Scorchsoft
UK Business App & Portal Developers

Build a Business App That Works the Way Your Business Does

A business app is software built around your operation rather than the other way round: a web portal for the office, a mobile app for people on the move, and one system of record behind both. Our in-house UK team has built them for 16 years, scoped in days and delivered in fixed-cost sprints.

220+ clientsCyber Essentials certified

Trusted by 220+ organisations

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How we work · VelocitySprint®

Bespoke software, without the usual risks

Software projects usually go wrong in three ways: the bill keeps growing, nobody can see progress, and you're locked in. VelocitySprint® is designed to stop all three.

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  1. Mon
  2. Tue
  3. Wed
  4. Thu
  5. Fri

Daily progress through the week. Every Friday is your call: continue, change or stop.

Pay for output, not hours

Each deliverable is scoped and priced in OutputUnit® units, a unit of finished work rather than time spent. The bill doesn't grow because a task took longer.

See progress every day

Short sprints with daily updates and working software early, so you judge real screens rather than status reports.

Escape Hatch Friday™

You're never locked into a sprint that stopped making sense on Tuesday. Change direction or stop at the end of any week.

What will it cost? Bespoke builds under £7.5k are rare. Every sprint is priced before it starts and payments are phased with delivery, so you agree the cost of each step before it begins.

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Portal + app

A Portal for the Office, an App for the Field, One System Behind Both

Most businesses that ask us to build a business app need two front doors and one back office. Managers and admin staff want a web portal on a big screen: dashboards, approvals, reports and the records behind them. Engineers, drivers, assessors and sales people want a mobile app that works in a van, a warehouse or a customer's site, with or without signal.

We build both on one shared database and one set of business rules, so a job booked in the portal appears on the right phone, and a photo taken in the field lands on the right record. That is what turns a collection of tools into a system your team trusts.

It also means you can start with one side and add the other later. Our supplier portal for Westbury Street Holdings began as a web portal; the BICSc cleaning audit platform began with a mobile app for assessors and grew a web app for head office. Read more about portal development and mobile app development, or ask us which order makes sense for you.

  • One login and one set of permissions across web and mobile
  • Offline-capable mobile apps that sync when signal returns
  • Connects to the accounts, CRM and stock systems you already run
  • Built to be extended, not replaced, as the business changes
A professional sitting beside a laptop that displays a web portal dashboard of pie charts, bar charts and trend graphs

Tell Us What Your Business App Needs to Do

Describe the process, the people who will use it and the systems it has to talk to. We will come back with an indicative cost and a sensible first release, usually within a couple of working days.

In our clients' words

On time, on budget, and sold before it was finished

4.840+ Google Reviews
  • “It was delivered on time - early in fact - and on budget. Highly recommend.”

    Dragonfly Intelligence logoRebecca PalserDragonfly Intelligence
  • “We were able to sell the product for use by our first customer before the product was finished.”

    Since launching, they’ve secured a major television network as a client.

    Aimee SpinksMD, ImageApprovals.com
  • “They have been accurate with timelines and budget, delivering a solid product.”

    A web portal for monitoring patients remotely while they use a novel at-home medical device.

    SensTrain logoDaniel GreenSensTrain

Where to start

Where are you starting from?

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Frequently Asked Questions About Building a Business App

The questions we hear most from business owners and operations managers before they commission an app or portal.

It depends on how many processes the app has to run and how many systems it has to talk to. A focused first release, such as a portal that replaces one spreadsheet-driven process, sits at the lower end; a portal plus a mobile app with integrations sits higher. We give you an indicative figure in our first conversation and a fixed cost for the first release once scope is agreed, so there are no surprises. Request a free quote to get a number for your project.

Scoping takes days, not weeks. A first release of a business app or portal typically goes live in a matter of weeks through our VelocitySprint® process, with working software shown to you every few days along the way. Larger systems are released in stages so the parts that pay back fastest go live first.

Usually both, eventually, but you rarely need both on day one. If the people using the system sit at desks, start with a web portal. If they are in vans, on sites or on a shop floor, start with a mobile app. We build both on one database and one set of business rules, so whichever you start with, the other can be added without rebuilding anything.

Yes. Integration is part of almost every business app we build: accounting packages such as Xero and Sage, CRMs such as HubSpot and Salesforce, stock and ERP systems, payment providers and Microsoft 365. Where a system has an API we connect to it directly; where it does not, we build import, export or middleware layers. See our API development and integration capability for detail.

This is one of the most common starting points. The spreadsheet tells us the data, the rules and the reports the business already relies on; we turn that into a multi-user app with permissions, validation and an audit trail, and keep the parts people like. Read about our spreadsheet to app service.

You do. Once the work is paid for, the intellectual property in the bespoke code we write for you belongs to your business, and we hand over the source code and documentation. You are never locked into Scorchsoft to keep your app running.

Yes. We host business apps on UK and EU cloud infrastructure (typically AWS), monitor them, apply security updates and provide ongoing development and support agreements sized to your needs. Many clients keep a small monthly retainer to add features as the business changes; others call on us only when they need to.

Business apps hold customer, staff and financial data, so security is designed in rather than bolted on: role-based permissions, encrypted data in transit and at rest, audit logging and secure authentication. Scorchsoft is Cyber Essentials certified, we work to GDPR throughout, and we can arrange penetration testing before launch where your customers or insurers require it.

Yes. Scorchsoft's developers, designers and project specialists are an in-house team in Birmingham. Delivery is not outsourced offshore, so the people you meet in scoping are the people who build and support your app.

Next step

Tell us what you want to build

An idea or a problem is enough; no specification needed. We'll come back with our thoughts, a realistic plan and a rough cost estimate.

We aim to reply within one working day a free 15-minute call a plan and a ballpark.

Andrew Ward, Managing Director of Scorchsoft

Andrew Ward

Founder & Managing Director, Scorchsoft

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