Our areas of work
Products
Building useful, accessible, high-quality web apps that help our partners increase their impact
Projects
Migrating a website or web app, or setting up a toolchain for a team
Power-ups
Enabling our partners to discover new technology and use it more effectively.
Our areas of experience
We combine technical expertise with interdisciplinary sector experience, so that we can embed technology successfully in your organisation.
Charities and non-profit organisations
We're all passionate about the third sector - building tech that benefits society is hugely important to us. We've been trustees, volunteers, and organisers ourselves, so we know what it's like: from funding requirements to data security, we've been there.
We can also recommend a number of enterprise services that we have experience with that are offered to charities for free or at minimal cost, which can be a big boost to a project.
Education
We've designed, built and supported tech solutions where the end users are primary and secondary school settings in the UK, working with teachers and parents to be as effective and impactful as possible.
This has given us a good understanding of the needs of users in those settings as well as the challenges and sensitivities involved when working with schools.
Tech that addresses economic disadvantage
It's too easy to build tech solutions that widen the disadvantage gap, making it easier for those who already have increased access to get further ahead. Our work has involved breaking down barriers that leave people behind.
Beyond meeting basic accessibility requirements, we take a holistic view of services users' workflows and come up with technology solutions that fit in with a service workflow to overcome any pain points.
Campaigns
Integrating technology effectively can make or break a campaign. Team members have worked on both local and national progressive political campaigns in the UK, both as volunteers cobbling together tech solutions to boost impact for local groups, as well as running platforms to support major campaign organisations.
We've used campaign software online and on the doorsteps ourselves, so we've got both a technical and a user perspective on many of the common problems.
Some of the folks we've worked with
We take pride in delivering innovative and impactful solutions that meet our clients' needs.
Meet our team
Peyman Owladi
Founder
Peyman Owladi
FounderPeyman's professional background is in software engineering and then technical leadership in companies with anywhere between a few and a few thousand employees. After completing an MBA and taking on CTO roles in startups, taking care of everything from web, app and IoT projects to the internal IT systems and tools, he is now bringing this experience to the nonprofit sector through consulting and fractional CTO roles at affordable rates, and building a team with a shared vision to put high quality tech solutions within the reach of more organisations who are working to improve society.
Outside of work Peyman has taken an interest in education and education policy, and has been a governor at his children's school and delegate to the local authority Schools Forum where the recruitment and financial pressures facing the sector are all too clear. He has also been a campaigner and campaign organiser, including acting as an election agent, helping set up and run campaign groups, and co-managing a national network of organisers sharing experience and best practice.
Peyman is on the advisory board of the Nesta Civic AI Observatory and on the board of Campaign Lab.
Josie McNally
Project manager
Josie McNally
Project managerJosie is primarily our Project Manager, although she wears other hats as needed including level 2/3 customer support and testing new features prior to release. Her background is in software, but more recently she's worked in the Education & Healthcare industries before joining Poteris. She has Prince2 certification & is an ICAgile certified Agile Team Facilitator.
Her past projects include:
- Large-scale roll-out of major new software systems, such as a workforce management system for a Healthcare chain (impacting 2500 staff) and a new Management Information System for a large school
- Collaborations with Buildings/Facilities, including the opening of a brand new build Endoscopy site and the full network revamp of a Grade 1 listed site
- Digitisation of a wide range of old-school paper processes, from annual leave requests to hygiene monitoring of high-touchpoint surfaces
Curtis Parfitt-Ford
Software engineer
Curtis Parfitt-Ford
Software engineerCurtis is a software engineer with a background rooted in campaigning, charities and healthcare. Having worked as a freelancer building websites for a few years, in 2019 he founded Loudspeek, a platform for political campaigns to get their supporters in touch with their representatives. He's passionate about ethical and equitable use of technology, and vocal about the importance of doing it right: in 2020 he led a legal challenge against the Ofqual algorithm, forcing a Government U-turn when thousands of students were downgraded by a computer model, for which he was named Young Activist of the Year 2021. He's been a charity trustee, volunteer, and volunteer manager, so knows the challenges the third sector faces inside and out.
Past projects include building web apps that scale to hundreds of thousands of users, developing systems that help Wikipedia editors get feedback on complex issues from communities of peers, and researching innovative models for informed consent in telemedicine.
Simon West
IT & WordPress expert
Simon West
IT & WordPress expertSimon has supported organisations in the third and private sector since 2011, working on digital from tiny startups to large companies, including WPP and Compare The Market.
His experience spans cross-team vendor selections, systems analysis, user journey mapping, and various backoffice platforms including Wordpress, Salesforce implementation, FormAssembly, Hubspot, Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, Google Workspace and Office 365 administration, Bubble.io prototype development and Airtable.
Tell us about your project
We want to get to know you, so that we can target the service best suited to your needs. Fill in the form or email us directly at hello@poteris.co.uk