Business applications

Custom software is only justified where you are different

Building internal software costs more than buying it. That is true on day one, and still true five years later. The only sound reason to do it is that no product on the market does what you do — or that adopting one would force you to work like everyone else.

Our first job is often to show that building is not necessary.

The decision grid

For each process, three outcomes, and only one right answer:

1. Buy. The process is standard, a mature product exists, and you can adapt to its logic. Accounting, payroll, e-signature, email. Heavily customising a standard product is the worst of both worlds: you pay the licence and the debt.
2. Configure and extend. A market platform covers 80% of the need, and the remaining 20% goes through its official extension points or a satellite application connected by API. This is the most common case.
3. Build. The process is your business. No product expresses it, and contorting one would cost you what makes you distinct.

The classic trap is the large integrated suite bought to cover everything, then customised until it becomes bespoke software — without the flexibility, but with the licence cost and the inability to follow upgrades.

Automate what repeats, not what requires judgement

Useful automation removes work without removing control. We consistently separate:

• Entry and circulation — re-keying, file transfers, reminders, formatting, notifications. Automate without hesitation: this is lost time that produces no value.
• Decisions — granting a discount, approving an exception, arbitrating a priority. To be supported, not replaced. The software's role is to put the right facts in front of the right person at the right moment, and to record who decided what.

Automation that makes a business decision without an audit trail creates a worse problem than the one it solves.

Your data stays yours

Business software concentrates the most sensitive material a company holds. Three requirements are non-negotiable, and all three are decided at design time:

• A data model you can export. Without a complete, documented export, you do not own your data — you rent it.
• Access traceability. Who read, changed or deleted what, and when. As much a compliance requirement as a diagnostic tool.
• Hosting you choose rather than inherit. Switzerland's revised data protection act came into force on 1 September 2023 with no transition period, and requires privacy by design and by default. It was aligned with the GDPR to preserve free data flows with the European Union. Where data is hosted should follow its actual sensitivity, not reflex.

Deliver in usable pieces

Internal software delivered all at once after a year is a bet. We cut it into modules that are useful on their own: the first must be in production use before the second begins.

That changes two things. Your teams correct course against a real tool rather than a mock-up. And if the project has to stop, what was delivered keeps working.