Best Route to Develop Custom Software for Small Company?

[jofus 2,266]

We are discussing the possibility of having custom software developed that would streamline our process.  What are some good ways to get this done?

We hope to achieve the following:

• Turn our excel based report (narrative reports sent clients) into web based reports.  
• Web based reports are connected to our database to perform the following:
  • Distribution of reports
  • generate and distribute invoices
  • gather specific data points from each report

What are ballpark costs to create and maintain something like this?  We hope it would make us more efficient, and thus require fewer administrative and project management employees. 

[CooterBrown 18,015]

Have you explored COTS solutions? I’m confident that already exists.

 

Properly developing, maintaining, and supporting custom software is expensive.

[F250 28,785]

It sounds like you just need a simple front-end/back-end development for a CRUD DB app. Any knuckle head could slap something together with PHP/MySQL for you but maintaining it will cost you.

Just buy something off the shelf instead of going custom.

 

[immamac 42,868]

Me and blacklab have built many custom codebases that do what you are talking about. The cost for building it should be no less than 30k and to maintain it I would budget at least 3k/mo if you plan on any changes or additional features. 

[Handcruser 2,805]

It sounds like you just need a simple front-end/back-end development for a CRUD DB app. Any knuckle head could slap something together with PHP/MySQL for you but maintaining it will cost you.
Just buy something off the shelf instead of going custom.
 

Listen to this guy



Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

[Handcruser 2,805]

It sounds like you just need a simple front-end/back-end development for a CRUD DB app. Any knuckle head could slap something together with PHP/MySQL for you but maintaining it will cost you.
Just buy something off the shelf instead of going custom.
 

Listen to this guy



Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

[jofus 2,266]

16 hours ago, F250 said:

It sounds like you just need a simple front-end/back-end development for a CRUD DB app. Any knuckle head could slap something together with PHP/MySQL for you but maintaining it will cost you.

Just buy something off the shelf instead of going custom.

 

We do have database software (FileMaker) for tracking invoices, projects, etc., but it’s outdated. 

My assumption is we would update the software (or move to something else), and have something built that works with it.

Our excel reports are macro heavy, so I think replicating their functionality in web form may be a little more complicated or time consuming than slapping it together.  The reports were developed in house on the side, but we have become so busy that our guy doesn’t have time to keep up with it.

Also, I have no idea what I’m doing.

 

16 hours ago, immamac said:

Me and blacklab have built many custom codebases that do what you are talking about. The cost for building it should be no less than 30k and to maintain it I would budget at least 3k/mo if you plan on any changes or additional features. 

I may follow up on this later. Right now I’m trying to establish feasibility, so this is very helpful. 

[blacklab 11,941]

about half the projects I do at work consist of replacing spreadsheets with webpages.

I always like when we finish the first thing they always ask for is an "export to excel" feature.

[Homercles 10,206]

about half the projects I do at work consist of replacing spreadsheets with webpages.
I always like when we finish the first thing they always ask for is an "export to excel" feature.

You’re not alone in that. I work for a very large company and that’s about exactly what happens...some of our PowerBI/O365 stack apps explicitly have no ability to export raw data in csv. We just tell them to learn some SQL if you truly need raw data, that usually is the litmus test for determining if they really need it.

[Nice Guy Eddie 13,515]

have you looked at smartsheets.com.   It might meet some of your needs without too much custom dev, or spending a ton.