Making internal business processes more efficient with Softr
DS Automotive's internal platform is a great example of an employee portal built with Softr and Airtable, and the Softr team was curious to find out more about this use case.
Introduction
DS Automotive is an independent Jaguar Land Rover specialist based in the UK. We talked with the company director Dan Smith to find out how he has made use of Airtable and Softr to implement an internal employee portal for his team. What they've built is a great example of an employee portal made with Softr, where employees can find all the required information on vehicles, customers, and so on. This has made DS Automotive more efficient and has impacted a number of business processes in a positive way. Below, we'll try to find out how DS Automotive ended up using Softr, how they were solving the same problem prior to that, what the next steps are, and more.
Before switching to Softr
According to Dan, he had tried many different platforms and services throughout the years and had always faced significant restrictions and limitations. However, 8 months ago, he made a decision to switch to Airtable, which allowed him to maintain his databases successfully and establish new processes. Prior to switching to Softr, Dan was using Stacker and miniExtensions, which he also considers good products. He also used and continues to use Zapier for certain automation as well as Google Workspace.
Why Softr?
After moving their databases to Airtable, Dan and his team needed a tool to create a front-end for Airtable, making his team's user experience more straightforward. Therefore, when choosing among the available options, he based his decision on such criteria as flexibility, user-friendliness, the ability to display the information in ways that would fit his employees' needs.
“I have been impressed with the flexibility of Softr. The ability to pull data from different Airtable bases into different blocks and display them on one page was one of the main reasons I chose Softr. I also find Softr more user-friendly.”
Dan Smith, Director, DS Automotive
Apart from that, the ability to experiment with the platform under the free subscription plan and the help from the support team also played an important role in Dan's decision to choose Softr and stick with it.
“The support from everyone at Softr is amazing! You listen, you help and you make us feel like we are part of something that is growing day to day.... The way the product has evolved over the months has impressed me!”
Dan Smith, Director, DS Automotive
Softr now allows the DS Automotive employees to view the company information stored in Airtable in a clear and usable way and access the database from any device, making the team more productive and less frustrated. For instance, vehicle technicians can access vehicle data, job cards, and history. Office staff has access to customer, vehicle, and booking data and more. Thus, this is an example of a fully-functional employee portal built with Airtable and Softr, which also provides user management and easy access for any member of the team.
The only important feature that's currently missing for Dan and his team is the ability for users to edit Airtable records directly from Softr (UPDATE: feature is already available). However, this functionality will become available soon, and they are looking forward to incorporating it into their employee portal so that users are able to make changes and update data whenever needed.
Next steps
We were also curious what plans Dan had in mind for the near future and if he thought Softr would continue to meet his business requirements as his company grew. We were excited to hear that he planned to expand the portal for customer use and would also like to move the company website to Softr (currently on Wix).
