We design and build business software for the work your current systems handle badly: internal tools, portals, approval workflows, integrations and dashboards. Each build is delivered in phases you can stop between, connected to the systems you already run, and handed over with the documentation your team needs.
Packaged software is the right answer more often than custom code. The case for a build appears when your process is specific enough that the package forces people to work around it. These are the situations that usually start the conversation, whatever the size of the organisation.
One workbook holds the jobs, the pricing or the compliance register. Several people edit it, nobody trusts the latest version, and it breaks when its author is on leave.
Your CRM, job system, finance system and SharePoint each hold part of the picture, and someone copies data between them every week.
Invoices, timesheets, delivery dockets, inspection forms or certificates arrive as PDFs or paper and get typed into another system.
Purchase requests, variations and sign-offs move through inbox threads, so nobody can see what is waiting or prove who approved what.
The package you bought handles the standard case, and your team works around it for the parts that make your business different.
A regulator, a head contractor or a board wants reporting or records your current tools cannot produce without a week of manual work.
If several of these apply and you are unsure where to begin, our free readiness assessment or an AI strategy engagement will rank them before anyone writes code.
Most projects combine two or more of these. AI is one option among them and is only used where it does a job better than plain code.
Web applications for your staff, plus customer, supplier or subcontractor portals where outside parties log in to submit, track or download what they need, with access set per role.
When to replace a spreadsheetRequests, reviews and sign-offs moved out of email into a tool that routes each item, records every decision and shows what is overdue. Rules come from your delegations, not a template.
Process automationConnections between finance, CRM, job management, ERP and Microsoft 365, with error handling and logs so a failed sync is noticed the same day. Older systems with limited APIs included.
Integrating older systemsData pulled from several systems into one place, cleaned and modelled, then reported in Power BI or a purpose-built dashboard so the numbers match from one meeting to the next.
Power BI reporting case studyStructured storage, version control, metadata, retention and search for the documents your operation depends on, often built on SharePoint with custom capture and approval steps on top.
Document processing guideJob intake, allocation, scheduling and job-site capture for crews and technicians, connected back to the office systems that invoice the work and report on it.
Field servicesDocument extraction, plain-English search over your records or drafted replies, added inside the application with human review where a wrong answer would cost money.
Custom AI developmentThe clearest evidence that we can build and run software is the software we run ourselves. Each item below is labelled as Solve8's own product or the founder's own product. None of them is client work.
Solve8's own product. Consolidates several Xero organisations into one set of dashboards and scheduled reports, which is a data platform and integration build.
Solve8's own product. Turns field service calls into allocated jobs and books them into an existing schedule and job system.
Solve8's own product. A self-hosted Docker application that connects to Jira, Redmine, Git and SQL and MongoDB databases to help investigate incidents.
Solve8's own product. An AI phone receptionist that answers calls, captures job details and sends them to the business by SMS, with telephony and messaging integrations behind it.
The founder's own product. A multi-agent system that extracts energy and emissions data from utility bills in many formats.
The founder's own product. An on-premise investigation tool that runs local models through Ollama, so data stays on the customer's infrastructure.
The founder's own product, built and grown to more than 1,500 users. It is still running.
Our documented client work is the Tier 1 infrastructure carbon reporting case study for Seymour Whyte, part of VINCI, where standardised data templates and Power BI dashboards replaced manual ESG data collection across projects.
Our principal consultant brings 18 years of enterprise delivery experience from projects for BHP, Rio Tinto and Senex Energy, delivered with previous consulting employers. These companies are not Solve8 clients. You work directly with senior people, not a sales team handing you off to juniors.
A package gives you updates, support and other customers finding the bugs first. Custom software gives you a fit to your process and control over its future, and in exchange you carry the cost of keeping it running. The licence fee or build quote is only part of the comparison. Hosting, support, security updates, staff time on workarounds and the cost of leaving a vendor later all belong in the same sum, and our total cost of ownership guide sets out how to add them up.
Many good outcomes sit between the two. Keep the package and build the integration it lacks. Keep the package and add a small portal for the one process it cannot handle. Or use a workflow tool such as Power Automate or n8n where the logic is simple, which our automation platform comparison covers. In discovery we look at the buy options first and say so if one does the job.
The build vs buy decision framework walks through the same questions in more depth.
Every phase ends with a go or no-go decision. You see working software early and can stop, change direction or continue with a clearer estimate.
Discovery is the step people are most tempted to skip, and the one that saves the most money. It is where we find the approval rule nobody wrote down, the field in the finance system that means two different things, and the system whose API costs extra. Where the riskiest part of a build is technical, we test it first on your real data, using the approach in our proof of concept framework.
If you have developers who want to build alongside us, team augmentation puts a senior person inside your team instead of running the project separately.
We choose technology your team or another provider can support after we leave. That usually means mainstream web frameworks, common databases and well-documented cloud services, with the reasons for each choice written into the design notes.
Hosting can be in the cloud or on your own servers. Cloud builds can run in Australian regions so your data is stored onshore, which matters for Privacy Act obligations and for contracts that specify data location. Our data sovereignty guide explains the difference between where data is stored and where it is processed. For operations that cannot depend on an internet connection, or data that must stay inside your network, we build for on-premise deployment, the same pattern RootCauseAI uses.
Many Australian organisations already run on Microsoft 365, so builds often use SharePoint, Teams, Entra ID sign-in and Azure hosting rather than adding another platform to manage. Finance integrations commonly go to Xero or MYOB, and our post on Xero automation beyond basic sync shows what is possible through its API. For industrial sites, the same integration work reaches historians, SCADA exports and ERP, as described in our post on production reconciliation.
Comparing cloud providers for a new build? Our overview of AWS, Azure and Google Cloud in Australia covers regions and services. And if the software involves genuine technical uncertainty, read our guide to the R&D Tax Incentive for software and take advice from your accountant on eligibility.
Who owns the code and the intellectual property is agreed in the contract before work begins. The handover is designed so you are never dependent on us to understand your own system.
Software that people rely on keeps changing. Staff find better ways to use it, a connected system releases a new API version, a security patch needs applying, or the business adds a site and a new approval level. Budget for that from the start, because a system nobody maintains drifts out of fit with the business within a year or two.
After handover you can support the system in-house, use another provider, or ask us to stay on for monitoring, fixes and a regular cycle of small improvements. Where the system includes AI features, managed AI services add the model monitoring and cost control those features need, and our post on operating AI in production explains what that involves.
We build business software for organisations that run on it. Some projects need a different kind of firm, and we will say so on the first call.
Solve8 is based at 9/86 City Rd, Beenleigh QLD 4207, between Brisbane and the Gold Coast. We build custom software for organisations in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Perth, Adelaide and the rest of Australia, with discovery, design reviews and release demos run over Teams.
In South East Queensland we can be in the room for process walk-throughs and workshops. For regional operations, the same build approach applies to the dispatch, maintenance and reporting tools that mining, energy and industrial sites depend on. Our Australian vs offshore development comparison covers what changes when your developer works in your time zone and under Australian law.
Advice on your systems, architecture and vendors before anything is built, including whether a build is needed at all.
Learn moreBuilds where a model does the core work: document extraction, AI agents and question answering over your data.
Learn moreConnecting the systems you already own when the job is integration alone, with no new application on top.
Learn moreWorkflows automated with the tools you have, which is often cheaper than custom code for rule-based processes.
Learn moreOngoing operation, monitoring and improvement once a system with AI features is live.
Learn moreSelf-hosted models and infrastructure for software that must keep data inside your environment.
Learn moreIndustry pages for construction, manufacturing, professional services and government show where custom software fits in each sector.
See how consulting engagements are priced, or read more answers on our FAQ page.
Book a 30-minute scoping call. Bring the spreadsheet, the process or the systems that are causing the problem, and we will tell you whether a build is worth it and what the first phase would cover.