Hello everyone, and especially the developers @ CODA.
Here is an immense thank you from me (the CEO) and my team, who run a large 3D printing manufacturing company in the USA. Our business is exceptionally technical, fast changing, low margin, and generally immensely complex. This involves both numbers (databases) communications (well presented write ups) equally. When communications in such a company breakdown, the damage and costs are insurmountable. We have been looking for a solution, which I affectionately call āBusiness process baby-brains.ā Effectively, as apps become more connected and automated, the software, like a brain, becomes a map that mirrors the real world business process flows.
What we wanted was an app that allows us to
- Store data globally/centralized like product and part lists
- Share track and interact with the data all in one place,
- Have amazing alerts that actually work
- Get easy psychological ābuy inā, desirability for our employees and customers to use the app
- Share data through seamless interactions that saves time
- Allows proper monitoring by management
- Programmable by anyone without a software background, or a dummy like me
- Is dynamic and allows quick adaptation to a changing work.
- Many smaller things we take for granted like common login (no new passwords) or revision histories.
To date we have use the standard sheets apps, and apps with cards, and even clever relational databases. All of these apps in theory offer many of the above features. So whats the difference? These other apps
- Are not fast. Many use real time cloud sync, and itās painful to search
- Their search isnāt as good
- They are not fun to use!
- Itās hard to get buy in from the employees
- The alerts donāt work (coda has a direct linkage to your google so it canāt get lost as spam)
- Itās impossible to follow conversational histories
So how do we use our APPS?
- A central app and table holds all tasks across all departments and initiatives
- The table has tags for each department, and views with that tag are used in individual sections
- all conversation is mandated under the comments
- whoever added the task ensures it is completed and marks it ādoneā
- a managers view shows what is overdue (based on date search) and even shows performance such as new tasks per unit time, or an individuals responsiveness.
This sounds simple, but it wasnāt possible before without some sort of snobby, stuffy ERP. Iām sorry but those $300,000 apps donāt even work, because theyāre static.
Now the apps use sections and tables to enable every aspect of the business:
- Direct customer request input (had to use another app, but embedded the view) - now customers feel heard
- Part order requests
- Product launch emails are written in situ as part of one section
- RMA systems and approvals
- Product design chats
- Production speed tracking and planning
- Marketing ideas
- A fully public doc that allows anyone to comment that has everything - guides, troubleshooting, calculators, specs, community help, links.
Above all there is something deeply psychological about the CODA layouts, font, spacing, intuitive nature of the interface. Do not take for granted - when something looks so right, itās because someone put a masterful amount of effort into the app. Everything else just looks old now.
In summary, CODA is simply enjoyable to use; it works the way the brain does - the information is alive, and linked to other information. By putting information in CODA, it is such a relief, it frees our minds to do so much else and to relax. Itās a joy to use CODA to braindump, organize, and feel like we are getting done what we know we were capable of before, but couldnāt. In just 1 week CODA has taken over our company, replaced our communications apps, databases, spreadsheets, tasklists and more. In just one week our customers have gotten to the information faster than ever before. In just one week we have freed up our time so very obviously, we are working on things that have been on the back burner for years. CODA very well may have saved our company.
I fully hope that I can keep CODA a secret and that my competitors will never find it. But since that is unlikely, Iād like to instead become an investor in CODA myself 
