Seven great examples of custom business solutions

Every business relies on several common types of processes and technology solutions: invoicing and billing software, CRMs and sales systems, and project management software, just to name a few. The rise of AI has added a whole new type of platform to serve many business, research, and creative needs.

But what’s an organization to do if they have needs that go beyond these “typical” applications? That’s where custom comes in.

The truth is that just about every business has some unique workflows that make it different from all the other businesses out there. Those are often best addressed by creating custom business solutions uniquely tailored to those unique requirements.

Over the years, we’ve created a wide range of these custom business applications for clients. By using proven tools and custom integrations, we often can develop those applications in less time and at a lower cost than other developers or consulting firms.

Here are some great examples of work we’ve done and the results those custom solutions delivered.

#1: A custom parts and ordering system

Some products are complex, containing many parts that have to be assembled in a precise way. Add options and customizations and you have a data challenge on your hands: How do you keep track of all the parts that are needed for each order while also ensuring you have the inventory for all incoming orders over a period of time?

We built a custom parts and ordering system for Vistabule, a manufacturer of custom trailers. This solution integrated with their existing systems to track orders and invoicing, as well as the status of specific parts and demand forecasts. This not only made customer communications and factory workflow more efficient, but it also helped ensure that needed parts would always be on hand or on-order. (You can read our Vistabule case study here.)

Once we get to know you and your unique operations, we can build an estimating and parts database for just about any complex product, from a pocket watch to a power plant.

#2: A creative assets database for a major retailer

Designers and creative directors will often mention that they need something “more robust” than a searchable database when it comes to organizing their creative assets. (Think catalog images, video, product descriptions, advertising photos, and so on). They often need a tool that can also help manage access and rights, track versions, and facilitate project management. They often want to store those assets locally, too. Local storage might seem counterintuitive in the age of the cloud, but it makes sense when storing large files that need to be accessed routinely. Local storage is also cleaner when it comes to intellectual property (IP) because the team itself can own the data and the app, and better control and monitor permissions and usage rights.

We built just such an asset database for the Creative Department at Bass Pro Shops, which designs and curates all online content for the brand. The solution we created not only provided a database for images and content, but also helped them to track projects, manage vendor samples, and generate critical reports. (Read our Bass Pro Shops case study here.)

#3: A custom LLM workflow for archiving historic photographs

Our custom AI solution for Historic Images was a textbook case of “the right tool for the right job.” Our case study tells the full story, but in short: Historic Images digitizes massive photo archives from newspapers and other sources, preserving them for posterity, then sells the physical photographs to collectors. Their challenge was finding a way to add cataloging metadata to each digital image – the vital information about who is in the photo, when and where it was taken, and any details from news captions or information written on the back of the picture itself. Paying vendors to look at each image and input this data manually was expensive and difficult to scale.

Our custom solution combines a unique LLM designed for image recognition and metadata generation with a custom software solution that teams use to track jobs and manage stored photographs. The result has been transformative, reducing the costs of cataloging data from about $1 per image to less than 10 cents per image. Once again, we were able to build them a solution that fit their needs exactly, and that is designed to evolve as both technologies and business challenges change.

#4: A database for city permits

A city government requires many of the same functions of a business, and offers a great example of the efficiency any organization can achieve with custom solutions. City governments oversee a wide range of assets, including land, buildings, personnel, vehicles, electronic devices and more. They also have to contend with legacy systems and processes. Slow updates, redundant data and error-riddled processes are common—so much so that most residents expect some level of “government bureaucracy” in their daily lives.

It does not have to be that way, however: a custom solution makes data collection more intuitive, automate data processes, and virtually eliminate human error. Best of all, it can integrate with other existing database sources, including MySQL, Microsoft SQL Server and Oracle, among others.

A great example is the database that we built for the City of Florissant, Missouri to track occupancy permits, property inspections, excavation permits, and other critical needs. Their manual methods for issuing permits and scheduling inspections had led to a mountain of redundant data and stalled processes. Today, that data is now continuously consolidated, cutting down on the time and administrative costs involved. (You can read the read the City of Florissant case study here.)

#5: A system for tracking employee hours in the field

Getting data from multiple people in multiple locations is difficult enough. When they provide that data in different ways, from email attachments to text messages, the result is a record-keeping nightmare. This is often the case when companies have to track the hours of employees who are out in the field, which is a common situation in construction, HVAC, energy, utilities, and similar businesses.

We helped our client Helmkamp Construction with this exact issue. Helmkamp is a full-service general contractor that has performed work in over 25 states across the country. On any given day the company can have several dozen superintendents in the field, all of whom need to accurately enter hours for their workers.

The solution we built allowed these superintendents to enter time data on tablets in the field, connected by Wi-Fi or mobile hotspots. The interface is intuitive and required little training to use. Once entered, the data is then automatically converted into a format that can be efficiently leveraged by the company’s payroll team. (You can read the Helmkamp case study here.)

#6: A home energy audit application

Imagine a utility company that will help you save money on your heating and cooling bills by coming to your home and running an energy audit. That audit goes so far as to take a thermographic picture of your home, showing you where the building is leaking air and thus losing heating.

This is exactly what an energy co-op in the midwest was offering to its customers, with Skeleton Key’s help. We helped this utility company develop a custom application that could process and store the data related to their in-home energy audits, giving them a quick and easy way to complete them. That functionality simply didn’t exist with any off-the-shelf software available to the client.

The beauty of having a custom solution for this type of application is that it can handle all manner of data, regardless of the format, or how big each file is, or how it needs to be accessed.

#7: Fully customized data dashboards

Though not a standalone solution, data dashboards are routinely a part of many custom business applications. Every business has its own signals that it looks for in its data, and while many of today’s solutions offer dashboards and data-analysis tools, some unique businesses want to track different indicators, or track them differently, to determine when to start a new project, reassess a current strategy, or any number of business activities.

We help teams access their data in ways that are helpful on a day-to-day basis with custom dashboards that can show key performance indicators (KPIs), calendars and deadlines, thresholds or warning indicators, and custom notifications via the application. We also have the ability to send custom notifications via Microsoft Teams, text message, email, and other means.

Rather than being limited to a single app or platform, fully-custom dashboards can include data from other systems as needed, and can be made to update in real time. We’ve created several such dashboards for clients and use them in our own business.

What does your team need? We can probably build it.

Many industries have workflows that are odd, or data that needs to be transformed, stored, and accessed in many different ways in order to achieve useful results. It’s possible to achieve those results with precision and efficiency, yet that is often what you sacrifice when you try to rely on manual work to get insights, or use off-the-shelf solutions that force you to change how you work to fit how the software wants you to work.

If your organization has some unique needs that aren’t met by your existing systems or tools, we’d love to talk to you and see how we can help.