Software Hunting
Software Hunter is a service that I developed in answer to the highly complex, risky, difficult and often emotional task of finding suitable and cost effective software solutions. Sometimes there's just too much choice and the thought of wading through loads of information comparing apples and oranges, and then trying to find honest and relevant reviews can be too much for anyone! I use my 20 plus years experience in evaluating and building web and mobile software applications for anything from micro businesses to UK government, to find the best solution to your needs, or to find you a trusted local development company if build is viable.
Give me a try, should save you a lot of frustration and time!
Created by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Listen & analyse

I will listen to you and your team, and understand your business goals and pain points. I will document your solution requirements and agree them with you and discuss budgets.
Created by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Identify the best solution

I will use 25 years of software experience and 15 years of this running my own software businesses to analyse and search for options at the right cost.
Created by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Select or build

If you decide to build a solution, I'll be your IT tech guy to evaluate and appoint developers, talking their language and ensuring all bases are covered. This will save you time, anguish and money.

How the service works in detail

Understanding your need

I help understand the business need and translate that need into business and system requirements.


I have had many years of experience leading teams and departments in software companies and then more recently as director of a software company that I founded in 2006. In these roles I have regularly been invited to meet with all different sorts of sizes of companies in a wide variety of market verticals, who have been seeking a software solution for their sales, marketing, customer care or operational needs. This experience has given me a special set of skills to help deal with your business needs.


In my capacity as business mentor for a number of different establishments including the University of Essex and Innovation Martlesham, I’ve also been involved with many start-up companies or growing businesses who have been looking for technology to support their establishment, or in their growth.

Analysing and documenting your need

A simple document that clearly encapsulates your needs is something that a developer rarely sees! I can write this in a way that captures your needs completely and minimises ambiguity, all written at just the right level of details to be useful and understandable.


 This document will also be written in a way that developers can understand, should you wish to develop your own solution.

The Hunting Begins!

Having a well organised and up to date list of software and it's pros and cons is a very good start. This enables me to provide a shortlist of systems to look at initially, and the right terminology to enable me to search for solutions I may not have come across already, in a particular market vertical for instance.


In the case where you require development companies to build or customise a solution, I will use a database of developers I have gained a deep understanding of, or worked with before, plus a spec that will give them everything they need to know to secure you a best price proposal. 


Better still I can save you many times what you pay me by removing the developers need to add contingency for things they fear they might discover during a project due to the right level of requirements being documented.

We decide next steps together

You might have all you need from our relationship at that point, but I can also project manage your interaction with the development from that point on. I can provide testing teams for user acceptance test if required, or help you build a test strategy to carry out your own testing as you prefer.


One of my marketing partners may also assist you with PR and marketing to help make the best success of your new system where you are taking it to the wider market.

Steve Austin - Software Hunter

We offer a wide range of services to meet every type of need.
Steve was involved as a user representative in BT, feeding back suggestions and issues with various software solutions used in operations. He then moved to BT Martlesham where he was trained as a tester. Soon he was running the test team, then a troubleshooting development team and then Technical Services for a major BT product. In 2006 he started Junari providing bespoke software solutions and Apps. In 2013 they focussed on CRM solutions and JunariCRM+ is their highly customisable product, working beautifully in a number of market verticals.

Example projects that Steve has managed

Breathe deeply

Projects involving complex ML & AI Solutions


2021 - 3rd Party Translation Product Evaluation, Selection and Implementation


Managing the implementation and global rollout of a Machine Learning platform on AWS to allow business users to translate all types of documents between 22 language pairs.


Managing third parties, vendor relationship, and stakeholders across a global business. Capturing requirements, evaluating product selection criteria, writing the test strategy and plan, managing risk, the project plan and budget, reporting at director level.


2021 - Natural Language Processing

Managed this project for a US legal products company. Involved ML and NLP techniques to look for adjustments on invoice lines automatically to save human time and therefore significant cost (some invoices up to 5000 lines).


2017 - Product development

Led three company-critical internal R&D transformation projects of a total budget of £5M involving global ‘C’ level stakeholders and a digital innovation team, delivering RPA (Robotic Process Automation), AI machine learning and predictive analytics. Developed with AWS Tech, RedShift (NoSQL MPP database), Glue, Apache Spark, ECS etc. Languages were ‘R’ and Python mainly. Managed stakeholders from FCA (Fiat Chrysler Automotive) in Italy and the US.


1999-2005 - Workforce Scheduling for BT 

Technically led and project-managed a Test team of up to 25, responsible for the integration and testing for the highly complex Mobile Workforce Scheduling product suite that governed the logistics and deployment of up to 25,000 field technicians in any one company.


Managed approximately £7M worth of software product development through all test phases within cost, quality and time constraints, receiving many accolades from customers.


Proposed and transitioned the project to adopt an Agile process to move from an expensive, slow and risky waterfall process, enabling the product to be much more reactive to customer needs, and more cost effective, reducing a six-month delivery process to as little as two weeks.


Project-managed £1.2 million of software development revenue to enable the product to fit into the legacy systems of the customer base. This well exceeded the £576k target I was asked to achieve. These were Utility and Telecoms markets, involving Centrica, Eon, ntl and similar.

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Climb higher

AWS Platform Implementations


2020-2021 Home Office

Managed critical fixed price £3M Official Sensitive AWS Platform project for UK Government Department, set-up Agile ceremonies and ran two scrum teams of 25 DevOps Eng's, Security Consultants and Testers.



2021 AWS Platform Deployments

Managed a number of AWS deployments of various sizes, involving the deployment of Guardrails, Elastic Load Balancing, Internet Gateway, multiple regions and availability zones, Organisations, EC2, S3, Spark, Glue, Prometheus, Grafana, custom Lambda functions etc etc also a variety of databases Redshift, Dynamo, RDS and reporting tools, PowerBI, Tableau and QuickSight.



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Explore nature

Variety of Web and Mobile Development Projects


2020 - Proximity Marketing App

Product managed a proximity marketing iOS App with outsourced development team using Jira in Agile mode. Also provided the BA role and managed UAT.


2019 - CRM App

Product managed Ionic Mobile iOS & Android App for CRM+ allowing creation and editing of Companies, Contacts, Sale Opportunities and support cases.


2019 - Highly Integrated with Back-End Systems

Project managed a £600k iOS and Android Mobile Apps project integrated with a variety of back-end web applications and legacy systems within time and budget constraints.


2014 - 3D Modelling App for Architects

Product managed the development of a very technically complex iOS App integrated with a back-end web application to view 3D models in-situ against the real world.


2019 - Complex Web Development for Global Clients

Managed GDPR enhancement project of a global application for BMW, liaising with internal development teams and two external software solution providers. Delivered four weeks early and within budget. Received plaudits from BMW and was awarded employee of the month.


2018 - Retail

Worked with a local company who were looking to help retailers to promote offers and improve walk-ins.


They came to me as they lacked the software experience to get a mobile App developed and were looking for a partner.


I worked with them to: -

  • Understand the business drivers and develop success criteria, and definitions of ready and done
  • Develop the business and technical requirements
  • Construct evaluation criteria to aid with the selection of a software development company

I managed the relationship with customer and supplier during the development phase, in terms of spend, communication and any change requests


I then  worked with both supplier and customer to sanity test a working prototype for both iOS and Android devices, and managed improvements and bug fixes, as well as developed a product roadmap for future improvements

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Challenge yourself

CRM & ERP Development, Implementation and Data Migrations


Dynamics 365


2019-2020 - Criminal Case Review Commission

Project manager and scrum master for a £750k transformation project for the Criminal Case Review Commission involving MSDynamics 365 and SharePoint build, a very complex migration from multiple sources into SharePoint and Dynamics. Cross-sold an additional £75k of services.


2017-2020 UK Government Dept

Engagement manager for a highly complex secret £10M AWS and MSDynamics Govt project. Managed all commercials. Recruited a 29-strong dev team with SC clearance.


2018-2019 Houses of Parliament

Project manager and Scrum Master for an MSDynamics CRM implementation for the Houses of Parliament to manage secure engagements. Conducted in line with Parliamentary and Government Digital Services (GDS) guidelines. Personally upsold over £300k worth of additional services.


2008 - 2013 OpenERP / Odoo

Primary customer interface and Agile Project Manager of all UK, US and African CRM / ERP customisations and implementations, delivering digital transformation to SME’s to PLC’s in the Specialist Contractor, Charity, Travel Agency, Financial Services (Wills and Trusts, Pensions and Wealth Management in a banking environment), Utilities, Manufacturing and IT reseller verticals.


Led an up to 12-man team and Product managed the CRM+ product through market-led improvements based on customer needs, gathered through keeping close to the customers. 

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Internet of Things Project for a Global Manufacturer


2021 - Managed a very successful IoT project for a major international manufacturing company. This was built on AWS and utilised SiteWise Edge, IoT Core, and Shadows and Green Grass Stream Manager.

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Pre-payment Metering Services


Managed a new on-line product range that enabled pre-payment customers to securely top-up electricity using home devices, connected to the telephone line, and via a USB connection over the internet. Managed commercial relationships with blue chip utility customers and full end to end development of a highly complex and high profile £5M programme.


Led a 20-man international product dev team (including three project managers) in all aspects from customer proposals, requirements capture, feasibility, solution design, materials design, firmware, manufacturing processes, testing and approvals (CE, WEEE, RoHs etc) and PCI-DSS.

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