Where Backbone stops, engineering starts.
Most of what a business needs is already built. The work worth paying for is the part that is genuinely yours.
Extending Backbone
Your differences are built into defined extension points rather than by editing the platform itself. That is what keeps you upgradeable while still fitting you exactly: every improvement made for the platform still reaches you, because nothing about your instance has been rewritten to get there. The seams themselves are covered in how we deliver.
Bespoke builds
Built from the ground up, entirely yours
We only recommend this when Backbone genuinely does not fit. It is the right answer for a specific set of situations, not a default.
- The process is your competitive advantage
- Regulatory, safety or contractual constraints specific to your organisation
- No platform exists for your sector
- You require ownership of the resulting intellectual property
When bespoke is the wrong answer
If a platform already covers you, a ground-up build is money spent on problems that have already been solved, for you and for every other client running the same Backbone.
- A platform already exists and covers your core need
- Speed to value matters more than a perfect fit
- You want ongoing improvement without repeating the build
- Your process is close to how the rest of your industry operates
What we build
Custom web apps and portals
A portal can be a front end onto the same data model as everything else you run, so it shows live project status rather than a static page. That link between what the outside world sees and what is actually happening is covered in Create.
Mobile apps
Built for the people using them on site, on the road, or away from a desk, and connected to the same underlying data as the rest of your systems rather than kept separate.
AI engineering
Built on top of the data foundations Backbone already gives you, rather than bolted onto systems that do not agree with each other. More on that in Data & AI.
Ownership and IP
We are plain about what stays ours and what becomes yours. Background IP is what we bring to every engagement: Backbone itself, our engineering methods, and the components we have already built and proven elsewhere. None of that transfers, and you would not want it to, because it is what lets every client benefit when we improve it. Foreground IP is what we build specifically for you: the extensions, the bespoke system if you take that route, and the configuration that reflects how your organisation actually operates. That is yours at the end of the engagement, on terms agreed and set out in the contract before work starts.
How quality is held
Senior engineers own architecture and review every change before it reaches your system, whichever track you are on. Nothing goes in without passing that gate. The full picture of who does what is in how we deliver.