Services
Engineering, applied to the specific way your business works.
Five disciplines. Most projects draw on several of them, because the problem rarely sits neatly inside one. Below is what each involves and the kind of situation it tends to solve.
Engineering
Bespoke software
Systems built for how your business actually works, not how a vendor assumed it would.
You have outgrown off-the-shelf. Every tool you evaluate does 70% of the job, and the missing 30% is the part your business competes on.
We design and build production systems end to end — domain modelling, architecture, delivery and the long tail of running it afterwards. The work is specified against your process rather than a product roadmap, so it fits on day one and keeps fitting as you change.
What that includes
- Greenfield product and platform development
- Domain-driven design and event-sourced architectures
- Replacing spreadsheets and Access databases that became load-bearing
- Modernising legacy systems without a big-bang rewrite
- Handover, documentation and team training
Applied AI
AI & automation
Automating the repetitive work — including the conversations — with something that measurably holds up.
Someone in your business spends their week rekeying data, chasing responses, and answering the same fifteen questions. It works, until they are on holiday.
We build automation that survives contact with reality: conversational agents that handle real customer traffic, document and data extraction that copes with messy inputs, and process automation with the error handling and observability that separates a demo from a system you can rely on.
What that includes
- Conversational AI over WhatsApp, web and voice
- Document, invoice and email data extraction
- Workflow automation with proper failure handling
- LLM integration, evaluation and cost control
- Human-in-the-loop review where accuracy has to be certain
Interoperability
Systems integration
Connecting the systems you already pay for — including the ones with no integration to buy.
Your CRM does not talk to your finance system. Your stock does not talk to your website. The connection between them is a person with a spreadsheet.
Most suppliers wire together off-the-shelf connectors and stop where the catalogue ends. We start there and keep going: when the integration does not exist, we build it — against APIs, legacy protocols, flat-file drops or whatever the system actually speaks.
What that includes
- API design, and integration with systems that have none
- ERP, CRM, finance and e-commerce connectivity
- Data pipelines, synchronisation and reconciliation
- Legacy protocol and file-based interchange
- Eliminating double entry between systems
Platform
Cloud & infrastructure
Infrastructure that is understood, documented and owned — by you, not by a supplier.
Deployments are a held breath. Nobody is entirely sure what is running where, and the person who set it up has left.
We build and run platforms on AWS, on hardware, or both — containerised, automated and observable. IR4 runs its own Kubernetes infrastructure, so this is not resold hosting with a markup: it is the same discipline we apply to our own production systems.
What that includes
- Kubernetes, containerisation and orchestration
- CI/CD pipelines and release automation
- Infrastructure as code with Terraform and Ansible
- Monitoring, alerting and incident response
- Cost reduction and cloud exit where it makes sense
Product
Web applications
Customer portals, internal tools and the interfaces your business runs through every day.
The tool your team uses all day was built quickly, years ago, and now everyone works around it rather than with it.
We build web applications people use willingly: fast, accessible, and designed around the task rather than the database schema. Customer-facing portals, internal operations tools, dashboards that answer a question instead of displaying every metric available.
What that includes
- Customer and supplier portals
- Internal operations and admin tooling
- Reporting and dashboards that drive decisions
- Accessibility and performance as requirements, not extras
- Design systems and component libraries
How we work
No surprises, in either direction.
- 01
Conversation
A call, then usually a visit. We want to understand the business, not just the brief — the problem you describe is often a symptom of a different one.
- 02
Order form
One page: what will be built, what “working” means, and the price. Larger work is broken into pieces that each get their own page, so you are never approving a number you cannot see the shape of.
- 03
Build
Delivered in working increments you can see and use, not a six-month silence followed by a reveal. You will always know where it is up to.
- 04
Acceptance, then run
You pay when it does what the page said it would. After that we can keep hosting and maintaining it on a monthly service, or hand it over — cancel whenever you like, and your licence to use it survives either way.
What it costs
A fixed price, agreed before anything starts.
We can’t quote a build we haven’t seen. What we can tell you upfront is exactly how the money works — and you can read the whole agreement before you call.
Terms §1.1
One page, one price
Every piece of work is described on a single page before it starts: what will be built, what “working” means, and the price. You approve it by replying to an email. There is no hourly meter and no open-ended project.
Terms §2.1, §2.5
You pay when it works
The price is invoiced once the deliverable does what the page said it would — not up front, and not against milestones that mean nothing to you. If it is finished and waiting on you, we say so in writing and can invoice thirty days later. Payable within seven days, plus VAT.
Terms §3.1, §2.2
The monthly keeps it running
Where there is something to host and look after, a monthly charge covers running it, monitoring it, fixing anything that breaks, and small tweaks. Cancel whenever you like — it stops at the end of the month you have paid for. No exit fee, no notice period.
Terms §1.3, §3.2
New ideas get a price first
Small changes are included. A genuinely new capability is a new piece of work, which means another one-page description and another price before anything is built. Nothing arrives as a surprise invoice.
All of it is set out in the standard engagement terms, published in full including the data processing schedule.
Not sure which of these you need?
Neither are most people at this stage. Describe what isn’t working and we will tell you honestly whether it is something we can help with.
Start a conversation