchase. Someone has to patch the server it runs on, renew the certificate, apply the security update, restore it when the disk fails, and change it when your business changes. Plenty of shops will build you something excellent and then vanish, leaving you with code nobody can read and a server nobody is watching.

We answer that question the same way for every client: either we keep running it as part of your support agreement, or we hand it over documented and train your team. Both are fine. Not deciding is not.

Why Argyle

We're a managed services provider that also develops, which is an unusual combination and the reason clients bring us the awkward projects.

When something breaks at 6am, there's no argument about whether it's the application, the database, the server or the network — it's all us. We built it, we host it, we monitor it, and we're the ones who pick up the phone.

We're a Microsoft, Cisco, VMware, Fortinet and Sophos partner, we've supported Northwest Ohio manufacturers, healthcare practices, schools and professional firms for years, and we're in Perrysburg — so for the discovery work that genuinely needs someone standing on the shop floor, we drive.

Tell us what the software needs to do

Bring us the process, not a specification. The first conversation is about whether you should build at all — and we'll say so if the answer is no.

Call 419-419-5737 or send us a message and ask about custom development.

Argyle IT Solutions · 28304 Cedar Park Blvd., Suite A, Perrysburg, OH 43551 · Serving Toledo, Perrysburg, Maumee, Sylvania, Bowling Green, Findlay and all of Northwest Ohio and Southeast Michigan.