Our culture is built on five pillars: Collaboration (synergy in problem-solving), Quality (exceeding expectations), Reliability (personnel and project accountability), Accountability (transparency and continuous improvement), and being Customer-Centric (fostering an inclusive, supportive environment for our clients).

Our leadership team is made up of highly experienced technology and business professionals with decades of experience delivering complex digital transformation initiatives across regulated industries. They bring deep expertise in custom software development, cloud architecture, AI and machine learning, and enterprise systems integration.

With strong backgrounds in engineering, data strategy, and large-scale programme delivery, our leaders ensure every project combines technical excellence, regulatory awareness, and commercial focus - helping organisations modernise confidently and achieve measurable outcomes.

We act as a transformation partner for organisations struggling with three primary challenges:

Inefficient Processes:
Replacing cumbersome, resource-draining workflows with AI-powered automation and custom software solutions that streamline operations, modernise legacy systems, and significantly reduce cost-to-serve.

Data Underutilisation:
Unlocking the full value of your data through advanced analytics, machine learning, and intelligent data engineering, transforming fragmented, raw data into actionable insights that drive smarter, faster decision-making.

Lack of Innovation:
Delivering cutting-edge AI capabilities, scalable custom software development, and deep AWS/Azure cloud expertise to help organisations adapt quickly, innovate confidently, and stay ahead of rapid technological change.

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We are a truly international partner with a strategic presence across Europe and North America. Our offices are located in Bath and London (UK), Lisbon (Portugal), Philadelphia & Hatfield (USA). This global footprint allows us to leverage diverse talent and support international organizations with local expertise.

The Virtual Forge was founded in October 2010 by Co-CEOs Matt Wicks and Garrett Doyle. Our unwavering mission is to bridge the gap between design and data-driven development. We evolve alongside technology - incorporating AI, Machine Learning, and Cloud Computing - to ensure that every solution we build is both innovative and grounded in robust data infrastructure.

Financial organisations sit on vast libraries of unstructured content — compliance documents, policy manuals, audit reports, product guides, and regulatory filings — that employees struggle to search effectively. MyContentScout is an AI knowledge platform that lets teams ask questions in plain language and instantly retrieve precise answers from documents, videos, meeting transcripts, and historical archives, without switching between systems or digging through folders. Mycontentscout For financial services teams where speed and accuracy are critical, this directly reduces operational risk and the cost of delayed or incorrect information.

Back-office financial operations - from KYC and AML checks to claims processing and reconciliation - are heavily manual, expensive, and prone to human error. We deploy intelligent automation that combines AI document understanding, NLP, and workflow orchestration to process these tasks at scale with minimal human intervention. The result is a significant reduction in operational cost, faster processing cycles, and a more consistent, auditable paper trail for compliance purposes.

Traditional credit scoring models rely on a limited set of variables and struggle to adapt to changing economic conditions. Our machine learning models ingest a broader and more dynamic range of signals - behavioural data, transaction history, market indicators - to generate more accurate and explainable risk scores. This enables lenders to extend credit more confidently, reduce default rates, and meet regulatory expectations around model transparency and fairness.

Financial fraud is becoming more sophisticated and faster-moving than traditional rule-based detection systems can handle. We implement AI-powered anomaly detection models that continuously learn from transaction patterns, flagging suspicious activity in real time with far greater accuracy than static thresholds. This reduces both false positives that frustrate legitimate customers and false negatives that expose the institution to loss - shrinking response times from hours to milliseconds.

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The insurance industry relies on clean, structured data. We build custom solutions that provide modern UX/UI while connecting your critical data sets. By applying Machine Learning and AI, we help insurance providers model data effectively, improve risk analysis, and create more precisely targeted solutions for their policyholders.

Yes. Data integrity is the foundation of our financial services. We specialize in Data Migration and Quality Management, which includes rigorous data cleansing and transformation. We ensure a seamless transition to new systems while maintaining the highest levels of data quality, enabling you to make reliable, data-driven decisions and drive operational excellence.

Unlike generic credit scoring, our custom evaluation tools provide precise, thorough assessments by analyzing a wider range of data factors unique to your risk profile. This leads to more accurate creditworthiness evaluations, allowing your institution to mitigate risk while accelerating the approval process for customers.

Unlike generic credit scoring, our custom evaluation tools provide precise, thorough assessments by analyzing a wider range of data factors unique to your risk profile. This leads to more accurate creditworthiness evaluations, allowing your institution to mitigate risk while accelerating the approval process for customers.

Custom software allows banks to automate manual back-office processes and connect disparate data sources that off-the-shelf tools often miss. We build intuitive solutions that modernize legacy systems, integrate real-time analytics, and enable faster response times, allowing financial institutions to meet modern customer expectations for seamless digital experiences.

Yes. We build Global Franchise Standards Evaluation platforms that ensure your brand is accurately represented across every dealership. Our systems facilitate the auditing process with photographic evidence and comprehensive analytics, allowing you to monitor compliance, track improvement plans, and assess regional differences in real-time.

Automotive companies manage massive libraries of unstructured content, from product specifications to training records. We implement Machine Learning Search Solutions and Natural Language Processing (NLP) to improve search effectiveness. These tools allow your team to promptly retrieve exact answers from complex PDFs, images, and dashboards, significantly increasing operational efficiency. Our own AI-powered search product, MyContentScout, is built precisely for this challenge - see how it works.

A customized balanced scorecard allows manufacturers to measure dealer performance against specific standards, goals, and peer groups. Our solutions include Future Performance Modeling, which allows dealers to design improvement strategies and model their downstream impact. This data-driven approach facilitates timely interventions and reinforces positive changes across the network.

Automotive brands face unique challenges in training both technical and non-technical staff across vast dealer networks. We build flexible LMS solutions that serve millions of assessments annually, making continuous product evolution and technical training engaging and measurable. These systems ensure that new product knowledge is internalized and put into practice effectively across the entire organization.

In the automotive industry, software gaps are a leading cause of pushed SOP dates and budget overruns. We mitigate these risks by providing expert technical resources and over a decade of experience in building tailor-made solutions. Our process ensures that robust software and data capabilities are integrated early, securing your production timeline and helping you maintain a competitive edge.

Raw data is only valuable if it is accurate and actionable. Our data consultancy services turn raw insights into strategic assets through governance, quality control, and advanced visualization. This reduces the risk of misinformation and empowers public sector leaders to make informed, data-driven decisions that improve operational planning and transparency.

A custom LMS streamlines L&D efforts by ensuring compliance and eliminating manual tracking. Unlike generic platforms, our tailor-made solutions scale effortlessly to handle high user volumes and provide specific reporting metrics required by government institutions, effectively cutting both training time and administrative overhead.

We specialize in bridging the gap between aging legacy tools and modern digital needs. Our experts design bespoke software that seamlessly aligns with existing infrastructures, ensuring that digital transformation doesn't stall due to technical debt. This allows for improved public interaction and significant long-term cost savings without disrupting mission-critical services.

Public sector organizations often face shrinking budgets and vast amounts of siloed data. Our AI tool, MyContentScout, revolutionizes how employees and citizens find information. By using advanced search technology to crawl documents, videos, and dashboards, it provides instant answers, reducing manual research time and operational costs while improving service delivery.

Security is non-negotiable in the public sector. We are an approved Crown Commercial Service supplier on the G-Cloud framework, carrying both Cyber Essentials and ISO 27001 certifications. This ensures that every solution we build - from data visualisation to cloud migration - is protected by a robust information security management system designed for risk management and cyber-resilience.

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By applying machine learning models to patient history, diagnostic data, and treatment pathways, we help healthcare providers identify high-risk patients before a crisis occurs. These predictive insights allow clinical teams to intervene earlier, personalise care plans, and allocate resources more effectively - reducing avoidable readmissions and improving outcomes at a population level while generating measurable cost savings for the organisation.

Manual adverse event monitoring is time-consuming, error-prone, and increasingly difficult to scale as data volumes grow. Our AI-powered pharmacovigilance solutions automate the ingestion and classification of safety signals from multiple sources - clinical reports, EHR data, and post-market surveillance feeds - enabling faster detection, more consistent case processing, and robust regulatory reporting that keeps you ahead of compliance obligation

AI and machine learning are transforming the pace of pharmaceutical R&D. We help life sciences organisations apply predictive modelling to compound screening, patient stratification, and trial design - significantly reducing the time and cost of moving from hypothesis to clinical evidence. By surfacing patterns across large, complex datasets, our solutions enable research teams to prioritise the most promising candidates and reduce attrition rates in late-stage development.

We transform vast amounts of pharmaceutical data into informative visualizations and KPIs. By focusing on critical metrics - such as HCP prescribing habits, managed care payer data, and EHR insights - we enable your team to unlock turn-key insights within major BI platforms, driving more informed clinical and commercial decisions.

Yes. Modern IT infrastructures in healthcare change rapidly, and we ensure no data is left behind. We have significant experience in data modeling and transformation, allowing multiple platforms to share data in real-time. Whether it is a data warehouse or a data mart, we maintain data quality and integrity across the entire technical landscape.

We empower CROs by developing comprehensive Clinical Trial Management Systems (CTMS) and Electronic Data Capture (EDC) solutions. These platforms automate subject enrollment, site management, and real-time reporting, reducing the administrative burden and accelerating the research lifecycle while maintaining strict data integrity.

Security is at the core of our MedTech development. We implement robust security measures to safeguard patient information and ensure full compliance with HIPAA and other global data protection regulations. Our systems include proactive alerts and exception notifications, providing peace of mind to both providers and patients.

Our eSampling solution digitises the request and distribution process for pharmaceutical and medical device samples. By combining a branded ordering portal with audit-ready signature capture and auto-scaling cloud architecture, we help licensed Healthcare Professionals (HCPs) receive samples efficiently while ensuring the business remains fully compliant with PDMA regulations.

Traditional demand planning relies on historical averages and human judgement, which leaves manufacturers exposed to stockouts, overproduction, and margin erosion. Our AI forecasting models ingest a broader range of signals - seasonal trends, market conditions, supplier lead times, and real-time sales data - to generate significantly more accurate demand predictions. This gives procurement, production, and logistics teams a shared, reliable picture of what is needed, when, and where, reducing waste and unlocking working capital tied up in excess inventory.

Yes. Predictive maintenance is one of the highest-ROI applications of AI in manufacturing. By training machine learning models on historical sensor data - vibration, temperature, pressure, cycle counts - our systems learn to recognise the early signatures of equipment degradation. This allows maintenance teams to intervene at precisely the right moment, eliminating both unexpected breakdowns and the waste of over-scheduled preventive maintenance. The outcome is maximum asset availability with minimum intervention cost.

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Modern manufacturing generates enormous volumes of operational data that most businesses never fully leverage. We help manufacturers unlock this value by applying AI-driven analytics and machine learning models to production data, quality control processes, and supply chain variables. This moves decision-making from instinct to evidence - identifying patterns, predicting failures before they occur, and surfacing optimisation opportunities that would be invisible to the human eye. The result is a smarter operation that compounds efficiency gains over time.

With over 10 years of experience, we specialise in transforming intricate manufacturing data into user-friendly, cloud-supported software. Our agile mindset allows us to adapt to the unforeseen challenges of a production environment, ensuring that the final product isn't just functional, but a reliable driver of business growth.

While our expertise is adaptable, we have deep experience in high-stakes industries:

• Automotive: Delivering modern, intuitive solutions for global companies.
• Food & Drinks: Integrating advanced systems to elevate brand consistency and production.
• Consumer Electronics: Accelerating time-to-market for new product development.

Yes. We specialize in creating data-driven dashboards that maximize parts inventories across manufacturing and distribution sites. By analysing logistics performance data, we help businesses ensure the right inventory is at the right location without the capital drain of excess stock, providing a truly integrated customer experience.

Leveraging the Internet of Things (IoT) allows manufacturers to move from reactive to proactive strategies. Our solutions capture real-time data from mission-critical equipment and vehicle fleets, providing insights into operating pressures, maintenance status, and machinery output. This enables faster reactions to risks and the ability to make intelligent decisions, such as identifying the optimal time to electrify a fleet.

Generic tools often fail to address the specific bottlenecks of a production floor. We build custom solutions that automate manual data entry, integrate fragmented communication channels, and optimize resource allocation. By aligning software with your unique operational workflows, we enable significant margin expansion and operational scalability that off-the-shelf software cannot provide.

The Virtual Forge is a global company with offices in London, Bath, Lisbon (Portugal), and Philadelphia (USA). This allows us to support both global brands and lean tech start-ups with a collaborative, high-touch approach.

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Through our Design Sprint Facilitation Services, we can take your team from a complex challenge to a high-fidelity prototype in just 5 days. This efficient process - available both in-person and remotely - allows us to test and validate ideas before committing to full-scale development, saving you significant time and resources.

We have world-class experience across five thriving sectors: Manufacturing, Life Sciences, Public Sector, Automotive, and Financial Services. In each of these areas, we combine our technical expertise with deep industry knowledge to satisfy specific regulatory, security, and operational demands.

Being data-driven means we don't build software based on assumptions. Our mission is to understand the core data and infrastructure at the heart of your business first. By identifying the "hidden truths" in your data, we design intelligent platforms that solve unique business problems, ensuring the final system is not just functional, but a powerful engine for insight and growth.

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Test automation front loads the testing work. Automated test cases must be implemented by an automation engineer, this process typically takes longer than designing an equivalent set of manual test cases. Once the test cases are implemented, the cost to execute them is very low, since they are executed by a non-human agent (there are possible infrastructure costs associated with hosting the server that runs the automated test cases, but these costs are much lower than the cost of having functional testers run test cases). 

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Codeless platforms allow testers to record test steps that are executed by a functional tester. These platforms then allow the recorded test steps to be executed in an automated manner. It’s possible to parametrize the test steps, reusing the recorded test steps when there is data or environment variations. Codeless platforms reduce the time needed to create the automated test steps, they also allow for testers without coding skills to implement automated tests. Most of the codeless platforms are paid, and although cost varies from supplier to supplier, using these platforms can significantly increase the project cost.

A code based approach to automated testing brings to the top of the table increased control and flexibility over the implementation of the automated test cases. Test cases are implemented as code, using libraries designed for it. This added flexibility translates into less time needed to improve, extend or modify existing test cases. Code can be reused, which means that as more test cases get implemented, less time is required to implement new test cases. 

Yes, failing is an acceptable and valuable option in a design sprint. In fact, embracing the possibility of failure is an integral part of the design sprint methodology. Design sprints encourage experimentation, rapid prototyping, and user testing to gather feedback and learn from failures or shortcomings.

By creating a safe space for testing and exploring ideas, design sprints allow teams to identify and address potential issues early in the process. Failures or setbacks during a sprint provide valuable insights and learning opportunities that can lead to better solutions and iterations.

The success of the sprint relies on active participation, collaboration, and collective decision-making throughout the process. Each day of the sprint builds upon the progress made in the previous days, and continuity is essential to maintain the momentum and ensure a cohesive outcome. Therefore, it is highly recommended that all team members commit to being present throughout the entire duration of the sprint to fully engage in the activities, discussions, and decision-making processes.

During a full Design Sprint workshop, several key participants should be present to ensure a comprehensive and collaborative approach. The Design Sprint benefits from having a diverse group of team members from various disciplines, to bring their unique perspectives and expertise to the table, fostering creativity and holistic problem-solving.

Ideally, the Design Sprint should include 3-6 participants who play key roles in decision-making, possess expertise in the problem area, and represent the design, development, and testing fields within your business.

A Design Sprint is an extraordinary concept to validate a large number of challenges.

It's a highly flexible framework, which be tailored to fit a plethora of different problems. At The Virtual Forge, we have delivered Design Sprints for products, services, internal and external digital solutions. All in all, a Design Sprint is great for almost any kind of challenge.

The time required to execute an AI project can vary depending on several factors, including the complexity of the problem, the availability and quality of data, the scope of the project, and the specific requirements. Some AI projects can be completed in a matter of weeks, while others may take several months or longer. It is crucial to thoroughly analyse the project requirements, assess the data availability, and develop a comprehensive project plan to estimate the timeline accurately.

If you are facing challenges that involve processing large amounts of data, identifying complex patterns, making predictions, automating tasks, or improving decision-making based on data-driven insights, AI may be a suitable solution. Consulting with our experts can help assess your specific problem and determine if AI is the right approach to address it effectively.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) refers to the simulation of human intelligence in machines that can perform tasks, learn, and make decisions. Machine Learning (ML) is a subset of AI that focuses on enabling machines to learn and improve from data without being explicitly programmed.

This can admittedly be a tough sell, and a barrier to adoption - no matter how you try to meet the needs of your entire user base, there are some who prefer their own self-directed analysis, typically based on large Excel-like tables. The good news is that, to some degree, all modern BI platforms support the generation of CSV or Excel-based extracts, up to and including the entire data model. In that sense, BI platforms allow users to continue exploration beyond the page’s visuals so no one is, in effect, left out.

Choosing a BI platform can be difficult, since on the surface, they all achieve the same outcome.

That said, your technology stack and data ecosystem will play a significant role in your choice. If, for instance, you are a 100% Microsoft business, we’d likely recommend Power BI. If you have a large Salesforce.com user base, we’d suggest Tableau CRM.

Often enough though, enterprises cross multiple systems and methods for capturing and storing data, so the choice often comes down to which platform is the most appealing, both in terms of visual output and capabilities, and price. At The Virtual Forge, we tend to stay platform-agnostic when entering a new situation in order to find the best fit that meets the majority of your needs.

Typically, most BI platforms offer some sort of trial period to “test drive” the tool. Some, like Power BI, allow you to create and publish dashboards and reports without any additional licensing, though at some point, in order to be able to easily share and collaborate, licensing will definitely be required. Once you’ve reached that point, the level of licensing will vary depending on the size of your intended audience, as well as platform-specific considerations. 

In general, the answer is almost always “yes”, though to what extent varies by situation.

There’s always some degree of cleansing and preparation, though the scope of that effort depends on the maturity of the data in question, and the means by which it is accessed.

If, for instance, you have an established data warehouse, consuming data from multiple sources in a central location, it’s very likely that little to no preparation is necessary.

By contrast, if the sources are Excel-based and touched by many hands in the chain of control, or derived from web-based sources, then it’s very likely to require anomaly detection and resolution, and a high-degree of shaping to fit the ideal reporting data model.

While a data warehouse should be considered an integral part of any enterprise-wide analytics solution, it’s not necessarily a pre-requisite to be up and running on most BI platforms.

Modern BI solutions, to varying degrees depending on the platform, have incorporated at least some level of data pipelines, transformations, and cleansing, functions typically carried out in the traditional warehouse.

While the data warehouse is the more complete solution, these platforms are designed to get you started exploring your data quickly, which is great news for smaller businesses or teams where a full-blown warehouse isn’t financially feasible.

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A dashboard is a user-friendly interface that displays critical information and data in a visual format (bar graphs, pie charts, heat maps, scatter plots, etc.). The purpose of a dashboard is to provide quick and easy access to key metrics, data, and insights that help inform decision-making and drive business performance. Dashboards can be designed to display a wide range of data from multiple sources, including real-time updates, historical trends, and predictive analytics.

Data Dashboards become essential by providing real-time insights, improve communication, increase productivity, and enable data-driven decision-making. They can be customised to meet the specific needs of your business, providing a single source of truth for decision making.

By linking dashboards to particular metrics or KPIs, you gain critical business intelligence and the capability to delve into specific pieces of information, enabling you to continuously track your progress.

Yes, testing services can be customised to suit your unique project needs. Testing services are typically flexible and can be tailored to accommodate your specific requirements, whether it's a specific testing methodology, industry compliance, or integration with your existing development processes.

Testing services employ systematic testing methodologies and techniques to identify defects, validate functionality, and ensure that the software meets the desired quality standards. They help uncover issues early in the development cycle, allowing for timely resolution and preventing potential problems in the production environment.

The main benefits of our Software Testing Services are early detection of errors, reduction of risk and validation of the quality of the system.

Software testing is the process of verifying that a software or application does what it is intended to do.

This is not necessary limited to, we also have in consideration:

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• What is defined as scope of the product.
• Guarantee that the product is responsive across different devices.
• Execute cross browsing tests.
• Check that the product is in accordance with the pre-defined designs.
• When applicable, confirm that the product is translated  for different languages.

Quite often we’re able to import at least part of your existing design system into whichever design program you would like to move to. We would then work with your design team to recreate the components in the new software, in brand new, pixel perfect components. These components will be fully layered, meaning we will begin with your smallest components, like icons, and incorporate these into the larger components. Then in the future, updating an icon, will update it throughout your whole component set and libraries.

A prototype is a preliminary representation or simulation of a product or user interface that allows designers to visualise and test their ideas before the final development stage. It serves as a tangible, interactive model that replicates the intended functionality and user experience of the actual product.

Prototypes can range from low-fidelity sketches or wireframes to high-fidelity interactive mockups, depending on the level of detail required to gather meaningful user feedback and validate design decisions. By creating prototypes, UX designers can effectively communicate their concepts, gather user insights, and iterate on designs to refine and improve the overall user experience.

User testing is the process of gathering feedback from users to evaluate and improve the usability and overall user experience of a product or service. It involves observing users as they interact with the product or service and collecting data on their behaviours, attitudes, and opinions. User testing can be conducted in various ways, including in-person interviews, online surveys, and remote usability testing.

The purpose of user testing is to identify areas where users are struggling or encountering issues while using the product or service. User testing helps designers and product teams better understand the needs and preferences of their target audience, enabling them to make informed design decisions and create products that are more intuitive, user-friendly, and effective.

Design sprints emerged as a revolutionary methodology, originating at Google Ventures, to accelerate product development.

In just five days, cross-functional teams collaborate intensely to uncover user needs, analyse market insights, and create prototypes for rapid testing. By compressing months of work into this short timeframe, design sprints minimise risks and allow teams to iterate quickly, resulting in a well-defined vision, refined prototypes, and an actionable roadmap.

This process empowers organisations to confidently move forward, armed with clarity, direction, and a competitive advantage, as they embark on the journey of turning ideas into game-changing innovations.

User Interface Design (UI) focuses on the aesthetics of the design that users will specifically interact with. This includes buttons, typography, visual features, and so on. The specialists at The Virtual Forge will work with you to craft your unique UI design that unlocks the full potential of your solution. 

User Experience Design (UX) refers to the overall design and the specific experience, such as feel and impressions, that users journey through when interacting with your website. Here, we focus on finding solutions to all user problems to guarantee an accessible, enjoyable experience. 

Yes! Ensuring a support contract is in place means that as a Virtual Forge client you are not simply acquiring an elegant solution, but you are ensuring its maintenance and ongoing development now and in the future.

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It depends on the complexity of the issue; oftentimes it can be resolved within the hour. If it is a low priority or particularly complex issue this can take longer, as the fix needs to be channeled through our Agile sprint process from fault finding / diagnosis / fix testing / final deployment. Our clients are liaised with regularly throughout the ticketing process.

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An immediate response is automatically generated to our customers so there is a tracking number which can be referenced during triage. With Service operators in Europe and US, response times are typically within 30 minutes during operational hours.

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All clients with a The Virtual Forge Servicedesk contract have access to our ticketing system. A ticket can be raised through an online portal, or simply by sending an email. The ticket is received, triaged and answered by our team of analysts. If our first line support are unable to resolve the issue, they will liaise with relevant developers / DevOps teams to address the issue, keeping the customer informed at all stages via our ticketing system

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There's no one-size-fits-all answer to this question - it depends on the maturity of the data in question, and the means by which it is accessed. If, for instance, you have an established data warehouse, consuming data from multiple sources in a central location, it's very likely that little to no data preparation is necessary. By contrast, if the data sources used are Excel-based and touched by many hands in the chain of control, or derived from web-based sources, then it's very likely to require anomaly detection and resolution, and a high-degree of shaping to fit the ideal reporting data model.

Put simply, a Power BI consultant is an expert in the field with a situation-dependent, malleable role. Through years of experience on the data platform side, a Power BI consultant has acquired the knowledge to fulfill many roles: data modeler, visual designer, advisor, and trainer. Above all, a Power BI specialist has learned to listen to you, and to assume the role that best meets your needs.

Whether you're just starting out in Power BI, encountered a seemingly intractable problem, or simply need an expert to review your implementation, , and data models, Power BI experts and consulting services exist to help you meet your unique needs efficiently and with minimal investment in time and manpower.

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Fabric is the latest innovation from Microsoft, with the aim of establishing an all-in-one, tightly integrated analytics platform. It encompasses ETL pipelines, data warehousing, AI capabilities, and visualisation via Power BI in a single scalable package.

Power BI is a best-in-class analytics tool, designed to deliver an end-to-end analytics solution, from data ingestion and cleansing, to data model design, to the delivery of beautiful and informative visuals, all wrapped in an intuitive, easy-to-use package.

By estimating the work correctly and planning according to the effort required to implement the milestones of a project. Accurately estimating is key to the success of a project. If the estimates match the actuals, there is a high probability of executing the project according to the plan, therefore delivering on time. In order to have accurate estimates, The Virtual Forge relies on experienced business analysts that, together with the client, define the scope of the project, milestone or sprint. Having a good scope definition is a key factor to have accurate estimates.

The cost of custom software development varies depending on the project. Key considerations are project scope, development time and team, technology stack, customisation and Integration, maintenance  and support.

Our team is agile and is capable of constantly adapting to solve problems and client expectations. Our process of handling potential changes in requirements fall under two core actions:

• Regular show and tell with the client - ensure the implementation is aligned with the client’s vision of the project; 
• Short development cycles that allow adding value to projects that are live or in a user acceptance environment - no need to wait months before seeing new functionality added to the build. This allows to fine tune the direction of the implementation and creates opportunities for enhanced scope refinement. Avoid cost increase due to scope changes os scope misalignment;

Our IT HelpDesk team underpins the products and services of The Virtual Forge, ensuring swift and comprehensive handling of any issues experienced by customers.

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Find out more here.

Our Backend development team is specialised in implementing the business logic and data access of the systems we deliver to our clients. This team is focused on understanding and implementing the business rules that underpin our clients’ businesses. 

This team is also expert in implementing data access layers that interact with multiple data sources with a particular focus on security, performance and scalability.

At The Virtual Forge, we like to have a good separation between backend and frontend development. With the amount of new frameworks and the evolution of existing ones, keeping up to speed with all of them (backend and frontend) is virtually impossible. We believe in having specialised developers that focus in one of the two areas. 

The Front-End team at The Virtual Forge is responsible for creating fast, modern user interfaces across a variety of devices. To do this, they work closely with other teams within the company, including the User Experience and Design team for front-end development, and the backend development and data teams for full stack applications.

• The Front-End team helps to turn the User Experience and Design team’s vision for customer needs into intuitive, pixel-perfect user interfaces. 
• The team’s goal is to produce user experiences that are both functional and enjoyable for our customers

All our solutions are built with the highest quality standards in mind. That same quality is achieved by:

• Regular show and tell with the client - ensure the implementation is aligned with the client’s vision of the project;
• In case of agile methodologies - bring the client closer to the development team by joining regular ceremonies like sprint planning or daily standups;
• Well defined and detailed test cases, executed by functional testers;
• UI Automated testing - test more, much faster;
• Unit testing - we write code that tests our code, ensuring a reduced level of regressions and defects from the backend of our builds;
• Code reviews - this practice that allows developers to review the code of other developers reduces defects and cross-pollinates the knowledge within the team;

The Virtual Forge, through its dedicated project management team, handles all the communication with the relevant stakeholders throughout the whole process.

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You can find more here.

Custom software is specifically designed for a particular organisation or user, tailored to address their unique needs and requirements, unlike generic off-the-shelf solutions.

These bespoke solutions focus on a well-defined set of requirements that align with the client's business rules, processes, on-site conditions, and UX/UI design specifications. The development process aims to design, create, deploy, and maintain software that precisely meets the end-user's needs.

This level of customisation allows the development team to intricately connect and prioritise data inputs and outputs throughout the system while maintaining a detailed level of security and crucial compliance. By constructing the software to meet actual needs rather than generic ones, the system can prevent bottlenecks and performance degradation by optimising for real rather than hypothetical usage.

Learn more in our blog post.

The development timeline for custom software can vary significantly depending on various factors. The complexity of the software, the scope of the project, the number of features required, the availability of resources, and the level of customisation needed all play a role in determining the time it takes to develop software.

Ultimately, it is recommended to consult with our experienced professionals who can assess the specific requirements of your project and provide a more accurate estimate of the development timeline.