Essex, London & surrounding areas
Business technology and automation for Essex businesses
Forge is an Essex-based business working with small and medium-sized companies across Essex, London and the surrounding areas, including Brentwood — building bespoke applications, automating manual admin and getting Microsoft 365 into a state that actually helps.
Working locally
When being nearby is genuinely useful
Most of this work is done remotely and location makes no difference to the result. There are a few points where it does.
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Watching the process in person
Understanding how a job really flows is much faster stood next to the people doing it than described over a call. Assumptions get corrected on the spot.
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Seeing work as it happens on site
For anything replacing paper in the field, it helps to see the conditions the system has to survive — a phone, one hand free, poor signal, bad weather.
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Hand-over and training
Sitting with a team while they use a new system for the first time surfaces the awkward parts immediately, rather than through a support email a fortnight later.
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Talking to a person, not a queue
You deal directly with Yiannis Christodoulou, who founded Forge and builds the system. There is no account manager layer and no ticket number.
Areas covered
Across Essex and into London
On-site visits cover Essex and the surrounding areas, including Brentwood, Chelmsford, Basildon, Billericay and Romford, as well as London. Remote work is not limited by geography — Forge works with businesses anywhere in the UK.
What Forge does
The work itself
The same services wherever a business is based. These pages go into detail on each one.
Typical starting points are a business that has outgrown its spreadsheets, a team still filling in paper on site, a Microsoft 365 tenant nobody has reviewed since it was set up, or documents spread across drives and inboxes with no agreed home.
Businesses across Essex also come to Forge for bespoke software development when an off-the-shelf tool almost fits but not quite — replacing spreadsheets and paper processes with a custom business application built around how the team already works, in the same way Forge built the three portals for GB Solutions UK.
Business automation
Business automation for Essex companies
Automation here means the small, repeated steps a business already does by hand, taken off someone's plate. It is not everything, and it is not always worth doing.
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Approvals that chase themselves
A quote, a holiday request or a purchase that needs a sign-off goes to the right person, waits, reminds, and records who said yes. Nobody keeps a list of what is still pending.
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Job sheets and quotes that file themselves
A job sheet completed on a phone on site becomes a branded PDF, lands in the right SharePoint folder under the right reference, and the quote or report that follows starts from the same record rather than being typed again. The digital job sheets, reports and quotes page covers that in detail.
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Built on what the subscription already includes
Most of this runs on Power Automate and the rest of the Microsoft 365 licence an Essex business is usually already paying for, so the question is rarely what to buy. Where a process needs more than a flow and a form, it becomes a custom business application instead. The workflow automation page explains how a step is chosen, built and handed over, and when the honest answer is to leave it manual.
Microsoft 365
Microsoft 365 setup, support and consultancy across Essex
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Microsoft 365 setup in Basildon, Billericay and across Essex
Forge helps businesses across Essex with Microsoft 365 setup, licensing and migration, including businesses in Basildon and Billericay. Setup means the tenant and domain configured on purpose, licences matched to what people actually do, identity and access set up with Microsoft Entra ID, and security decided rather than inherited. Where email is moving from an older provider, the cut-over is planned around the working week, and for a Basildon or Billericay business it can be done on site. The Microsoft 365 consultancy and migration page covers what that work includes.
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Ongoing Microsoft 365 support and consultancy
Forge also supports Essex businesses with ongoing Microsoft 365 administration, licensing and practical advice as their requirements change. This can include reviewing the existing setup, helping with changes to Microsoft 365 services and providing support beyond the initial migration or configuration.
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Microsoft 365 for small businesses across Essex and London
Forge helps small and medium-sized businesses across Essex and London get Microsoft 365 set up properly, licensed correctly and reviewed periodically, rather than simply leaving a Microsoft 365 tenant on its original configuration. A free consultation is the starting point for understanding the existing setup and working out what is right for the business. One example of this work is detailed in the GB Solutions UK case study, which included migrating the business onto Microsoft 365 and organising its SharePoint document library.
Bespoke software
Bespoke software development for Essex and London businesses
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Bespoke software for small businesses across Essex
Forge is a small UK development business, so a local company deals directly with the developer who builds the system rather than with an account manager layer. The work starts by mapping the process that is costing time, and only then deciding what should be built — including when the honest answer is that custom software is not worth it. The custom business applications page covers how a build is scoped, developed and handed over.
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Replacing paper job sheets, reports and quotes
A common local starting point is a team still filling in paper on site. Rather than buying an off-the-shelf field-service product, Forge builds the job sheet, job report and quotation process as software shaped around how the business already works — completed on a phone on site, with branded PDFs produced and filed automatically. See digital job sheets, reports and quotes for what that involves.
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Custom business portals for staff and customers
Where several teams and approved customers need their own view of the same records, Forge builds secure business portals rather than a shared drive and an inbox. Staff sign in with their existing Microsoft work accounts and people outside the business get time-limited access. The GB Solutions UK case study describes three such portals built over one set of client and site records.
A real project
Three portals for a facilities management business
GB Solutions UK is a facilities management business whose teams work across many client sites — exactly the pattern of a lot of Essex trade and service companies. Forge replaced paper job reports, manual quotations and disconnected processes with three bespoke portals sharing one set of client and site records, documents filed automatically into SharePoint, and secure access for both staff and approved customers.
Next step
Tell me what you need fixing
A free, no-pressure consultation. Describe the problem in your own words and you will get a straight answer on whether — and how — Forge can help.