Manifesto

1. We are Arabellsoft
  • We design and develop web and mobile applications that are useful and easy to use
  • You know when you have found inefficiencies in your company workflow and you have ideas on how to fix them? That’s where we come in – to help you design and implement software to implement your ideas and enable you to grow and profit.
  • How you fit – we don’t work with clients who want to fight on requirements and invoices. We only work with clients who truly are on a mission to improve their organization workflow and scale. When we find you, we go the extra mile to build amazing tools for you.
2. Pain for not drinking the digital transformation “kool-aid”

If you do not invest in digital transformation, your business may be at risk.

Less competitive edge: With the information age, your business has to use technology to optimize processes and increase efficiency. If you don’t, you may fall behind the competitors that leverage technology.

Struggle to adapt to change: The market and customer needs change quickly. Businesses that ignore digital transformation may struggle to innovate and grow.

Attract and retain talent: With the high talent shortage and quit culture, the workforce, more so the younger generations, value working for organizations that invest in digital transformations. A business that does not invest may struggle to attract and retain talent.

Bad quality customer experience: Customers want convenient and seamless interaction with your product and services. If a business is not keeping up with technological advances, it may lead to more customers shopping with your competitors.

3. You have a life

At Arabellsoft, we see you have a life. You are a person who just wants to retire someday, play the ukulele while sipping your martini, want your kids to make good choices, and want to sing in your favourite band while on the beach. So when we design and develop apps for you, we see your dreams, vision and passion too.

4. We dislike complicated apps

Complicated doesn’t equal useful. Most of your staff just want to create invoices, view their reports, assign tasks to their reports and go home to their loved ones. We will help you to understand the customer/staff journey in your business before we build apps for you.

5. Not for everyone

We don’t do websites, logos or icons. We only develop web and mobile apps. We decide to focus so we can get better at just that. If you need those services, we have partners we can coordinate with.

6. Don’t speak jargon

In the software world, we speak algorithms, objects and functions. What does that even mean to you? To understand you as a user, we at Arabellsoft like to communicate with you in terms of jobs you need to get done, people that need to get the jobs done and the outcomes of those jobs.

7. Usability meet usefulness

We believe apps should both be usable and useful to the end users. We start with a user experience and work backwards to design and implement the technology.

8. Don’t meet, get out of the office

When designing and developing a new or updated digital experience, it is best to “go see” what the workflow for the branch manager is like, how the service technician does her job, and how they interact with the customer. So “don’t just meet and pontificate”, “get out into the field”.

9. Are you guys experienced?

We are the best thing since slice bread. Well kind of.

While we don’t especially like tooting our own horns, our earliest experience of delivering projects dates back to 2003 when the final Concorde flight took place. Arabellsoft has since gone on to deliver web, mobile and desktop apps for industries like fire and safety, mining, event ticketing, public safety, market research, medical, transportation, and forestry. Shall we continue? 

10. Experience

The members of the Arabellsoft team have performed work for a wide range of companies:

11. Good design makes a product useful

A good product is bought to be used. It has to satisfy certain criteria, not only functional but also psychological and aesthetic. Good design emphasizes the usefulness of a product whilst disregarding anything that could possibly detract from it.

#2 from Dieter Rams’ 10 Principles of Good Design

12. Process

We promise to meet with you before we recommend a solution for your digital transformation. We will seek to understand your business, industry and rationale for wanting a digital solution.

13. Simplicity over complicated features

“Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.”

~ Steve Jobs

Enough said.

14. Onychocryptosis?

When communicating, it’s easier to spell out your acronyms rather than be confused about what the acronyms mean. Imagine going to the doctor to get checked and he diagnosed you have “Onychocryptosis”. What? Why doesn’t he simply just say you have an ingrown toenail?

15. Have a budget in mind and plus we don’t read minds

We want your project to be successful and at the same time, we want to know you have a reasonable budget in mind to complete it. You clearly do not want us to bankrupt and not deliver your work because we can’t pay our internet bill to get your work done. Please tell us. We promise to spend your budget fairly.

16. Race to MVP

MVP, yes we know you are the Most Valuable Person. No not that one. We mean Minimum Viable Product. You have the idea, we can custom-build what’s needed based on ideation, engineering and scale.

17. Shoulders of Giants

Where would we be if we didn’t have giants that have gone before us? We honour:

Steve Jobs
Elon Musk
Bill Gates
Dieter Rams
Alan Kay
Linus Torvalds
Alan Turing
Bjarne Stroustrup

18. Quote

Adding last-minute features, whether in response to competitive pressure, as a developer’s pet feature, or on the whim of management, causes more bugs in software than almost anything else.

~ John Robbins.
19. Work directly with us

Call, email or DM, and you get to talk to a real Software Developer. You don’t speak to a salesperson, customer sales or snake oil salesman. You work directly with the people who will design and engineer your code.

20. I can go to UpWork and develop it cheaper
  1. Then go to UpWork or the cheapest equivalent you can find.
  2. The money and time you save going to UpWork is nothing compared to the time and money to undo bad quality work.
21. We messed up, please let us know

Things sometimes need to be revised. If we mess up on fixes, communication, or timeline, let us know. Don’t bottle them up. We are humans and we will try our hardest to continue to earn your trust.

22. Credo

We pledge to provide the finest software & hardware development service. We will continue to learn and apply the knowledge to deliver your project.

23. Do User Experience (UX) upfront

The bunch of software development costs come from the back-and-forth UI changes between the stakeholder and the development team. To reduce cost for your project, do the “back and forth” by doing a User Experience (UX) design with feedback built-in first.

24. We believe in the Agile way of delivering projects
  1. Agile software development allows your work and team to respond well to your needs. 
  2. We deliver useful software often.
25. Our Team
  1. Peter Akarakiri – Peter is the CEO of Arabellsoft. He’s a family man who still enjoys coding even after 15+ years in the software industry. He dreams of inventing an auto snow thrower one day.
  2. James Welsh – James has the saying “living the dream” when he jumps on a zoom call. He’s a programmer with tons of energy to come up with solutions when we need ideas.
  3. Gilead Foster – Gilead is the master of fun on the team. He likes hiking and has a long beard to boot. He takes care of programming and quality at Arabellsoft.
26. Reference