Sentry Construct
The app your business runs on was written by someone who left.
Most businesses have one. A tool built years ago by an employee or a contractor, doing something genuinely important, that nobody can now change, move, or safely update.
It usually runs on exactly one computer. Everyone knows this is a problem. Nobody knows what to do about it, because the obvious answer, hire a development firm, has often already been tried.
What happened for one client
Years and tens of thousands of dollars, with nothing to show.
A manufacturing client of ours personalises products with laser engraving. Their process depended on a small application that took a spreadsheet of customer names, applied each one to the right design template, and handed the result to the engraver. Straightforward in concept, and it saved an enormous amount of manual work.
It had two problems.
It ran on one specific computer, and nobody could add new products or templates to it. The employee who wrote it had long since left. As the business grew, both limitations became harder to work around, every new product line meant a manual workaround for a tool that was supposed to eliminate manual work.
They had already tried the obvious solution. A traditional development firm took the project on, and after tens of thousands of dollars and several years, they had nothing usable.
What we did
We were already managing their technology, which meant we did not need to spend the first month working out how their business ran. We knew the engraving workflow, the file formats, the machines, and the people who used it every day.
We rewrote the application from scratch. Improved it. Made it run on any modern system rather than one ageing machine. Made new products and templates something they could add themselves without calling anyone.
They had working software in about six weeks.
- Previous developer, no result
- Years
- From start to working software
- ~6 weeks
- Was one machine only
- Any PC
Why it worked
We were not starting from zero.
A development firm coming in cold spends the first stretch of any project learning the business. That discovery is where budgets go and where projects quietly stall, because the questions that matter often do not surface until something has already been built wrong.
We already knew the business
We manage their systems. We knew the workflow, the file formats, the hardware, and which parts of the process people actually cared about. No discovery phase.
We knew who to ask
When a question came up, we knew which person on their team had the answer, and they already trusted us enough to give a straight one.
We have to support it afterwards
We are still their IT provider. Anything we build badly becomes our problem forever, which is a stronger incentive than any contract term.
What this is good for.
- Replacing a tool written by someone who has left
- Moving something off a single machine so it stops being a risk
- Automating work your team does by hand because no product does it
- Connecting two systems that will not talk to each other
- Rescuing a project another developer could not finish
And what it is not.
We are not a general software house, and we do not bid on cold development projects against firms that do nothing else.
Sentry Construct is for organizations whose technology we already manage. That constraint is the entire reason the last one went well. Take it away and we are just another developer learning your business on your budget.
If you are not a client and you have a project like this, we are happy to tell you what we would look for in a developer. That costs you a phone call.
If you have one of these
Tell us about the app nobody can change.
Fifteen minutes. We will tell you honestly whether it is worth rebuilding, worth replacing with something off the shelf, or worth leaving alone, and what we would look for in a developer if it is not us.
No pitch on the first call. If we are not a fit, we will say so and point you somewhere better.