From good to great with Softr.

What was the problem?

An established compliance business was looking for alternative ways to generate leads after local legislation prevented them from advertising their services which was their usual way of generating leads. This meant stagnating growth and a need for a more innovative solution to generate leads arose.

While their business was established and profitable, they were looking for ways to generate income from their current client database as the majority of their services are once-off. They were looking for a product that would allow them to generate both new leads without advertising and also offer a recurring product. Through countless short conversations, the problem was unpacked and the soil for innovation prepared for planting some seeds.

The solution

To solve this challenge, a customized no-code solution offering a fully functional and searchable database of non-profit funding opportunities - which was later changed to a tender database - using Softr and AirTable - was designed and deployed within a few days.

To further leverage the power of AI as cost- and time-saving alternative to the human reviews and thus a business opportunity, an AI chat solution was sourced to enhance the service offering. With the help of AI, a 100 page or more pdf tender document can now be translated into a professional looking tender review document containing a summary of the contents within seconds. Where a human reviewing the document can only guarantee a turnaround time of 48 hours, now it is possible to have the results within seconds.

Iterate to Innovate

This project started by looking for ways to turn creating funding proposals for non-profits, which can be extremely time-consuming and in-effective, into a sustainable and easier means of generating revenue.

A prototype was designed and demo'ed to an interested business owner. While interesting, it wasn't what he wanted. The seed planted, however, a few months later he requested a similar database, but for listing tenders as a lead generation tool.

The next iteration of the prototype was designed and presented, this time eagerly accepted. After an initial demo and a deeper understanding of the the current workflow, a few changes were made to the interface design to make it more digestable and easy to use for a non-technical end-user. The comprehensive list of available services were also simplified into a short list of items in a drop-down menu, refraining from using the overwhelming compliance terminology which end-users often don't understand.

Additionally, the users maintaining the database needed a user-friendly interface to add and delete tenders. To reduce the risk of accidental deletion of data, an Airtable Interface was designed that filtered all the expired tenders to more easily delete them without needing to access the database and with no risk of accidental deletion of active tenders.

Reviews as a service

Additional to the initial scope of work agreed upon, it made sense to look for tools that can summarize the tender documents, which often are hundreds of pages long. Typically, a tender document doesn't contain an easy to find section with all the requirements to bid. It often takes hours of reading simply to learn that a business might not meet the requirements to bid.

It thus made sense to integrate a chatbot and tailor a custom prompt that enables the pdf to be read, analyzed, and summarized into a pdf report. The impact is that the usual turnaround time of 48 hours can be reduced to a few seconds and at a fraction of the cost of a manual review.

Selecting Softr

I chose Softr as tool of choice for a number of reasons. Firstly, it's one of the easiest no-code tools to get started with and master, and the available design templates are both beautiful and comprehensive. It allowed me to build the initial prototype risk-free as it only took a few hours and purchasing a domain. Without being able to show the customer the potential they would have probably never considered it as a viable option for a business opportunity.

Another big reason why I like working with Softr is that I can easily change and map my data. It seemlessly integrates with a number of datasources. In this case, the customer wanted to use Airtable as they were already familiar with this tool and didn't want to learn yet another technology as their focus was compliance and they don't have an inhouse technology team.

Softr provides a highly scalable solution, empowering users to start and validate ideas with its free plan. As users grow, Softr's impressive array of features encourages seamless progression to a paid plan, meeting the evolving needs of its customers. Softr and SmartSuite is definitely one of the best combinations to build and validate ideas fast!

Lessons learned

Looking back, the key insight was the importance of showing rather than telling in order to sell an idea. Minimal viable product took on a new meaning for me with this project, as Softr allowed me to create a fully functional web app within hours. This, of course, wouldn't have been possible without the countless conversations to understand the underlying need. With a clear and concrete foundation, you can efficiently translate ideas into actionable solutions, streamlining the path from concept to fully functional application.

Another key success factor was defining a clear scope by isolating a specific functional area. This focused approach enabled us to prioritize and perfect a core feature – a searchable tender database. By starting small, we gained valuable insights into the underlying process, informing a user-centric design. I could incrementally build upon this solid foundation with enhancements like automated tender review.

Airtable's performance was the one area that fell short of expectations during the solution's development. Given my prior reservations about Airtable, I should have spent time creating comparative demos with different data sources to illustrate the performance differences.