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Welcome to the Ksense Technology Podcast where we discuss the trends in software development, web applications, and how custom software can help businesses scale. Ksense is a full-stack software development company using state-of-the-art technologies to build cutting-edge applications. With over a decade of software development experience, our team is confident we will deliver results for your organization.
[Kelson Erwin]
You know, when your spreadsheet is crashing every time you open it, you'll be really quick to look for other solutions.
[Calvin Smith]
Once you move away from that spreadsheet, your horizons sort of open up.
[David Guthrie]
How do you get from spreadsheets to a better world? All right, welcome, everybody. I'm here with Kelson Irwin and Calvin Smith from KSense Technology Group.
KSense builds custom business software to run an operation efficiently. And today we're going to be talking about how you can transition from using spreadsheets to using custom web applications in your business. Thanks so much for joining me, guys.
My first question for you is if you can just tell us a little bit about what kinds of use cases are going on or what kinds of problems people are running into when they're using spreadsheets.
[Calvin Smith]
Spreadsheets are sort of, you know, a fundamental tool in business. Usually businesses are using them for all sorts of different things. They're powerful, so you can do a lot of different things with them.
And what happens is that power comes at sort of a cost because since they're so open-ended, you start setting up big processes. And the more complex those processes get, the more that one mistake can throw everything off or, you know, it starts to require a lot of manual work to keep it to keep it working correctly. So people are trying to automate, you know, they're trying to automate data analysis or they're trying to store data retrieval.
It centers around data, obviously, for the most part. The things you can do with them, I mean, really, if you had to, you could do almost anything with a spreadsheet if you're willing to do enough manual data entry and manual updates or, you know, work long enough on building, you know, functions or whatnot. Like, you can almost do anything, just like you can almost do anything with paper, right?
So they're doing a lot of different things that they end up digging themselves into a little bit of a hole with the spreadsheets, even though they work really good, especially when you're smaller and you have a more simpler use case.
[Kelson Erwin]
Yeah. And everything starts really simple, right? Nobody plans on their Excel document having a million rows.
It's just that a lot of people have grown up, especially if they're non-technical, learning about the power of spreadsheets, using them for simple purposes. And then since they have familiarity with that tool, that's the tool that they feel is necessary for every job. It's kind of like if you only grew up with a hammer, you would think that that's the tool you need for everything.
And you wouldn't be familiar with any of the other tools that serve other purposes. And that's kind of what happens a lot of times is people learn Excel. That's really the only software that they know.
And they think that they can do everything with it. And they don't recognize the downsides that like the massive issues that spreadsheets can cause an organization over time, which we'll get into later. But the best thing that a business can do is prepare for the future and not try to start off with something small.
Think about what is the best tool that we need for the business operation that's required. And we'll get into the do's and don'ts about when to use spreadsheets in this conversation, I'm sure. But yeah, like Calvin said, it's a dangerous pit that you can find yourself in.
And the problem is you can dig yourself deeper and deeper and deeper and cost yourself a lot of money.
[Calvin Smith]
Yeah. You know what people may not realize is there when they use like really complicated spreadsheets for business operations, the person running the spreadsheet is basically like more than half of the automation. Like the person running that spreadsheet is basically doing a lot of heavy lifting.
So what happens is that person is essential because they're the only one that knows how it works. And then their time is getting sucked up because spreadsheets are very time intensive. You know, if they make one mistake, then now they have to go through the spreadsheet and figure out where the error happened.
You know, so it's like one thing that might surprise people is when you try to transition off of a spreadsheet into an app, like that spreadsheet that you thought was so simple. Turns out that you can take that and abstract that one spreadsheet out into a massive web application that does so many different things because now you want the web application to do the heavy lifting, not the people using the spreadsheet.
[David Guthrie]
Yeah. And I really liked the comparison you made where it's like, you know, people can do almost anything on paper too, but that doesn't mean it's the best place to go. And, you know, I use spreadsheets.
I know plenty of people who use spreadsheets. I also use paper and I've got a digital whiteboard in zoom, but I still like to come back here to my whiteboard and write stuff out sometimes. So there are some really valid uses for spreadsheets.
Can we talk about that a little bit? What are the, like you mentioned, Kelson, the do's and don'ts, let's talk about some dues. What are some great reasons that you should use a spreadsheet?
[Kelson Erwin]
I would say there's a few reasons why you would want to use a spreadsheet. If you are doing budget tracking for yourself, or you have a very small team or like to do lists, or you're doing quick prototyping or quick calculations, or I don't know. When I think of spreadsheets, I think of doing something quick, doing something small, a temporary solution.
I don't think about any of these systems and especially not running an entire business out of it.
[Calvin Smith]
The advantages is anyone can start using the spreadsheet. So it doesn't take any special new project or people doing a bunch of planning necessarily. Everyone has it on their computer.
Everyone probably learned it in computer science 101 in college. So everyone basically can just pick up the spreadsheet and just do anything they want with it. Anything from a very simple report that you need to do all the way up to maybe automating a task with a macro or something like that that you do every single day.
Maybe it takes you three hours to build the macro, but once it's built, you just press one button and you just say 15 minutes of work every time. Things like that, spreadsheets will probably always be useful for that kind of stuff. I don't see them going away anytime soon because they can fit into these little gaps that every single business has and every single person probably has, where it's like you just need a powerful, you know, something powerful that can fit into this little space and do this little task and do it well.
It's just fundamentally easy to understand a spreadsheet. It's just a bunch of rows and columns and a bunch of cells and everyone sort of gets it. And so they're useful for so many different things because of that.
[Kelson Erwin]
And it's free, right? So you don't have to pay any money for it. So you have very low technical skill requirements.
You have the fact that it's free and the fact that most people know how to use it. And it's, it's quite powerful. You know, it can be very powerful, but it's all about knowing the right tool for the job.
We wouldn't run our entire organization off the paper and most businesses don't, but every business has a time where they're going to use paper. You know, you're never going to get away from having business without paper. It's just knowing where to put paper and where not to put paper.
Right. And that's a little bit easier for people to understand than, than spreadsheets. I feel like sometimes they're like, Oh yeah, I wouldn't run my entire business off the paper.
That's silly. But then they think that they can go and do it on Excel. That's silly too.
[Calvin Smith]
It's either going to work or it's not. And so once you, if you're listening to this right now, you may be able to relate to what I'm saying here, where you already know, you already have a spreadsheet and it's already to the point where you're feeling the pain of the, of that, of what that spreadsheet is doing. It's, it's essential.
It's something that you literally like right now, if, if, if, uh, you could no longer access the spreadsheet, your business maybe would, would suffer a lot. However, um, there's a lot of pain points, a lot of manual tasks, a lot of data that might be wrong, or there might be one mistake might cause a whole cascade of mistakes. Um, so you know, it's, you kind of probably know if you're, if you're in a position, position where you shouldn't use the spreadsheet any longer, or you need to transition away from it, you probably feel that to some extent while you're using it.
[Kelson Erwin]
Yeah. And, and if you're not feeling it now, just wait until the size of your team doubles or the size of your data spreadsheets with a ton of data become really, really slow and they crash. Um, just wait until that happens.
You know, when your spreadsheet is crashing, every time you open it, you'll be really quick to look for other solutions.
[Calvin Smith]
Yeah. Ask yourself, like what would happen if number one, my, the size of my team doubled or tripled or the size of my, whatever operation you're running out of the spreadsheet, it doubled or tripled. Number two, what would happen if someone else besides me had to use this and manage it?
[Kelson Erwin]
Like they had to admin it, you know?
[Calvin Smith]
Yeah. They had to be in charge of it because eventually you're going to have to delegate that to like, you're not going to be able to be the sole manager or admin of your spreadsheet forever. Right?
So what would happen is the spreadsheet, like, would you trust your team or would you be confident in, in, you know, lower level people, uh, basically running the spreadsheet or running the system out of the spreadsheet? Like those are some questions you can ask. And then maybe it becomes clear that, okay, it's working.
It got us to where we are, which is great, but maybe it's time now to retire the spreadsheet and move to something that is going to scale really well. It's going to automate even more of your labor and of the processes. And it could also introduce new capabilities that will, we probably will talk about, uh, in a little bit here that maybe you've never even thought of or even realized that you could have because you're so used to the limitations of the spreadsheet.
[Kelson Erwin]
If you're passing the spreadsheet around, it's like an actual Excel. You're not using some online collaboration tool, like, uh, Google drive. Then you also have security concerns that you need to be aware of, right?
You you're passing around what is probably confidential information. You know, you also don't have any sort of auditing capabilities. Like if somebody makes a change, is there any way that you know who that was?
And so it's just really easy for sensitive information to be leaked. And it's really hard to know who leaked it. And it's really difficult to know who made what change.
And then next thing you know, you find yourself in some sort of lawsuit or worse, your business goes under or, or becomes a source of controversy. So it's just something to think about. And it's a good thing to think about the data security side of things before it becomes a problem because after it becomes a problem, it's usually too late.
[David Guthrie]
Yeah. Makes sense. Yeah.
I remember, uh, we had, uh, that exact situation you were talking about one time at one of my jobs where there was an actual Excel file that was getting passed around and updated as it was going. Um, which is just a terrible idea. You know, somebody asks somebody else for the file and maybe they got the version from three days ago and it's missing 700 rows, you know?
And, and so it's just like getting passed around the organization, uh, and it ended up just being a big mess, right? So it's really cool how things like Google sheets have tried to address a lot of these problems with, with spreadsheets, right? Like you were talking about that collaborative workflow, there's version history, uh, you know, who's in there and what they're doing.
So that's really great. Tell me more about why it's still not the best solution. What are some of the things that people are running into that are common issues, uh, with spreadsheets, even if it's a Google sheet?
[Calvin Smith]
Um, as soon as you need custom logic, business logic built into the tool where a decision, like there are basically decisions or, uh, logical flows that have to happen. Like if the client is this, wants this type of service, then this whole flow needs to happen. Otherwise this other flow needs to happen.
And we need approvals along the, along the way. We need, you know, all sorts of calculations and you start trying to do it in Google sheets or Excel. Um, and you can do it to some extent where you can start looking up the really advanced stuff that maybe if you're really into spreadsheets, you probably know about, which is like, uh, you know, macros, even custom, almost custom code type stuff you can do in Google sheets where you can literally write some script like scripts that run in Google sheets.
Um, at that point you're, you're starting to get there, uh, to where it can do more for you, like where you press a button and it's doing all these different things and it's automating a bunch of stuff. Right. But, but you're going to run into a place eventually where it just can't do what you want it to do.
It just can't quite, you can't quite build those features into it because it's not made to be a fully custom app. So that kind of stuff is what you'll end up running into I think.
[Kelson Erwin]
Yeah. And even the online spreadsheet is still the wild, wild West in terms of people stepping on each other's toes with data changes and still it's difficult to know who made what change. Yeah.
You can go look in the audit log, but if you have somebody in your organization that's not even supposed to be making changes to a table, there's really no way that you can enforce it unless you don't share access with them. But there's not any sort of permission systems where you could say this user can do this and this user can't do this. If you give somebody access, then they can do it all.
Everything. You can't say they can write to this table, but they can't read from it. For example, things that you can do in other systems, right?
You get some additional functionality, but the tool still falls short when it comes to running your entire business out of it. You still have human errors. They type in the wrong thing.
They delete the wrong thing. You know, at the end of the day, no matter if you're using a online spreadsheet or an offline one, you're still losing money. Your business will make more money if it's on modern tools that are built to handle this type of data in the way that your business needs it to.
[David Guthrie]
That's a big one too, is just like the speed of all of these things happening. You know, if you're using spreadsheets to store data, there's a certain limit to how much that sheet can contain. And then you've got to have another one created.
And then if you want to go and you want to reference all this data, even with a script, let alone manually, right? But even with a script, it's going to take a lot longer because it has to go check all these different files, you know, and it's using these free services that you're getting through Google Sheets or whatever you're using, right? So it takes a long time.
It's not the most efficient, clean way of creating and managing a database, right? There's a lot of reasons not to use spreadsheets. If you're a business owner and you have spreadsheets, what should you do?
How do you get from spreadsheets to a better world?
[Calvin Smith]
Basically, what you're trying to do is you're trying to automate your business, right? To some extent, you're trying to basically upgrade your tools, like get new tools or build new tools that now basically streamlines your business operations, solve some of your pain points like data not being centralized or people not having an enforced workflow where they can open up, you know, the screen or the app, and it tells them exactly what to do. So that it's very streamlined, it's very efficient.
I guess I want to tell a story about one of our clients who switched from a spreadsheet to an app. It illustrates a good point where people usually don't realize how much functionality can be built out of it, like to replace a spreadsheet, like they don't realize how much heavy lifting is being done by the people, like I was saying, instead of just the spreadsheet. So they had a single spreadsheet, right?
And they told us, hey, listen, all we want is just to take this single, it's just one sheet, you know? We just want to take the single sheet and replace it with an app, right? That's all we want to do.
It's super simple. It should be super easy. No big deal.
So as soon as we started digging into this sheet, and realizing how, you know, what their workflow looked like around the sheet, like what are they using the sheet for? And what are all the steps also that they're, because they have this sheet, they're actually not doing in the sheet, but they're doing like at the beginning or like before they use the sheet and after they use the sheet. So their whole workflow that involved, you know, lots of emails, lots of communication in the office or with clients, like all this different stuff that they were doing.
And this spreadsheet was like the epicenter of just keeping track of it. It turned out to be a full web application with several database tables, multiple user roles, it turned out to be pretty significant, because as soon as we asked some questions about, okay, well, what do you want your users to be able to do in the app? What do you want it to look like for them?
What should they have access to what like, what types of data do you need in this app? As soon as we started asking some of those questions, the scope, you know, sort of exploded, which was ended up being good for them, because now they have a really powerful web app. But it's just a good illustration.
Like, if you have a spreadsheet, part of what you're looking for is for somebody to help you design what your workflow could be not just what it is now. Because once you move away from that spreadsheet, your horizons sort of open up, what could you be doing? What could your team be doing?
What types of systems could they be using to streamline and make their process more efficient? That's the main thing you're looking for, not just building a web app, that's an exact replacement of the spreadsheet, obviously, right, but building a whole new system that dramatically improves on the spreadsheet.
[Kelson Erwin]
What I think that we could do to illustrate what this process looks like is explain what we would do if somebody came to us with their spreadsheet, you know, they've recognized that the spreadsheet is no longer sufficient, it's not scalable, and they've identified that there's issues with it for their business. So they come to us with it. And what are we going to do?
Well, first, we're going to identify all of the pain points that they're currently having. We're going to look at how much data there is, the complexity, and we're going to try to get an idea of how the business is run, you know, where does the data come in? Does it go out?
Who needs it? Who are all the stakeholders? Once we have all of that information, then what we're going to do is explore the different alternatives.
If they come to us with a ton of data, and it requires a lot of complex queries, then we're probably going to use something different than if they're storing visits to their store or purchases or something like that. Or if they need a pure business intelligence tool or just reporting, then we're going to look at a different tool. So the next part is after we understand all of the user requirements, the complexity, and we have a good understanding of how of all the pain points and how software needs to be implemented, then we're going to be able to suggest what tools we can implement.
Is it going to be a fully custom app, like built from zero? Maybe. That might be what you need.
But it also could be the case where there's an off-the-shelf SaaS product that you could pay, you know, $5 a month for that's doing what your Excel sheet's doing now. So once we have all that figured out, then we start deciding what the migration strategy is going to be, you know, how much data there is, are we going to get this data out of the spreadsheets and into the new system. And then we'll build out a plan on what that's going to look like and do mock-ups of the new system if necessary.
You know, once we have the new system, then it's kind of going to kind of be back in the business owners core or the stakeholder who's hired us to train their people and really push the new system, right? So that's kind of what it looks like. And there's a lot of experts that are involved in that.
We have our tech leads and our engineers, and then we have business analysts people, you know, really people who are educated and they work day in and day out in identifying how software can best fit business objectives. So that's kind of what we would do in order to to decide what's going to be the best fit for you. Now, some of that could be pared down a little bit if you wanted to do this yourself.
You could draw a diagram of exactly what your spreadsheet's doing. You can write down the list of all the pain points that you're trying to solve, and then you can go and start researching on the different alternatives. The challenge that you may have with that is some of the tools that you might need to implement to actually solve these pain points might be above your technical level, meaning they may require custom coding.
And if you're not software engineer, they might just be outside of your skill set. But yeah, we're happy to take a look at what you have and offer some suggestions.
[Calvin Smith]
When we're first talking to you to understand your business. What I'm wondering is what what is your step by step process to achieve your goal? So you have a starting point and an ending point.
Maybe you have a spreadsheet for basically tracking visits, let's say, to a doctor's office. So you're the doctor's office and you're tracking every visit that came through the time, the date, the time, the patient, all the maybe, you know, the diagnosis. I mean, this isn't a great example, because health data probably wouldn't be stored in a spreadsheet.
But you get the idea. If you have one of these spreadsheets, and you're trying to figure out what do I even do? Where do I even start with this?
Well, first, where does your process start? What is the where's the starting point where some either you or someone on your team opens the spreadsheet and basically starts off this process? Maybe it's when the when the person calls, right?
You open the spreadsheet so that you can schedule, record their information and schedule them. Okay, so now, this is where when people are talking to us about their business, like our minds are already going out to other solutions and other possibilities. Like imagine, what if your client could just schedule themselves?
You know, do you want them to have to call in every time? Like, maybe you always want them to have the option to call in, and then someone on your team to schedule them and talk to them. But what if your your client also could just schedule automatically, there's tools like Calendly.
But the issue with that, you know, is is you want their data in your system, right? Like when they schedule, you actually want that data in your system, because you want to keep a record of everything in your system. And Calendly can't really do that, right?
So what can we do? Well, Calendly has an API, we can connect Calendly to your system. You know, so there's all these options that you may have never even thought of, like, you know, even the very first step there, there's endless things we could probably talk about, okay, scheduling, like, do you want your clients to be able to see your availability automatically, so that they can know when to even call?
Or so they can decide if, if, you know, it's right for them? Or if they need to wait a week before calling in? Do you want your team to be able to see the available doctors at that, during that week, and which specialty they're they're in, so they can match this person with the best doctor?
You know, there's all these different things that this extra these extra features, where the spreadsheet, like can't do any of this stuff, right? All the spreadsheet is, is just literally a row with some data in it. But even this very first step, like when we start talking to you, what we're really good at is brainstorming and thinking of solutions.
Once we understand, like, because you might tell us, you're probably gonna tell us, well, the biggest thing we wish we could do is x, y, z. And if that's the case, guess what, there's definitely a way to do it. Like, you can do basically anything with with a custom web app, all you need to know is, what does my ideal world look like?
Like, if I could basically have any system, what would it look like? And if you know that stuff about your own business, then we can help you. We can tell you what's available, because there's all these different options.
And we can talk with you and maybe go deeper and start brainstorming and start understanding, okay, what's your process? And what do you want to be able to do?
[David Guthrie]
Yeah, I really like that. That point you made about thinking about the why behind the process, not just replicating the exact process over again. But thinking about what you're trying to accomplish, right?
Why do we open the spreadsheet and fill out this thing? And why do we send it to that person? So kind of mapping out the goals along that process, right?
And then that enables a solutions architect like yourself to say, Oh, so what you're really trying to do is schedule an appointment, the process isn't, you know, even if the steps are to open this sheet, fill in this row, send it to this person. Really, what you're trying to do is this and then you can you can look at a lot of, you know, creative ways to solve those problems more efficiently. So that's awesome.
[Calvin Smith]
Yeah, there's always a better way to do something. And so it's like the business owner might say, well, what we really want to do is automate appointment scheduling. So we need to make it easier for our team to enter in the appointment details.
And I'm thinking, well, if you really want to automate it, why don't we just completely automate it, you know, let your let your clients schedule themselves. So like the goal is to automate. But, you know, with a custom app, we can take that to the extreme and basically completely automate things and really just go way beyond whatever the spreadsheet was capable of.
[David Guthrie]
And maybe it's basically the same amount of work, right? Because if you're already going to set up a scheduling tool that someone's going to be filling out, why not make it look nice and give it to your customer so that they can fill it out and they have that added convenience, you know, less resistance to solving problems and getting things done.
[Kelson Erwin]
The old style of reservations and waiting lists for really nice restaurants were mostly done out Excel documents. They'd have like a big Excel document and when somebody called it, they would add them over the phone, they would add them in, they'd put their name and stuff into the spreadsheet, right? Nowadays, the waiting list is completely automatic, right?
It'll email you if there's something that opens up and you can go and click on your email to schedule. And the days of having somebody scouring through the spreadsheet, trying to find somebody, you know, picking up the phone and calling a bunch of people and saying, can you come in? Those days are over.
The problem is we still have a bunch of people replicating those types of systems. I guarantee there's still restaurants that are using spreadsheets for their waiting lists and their reservations. And nowadays, that's especially silly because you can go and pay, you know, $20 a month for something that will completely automate it for you.
[Calvin Smith]
I have a client right now who they use what's called Smartsheet, which is basically a fancy version of a spreadsheet. It's like a spreadsheet, but with a little more functionality, like Airtable, for example. So that's what they've been using.
And once we started building out their web application and adding more features and letting, like they have end users, auditors who are basically, you know, they have to do a bunch of tasks like schedule exams. It's like a very similar situation to what we're just talking about. And once we started building these tools, we literally were able to automate away two entire full-time positions at the company.
That wasn't even with AI, that was just with building web application features that allowed more self-service, that basically reduced the need for manual data entry and manual checking because they would have to check, like manually check so many different things, manually email so many different people. We were, in the course of six months, able to fully automate 80 hours a week of work. So that's how powerful some of these things can be.
And if you're using spreadsheets, I don't even need to know what your business is really. If you're using very complex spreadsheets for business operations, I already know I can automate at least one full-time position probably from the system.
[David Guthrie]
As we're looking at their existing processes, we're identifying, you know, hey, you could actually simplify this whole process. If you're not in a spreadsheet, you don't have to be limited to these steps, right? How do you go through that process and how do you choose the right technologies to make sure that you can deliver the solution that meets exactly what they need and it's also within their budget and it's going to get them the ROI that they're looking for?
[Calvin Smith]
Since we're talking about spreadsheets, maybe the first place to talk about is the database. Where do we store this data now that it's not going to be stored in the spreadsheet, right? For most businesses, what they really need is a relational database and that's what we give them.
We will basically put them on a database, an online web-based database that can support really complex relationships between different things. If you have customers, those customers are related to so many other things in the business, right? They're related to tickets, they're related to plans, they're related to companies or accounts, contacts, addresses.
They're related to so many different things and these relationships get pretty complex. If you've ever tried to do that in a spreadsheet, you know that it's basically like you're referencing cell A5 from this spreadsheet. It's like there's these references, right?
But it gets really complicated and it's not nearly as powerful. That's usually the first fundamental building block of somebody's custom tool. Now, that's if we're going with a custom web app, but sometimes there's low-code platforms where the platform has its own database.
Obviously, it's a core of the services, the database. Sometimes these platforms are really good for clients because the client is able to go in and make changes themselves. Of course, we build the app for them because it's still pretty complex, but then if they needed to, let's say they just needed to go make one small change, they could just do that themselves and they wouldn't need to call us.
It's flexible for them and some people really like that, even though there's some trade-offs with speed and user interface and design, things like that. But that's an example of a few of the technologies we might go to, but it's very dependent on features. What features do you need?
[Kelson Erwin]
Yeah. First, we need to understand the needs, right? You're coming at it from a feature-based need, where what are the features that the user needs to be able to do?
But on the technical side, we also need to consider the amount of data we're going to be handling. We need to consider the future growth and how the system is set to scale. How fast does the system need to be?
We need to think about security requirements and access control needs, right? So it's not just the features that we need to consider when we're deciding, but yeah, Calvin's right. We're going to probably need to move the data.
So we need to figure out where does the new data need to live and is that something that is going to be some sort of open-source database or is it going to be a low-code platform or is it going to be we're going to move it into a SaaS product? These are questions that are based on the answers that we got from the needs assessment. If you have a really complex application and there's no off-the-shelf software and there's also a low-code tool is not going to cut it, then we're going to need to build a custom web application.
Or if you have an insane amount of data, we're probably going to need a database that's going to be able to handle an insane amount of data. We can't just use whatever database we want. You definitely won't be able to use a SaaS product because they're all different.
It all starts with the need assessment and then from there we can pick and choose what technologies are going to be the best to meet those needs.
[Calvin Smith]
This is one of the things that people might be wondering. How are you going to be able to transfer my data into the new system without losing any data? And if the new system works completely differently than the old one, how are you going to be able to put the data in the right places?
What if we have companies and contacts and addresses, but in the new system we have projects and we didn't have any projects in the old system, but we still need these companies connected to those projects. How do you match it up so that the data goes into the right places and to the right structure in the new system?
[David Guthrie]
Yeah, I had an example of that a couple of years ago too where I was working for a really large solar company and they were acquired by another large solar company and then we had to combine those databases. Everything from all of our customer records to all of our internal processes and policies and then put it all into one combined system. Exactly what you were talking about there.
We had to think about how do we make sure that when this customer calls in, if they talk to an agent from the new company or the old company, both of those agents know who this person is, they can find their account, and they know how to answer their questions because they come from different contracts and backgrounds and things. That process of you really have to think about the in-between period, the transition period, where you're not on the fully new setup yet, the new system, but you also can't totally rely on the old one. To your point, how do you make sure that there's some overlap there and whoever's using it, whoever's working with it, knows how to find the information that they need if it's not going to be in both places at that point, right?
[Kelson Erwin]
Yeah, that's right. What we like to do generally is some sort of phased transition where we start with the less critical operations and we try to get the business on the new system as soon as we can so it can be evaluated on a regular basis so that we can ensure that we're building software that is going to meet the client's needs in the very best way possible.
[Calvin Smith]
Yeah, so the process for making sure that it depends on the situation. We obviously tailor our approach to each situation, but what we have to do is actually logically program how that data needs to change as it goes from your spreadsheet or the old system to the new system, and we need to build those relationships if they didn't exist already. So the script will actually take every single record in the old database, it will change that record to fit the new structure, and then it'll put that record in the new database where it's supposed to go, and that will happen automatically.
If we're talking about millions of records, the script runs in the span of a couple hours, but then all of your data is now transferred. So that's usually the process. So if you're wondering, okay, I'm going from a spreadsheet to a web app, what is the business going to have to deal with for that transition?
Like Kelson said, what we like to do is we like to do it in phases so hopefully we can do a slow transition so you can start using the new system at the same time that you continue using the old system so that we can have time to transition you over smoothly and have time for you to make sure that new system is working completely before you shut the old one off. That's ideal. If we have to and that's not going to work, then we will plan a hard cutover, which means we're going to get everything ready in the new system, we're going to fully test it as much as possible, and then we're going to basically press a button and all your data is going to go from that system to this new system all at once.
And from then on, your team would use the new system. And then as soon as we have like a day one patch where we're ready to fix bugs on day one that we may have not caught before, and then we'll basically jump on those, fix them, and then from there, the new system gets used and it gets improved and things go from there. So that's sort of the process for doing those data transfers for your business.
[Kelson Erwin]
Yeah, and the migration itself of the data from the spreadsheet to whatever the new system is, is going to be very dependent on what issues you're facing now. If you come to us and say, we can't even use our spreadsheet anymore because there's too much data and our business is suffering, then we're going to strategize a way to get you off the ground faster, even if it's a little bit more scrappy, so you can start running your business again. But if there's less risk, if there's more time, then we can take a slower and perhaps more stable approach than if you come to us saying, hey, the house is burning down, we need to get out now, right?
[David Guthrie]
Yeah, so you've got to have that overlap that we talked about. And like you said, either a clean cutover or a phased approach, either way, you have to make sure it's well planned out, right? Before you get there, so you mentioned finding some bugs, what's the process to make sure that you're ready for that launch?
What kind of testing goes into that?
[Calvin Smith]
Ideally, the best type of testing is real world usage. So users who are going to be in that app using it every day are going to find bugs that it's very difficult to otherwise. However, with enough resources, we can basically test an app just as good almost, if not just as good, but it's going to require a lot of manual testing.
So we'll go with manual testing approaches where we map out all of the different functions of the app and then someone will go and do each one of them throughout the entire app so they can find any bugs that might be there. We'll do calls with you as the client and we'll walk you through the app so that you can see how everything works and we can use it on the call. And that way, that takes care of situations where maybe something isn't technically broken, but it's also not technically correct, like it's not built quite right.
So we do that. We'll have a staging version, so basically a test version of the app that we want you to get on and use and has test data that you can mess with and you can add data or whatever without worrying about anything. And that way, it's a place for you to test like a sandbox for you to test the app before we actually launch it.
And then we do have automated tests, especially if the apps are more critical and with medical applications or certain web applications that just can't fail, we cannot allow them to fail. Basically, we'll do an automated test, which means every time the app gets changed at all, the test runs to verify that it works programmatically. So that's like the most hardcore testing option.
Usually you would want to do a combination of all of these things, unless there is an approach where it's kind of like move fast and break things. And sometimes people prefer that where you basically, okay, let's do a little bit less testing, but that'll enable us to go really fast and have lower costs. So we can do either one.
It just depends on your needs.
[Kelson Erwin]
Yeah. And it depends on a risk analysis as well. If we're moving medical data, then there's a higher inherent risk there.
So we're going to need more guardrails up to prevent potential errors than we would if the data was less sensitive. But like Calvin said, and I want to emphasize again, the best type of testing is the real world testing because we can put in all of the automated tests and we can make sure that there are no logical errors and the system can scale to the moon and there's no security vulnerabilities but the thing that we can't do through automated testing is we are unable to handle what's called like a spec bug or like a feature bug, which is where everything was built to the spec that was given to us, but it doesn't actually meet the user's needs. Right. And so that's why we need real people on the app because they're the ones that are going to tell us this is actually working for us.
[David Guthrie]
I thought I'd like to share is regarding change management. This is more of the world I've lived in for a lot of my career is, you know, how do we make sure that, okay, we've, we've come up with this awesome solution. We've implemented it.
We've launched it. It's there. How do we make sure that people know how to use it?
How do we make sure that they actually are using it, that they're doing it correctly? Right. So that's a big piece of this too, right?
Is when you introduce a new tool, you need to make sure that people are familiar with it and that they understand why, right? That's a big piece is the transparency and selling the benefits to them, right? Here's what this is doing for our company.
Here's what this is doing for you. Here's what this is doing for our customers and please use it. Right.
And then another important piece of change management is document all of that. Give them some resources that they can go back to and look at and say, I don't remember how to schedule this type of appointment. You know, do I need to add these materials for this technician visit, right?
All sorts of unique scenarios that your business is going to have. Make sure you just document it because once it's written down, everybody across the organization can use it. Right.
And so you just want to make sure that you have a good process in place for documenting and updating what you expect people to do with your system. So if you're going to push out a change and ask everybody to do it differently, make sure you document that change to make sure you send out that communication as well. And that way you'll make sure that the operation moves in sync and you're moving together towards those goals that gain deficiency that you're looking for.
What sort of things should people think about after they've implemented a new system and they've gone through those change management best practices that I was talking about? They make sure everybody knows how to use it. Do they need to think about anything else after that point or is that app just done and it's there?
[Calvin Smith]
Yeah, they're going to need to think about some other aspects of maintenance. And also, you know, you're probably going to want new features over time as your business changes and as the market changes. We like to think of web application development in terms of a monthly development budget rather than, you know, one time cost, because usually what happens is over time, there's always something to improve.
It's sort of like, you know, any system, like you can keep adding to it. So it's good to have a budget for that so that you can do that over time. And then, of course, maintenance is necessary on these type of apps where, you know, you're upgrading to the latest version for security reasons.
You're also making sure that everything keeps running smoothly because these libraries are always getting updated over time. So you want to bring those updates down into your app so that you're on the latest version. That maintenance is important, too.
[David Guthrie]
Awesome. Well, thanks, you guys. I learned a lot today.
I think our audience will find this really valuable as far as, you know, just practical ways to think about getting away from a lot of the inefficiencies and the problems that they're running into a spreadsheets. Do you have any final thoughts that you would like to share with people out there who are dealing with these problems?
[Calvin Smith]
I would say that you might as well take some time and, you know, figure out what the options are, even if you're not necessarily ready to jump on board right now, because even understanding your options might change how you think about things. Once you realize that there are so many different things you can do with web applications and operations and things like that, it's good just to spend a little bit of time, maybe every quarter or every year, just to do your research, figure out what's new out there, because things are moving even faster now than they were before. There's AI that is becoming super big, implementing that into these sorts of apps.
You know, businesses need to change or die, as the saying goes. So it might be good to take advantage of that. We'll talk to you for free, obviously, and analyze your business and let you know, you know, what we can do for your different situations.
So, yeah, we'd love to talk to you.
[Kelson Erwin]
Yeah. And if you don't know where to look, then go talk to a bunch of people like us. You know, we all have differing opinions and there's, you know, a lot of ways to get to the top of the mountain.
And, you know, we might suggest something and somebody else could suggest a different option that, you know, maybe a better fit or, you know, or our option could be the best fit for you. Or you could just gather all of the different solutions that everybody's offered and then, you know, do it yourself or in-house.
[David Guthrie]
Awesome. Well, thank you guys so much. I appreciate you joining me today.