Custom Software Development Company

What a custom software development company actually does

A custom software development company builds systems that fit the way your business already works, instead of asking your business to fit a vendor’s template. Tepia has done this for thirteen years for manufacturers, healthcare facilities, grocery chains, retailers, home improvement companies and IoT hardware makers, building the web portals, mobile apps and backend services those operations run on.

Tepia is US led. Project management, design leadership and engineering leadership are based in the United States, across offices in Costa Mesa, Tampa, Pittsburgh, Austin, Las Vegas and Kansas City. Engineers are individually sourced and hand picked, not pulled from a bench, and they work in US overlapping hours. Leadership includes Abraham Agopian (Founder and CEO), Brianna Martison (Director of Engineering) and Fahad Baig (Technical Lead Manager).

Examples are on the Tepia portfolio.

Should you build custom software or buy off the shelf

Most companies should buy. Tepia says this on the first call because custom software is a poor fit for problems that a well supported product already solves.

The common middle path, buy the core and build the edges, is often where Tepia’s systems integration work begins.

Web, mobile, backend and integrations from one team

Custom software rarely lives in one place. A typical Tepia system has a web application for office staff, a mobile app for customers or field teams, a backend API and database, and integrations with accounting, CRM or ERP. Tepia builds all four layers with one project manager so nothing falls between vendors.

• Web applications and portals in React with Node.js or .NET backends: dashboards, admin panels, customer portals, approval workflows. See web application development.
• Mobile apps in Swift, Kotlin, React Native or Flutter, engineered for retention with offline first sync and push notifications.
• Backend and cloud on AWS, Azure or GCP with PostgreSQL, REST and GraphQL APIs, and Firebase for fast MVPs.
• Integrations with Salesforce, HubSpot, QuickBooks, ServiceTitan, Stripe, Square, Shopify, Twilio and SendGrid, plus Zapier and Make when a lightweight connection is enough.
• AI features using OpenAI and Anthropic model APIs, retrieval augmented generation and vector databases, added to new or existing systems.

Mother’s Nutritional Center is a representative Tepia project: the MNC Go grocery ordering app streamlined orders for a grocery chain and required a customer app, a store facing workflow and inventory logic working together.

How Tepia approaches custom software development

Every Tepia engagement follows the same six phases, documented on the process page. For custom business systems, the early phases carry most of the risk, so Tepia invests there.

1. Discovery (typically 1 to 3 months). System investigation of what you run today, interviews with the people who use it, and a third party integration review of every system the new software must talk to. Deliverables: Investigation Summary, Interview Summary and User Stories that become the scope baseline.
2. Design. Design questionnaire, moodboards, a style guide and detailed wireframes for each role in the system, followed by sample designs you approve before engineering.
3. Development and Testing. Alpha and Beta schedules, with test plans covering functional, user acceptance and non functional testing such as load, security and backup restoration.
4. Training. In person and remote sessions, hands on, using user story scenarios for each department.
5. Launch. Data migration from the old system, a planned transition (often parallel running for a period), and Tepia support reps on rollout.

Choosing among enterprise software development companies

When buyers search for the best enterprise software development companies, the lists they find are mostly pay to play directories. Tepia suggests a simpler test: ask each company who your project manager will be, where the engineers sit, whether you will own the source code and cloud accounts from day one, and what happens after launch.

Tepia also brings the compliance experience enterprise projects need: HIPAA aware architecture with PHI handling, BAAs and audit logs; PCI DSS scoping with tokenized payments; SOC 2 aligned practices; GDPR and CCPA data handling; and WCAG 2.1 AA accessibility. Water Saver Solutions, a fixture care and water conservation app for hospitals, is one example of Tepia building for a regulated environment.

A PalPilot analyst described the experience this way: “In every stage of our web development project, Tepia was there to nurture and guide our team.” Explore all Tepia services or compare Tepia to hiring in house on the in house developers vs agency page.

Frequently asked questions