In short: Choose the software house in Egypt that maps your process and data before it quotes, puts the scope in writing, shows you working software every one to two weeks, connects to the systems you already run, handles personal data under Egypt's Law 151 of 2020, and leaves your own team able to run what it built. Cairo Syntax, a Cairo-based B2B training and technology company, builds internal business systems this way. The seven questions below work with any vendor you are considering.
Most internal systems start the same way. A key process (approvals, stock requests, collections, HR cases) outgrows the spreadsheet and the email chain that carried it, or an off-the-shelf tool forces the team to work around it. Someone is asked to "find a software house." The hard part is not finding one; it is telling a good one from an expensive lesson.
The risk is well documented. In McKinsey's research with the University of Oxford on more than 5,400 IT projects (a global study, published in October 2012), large IT projects ran on average 45% over budget and 7% over time while delivering 56% less value than predicted, and software projects carried the highest risk of overruns. The data is older and not Egyptian, but the pattern will be familiar to anyone who has bought software: value is lost in unclear scope and weak follow-through, not in the code itself.
Egyptian companies will be making more of these decisions. Fitch Solutions expects Egypt's IT market to grow from $3.5 billion in 2025 to $9.2 billion by 2031, and names software and IT services, including enterprise solutions, as the main growth engines (MEA Tech Watch, 28 August 2025). Here are the seven questions to ask before you sign.
1. Will you map our process and data before you quote?
A serious vendor asks to sit with the people who run the process, see the real files and agree what success looks like before naming a timeline. A quote that arrives after one sales call is a guess. Ask what the discovery session covers and who from your side needs to attend.
2. Is the scope written, with milestones and what is out of scope?
You want a short written scope, not a pitch deck: the screens and workflows included, the milestones and dates, and a clear list of what is not included. Most disputes later are about the line nobody wrote down.
3. When will our real users see working software?
Ask how often you will see something that works. Every one to two weeks, reviewed with the people who will use it, is a healthy rhythm. A first demo after three months means three months of assumptions nobody has tested.
4. Will it connect to what we already run?
An internal system rarely stands alone. It has to read from or write to your ERP, the Excel files your finance team still depends on, and the Power BI reports management reads. If it touches invoicing or sales, it also has to sit alongside your e-invoicing and e-receipt set-up: the Egyptian Tax Authority has been moving further groups of taxpayers onto e-receipts and requires them to integrate their point-of-sale devices or ERP systems with its central system (Thomson Reuters, 8 August 2025). Ask the vendor to name each integration in the scope, and confirm your own tax obligations with your adviser.
5. How will you handle our personal data?
HR, payroll and customer systems hold exactly the data Egypt's Personal Data Protection Law (No. 151 of 2020) covers, and the grace period after its Executive Regulations ends around 1 November 2026 (CMS, 13 January 2026). Ask who on the vendor's team can see live data, where it will be hosted, whether test data is masked, and who tells you, and how fast, if something goes wrong. This is not legal advice; check the specifics with your counsel.
6. What do we own and receive at handover?
Get it in the contract: the source code, the admin and hosting accounts, and the documentation. A system that only one vendor can open is a dependency, not an asset. Ask to see a sample of the documentation they usually hand over.
7. Who trains the people who will run it?
Many systems are delivered and then quietly abandoned because the team was never shown how to use them on their own work. Ask whether a training session is part of the handover, in Arabic or English, and whether the trainers know the system from the inside. The best answer is that the people who built it are the people who train your team.
Four red flags
A price before anyone has seen your process. A pitch deck instead of a written scope. No working software for months. "We'll handle training later."
How Cairo Syntax helps
Our custom software development work for companies in Egypt follows the same four steps: a discovery session to map the process, the data and what success looks like; a written scope with milestones and a timeline; working software every one to two weeks, reviewed with the people who will use it; and a handover with documentation, access and a training session. We build internal tools and dashboards that replace spreadsheets and email chains, workflow and approval systems, portals, and integrations with the systems you already use. Because the same company runs corporate training in AI, Power BI and development, your team is trained by people who know what was built.
Bring the one process that has outgrown its spreadsheet to a free 45-minute diagnostic, and leave with a clear view of what to build first.