When Your Product Looks Automated But Runs on Human Expertise
Your customers see a sleek, automated platform. But behind the scenes, skilled professionals are doing the real work. Sound familiar?
We recently worked with a compliance automation company that faced this exact challenge. While their customers enjoyed a modern SaaS interface for submitting compliance requests, their internal team was manually processing thousands of state agency filings. It's a common pattern in today's tech-enabled services: automation handles the customer experience, but humans provide the actual value.
The Breaking Point
Like many similar companies, they hit a scaling wall. Their engineering team had built an impressive customer-facing product, but internal operations were held together with a patchwork of tools.
"We had some things in spreadsheets, some things in Airtable, and some things only in our database and only in Stripe," their CEO explained. "People were having to go to a lot of different places to get all of the information."
This might sound familiar if you run a modern service business - perhaps a design agency with a client portal but real designers doing the work, or a content service that automates distribution but relies on human writers. The challenge is the same: how do you scale operations when automation can only go so far?
The Build vs Partner Decision
The company's engineering team first tried building an internal tool themselves. Twenty hours of engineering time later, they were stuck on complex features. It's a common trap - the same engineers who expertly built your customer-facing product struggle with the nuances of internal operations.
"We have essentially reached a terminal point where additional R&D investment isn't necessarily like a crazy amount of ROI," their Chairman explained. The engineering team needed to focus on the product, not internal tools.
Creating Order from Chaos
Working with Connex, we built a Retool system that could handle their scale - tens of thousands of records, complex workflows, and real-time updates. The technical challenges were significant. As our lead developer Carlos explains,
"We're pulling in real time. There's a cache, so it gets held in the app. It's not pulling every time you refresh, but it's like every couple of times a day."
But the real breakthrough was in the workflows. Billing that used to take hours monthly became automated through Stripe. Task assignment and tracking became seamless. The scattered tools were replaced by a single source of truth.
The Human Element Remains Central
The key insight was that we weren't trying to automate away the human element - we were empowering it. The team's expertise in handling complex compliance filings remained crucial. But now they had tools that supported rather than hindered their work.
The impact was immediate. When the CEO showed the system to her team, "they are so excited. They're like, 'It's so nice!'" The system was so successful that she decided to keep partnering with us rather than hiring internal Retool expertise:
"If we need to do some Retool, I'm just gonna hire Connex again, because they knows how it's built, and it's just easier than context switching 5 times."
Is This Your Story Too?
If you run a tech-enabled service where automation meets human expertise, you might be facing similar challenges. Perhaps you've built a great customer experience, but your internal operations aren't keeping up with growth. Maybe you're drowning in spreadsheets and manual processes while trying to maintain the quality that only human experts can deliver.
We specialize in helping companies like yours bridge this gap. Let's talk about how we can help you scale your operations while maintaining the human expertise that makes your service valuable.
Ready to streamline your operations? Book a free consultation to learn how we can help.
