Here at NOREMO we are delighted to announce publicly our first Software partner - Softools.net.

Softools is a no-code app builder platform - available direct from Softools or via the Microsoft Azure marketplace.

I’ve recently been working my way through the Softools ABC training program and was really impressed that their AppStudio app building tool is a really first class product that will help you build apps super fast; even if you’re not a formally trained software developer or programmer.  Literally anyone that has built and battled spreadsheet formulas a few times will be able to fit-for-purpose apps in super-quick time.

Softools is really all about helping businesses get their data out of Excel and their business process off email.

For all those other business processes (where you’ve not invested millions in an Oracle Financials or SAP Resource Planning system) - or even those sub-processes right the way round the edges of those aforementioned systems that depend on you collecting information from customers, employees or partners in surveys, forms or other means, a Softools-built mobile-first web app will enable you to collect information with ease.  A Softools-built app will enable you to:

• Standardise the format of the data you are collecting
• Aggregate and Analyse the results 
• Present great-looking Reports in consistent on-brand format
• Share Insights and Results effectively with your management team  
• Secure and Protect your Data with confidence
• Comply with various Customer and Employee Data Privacy laws and regulations
• And do that more cost effectively and faster than any other means

Your teams will be able to spend more of their time thinking about how to solve issues or come up with innovative ideas to improve processes rather than being weighed down by the drudgery of needing to clean-up and re-format data every time a new initiative is introduced.

That’s real value added!

The onus will move back to management - how quickly can you respond? And how effective is your response?  If you want to harness the new energy and enthusiasm that’s infected your team then you’d better get on with it - producing faster, higher quality results every single day!

Some of the workflows where we’ve seen Softools used most effectively include:

• Supplier Audits
• Health & Safety
• Ideation & Innovation 

And for Noremo, given our focus is Private Equity General Partner (GP) firms and their Portfolio Companies, we see one very rich use case for Softools; using Softools for GP firms to collect Key Performance Indicators (KPI) data from their Portfolio Companies most effectively on a regular basis. Processes that really do today rely too much on Excel and Email. You can do better than this if you really want to bring value.

Collecting information and generating standardised reports on a weekly, monthly, quarterly basis for the obvious and very generic categories of Sales, COGS, Operating Costs. But typically a GP firm invests across a range of different industries and their Portfolio Companies have or should have a set of KPIs that are relevant for their business and their industry. Inevitably, a Portfolio Co. that operates a chain of restaurants will have a very different set of KPIs to another Portfolio Co. that operates a Software SaaS business.

A Softools built app will make it easy for Portfolio Co.s to report their results (giving time back to the Portfolio’s CFO team) and relevant KPIs for a range of very different industries and then make it easy for the GP firm to review and analyse these results without the waste-of-time drudgery of repeat data cleansing and reformatting (giving time back to the GP’s Analyst team). 

That’s the beauty or should be the real beauty of technology - give time back to your teams so that they can focus on the more important things; delivering first class customer experiences; ensuring the quality of your products is absolutely tip-top; or coming up with ideas on how your company can grow and improve.

Get in touch if you want to know more and hear more of our ideas on how.

See below for a video introducing the partnership.