The Challenge

Trojan Recruitment Group is one of Australia's established recruitment businesses, placing thousands of workers across industrial, commercial and government clients. Running an operation at that scale means juggling candidates, client sites, timesheets, approvals, payroll and a constant flow of compliance documents — all while keeping clients and candidates happy.

Off-the-shelf recruitment software couldn't fit Trojan's specific operational model, and the cost of trying to bend it was higher than the cost of building purpose-fit tools. They needed a long-term technology partner who could deliver custom systems, integrate them with the back-office software they already had, and keep them running as the business evolved.

The Solution

Since 2015, Nano Solutions has been Trojan's custom development partner — delivering a suite of three tightly integrated platforms that together cover the day-to-day operations of the business.

Candidate Management

A purpose-built Laravel application for managing the candidate side of recruitment — profiles, compliance documents, availability, placements and the operational data the consulting team needs at their fingertips. Tailored to the way Trojan actually recruits, not the way a generic SaaS tool assumes they should.

Timesheet and Approvals Portal

A daily-use portal for thousands of timesheets across Trojan's contractor base. Candidates submit time, supervisors approve, the office tracks it all — and the system is integrated directly with Cobweb, Trojan's core back-office platform, so personnel records, timesheets and approval routing stay in sync. Automated reminder workflows chase late submissions and notify approvers. The platform is dockerised, with end-to-end browser tests and a CI/CD pipeline that keeps releases predictable.

Secure Document Portal

A secure document portal for sharing files between Trojan and their clients and candidates. Server-side document conversion (PDF, Word, image formats) generates clean previews and thumbnails, so any document can be opened and reviewed in the browser without local software.

The Results

Ten-plus years of continuous partnership — the same team has been building, maintaining and evolving Trojan's platforms since 2015
Three production systems running daily across the business — candidate, timesheet and document sharing
Integrated with their existing back-office (Cobweb), not replacing it — a pragmatic, low-disruption approach
Custom-fit at every step — workflows, terminology and data model match how Trojan actually operates
Long-term reliability through dockerised deployments, automated tests and CI/CD on every change

Technology

Three Laravel applications with shared deployment patterns. Docker-based environments, automated testing (PHPUnit, Laravel Dusk), GitLab CI/CD pipelines. Server-side document processing using ImageMagick, Ghostscript and LibreOffice for PDF and Office-format previews. Direct API integration with Trojan's Cobweb back-office for personnel, timesheet and approval data.

See also: Procom and Xcepcion — two more long-running custom platforms we've delivered for Australian clients.

Related Nano Solutions services: Custom Software Solutions · Web Application Development.