The Power of Building Internal Tools: Streamlining Processes and Boosting Efficiency
In the world of business, efficient processes are the backbone of success. At the heart of these processes, we find a compelling hero: internal tools. What is an internal tool, you might ask? These are software applications developed and utilized within an organization, varying from database GUIs to employee wikis, and are highly-tailored to an organization's processes. They are the unsung heroes that power the majority of businesses today and their popularity is on the rise, with an increasing budget allocated to internal software development every year.
The Role of Internal Tools in Organizational Success
Google: A Case Study in Internal Tools
Take Google, for instance. With over 500 internal tools, they've crafted an array of bespoke software solutions to tackle a multitude of organizational challenges. For instance, Google developed an internal browser tool to monitor meeting requests and manage calendar spam, while their tool Borgmon (now Monarch) helps monitor their vast array of computer systems, managing trillions of time series essential to the smooth running of the Google engineering empire.
Airbnb: Experimenting with Internal Tools
Airbnb, too, has employed internal tools to propel their business. They created a tool to run and manage their many experiments, carrying out the heavy analytical lifting automatically and limiting bias when setting up an experiment. This internal tool was designed with simplicity as its primary goal, demonstrating the potential for internal tools to streamline complex processes.
Stripe: Building Internal Tools for Scalability
Similarly, Stripe has leveraged the power of internal tools. They developed an internal tool called 'Home,' which serves as their employee resources portal, providing directories for employees and teams as well as company-wide resources like calendars, events, and announcements. This exemplifies how internal tools can facilitate effective communication and resource management within an organization.
The Wide Array of Internal Tools
Customer Relationship Managers (CRMs)
CRMs are a popular type of internal tool, helping sales and marketing teams manage their clients. While there are many off-the-shelf options like Salesforce and Pipedrive, many organizations build their own CRMs to cater to the unique nature of their sales process.
Dashboards and Database GUIs
As organizations and processes move online, the need to interpret and analyze large amounts of data has become paramount. Many companies build internal tools or dashboards to display this data in an easily interpreted format, bridging the gap between raw data and actionable insights.
Admin Panels
Admin panels are often required in SaaS and eCommerce platforms to manage backend operations. They enable user access approval, data manipulation, and transaction tracking, often featuring built-in dashboards for data export convenience.
Approval Apps
Approval apps are popular within larger organizations with multiple management layers. They manage highly specific approval processes, such as holiday bookings or sales sign-offs, and require a clear understanding of user types and their hierarchy.
Inventory Apps
Inventory apps manage various forms of inventory, from rockets to Tamagotchis, requiring a robust database, an interactive UI, and automations to expedite processes involved with managing shipments, orders, and deliveries.
IT Support Ticketing Tools
IT support ticketing systems help manage incoming support requests from general employees. A good ticketing system is essential for planning, triaging, disseminating, and informing, allowing IT Support to work with impressive calmness and efficiency.
Outsourcing vs. Building Internal Tools: The Aloa Story
The journey of software agency Aloa offers a compelling narrative on the benefits of building internal tools. Faced with increasing demand and limited resources, they initially attempted to outsource outside the U.S., but quickly encountered issues with communication and encountered numerous unexpected problems. This led them to the realization that if they were struggling to outsource effectively, others must be too, which started their journey to solve outsourcing and make it accessible to everyone.
The Retool Embed: Enabling Custom Internal Tools
This need to efficiently build and deploy internal tools has given rise to platforms like Retool. Their solution, Retool Embed, helps businesses build embedded dashboards, tools, and features quickly, enabling them to focus on moving their business forward instead of wrangling their frontend. With Retool's powerful drag-and-drop system, businesses can design their ideal user experience and customize the look and feel of their tools to match their application.
However, as businesses grow and their needs evolve, they might require specialized software services that are precisely tailored to their needs. In such instances, an expert software agency can offer immense value. Paramint Digital, a software agency focused on internal tools and low-code technology, delivers custom software solutions that streamline processes, enhance efficiency, and ultimately propel businesses to greater heights of success.
Retool also facilitates faster and more secure development with pre-built components and integrations. It allows businesses to safely deploy changes using source control and securely self-host their tools on their own infrastructure. Furthermore, Retool lets businesses use fewer resources to drive results, allowing them to add new functionality that delights their customers.
Retool can be embedded into externally-facing apps as well, providing a variety of use cases such as customer portals for updating settings or uploading documents, franchisee portals for self-serving performance data, and partner portals for tracking invoices and managing contractors. With Retool, businesses can build any product experience, from forms and multi-step flows to analytics dashboards, helping to build more features faster.
Conclusion
In the ever-evolving landscape of business, internal tools have emerged as a powerful ally. Whether built in-house or using platforms like Retool, or partnered with an expert agency like Paramint Digital, they can streamline processes, enhance efficiency, and ultimately propel businesses to greater heights of success. As we continue to gather more data and industries become increasingly competitive, the importance and prevalence of internal tools will only continue to grow.
