Software development is easy (for us, anyway). Most mistakes trace back to being in a rush; successful builds trace back to a good plan and ample time. Our process combats haste with what we call insane clarity. Measure twice. Cut once.
Insane Clarity First, Dev Second
Software development is easy (for us, anyway). Most mistakes trace back to being in a rush; successful builds trace back to a good plan and ample time. Our process combats haste with what we call insane clarity. Measure twice. Cut once.
Building software is way more complex than building a house. You wouldn’t build a house without first getting the lay of the land. This is where software architecture comes in.
We’re the surveyors who help you figure out what you’re up against:
What business problems and opportunities are you trying to solve?
What’s working well with the system you’ve got?
What’s making you look bad?
When your software is hard to use, it’s tempting to start squashing bugs right away. However, in our experience, the two biggest reasons custom software projects fail are 1) lack of planning at the beginning, and 2) change requests and rework throughout (due to inadequate planning).
We’d prefer to not set your money on fire.
You pay us to help you avoid software traps, solve new problems as they come up (and they always do), and put into place the right budget, tools, and strategy to predictably grow your software business.
To that end, we start our consulting projects with a discovery workshop for brand new software and a digital diagnostic for existing software. After that, we send you an actionable plan for hitting your software goals.
For our touchless micro-payment system we turned to 245TECH. All of the documentation we did up-front really paid off and provided an amazing level of clarity. The amount of detail that went into our software was beyond my expectations but Scott and Jeff took it in stride as we got everything exactly perfect. If you’re building a software-as-a-service company, you need to consider these guys.
To take the home building metaphor even further, without nice curb appeal your humble abode won’t receive any visitors. Add shrubs that block the path to one of your greatest investments and you’ve got problems. This is where user interface design and user experience skills can make your app inviting and a joy to use.
User Interface Design
You can spend thousands on planning and programming, but it won’t mean a thing if users think your app’s design sucks. We human beings are attracted to beauty, especially when it resonates with our interests. What complicates matters is that we have mobile phones, tablets, and desktops to contend with. This is where we come in with a creative process that ensures you are keeping up with the Joneses.
User Experience
Where user interface design handles how things look, user experience deals with how your app makes people feel. Does your app make people rage-click your key call-to-action-buttons? Perhaps your application treats smart people like they are dumb, which is insulting. How do we figure this kind of stuff out? Besides heat mapping and studying recorded user sessions, we use the F-word. No, not that word. Focus groups (ok, it’s two words). There’s nothing like watching people use your website or app in real-time. While we don’t do this for every project, we do it for the ones where each user counts.
At Evolve Creative, we believe that details make all the difference. That’s why we exclusively partner with 245TECH to develop websites for all of our clients. We’ve worked with many developers in the past, and 245TECH’s attention to detail is truly unmatched.
The status quo in custom software development is hiring crappy devs who tell you what you want to hear, do half-assed work, and disappear.
We’re too grizzled and salty to keep our mouths shut and let you waste your time and money.
Instead, we’ll lead your project with entrepreneurial maturity and polite pushback.
In practical terms, that looks like a Project Blueprint with three distinct stages:
Software Requirement Specification (SRS) doc → Explain every facet of your app with the help of use cases, flowcharts, and network diagrams.
Wireframes → Show how the pieces will fit together visually in the user interface.
Clickable, high-fidelity prototype → Shows how people will actually use the software
This Project Blueprint trifecta helps you create the right MVP without things going sideways and wasting a ton of investor dollars.
The Project Blueprint is just the beginning. Our complete development process ensures success from day one. So, whether you’re in need of a completely custom solution or you want to use WordPress or Drupal as a starting point, we can help.
I’ve been working with 245TECH for over 6 years and with Scott for over 20 years since the early days of his first web development company. I love working with him and his team as they have evolved with our needs as they have grown.
We partnered with 245TECH because we plan to increase the number of monthly website visitors by nearly 250% in the next 12 months and needed a scalable solution to accommodate the additional traffic. They recommended AWS and now support and manage all three of our sites in addition to our wholesaler e-commerce system they developed.
We have been in the trenches together with 245TECH solving Magento challenges for over 6 years. I appreciate working with a company that strives to continue to improve the way they do business.
Mobile app development is a different animal with lots of technologies, devices, and moving parts. We specialize in complex mobile apps that integrate securely with existing business systems and processes. (If you’re looking for a team to launch your latest game idea, our team isn’t the right fit.)
As consultants and business analysts, we’re particularly adept at helping you build a business, not just a product.
Your Project Blueprint will zero in on exactly how the app will work before we write one lick of code. We help you look for wise compromises—e.g., writing code once and deploying twice (to both iOS and Android).
You avoid rework and save money.
The quality of our questions determines the quality of our answers (and apps).
Does your app need to work with iOS and Android?
Do people need to log in to or create profiles?
What’s the revenue model—free, one-time cost, or in-app purchases?
Will the app’s users need it to rate, review, count, or inspect things?
Will the app need to connect with a website or database server?
How important is design—e.g., award-winning or just get the job done?
The team at 245TECH created our Bed Bug Detection Reporting mobile app and it has become an integral part of our business. Compared to our previous system, we are saving 10 to 12 hours a week in admin time and our dog handlers are happy to eliminate paperwork and send data through the app to our main back-office database. We look forward to enhancing the system as we grow.
Pieces of tech are like kids. Sometimes they get along. Sometimes they don’t. What we do at 245TECH is act like a parent and get all the kids to play well together.
If misbehaving APIs weren’t problem enough, the dizzying array of tools, plug-ins, and whizbangs makes it hard for non-technical leaders to make confident decisions.
We get all sorts of API integration requests. Here are three fairly common ones:
MailChimp needs to connect with your custom marketing system.
Quickbooks needs to connect with your inventory system.
Your CRM needs to connect with your HR system.
Your e-commerce system needs to connect to Apple Pay and Google Pay
We can put all the pieces together and get your system working the way it should.
Everyone sees the benefit of SEO and Pay-per-click, but who can you trust? Maybe you’ve encountered your fair share of charlatans and bad actors. Maybe you’re ready for a change.
Give us a chance to earn your trust. We don’t use jargon and buzzwords to pretend like we’re doing a bunch of stuff. We prove we care by delivering real, quantifiable results.
You’ll want to stick around not because it’s too painful to leave but because you see the value every single month.
If you’re looking to get more people to your website then consider 245TECH. No smoke and mirrors. I hired them to help us get better rankings on Google and they recommended writing blog posts to attract people looking for the topics our posts are about. I didn’t expect that approach. Who cares—it’s working!