Custom software development

Bespoke software, engineered to fit, built in-house on .NET.

We're a UK bespoke software development company, and .NET is the stack we build on. Line-of-business systems, customer portals, internal tools and the integrations between them, scoped, designed and coded by our own team in Wakefield and Liverpool, then supported long after launch. No offshoring, no hand-offs, no disappearing at go-live.

What Blacklight delivers

Not "software" in the abstract. These are the shapes of system we build most.

Line-of-business systems

The system your business actually runs on, built around your workflows instead of forcing them into someone else's product. For Airbus UK that was RETURNS, a five-stage absence-management workflow; for Sulzer it was OED, one central system for engineering data used across 150 countries.

Customer and client portals

Self-service portals your customers can actually use, from Proveca's clinical-study portal to the resident self-serve portal we built for Wandle Housing Association.

Internal tools and mobile apps

The quick wins: digital forms, workflow tools and mobile apps that replace paper, spreadsheets and re-keying. The same team that built a multi-site system for Airbus has built a single digital form for a youth charity.

Integration

We make your systems talk: SAP, Oracle, telephony, payments, housing and finance platforms, so data stops living in silos. Airbus's absence system updates SAP automatically; nobody re-keys anything.

Legacy replacement and modernisation

Retiring the system everyone's afraid to touch, one workflow at a time, not a big-bang rewrite, while the business keeps running. Praxity came to us with a decade-old SharePoint 2007 estate and Flash features that didn't work on mobile; we rebuilt the whole thing.

Proof: built to fit, measured after go-live

Airbus: absence halved in six months

  1. Problem

    Airbus UK had an absence rate of up to 8% across its manufacturing base. It needed the rate down without extra staff. Airbus considered an SAP-native build and rejected it on timeline and cost.

  2. Build

    RETURNS: a five-stage absence-management workflow on .NET and SQL Server. Automated absence reporting by IVR. Workflows that notify managers and occupational health. Electronic return-to-work assessments. Automatic SAP integration.

  3. Result

    Absence fell from 8% to 4% in six months, across all Airbus UK manufacturing sites. Each 1% reduction is worth £1 million in productivity.

Sulzer: one system for engineering data in 150 countries

  1. Problem

    Sulzer's engineers designed custom pumps across global sites with dispersed spreadsheets. Their accreditation required tight version control and an audit trail. Spreadsheets could not deliver that.

  2. Build

    OED: a central web system on .NET and SQL Server. It standardised all 88 engineering sheet types, converted units automatically by country, and controlled access by role through Active Directory.

  3. Result

    Engineers across 150 countries work from one controlled system, with versioning and an audit trail to support accreditation.

Proveca: exactly what the study needed, nothing more

  1. Problem

    Proveca needed a data-capture system for a paediatric clinical study. Off-the-shelf clinical trial databases were too complex and too costly for what the study required.

  2. Build

    A bespoke .NET web portal on Azure, with GCP-compliant role-based access, a clean interface for clinician data entry, and a self-managed admin and reporting suite.

  3. Result

    The secure hosted portal replaced paper case-report forms, with full study data visibility.

Why we build on .NET

If you searched for a .NET development company, this is the part you came for.

We've been building bespoke systems since 2009, and Microsoft .NET has been the engineering backbone throughout, we've been a Microsoft partner since 2010, today a Microsoft Solutions Partner.

What that means in practice:

It runs where you need it. With .NET and .NET Core we build applications that run on Windows, Linux and Mac, on-premise or in the cloud.

It covers the whole range. The same stack has carried everything from Dynamics 365 plug-ins to entire mobile apps and bespoke customer portals.

It lasts. .NET is Microsoft-backed, openly documented and actively developed, which means your system can still be maintained and extended in ten years, not just shipped today.

You own it. The systems we build for you are yours, including if you later choose to take them elsewhere.

How we work

Understand first, build second, then stay for the long run. Every project is delivered in-house and onshore by our own UK team of business analysts, project managers and developers, the people who scope the work are the people who ship it, and they're still here long after go-live.

See the full process →

Talk to us

Bring us the process that hurts.

Thirty minutes, no pitch deck, you'll leave knowing whether a bespoke build is worth it, roughly what it would take, and what we'd do first.

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