Stop duplicate data entry. Eliminate common mistakes. Automate every report your group creates. Connect directly to enterprise systems. Track and find documents, to do list items, inventory, or any business data. Set up automatic data feeds with other groups. Get custom reminders or warnings. Pull data directly from the web into your group's system, or automatically push internal data out to the web.
Our custom systems save staff time.
Custom business software analogized as a friendly chicken (you read it here first, folks)
Every growing business looks like a mess from the inside sometimes. You’re growing – so by definition you’re doing something right! But, at the same time, if you’re growing, you’re also outgrowing older ways of doing things. Sales leads or follow-up calls could be tracked on Post-its when you were a one person operation, inventory could be kept in Excel at the start, to do lists could just be your team’s email inboxes when you’re getting off the ground, but as you grow and succeed, processes you’ve outgrown don’t just slow work down, they start to fall apart.
When we go into a successful, growing business of 20 people and see their operations are run with tottering piles of paper files plastered with Post-its, with checks paperclipped to the outside of the folders (that occasionally fall off and get lost) we give that business team a huge high five — for two reasons: 1) these people run a successful business, and are able to keep the wheels on and grow even when driving a breaking down jalopy of business processes, and 2) these folks are going to love having a modern, automated system to do their work — and they have only the first inkling of how good it will be.
Replacing cumbersome and broken business processes with brilliantly designed custom software makes people as happy as a three-year-old holding a very friendly chicken. Even better, the chicken follows you home afterward, starts doing many of your chores, and then provides color charts showing the hugely positive return on investment of its efforts on your behalf.
Custom business software analogized as a friendly chicken (you read it here first, folks)
Takeaway: we should all get such a chicken.
For some, it’s automating one particular task or complex report. For others, you’re looking for an automated system to replace dozens of disconnected spreadsheets and duplicate data entry, putting information into one central system with automatic reports, automatic email, task tracking, invoicing, and more.
Whatever you’d like to do, to find out if it’s worth it, we work with you to compare the cost of the automation to the business benefit it provides. How much time does the work take now, and how much staff time and cost will be saved if it is automated? What are the business costs of the mistakes and omissions made by the old process now, which will be eliminated by a new system? We then compare the benefit of a new system to the cost of developing it, calculate what the investment will be worth, and how long it will take to pay for itself, so you can decide how to proceed.
You know your business and what you’d like to achieve. We know technology, including many options and software features most business owners don’t realize are possibilities. To figure out what can be done, what it might cost, and if a project is worth doing, just give us a call. An initial consultation is free. And we promise to be friendly and not make fun of you if your entire operation is run on Post-its. By contrast, we'll give you a verbal high five for doing what it takes to get the job done, and then practical information on how things might be done better.
Highland develops and rehabilitates low income housing. Highland has grown rapidly by successfully innovating at both dramatically improving the quality of housing for residents, while at the same time offering highly competitive tax credit investments for investors.
When Mighty Ant first started working with Highland, they were a scrambling startup with all their data and financial modeling in a blizzard of remarkably complex Excel spreadsheets. Mighty Ant replaced Excel with an automated system with industry leading capabilities to manage operations (and did so at about a tenth the cost of other organization's systems.)
When we did proceed with Mighty Ant, we got a product delivered on time, on budget, and which had mobile capabilities that weren’t even in the project specification that let us use the system not just in the office but also out in the field.
Mighty Ant was able to understand the big picture of our business model and what we were attempting to do in our industry, giving us a solution that met our current needs, but also had the flexibility to grow and expand with us as we moved forward executing our business model. Mighty Ant excels at simplifying and combining complex data bases and making it usable for our employees with custom reporting.
We liked that Mighty Ant wasn’t locked into one or two technologies, but had a large toolbox to choose from to bring the project to fruition. Mighty Ant was platform and technology agnostic which allows our employees to use whatever computer or device they choose.
Mighty Ant does projects on both flat fee as well as a time billed basis. Many of our competitors only offer work on a time billed basis, leaving open what features you'll get and what they will actually cost. By contrast, after we specify and design a project (billed by time) we offer construction of systems for a flat fee telling you exactly what you'll get and at exactly what price.
We offer ongoing support for systems (which is optional, but popular) by support agreement or billed by time. You can learn about the steps of the software development process and the relative costs / schedules for different parts of the process (specification & design, construction, deployment, ongoing support, etc.) on our Approach page here.
Custom software is, of course, custom, so what it costs depends on what it does. Custom systems typically cost more than pre-built systems. If you can find a pre-built, affordable system that does everything you need, it's usually going to be your best buy. Typically, custom software costs more than buying computers for your staff, but a lot less than adding new staff. We have created $200,000 systems that pay for themselves every year in staff savings (and which have run for 10 years.) Since you have to spend money to get work done whatever you do (on either staff time or, even better, automation) then it makes sense to spend on the one-time cost not the ongoing cost when you can. When looking at whether it makes sense to do any project, figure out how much time a system will save or make, compare it to alternatives, compare the benefit to the cost, calculate the payback period, and then you can decide if the project is worth doing.
Every project is different, and the best way to get a ballpark cost for your own project is to give us a call for a free consultation, but for rough guidance here are some common price points we see for projects:
We talk through your project needs and explore whether working with Mighty Ant DataWorks might be a fit for your organization.
info@MightyAnt.com
(800) 216-8182 (U.S. Eastern Standard Time business hours)
We’ll get back to you, normally within 24 hours.
