01
Client portals
Secure areas for customers to submit, review, approve or retrieve information without relying on long email chains.
Custom web applications
Software built around your business, not the other way around.
When a standard website or off-the-shelf product leaves an important operational gap, SD designs and builds focused web applications around the real workflow.
A focused alternative
Custom does not have to mean enormous.
The useful starting point is usually one awkward process: repeated data entry, disconnected systems, a client task trapped in email, or a spreadsheet that has quietly become critical infrastructure.
Build that part properly first. Add complexity only when it earns its place.
What can be built
Practical systems for specific work.
02
Operational workflows
Structured steps, permissions and handovers shaped around the way the work is actually completed.
03
System integrations
API connections and data movement between websites, CRMs, listing systems, payments and other business tools.
04
Directories and portals
Structured collections of businesses, events, articles or listings with the search and management tools they require.
05
Reporting tools
Business-readable views of important data, with fewer manual exports and less assembly by spreadsheet.
06
Legacy replacement
A staged path away from an ageing or unsupported system without pretending the surrounding business can stop while it changes.
Example · Moving Software
One job, connected from quote to invoice.
A purpose-built system can replace several disconnected handovers with one operating view. The value is not novelty. It is knowing where the work is and what happens next.
01Quote02Booking03Schedule04Job05Invoice
Technical foundation
Built to remain understandable.
Current custom application work uses CodeIgniter 4 as a stable foundation, with the interface, data model and integrations shaped around the project.
The more important principle is restraint: documented behaviour, supported dependencies and code that can still be worked on after the first developer has forgotten the clever bit.
Good signs you need custom work
The problem keeps returning.
People enter the same information twice.
Two systems do not talk to each other, so staff become the integration layer.
The spreadsheet has become a system.
It now carries business rules, history and risk that were never meant to live in one file.
Customers cannot complete a useful task.
An important step still happens by email or phone because the existing public system stops too early.
The off-the-shelf product is mostly workarounds.
You are paying for a broad product while maintaining a separate manual process around the part your business actually needs.
Start sensibly
Start with the part that matters most.
Describe the current workflow, where it breaks and who needs to use it. A rough outline is more useful than a polished feature list built too early.
Describe the workflow