Business application development in Lyon and the Rhône-Alpes region

MEKANO is a business application development studio based in Lyon, at 12 rue de la Part-Dieu in the 3rd arrondissement. We build management applications for small and mid-sized companies and for buying groups: member portals, supplier approval, revenue declarations, year-end rebate engines, document management. At a fixed price, in accepted batches, with the source code handed over.

Proximity as a method, not as local colour

Being based in Lyon is not a sentimental argument. It is a constraint of method: the way we work assumes physical moments, and those moments become expensive to arrange once they involve a flight. Three of them are hard to replace.

The rest of the work — development, code review, end-of-sprint demos, fixes — happens remotely, as it does everywhere. We do not claim that proximity improves the quality of the code. It improves the quality of what we understand about your business, and that is where management projects are won or lost.

The regional economy we work with

The Lyon area concentrates exactly the kind of company we serve: mid-sized organisations with specific business processes and rarely an IT department sized to lead a rebuild.

• Industrial small and mid-sized firms whose production, job tracking or after-sales processes live in an ageing ERP topped up with spreadsheets.
• Buying groups, central purchasing bodies, cooperatives and member networks whose supplier approval and rebate calculations rest on a few workbooks and two people.
• Refrigeration, air conditioning, HVAC and professional kitchen businesses — a sector whose approval and rebate mechanics we know from having delivered a full platform into it.
• Food processing, with its traceability, batch and documentary control constraints.
• Specialist retail and franchise networks, with revenue reporting per outlet and periodic closings.

The common factor is not the sector but the situation: a critical process carried by a tool that is no longer sustainable, and nobody in-house whose actual job is to lead the rebuild. The trigger is almost always the same — a retirement, a disputed amount, a vendor who no longer answers.

Where we travel

How a project starts here

1. 1

   A thirty-minute discovery call

   By video, to say plainly whether your need fits what we do. We decline when the subject calls for a standard off-the-shelf package — payroll, general accounting — rather than custom development.

2. 2

   A first meeting in your offices

   To see the tool in place and the people using it. That is how we size the scoping phase, and how you judge who you would be working with for several months.

3. 3

   Three weeks of scoping and prototyping

   Two on-site workshops, a working prototype of your priority use case, a firm quote for the full build. €6,000 to €10,000 excluding VAT depending on scope, deducted in full from the fixed price if the project proceeds.

4. 4

   The fixed-price project, in batches

   Two-week sprints with a demo, contractual milestones with formal acceptance and a signed report, gradual go-live, then maintenance. The source code is handed over to you.

And outside the region?

We work outside Rhône-Alpes when the project warrants it, and part of the exchange happens remotely in any case. The rule we apply is simple: if the schedule allows the scoping workshops and acceptance sessions to be held in person, distance is not an obstacle. If it means replacing those moments with video calls, we say so before signing rather than discover it at the third batch.

MEKANO is led by its founder, Chrys Vlachou, who personally handles scoping and project direction on every engagement. A project team is assembled for each build — project manager, back-end development, front-end development — and named in the contract. You know who is working on your application, and there is no account manager standing between you and the team.