Bespoke Applications

 Overview

Sometimes your business will need a solution and there just doesn‘t seem anything out there that provides the answer. Often companies will change their own procedures to work around the software they use, but why should you? Every company has it‘s own ways of doing things and those procedures will have been developed over time to best suit your business. There is no "one solution fits all" and software developers certainly don‘t know more about your business than you do, so keep your methods and tell the software developer how you want it to work.

Bespoke software solutions are applications developed to your specification and contrary to common belief they are not usually expensive to produce. They can run as standalone applications, be integrated with other programs such as Microsoft Access or run automatically from your startup menu. At Design Atom we program our applications in a language called VB.Net and then install the compiled version which is secure because it cannot be altered and it is faster than many applications. You of course, also get the original code so if you want any changes at a later date then that‘s also possible.

 What Can They Do?

Bespoke applications can access databases, read files, carry out backups, connect to the internet and do pretty much anything you want. If you have a requirement that doesn‘t seem possible with the software you‘ve already got then a bespoke application will probably provide the solution. At Design Atom we have produced many bespoke applications and below we have listed just a few examples of solutions we have already design.

Stock Prediction. A wholesaler with several hundred product lines needed to estimate when stock would run out. Most lines were inspected between receipt and dispatch and those that had passed inspection were available for sale. We designed and installed an application that used current stock levels, recent sales and sales from the previous year to calculate buying trends, and then our program produced an estimate of the dates when available stock and total stock would run out.

Automatic Backups. A client kept critical information on a personal computer located in their business premises, but they also had access to a web server. We developed an application that, at regular intervals, copied all the files in selected folders to the webserver using File Transfer Protocol (FTP), making sure that all this important information is safely backed up. We also used their MS Access database, converted selected tables to an XML format, exported them to the website and then imported the tables into their mySQL website database. This not only backed up critical data but also synchronised their website so that it contained the latest information.

Program Control. One client wanted to monitor installed programs, limit the amount of time certain applications could be used and place restrictions on the time of day at which they could be run. We developed an application which monitored running programs and if they had exceeded the maximum time limit, the program was disabled for the remainder of the day. The client can select any installed program, specify the maximum run time by day of the week, and set time of day limits.

Domain Checker. On average 50,000 domain names expire every day and one client required a means of identifying premium names to add to their portfolio. The most valuable domain names are three letter, single word, or two word domain names with high search term popularity and in any day there are only a handful that are of significant value. We designed a solution to retrieve a text file from the internet and compare the contents with a dictionary file. The application extracts and saves all three letter, single word and double word domain names and then checks these for search term popularity. The resultant file contains only those domain names of potential value which is usually around 20 each day from a start of 50,000 possibilities.

How We Can Help?

If you can‘t get your existing programs to work just how you need them, don‘t waste time trying to work around the solution. We can design, code and implement an application to provide the ideal solution. These can be designed for a wide range of requirements and provide secure and fast execution of the code. Supply us with your requirements or tell us about your problem and we‘ll design a solution for it.

Find Out More

If you‘re interested in a bespoke software solution, or you require any aspect of software design then we can certainly help you. To find out more use the "Quick Links" to the right or Contact Us with your requirements.