“I think we have proven in the BW case that Glide and this no-code approach does work on an enterprise level.”
The Problem
BW: Workplace Experts delivers workplace fit-out and refurbishment projects across sectors, including higher education, legal, financial services, and media, with notable clients such as Sony, Virgin Media O2, and Skyscanner. These projects are complex, involving many stakeholders, and deal with large quantities of data.
"We have a very large partner database," said Tomas Hollingsworth, BW's Director of Technology. “We ingest a range of data points across our supply chain, which means there’s a huge amount of information to manage.”
Traditionally, these processes were handled through Excel spreadsheets and custom-coded software. However, spreadsheets didn't give the flexibility or mobile accessibility necessary for their teams, and traditional software development just wasn't fast enough.
“The pace that we needed to go at just wasn't happening with traditional development. ”
The Solution
Discovering Glide changed that. Tom contracted leading Glide agency V88 to create a custom CVR for the BW team. Since then, they've built a suite of 24 apps that are being used across the company. "Glide is perfect for when you have existing data," said Oscar Brooks, Co-Founder of V88. "My job is to get underneath the skin of the business, understand their challenges, and translate those into technology. We were able to get proof of concept scoped and built within a week."
“With Glide, the scale and the speed at which we've rolled these applications out is like nothing else. ”
Creating a custom CVR gives BW better insights into its financial data
“Developing systems to support and add value to our commercial team was a real priority,” said Tom. “Now, they’re utilising the application to deliver the right information to the right people, at the right time.”
“The CVR application that we developed is probably our most complex, and is bringing the best business benefits in terms of return on investment. ”
Typically, BW has 35 construction sites going at once. Each site generates a spreadsheet every single month. Additionally, commercial managers generate a spreadsheet. Commercial directors will generate another. All of those need to filter back to the finance director, who needs to be able to receive one very simple report.
Previously, all of this was done through copying and pasting from spreadsheets. A process that generated a lot of errors and required keeping important people away from their primary role of delivering projects to clients.
"Previously, we were filling in gaps between Salesforce and Procore data with spreadsheets," said Tom. "In order to deliver the scale of projects we undertake, it’s imperative to remove data silos. Our Glide CVR is helping us process the right data so we're making data-driven decisions."
Creating a custom CVR app resulted in less copying and pasting and more client satisfaction. "We’re saving significant time across departments, particularly in IT support," said Tom. "It means we can do impactful activities like trend analysis."
User adoption is high, and apps are generating more useful data points
"The applications are driving our business forward," says Tom. "We’re seeing usage and interaction with the applications both in our office and across our project sites, that's the first sign it is working."
He described user adoption in the construction industry as always a problem. It is important that the team can use their phones or desktops to use the applications with ease.
“The usage rate for our Glide apps is up there at 95%. They're both useful and user-friendly. ”
The result of this adoption rate is that their apps are generating more data, and that data is helping shape the business.
"Whether you are building larger-scale solutions or micro tools, artificial intelligence has obviously exploded into the business world," added Oscar. "Glide allows us to implement these technologies inside of businesses so that they can operate as additional employees."
Apps supporting processes across the business
The success of their initial CVR app inspired BW to continue working with V88 to build out and scale other solutions across the business, bringing on two dedicated developers, Art Tuzin and Miguel Mejia.
"We currently have a suite of around 24 applications, including those in development," said Tom.
Current Applications:
Holiday Notifications: Manages leave requests, approvals, and calendar invitations to those who need to be aware (e.g., my line manager).
PartnerDB: Enables 2,000 subcontractors to sign in and access all details about all projects they've done with BW and enrich their own profiles, built on an existing SQL database.
BW Contract Reviews: An AI contract review tool.
BW PQQ: AI agent to automatically answer pre-qualification questionnaires. The PQQ solution reduces questionnaire answering from 1-2 days to around 30 minutes per questionnaire.
BW CEQ: Sends a questionnaire to clients after every project, which they can submit through a Glide app that auto-generates a PDF case study, including the client feedback and project details from Salesforce and Procore.
BW Client Portal: Pulls in data from Salesforce, SQL, Procore, and Egnyte to show the exact status of a given project to relevant clients.
BW Estimating: Replaces the traditional Excel estimating process with a Glide solution that pulls pricing sheets out of Excel, populates Glide for them to estimate a project, and then puts the estimate back into the original pricing sheet to be returned to the customer.
"We've built apps of varying size, varying scale, varying complexity for different departments in the business," explained Oscar. "They talk to a lot of third-party tools through integrations, and we use Glide to sit in the middle and centralize their processes. The goal is that it works so well that the technology actually disappears into the background. It's just happening automatically."