I'm Ben Reed, a technical problem solver for small businesses, based in Borehamwood, Hertfordshire. I work with clients across Hertfordshire, North London, and remotely across the UK.

Over more than fifteen years I've worked alongside researchers, marketers, developers, business owners, content teams and designers - each brilliant at what they do, but often working from completely different playbooks. I've always been the person who understands all of those worlds and connects them.

Most business problems aren't really about the website, the spreadsheet, or the CRM. They're about the gap between those things - and the manual work that fills it.

What I actually do

Most small businesses I work with have grown to the point where the way they were doing things no longer works. Data and processes are scattered across different systems - a website, a CRM, spreadsheets, third-party tools - none of which properly speak to each other. Keeping everything in sync becomes someone's job. That person makes errors. Things fall out of date. Time gets wasted.

I find where the problem actually is and fix it - whether that means rebuilding a website, writing a Python script to automate a manual process, connecting systems through an API, or building something entirely custom that sits quietly in the background and just runs.

If you know something is wrong but can't quite explain what it is - that's exactly the kind of work I do.

How I work

I use whatever is the right tool for the job. In practice that usually means some combination of the following:

WordPress

My primary platform for building and repairing websites. Reliable, flexible, and straightforward to manage once set up properly. Most of my clients' sites run on WordPress.

Python

For automation, data collection, scraping, cleaning and processing. If there is a repetitive task eating someone's time, Python is usually how I remove it.

Google Cloud

For automations and processes that need to run on a schedule in the background - Cloud Run, Flask apps, and BigQuery for larger datasets that need structured querying.

APIs & integrations

Connecting systems that don't talk to each other - CRMs, spreadsheets, third-party platforms and custom databases. If the data needs to move between tools automatically, I build the connection.

The technology is never the point. The point is that something in your business stops needing a person to run it.

My approach

I focus on solving the actual problem, not just the visible symptom.

That means stepping back, understanding how everything fits together - technically, operationally, and from the perspective of the people who actually use it - and then building the simplest reliable solution. No unnecessary complexity, no over-engineering, no setups that break the moment something changes.

You will always know what has been done, how it works, and what to expect going forward. The result is fewer errors, less admin, and systems that run quietly in the background.

Typical problems I solve

  • A business that has outgrown its processes - things that worked when you were smaller are now eating hours every week
  • Data scattered across systems that don't talk to each other - website, CRM, spreadsheets all out of sync
  • Manual tasks that run on a regular cycle and could be fully automated
  • A website that is broken, outdated, or difficult to manage and extend
  • A feature or tool you want to build, with no clear path to implementing it

Sounds familiar?

Tell me what is going on and I will give you a straight answer about whether it is something I can help with - and what that would look like.

Get in touch