From Spreadsheets to Custom Dashboards
For a while, I was wrestling with a massive Google Sheet that held everything about our company performance metrics. It had more than 15 connected tabs, and other sheets depended on it too. Every time I tried to improve it, something else would break.
I just wanted clean, reliable data. Something I could trust without spending entire weekends trying to fix formulas or trace down the latest error.
One weekend, I decided to try something different. I used AI tools to build a small internal app that pulled data from our finances, sales, marketing, and customer success teams. Within a few days, I had dashboards showing everything in one place, and the numbers were finally right.
That was a big moment for me. Reporting to investors became easier. Understanding our ARR and customer metrics started to make sense. I could see which customers were the best fit, which marketing efforts weren’t worth the extra effort, and more.
As a sales-led SaaS company serving nonprofit youth programs, having that kind of clarity has changed how we make decisions.
What I learned is that you don’t always have to buy another tool to solve a problem. Sometimes building something small that fits your business perfectly can unlock a lot of value.
It’s like getting a tailored suit instead of one off the rack. The off-the-shelf tools can get the job done, but they rarely fit quite right. Now that AI tools have made custom software faster and more affordable to build, it’s possible to have something that fits your business perfectly.
This little “micro app” has done that for us. It’s now in production, the team uses it every day, and it’s helped us move from gut feel to data-informed intuition.
There are definitely some big caveats to using AI tools for development, which I’ll talk about in another post. But for us, it’s already proven that small, focused apps can have a big impact.
If you’ve ever felt buried in your own systems, you probably know the feeling. What’s one thing in your business you wish just worked better?
