Replacing Spreadsheets & "Off the Shelf" Software with a Bubble App

if you are currently paying for off-the-shelf software or SAS applications to handle different processes within your business or just the work you do in general there are two problems I can almost guarantee you run into the first is that the tools you're using are probably not designed specifically for your needs and because of that you're having to compromise a lot on the feature set it's probably really annoying and second because it's not designed for your needs it's probably also not priced for your needs and because of that you are likely vastly overpaying for it now I say all of this because many of our own clients have come to us After experiencing the exact same things in fact we have personally experienced these things as well and it's why the idea of building your own custom app using no code tools is so appealing so if you're considering doing this yourself in this video we're going to talk about both the good and the bad of replacing off-the-shelf software with your own custom app that way you know what to expect and stick around because while there are some major advantages to doing this there are also some drawbacks and those may be non-negotiables for you plus toward the end of this video I'm going to show you a couple demos of apps some of our own Founders have built to do this that way you can get an idea of what's possible first we're going to go over some of the biggest red flags that to me are signals you really need to be replacing that off-the-shelf software and if you are experiencing any of these things it's good validation that you are headed in the right direction in thinking about building your own app to replace them so number one is that you are experiencing a big lack of customization look if you are currently having to mold your own processes to fit the software that you're using instead of the other way around that's a massive problem for example we had a client join us who has a business where he manages a large team of agents and he was forced to use software that was designed for managing coaches or sports teams because it was the closest thing he could find to meet his needs and you can imagine the inefficiencies that would still come along with something like that I can't tell you how many times people have come to us because they are using general invoicing quoting proposal scheduling or payment tools that are either for different Industries outside of their own or just general business use as a whole and therefore they still have to do a lot of manual work because it's not designed for them and there's another one you know you've probably experienced this too but a lot of people end up just resorting to using spreadsheets like massive spreadsheet systems because it's the closest they can get to what they need but obviously it's not ideal so that's the first red flag just the lack of customization but the second red flag has to do with high cost and unused features so aside from those examples we just went over another thing that I see fairly frequently is that people are paying for off-the-shelf software that is designed for their specific Niche industry but it's designed for large or Enterprise level companies within their industry and they themselves are maybe a small to mediumsized business and therefore the cost of the software is just way too high for them they're just not going to get any Roi in using it and they can't justify that cost now there's one more red flag that is not quite so obvious unless you've experienced it already but it has to do with a dependency on external updates so here's what I mean if you are using off-the-shelf software and something goes wrong an issue comes up something breaks well you got to wait around for someone else to fix it or maybe there is a feature in a SAS company's road map that is pretty low priority for them but maybe it's a really high priority for you well again your hands are tied and honestly in some situations depending on what it is this can even pose a security risk I mean if something breaks within the software and you have to wait around for someone to fix it if there is a gap happening that can be a risk for you and your own processes so if any of those things resonate with you then you are likely on the right path path in considering building your own software to replace it after all with a custom app you can have a tailored solution specifically for your needs and not only does that mean having a feature set that is designed for your needs but it means having a feature set that can evolve as your needs evolve and if you're using no code tools this is very cost effective in the long run now there are some caveats to this which we'll talk about in just a minute and you of course do still have to make that initial upfront investment but over the long haul this can save you tons of time and money I mean we've had clients who have saved tens of thousands of dollars by building their own custom apps over the long run and of course building your own solution is just going to give you more control and ownership you know you're not going to have to wait around hoping that your priorities are also someone else's priorities if something goes wrong you can fix it if you need to iterate you can literally do so in the moment if you want and that sort of control over your own processes is just really empowering all right so we're about to jump over to some of those negatives and caveats I mentioned but before we do so we need to talk a little bit about the how as it relates to building your own app first and foremost we personally use bubble for building no code apps and when it comes to building apps handling different business processes or or even Erp apps that handle full-blown business operations as a whole bubble really shines now if you're not familiar with the platform it enables you to build complex and comprehensive datadriven applications without having to code now we have a full video series on how to build Erp apps that handle all kinds of business operations and I'm going to drop a link to that below you should definitely check it out out to see some of the broader capabilities and just understand what's possible but I also have a guide that will help you decide whether or not bubble is right for your own needs and so I'll put a link to that down in the description below as well so in terms of how you're going to build your app using no code bubble is probably the platform you're going to end up relying on but that's going to lead us to some of the potential drawbacks and caveats which we're going to jump into now so we'll start with the biggest and that is the learning curve and therefore the time commitment so you are wanting to replace that off-the-shelf software that runs your business systems your work processes and therefore you likely need a complex and comprehensive no code app now I mentioned the fact that you're probably going to be relying on Bubble because it enables you to build that type of complexity within an application but with that potential with that power comes a learning curve you have to learn how to correctly use the platform of course but it's going to require skill building in other areas too learning how to use the no code tool learning proper development methodology understanding how to build and launch an application as a whole this does require a Time investment now if you are currently dealing with inefficient processes and therefore a lack of time this can be hard to stomach but you have to consider the fact that this upfront investment and this heavier load for a period of time is going to significantly lighten your load later on and look there is never going to be a good time to do this I can promise you that but to be completely transparent with you the best way I have seen this work is to just accept that heavier workload for a period of time push through it and then come out on the other side finally able to get out of your sour spot aside from the time commitment though another thing you need to consider is the transition process where you're going to be leaving the software the systems that you're currently using and starting to implement your new custom application so the software you are currently using is probably fairly featur Rich it has likely already evolved quite a bit from its original version and the app that you are going to be building and implementing into your business is going to start out as a pilot app a minimum viable product so making this transition period is initially going to cause a bit more pain before you can ultimately get to that symptom relief now you might be thinking well I'm just not going to transition until I have the entire app built out but if you do that you are likely going to be in a lot more pain than you really need to be and I strongly urge you not to do it that way you know the reality is a lot of tools that handle business processes they they are very complex and they could ultimately be considered as multiple apps all in one and so if you try to deploy something like that within a business or within work processes all at once you are going to be spending months and months of your time trying to work out the Kinks and it can be hard to operate your business during that time now instead you want to create the core component of your app that you can deploy into your business into your processes and keep it small enough and contained enough to where you can get that perfect before expanding on it a little bit more and then get that perfect expand a little more get that perfect and so on so that's still going to take a a period of transition right it's still going to take time but that time is going to be much much less painful than it otherwise would be now with that transition period in mind you also have to make sure that you find the correct starting point for your app and this can be really challenging to do because every single feature that's going to be included in your app is important so how do you decide which ones are going to be appropriate for the first version of the app and the next version and so on now there is a very specific method to follow when scoping out an app like this and we actually have another video that covers that in its entirety so it's going to help you scope out different versions of an app that handles internal business operations I'm going to link that down below that's definitely one that you're going to want to check out okay so we have the learning curve and therefore time commitment to consider that transitional period where you're switching over to your custom app another potential negative is the maintenance having the ability to quickly iterate your app to evolve it alongside your needs to make sure it has every feature that's going to be exactly perfect for you that's a really big benefit but with those benefits comes the responsibility of maintaining the app now a few ways some of our own clients have handled this some have just continued maintaining their apps on their own some have eventually trained maybe an existing employee to take over that responsibility some have even gone through the initial development of their app so that they can have the control over it have the knowledge uh and then they'll bring on outside help afterwards so that they can kind of get the app up and running on their own and then expand as they shift their focus back toward the business and allow someone else to kind of continue maintaining the app none of those things are to say that it's not worth it to build your own custom app but I personally find that it's helpful to be able to set your expectations correctly so that you can just plan ahead for what's to come next up I want to show you demos of a couple of apps that our own clients have built for their own internal business processes now for some context these are demos that the clients themselves have created and I'm just going to show you some segments of those though I'll share where you can watch the full demos if you're interested so first we have our client Wade now this is the very pilot version of his app which was designed to help management within companies and organizations train up their employees and support their teams all right so let's take a look and you can see that we have given our uh our users the ability to take all kinds of information from a coaching session so we have some of the the stuff that we keep track of and I'll show you how this works in a minute but we want to we we encourage our users to capture all this information because we can actually develop data around this and so I'll show you the session insights Tab in a minute but people would go in and fill this out as they're coaching their their direct report they can enter in goals they can enter in action items we we like the way some of these turned out looking thanks to coaching no code apps we can add a note and it looks cool can shows up in a chat bubble so that works really well and we also even got the ability to create custom questions so if people want to create a custom thing that they want to coach around they can absolutely do that in the system so we're really excited about that so as we generate sessions we also generate session insights so we can see what kinds of things are going on throughout our team we can see how many of our sessions have been focused on what core values we can see the different guiding principles that we've we've been coaching on in our company we can also look at it by date so if we wanted to say I wanted to see maybe last month to the beginning of this month we can see these and thanks to coaching no code apps we've been able to set up some really cool workflows where we can actually add more data to these charts as we go on there's lots of different data series that we have access to for for these for these customers so we want to be painting the broadest picture possible for the for the customer and really giving them the insights that they need to conduct a really great coaching program so as you can see a completely custom solution based on his own work processes but let's jump J into another this app was built by our client Darius who runs a service-based business offering custom curtain and blind Solutions so I'm just going to show a segment of this but let's go ahead and take a look next is a jobs part uh I believe that this is uh the major um uh part of the application where we can manage uh all our jobs and if I will jump into one of the job uh say I I I I'd love to show you how it looks like so first option is our client's details where we have a possibility to enter either individual clients or business clients and at the moment we are working on a possibility to integrate with a uh with with a current CRM or external CRM system or use our own uh customer relationship management where the user I have a possibility to search a current customer from from the database in the jobs part uh we have a possibility to add windows and add images on the window itself and of course on on any of the window we have an option to upload to add uh window treatments by selecting uh one of the option from from uh the products we want to add so uh inside the the treatments the user will add uh measurements select the the Fabrics uh by adding uh those tags or searching uh by by collections or the a fabric name and uh and the user will get all the information about the product and uh will create a a quotation uh where we will move uh very soon so inside the quote or or documents we have a possibility to create a quote uh add any item manually uh give a discount uh add terms and conditions on the document and even uh create a possibility for user to make a payment with just a click off a button uh also from order you can move into Prof fora or invoice where we automated invoice number or and and by the way gave a possibility to enter this invoice manually inside the work shop we have this option to create a workshop for the manufacturers with all the needed all the necessary information uh to manufacture of those uh treatments and the last part is uh uh a Library part where we have a possibility to manage all our products in one uh userfriendly Library so as you can see another deeply custom solution covering processes within his specific Niche now what I really like about that example as well is that Darius built the app to handle his own business's needs but he decided to package that up and sell it as a SAS application to other businesses within his industry as well all right so look I hope this was helpful as you decide whether or not building your own no code app to replace that off the shelf software is the right Next Step for you and if it is we have a free extended Workshop over at coaching nood apps.com slork and it's going to be really helpful as you take your next steps it's going to guide you through the strategies the tactics some of the techniques that you're going to have to take to analyze your app idea get it scoped out actually start using the bubble platform and learning how to do that and also just seeing what some other Founders are doing as well so head to coaching nood apps.com shop and we'll look forward to seeing you in that training soon and hey I hope this was helpful we'll see you in the next [Music] one

Channel: Coaching No Code Apps

Views: 780

Keywords: bubble, bubble.io, saas, erp, crm, custom crm, custom erp, spreadsheet, turn excel into an app, turn spreadsheet into an app, building an app on bubble, bubble no code, no code, no code apps, automate spreadsheet process, business automation, replace internal business tools, replace business software

Id: 33EdbElnmT0

Length: 20min 16sec (1216 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 13 2024