02Operations & finance · ERP

Custom ERP development.

An ERP is the one system that records what a company owns, owes, buys, makes and sells, so every department works from the same numbers.

We build it to order, around the way you work, or extend and connect the one you already have.

Fig. 00One core, every department
Fig. 01Scattered, before it is joined

01What it is

In plain words.

An ERP is the one system that records what a company owns, owes, buys, makes and sells, so every department works from the same numbers.

A company outgrows spreadsheets and separate tools at the point where the departments stop agreeing. Sales promises what stores cannot find, purchasing reorders what is already in the building, and month-end is two weeks of reconciling one file against another.

An ERP ends that by keeping one set of records. The large packaged ERPs do this well for companies that can adopt their standard processes. A custom ERP is for the business whose process is unusual, whose size does not justify a large implementation, or which has been bending a package with customisations for years.

02What it includes

Every part, explained.

7 parts. Each can be built by itself; together they are one system.
Fig. 02One core, every department

01

Finance and accounting

General ledger, payables, receivables, bank reconciliation, fixed assets, cost centres, tax and period close, with every figure traceable to the transaction behind it.

02

Procurement

Requisition, approval, purchase order, goods receipt and invoice matching in one chain, with approved suppliers, agreed prices and budgets checked along the way.

03

Inventory management

What is held, where, in what quantity and at what value: items, batches and serial numbers, locations, reorder levels, stock counts and adjustments, across every site.

04

Operations management

The work itself: production orders, bills of materials, routing, job costing, quality checks, maintenance or service delivery, depending on what the business does.

05

Resource planning

Matching demand to materials, machines, people and cash: what must be bought or made, by when, to meet the orders in hand and the forecast.

06

Enterprise workflow automation

Approvals, notifications, document generation and hand-overs between departments, as rules in the system and not as emails people have to remember.

07

Custom ERP solutions

The modules a package does not have because only your industry, or only your company, needs them: a pricing method, a compliance record, a way of planning that is your own.

Buy, extend or build?

Buy a packaged ERP if your processes are close to standard and you have the appetite for an implementation; that is what most companies should do. Extend your existing ERP if the core works and the pain is at the edges. Build when your process is the business, when a package would need so much customising that you would own custom software anyway, or when licence and consultant costs no longer match what you use.

Where intelligence fits

The intelligence that pays in an ERP is unglamorous: catching duplicate items and duplicate invoices before they cost money, classifying free-text descriptions, forecasting demand, and flagging the transaction that does not look like the others. This is the ground our enterprise products are built on, so it can be designed in from the start.

Fig. 04From brief to hand-over

04How we build it

Five steps, in the open.

  1. 01

    Listen

    You describe the work and where it hurts. We look at the systems and the data you have now.

  2. 02

    Specify

    A written specification: what the system does, what it does not, what it connects to and how we will know it works. A clear quote before any work starts.

  3. 03

    Build in stages

    A working piece at each stage, on real data, so you steer early. The part that matters most comes first.

  4. 04

    Move the data

    Existing records mapped, cleaned of duplicates and reconciled against the old system before anything is switched off.

  5. 05

    Hand over

    Training, documentation and the keys. Your team can run it, and we keep it working for as long as you want us to.

One set of records underneath

Customers, products, suppliers, people and stock are each defined once. A second system joins the first; it does not start a competing copy.

Runs where you decide

Your own servers, a private cloud or a cloud account that belongs to you. Customer, employee and financial data stays on infrastructure you control.

Yours to keep

You own the code, the data, the configuration and the documentation. There is no licence fee to us and nothing stopping another team from taking it on.

05Questions

Before you ask.

Fig. 05What people ask first

Questions about ERP

When does a company need a custom ERP rather than a packaged one?

When the standard processes of a package do not fit the way the business makes its money, and the cost of bending the package exceeds the cost of building what is needed. A fair test: list the customisations a packaged ERP would need. If the list is long, you are buying custom software either way.

Can a custom ERP be built in stages?

It should be. Start with the module where the pain is greatest, run it alongside the old system, and add the next once the first is trusted. A single switch-over of everything is where ERP projects fail.

How is data moved from the old system?

Mapped, cleaned and reconciled. Master data is de-duplicated before it is loaded, opening balances are agreed with finance, and the totals in the new system are checked against the old before go-live.

Who can maintain it after you finish?

Your own team or any competent engineers. You own the code, the database, the documentation and the deployment configuration.

Tell us how the work runs today.

How the work runs today, what the system must do and what it has to connect to. A person reads it and replies honestly about whether to buy, extend or build.

Fig. 06Quantum Beetle

Contact

Hire the
swarm.

Tell us what you want the swarm to do. We'll tell you honestly whether it can — and what it would take.

hello@quantumbeetle.ai