The E-mergo Academy: from Excel to low-code

Many processes start small but quickly outgrow a simple spreadsheet. This was also the case for the E-mergo Academy, and the solution was low-code. Our Academy Manager Onno van Knotsenburg tells you more about the development of the Academy app.

Just solving it with a spreadsheet. Sound familiar?

There's a new process within your company. It starts small, but soon there's a need to keep track of lists, statuses, actions. Who needs to do what, when, and how far along were we with that again? With a bit of tinkering in Excel, that challenge is solved. Yes, that magical tool where all simple solutions can quickly be built. Excel. Pretty fantastic, right?

For a lot of small things, Excel is a perfectly good solution. For things that stay small, there's nothing wrong with that; you're not going to build software for that. It starts to go wrong at some point when that small process and that Excel file grow. At first that goes fine, of course, but there comes a moment when Excel starts to play a really important role and also becomes very large. Then comes the tipping point.

The tinkerer who built that thing gets sick or leaves the company. Staring at a loading screen for an eternity gets annoying. You increasingly have to work in it at the same time, and of course that colleague does things just a bit differently. Or the file simply gets corrupted. And then, of course, there are also the actions around it. You need to send an email at point X, gather information at Y, and at Z there's that one little thing that often gets buried at the bottom of the pile. Anyway, you know how it goes.

Replacing it with an app

Often, consciously or unconsciously, the choice has been made that this is just how it is. It's just far too expensive to write software for this, because that costs at least a huge amount of money for those few hours of work it saves you. Right? Or we just do it this way because we've been doing it this way for years, and we'll bring it up at the next meeting, but first let's just...

Right? Or maybe not? What if I told you there's a middle ground. A relatively simple way to phase out that Excel file and replace it with a piece of software. An app? Something that doesn't cost a year of development time and also doesn't cost a huge amount of money for a simple little form (and can also handle X, Y, and Z, which take up so much of Karel or Marie's time every time). Something that saves you a lot of work (because really, it was more than just a few hours).

The E-mergo Academy

Too vague a story? Too abstract? Let me tell you my own situation: when I started at E-mergo, I kept giving trainings and started scheduling them myself. The little process was born!

Those first few years it was a handful of trainings and participants, and me as the trainer. And that one participant with a nut allergy, you'd write that down somewhere. There were more and more trainings, participants, trainers, but nothing Excel couldn't handle. And things kept getting added.

"Can you register who showed up?" We added checkboxes. "Lunch ordered?" Another checkbox. "Can you email a certificate of attendance (but check first...)?" Sure. "Maybe we should do something about quality control?" "Can you share that calendar with so-and-so too?" "And on the website?" Etc.

And then you get sick. COVID. And I wasn't someone who was back to normal after three weeks of a runny nose. Luckily, colleagues took a lot off my hands. But also things that got left behind. And of course they did it slightly differently. And wrote it down somewhere else.

Low-code

The solution? Low-code. I had to scratch my head about it too. Low? Does that mean limited functionality? Code? Are we going to build something from the ground up? And once it's finally finished, will I have yet another extra tool where I do a piece of my work? Yes, low-code is the solution.

Within a few weeks there was a first version of an app where I could plan trainings and enroll participants, and where trainers could flag attendance. In the next version, participants could enroll themselves. Another version further along, I got emails on enrollments and trainers were reminded to flag their attendance. Participants now also automatically get an evaluation email. And participants can also share their food allergies and download participation certificates, and the history from that Excel file has been imported.

Simpler

The app has made my work simpler and means I spend less and less time on administration and have more and more time for a growing Academy. But there's more. Things aren't just simpler for me; they're also simpler for other people involved, such as participants but also our HR and finance administration.

Where we've offered training programs for years, these are now also visible to participants and account managers in the form of learning paths. Participants can now easily see which trainings they've done in the past and could still take to complete a learning path. They can also immediately see when those are scheduled and enroll, or ask me for more information.

Data stored centrally

In addition, the data is now stored simply and centrally. Where HR and Finance used to depend on when I had time to put together an overview, we now tap directly into the database behind the app with our BI software, and there's a dashboard where HR can track the progress of internal learning programs or Finance can see which customer attended.

That Excel file? Yes, it's still around. Archive. "In case it turns out we forgot something after all." But really, I haven't touched it in weeks. Now everything is in the Academy App. And if I'm missing something? Then extra functionality can be built within a short time.

Written by Onno van Knotsenburg,
Academy Manager at E-mergo