Developers you can speak to
Most of the businesses that ring us have a database somewhere near the middle of things. Orders go in it, the customer records live in it, and the month-end figures come out of it.
Quite often the person who built it has moved on, and nobody is sure what would happen if it stopped. Looking after those systems is what CDE Systems does, and has done since 1999: Microsoft Access, SQL Server and bespoke software, most of it built by somebody else. We keep it running, fix it when it breaks, and when you want more from it we build that too.
Some of the work is fixing things that have stopped. More of it is the changes a business needs as it goes along: a report finance wants, a form that needs another field, the job list on a phone. Either way the data and the decisions stay with you.
We’re in Sheffield and work with organisations all over the UK, nearly always remotely.
What do you need?
A fix, a fresh start, or a way forward
An inherited database or a new idea. Find the line that’s closest and start there.
| If this is where you are | Start here |
| Something has stopped and people can’t work | Emergency database support. Ring, don’t email |
| An Access database runs the business, and the person who built it has gone | Microsoft Access support and development |
| SQL Server is slow, or nobody is looking after it | SQL Server support and tuning |
| Spreadsheets, retyping and workarounds have become the system | Bespoke database and software development |
| People need it on a phone, at home or out on site | Modernisation: web and mobile access |
| The same figures get typed into two systems | Integration and APIs |
| You’re wondering about the cloud | Azure and cloud options |
| You’ve been asked to find out what state it’s in | Database health check, £495 (+VAT) fixed price |
| You’re not sure what it’s built in, or who to ask | Database and business software support |
If none of them fits, ring and describe it however it comes out. You don’t need the right name for the problem, because working that out is usually the first ten minutes of the call.
What we do
Four ways we help
Our work
Systems we’ve fixed, built and looked after
Commercial Catering Service & Maintenance (field service)
Aire Valley Catering
Field service apps that work with no signal
Aire Valley Catering’s engineers work in commercial kitchens across the UK, often with no usable signal, and every job still has to be recorded. We built four production…
View case study
Transport and logistics
ACC Worldwide
A faster SQL Server system, noticed on day one
ACC Worldwide’s staff used one business system all day, every day, and it was slow. We worked on the SQL Server environment behind it. The speed-up was immediate,…
View case study
Travel and leisure (adventure travel and expeditions)
Jagged Globe
Keeping bookings, customer records and the website in step
Jagged Globe runs on an internal database and a booking website that have to agree every day, and sometimes they didn’t. We traced and fixed the transfers between…
View case study
Why CDE
Why people ring us
We take on systems we didn’t build. No documentation, no developer, and nobody left who remembers why it does what it does. That’s most of what we look after, so it doesn’t faze us.
You talk to a developer. We don’t have a ticket queue or a first-line script. Whoever answers is one of the people who does the work, and it’ll be the same people the next time you ring.
We’ll say so when the answer is “leave it alone”. Sometimes the system is fine, or the fix is cheaper than the project someone has quoted you for. If that’s what we find, that’s what you’ll hear.
Business systems are what we do all day. We aren’t an IT support company that also does a bit of database work. It has been Access, SQL Server and the software built on them since 1999, for businesses, councils and central government.
Good people to have on your side
Work is always completed to a high standard, on time and to budget. We always appreciate their patient, friendly and reliable service too.
Aire Valley Catering
Let’s get it sorted
You don’t need a technical brief
Just tell us what’s happening, or what you’d like to do. The first conversation is free, and a lot of people only want a rough idea of what’s involved to begin with.