How To Build A Web System

What is a web system?

There are many different definitions of what a web system can be, but in the context we are talking about, a web system is a business system of some kind that is used to help power the operations of a business. Here are a few examples of how we would define a web system:

• Bespoke CRM system – A bespoke CRM system built using web technology can offer enormous flexibility and efficiencies to a business. The admin time saved by building a bespoke CRM combined with R&D tax credit benefit businesses will often receive can often offset any additional cost compared to an off the shelf CRM. When you factor in the increased scalability of a custom system and the lack of licensing fee that will come with pre-existing technology, many businesses would often be better served by a bespoke solution.
• Team management software – If you have a reasonable sized workforce who visit multiple locations for their work, the chances are you have software to manage what they do day to day. This may be to record any incidents, to store personal information like emergency contacts, or software for them to update timesheets. A web system can incorporate all of this information and store it in one place, bringing great efficiencies to a business whilst also giving them visibility of their team and a range of reporting tools to allow them to analyse as required.
• Producing formatted reports – If a business has to create formatted PDF documents as a report for their clients then a web system is a great way of handling this information and then creating a fully formatted PDF document at the touch of a button.
• Handling claims – Any business that handles claims (such as an insurer or warranty company) needs some kind of system to manage and store the details for these claims. Within a web system you can store these claims against your clients and relate them to other aspects of the system to produce relevant and useful data on your business.

Those are just a few examples of how we would define a web system for this context – there are many more but hopefully that gives a feel for the possibilities available by utilising web technology. So what is the process for building this type of web system? Read on and we will explain…

Planning / strategy

Planning and strategy is a key aspect of any type of project like this. We see businesses make two key mistakes in the planning phase:

1. Getting too technical – Most clients we work with are not technical which is why they speak to us, but they often look too much into the technical side of what they are looking to achieve in the planning stage. You don’t need to do this, that’s our job! Think of the system you want to build from a user perspective – what do you want each of your users (users could be for example clients, administrators or managers who need reporting features) to be able to achieve with the system and write this down as a bullet pointed list. Let us then think about how / whether what you are looking to achieve is possible technically.
2. Thinking too long-term with features – Another common mistake is thinking about all the features they could ever have on the system and attempting to include these within the first phase of development. Firstly this often means deployment will be delayed and also once you start using the system, the changes are there will be different features you want to implement than those you originally thought of. We would recommend looking at the aspects that will save the most time (such as automating the PDF reports example we mentioned earlier). Once you have established these, they become your first phase features. Deploy those and then continuously add new features as you go.

So think about your strategic plan from a non-technical perspective and try not to think about the final system you will have in too minute detail.

Design

Design can often be an overlooked aspect of building a system, particularly if it’s internal and for administrative, operational use. It is true that most of the time when you are building a web system you are mostly looking at making it functional but even in that instance design can be important.

Take the team management software example earlier – timesheets may be a really critical aspect to the system and to make these as accurate as possible you will likely want your team to be able to add the data as they go. A good way of doing this would be to design and build an interface that allows them to easily update their timesheets from their phone. In this instance a slick, well designed interface is crucial as you want this process to be painless, quick and easy for your team so they are happy to do it. If you make this difficult or clunky, there is a good chance your data may be less accurate.

So by thinking about the design and user experience of even a purely administrative back office system that is never seen by clients, you can still add benefits and efficiencies. Design is therefore still important!

Technical development

When it comes to the technical development aspect, choose your development partner wisely. We build using the widely used PHP programming language connecting to a MySQL database. We have built our own bespoke platform over the years using these technologies which puts us in complete control and enables us to add the exact functionality to a system that is required.

We have assessed frameworks such as Laravel and other platforms such as WordPress or Drupal for developing web systems but find a number of limitations to them, which you can read more about in our article which discusses the benefits of bespoke CRM development. Fundamentally we feel that our approach works best for a large web system as we build the system to match the exact requirements and processes of the business as opposed to trying to change the business requirements and process to match the system which is often the case with other more off the shelf platforms.

Choosing a development partner is so important that here are a few key questions we would recommend you ask whoever you choose to work with.

• Have you done this sort of project before? As already mentioned, experience in building this type of system is extremely important. Make sure that whoever you are using has a tried and tested record in the type of platform you are asking them to build. You don’t want to be anyone’s guinea pig!
• Who in your team will be working on this? You may really buy into the owner of a business or the sales team, but it’s important to both build a rapport with the development team working on the project and know that they are capable, competent and experienced. So make sure you know who will actually be working on the project as they are the people you will be dealing with day in day out.
• Have you handled this level of data before? This is a big question and again one that can only really be learnt through experience. If you are re-building an existing platform that has many thousands of records and fields, make sure that your development partner is competent when it comes to data migration. You don’t want to use any of the precious, valuable information you have built up over the years or have to spend the admin time to copy hundreds of thousands of records manually.
• How will the platform be hosted? It is important to understand where the platform will be hosted – most importantly is it UK based and cloud based and what level of infrastructure is in place. It is also important to understand the level of knowledge the development partner you are working with has about hosting. They will usually be using a third party to host the platform but will be the first port of call, so should be able to offer certainly first level support. We use the highly regarded 20i to host web systems we build and having supported web systems for over 20 years, have an excellent knowledge of the hosting technology that powers web systems.
• What platform will you be using? As discussed earlier, make sure you are choosing the platform that is right for your business and not necessarily the one your development partner suggests. We have more and more clients wanting to use WordPress for development which, in our opinion is not an appropriate platform for many of the web systems we build, but is a widely used platform with a relatively low barrier to entry so is often one development agencies will recommend. Our platform may not always be optimal for every project and we would always say if we thought there was a better option out there, so just make sure you are quizzing your development partner on why they are using the platform they are!

Deployment

Planning when to launch a new system is critical. There is an awful lot to consider. Here are some of the key aspects to make sure your development partner has covered:

• Security If you are handling large amounts of data then making sure that when you transfer to your new system that it is being hosted in a secure environment is important. Even simple requirements like having an SSL security certificate in place for launch needs to be considered, and ticks the GDPR box.
• Testing It sounds obvious but test your new platform before it is deployed. Ideally get the administrators who will be using it and potentially a focus group as well to pick up on as much as you can before launch. Just make sure you leave enough time before your planned launch for any recommend changes from testing to be actioned. Nothing is worse for an agency in this situation than handing a system over for testing and receiving feedback the day before it is due to go live.
• Data migration As previously mentioned, managing the migration of data is an extremely important aspect of any large web system project. Make sure this is planned carefully. We usually suggest a test migration of data well in advance to make sure fields match as required and there are no anomalies with the data being transferred to the new platform. The final migration of data then needs to be planned carefully with a cut off on when data is loaded into the old system so all data can be transferred.
• When to launch Never launch a big web system on a Friday afternoon! Or at least our experience shows us that this is usually a bad idea (unless it’s a new platform that will have little use when it is launched). The system should of course be tested thoroughly before it is launched but there are still likely to be some gremlins and potential teething problems when launched to the wider world, so don’t plan a big launch event for example the day after launch or direct clients to the new platform too quickly – give it time to bed in first!

Evolution

As we have already discussed, thinking too much about long-term features in the initial planning stage of a web system is often not the best approach as you will usually be too rigid in your thinking and not have the flexibility to evolve the system as you start to better understand the possibilities that come with your system. As such, when it comes to evolving your system, we would recommend an iterative approach to development. This is how our iterative approach to development works:

• A rolling list of features There would be a continuously evolving list of upcoming features for your system, some of which would be from the start of the process and others which evolve as the platform grows.
• Briefing on features Usually every month, or every other month depending on budget and availability, we would have a discussion with the client on a batch of features.
• Development These features would then be developed, tested and deployed before moving back to briefing on the next set of features.

This approach to development is agile as it gives so much flexibility both to you as a client and to the development team that it means your platform will always be evolving and constantly moving forwards.

Studio44 have been developing bespoke web systems and web applications for many years and have worked on many successful projects in that time. If you are looking at a new bespoke web system or web application for your business and don’t quite know where to start then get in touch, we would love to talk through options with you and see if we can help!