The wrong system doesn’t cost you once. It costs you every day of the contract.
We build the operational systems product brands run on. Diagnosis is how we find out what yours actually needs, before you’re the one living inside a wrong build for the next twelve months (not the six weeks the sales deck promised).
How does it work?Everything is broken
One product change and you have 5 places to update. The Monday trade report pulled together manually every week. A master buying spreadsheet with 150 tabs only one person knows how to edit. Different symptoms, one broken foundation underneath.
The wrong ‘fix’ makes things so much worse
Transformational projects should be treated like one-way doors. Once you’re committed you have to live with it whether you like it or not. It pays to do your homework upfront before you commit.
GolfClubs4Cash bought SAP to appease finance that never fit the operation. We replaced it and much more.
Represent came to us 2 and a half years into a Centric rollout. Their core functions were live on Airtable 5 months later.
Brindisa spent 90 minutes per product across 700+ SKUs. We got the spec write-up down to 5 minutes.
Don’t mistake knowing your business for knowing what it needs.
Three stages. You can stop after any of them.
Tell us what’s going on. Send a few spreadsheets first and we’ll come with a view.
You get our initial assessment of where the real problem sits.
A day with everyone who touches the work. We map how data moves, every system on your invoices, and every spreadsheet holding it together.
Anything we can tell you on the day, we tell you on the day, plus the shape of what a full Diagnosis would cover.
Every team and workstream, your master data, your systems and integration points, where AI is worth it and where it isn’t, and a working prototype with your own data in it.
You leave with a Solution Guide: what to do, in what order, what each piece is worth. Build it with us or take it away. No obligation.
High-agency decision makers that need to commit to a direction
You’re about to buy software — an ERP, a PLM, a PIM — and want to know it’s the right call first.
A product brand between £5m and £50m turnover.
Your operation runs on spreadsheets and manual workarounds nobody wants to own.
You want to introduce AI and suspect your data isn’t ready for it.
A rollout is underway and it isn’t landing.
You need the plan agreed across ops, finance and product, not just one of them.
You’re locked into a long-term software contract you can’t change yet.
You want a specific build quoted, with the diagnosis already done.
Nobody senior can commit a day to the workshop.
You want the cheapest option rather than the right one.
“Nolo consistently demonstrate a combination of deep Airtable expertise and ability to identify and diagnose key operating gaps across our business.”
4 brands we saved from surface level fixes
“They’d written an RFP for a PIM. What they actually needed was bigger than that. We helped them think outside of the confines of a category and identify what would genuinely make an impact on how the team work”
Operators who found clarity after struggling on projects
“A great partner who are pushing the limits of what is possible within Airtable. Custom Interfaces have unlocked a lot for some specific workflows. We are in a good spot!”
“We have not just been listened to but interrogated to make sure Nolo Apps could deliver a realistic expectation of a first-class solution. The amount of lifting up rocks to identify the current workflows and identify wins was off the charts.”
“Nolo is a highly competent and reliable Airtable agency. Their extensive knowledge in the retail industry is instrumental in developing practical and effective solutions that are actually implemented by our team.”
What it looks like when it’s built
Talk to me about your operation
I founded Nolo in 2022 after a decade in product and ecommerce operations. I take every first call myself.
The first thing I’ll ask is what you know so far and then we’ll start to figure out what you don’t.
How work actually moves through your operation, and where it stalls.
Every system on your invoices, and every spreadsheet holding them together.
What you’ve already been told to buy or build.
What you would fix first if it were only your call.
The workshop day on your site, with the people who do the work.
The read on what the real projects are, and what order to do them in.
The first read back within 72 hours of the last workshop.
The honest answer when the right thing to do is nothing substantial, yet.
Questions worth asking
The call is free. The workshop day is paid, and we’ll tell you what it costs before you commit to it. A full Diagnosis is quoted after that, once we know the shape of what’s actually in scope. Giving you a number before we’ve seen your operation would just be guessing.
Whatever you spend working out the right project, you save when it gets built. The Diagnosis onboards us to your business, so we’re not learning it twice and you’re not paying for that time twice.
Most operators we meet are right about roughly half of it. The half they’ve got wrong is usually the expensive half, and it’s usually the order rather than the diagnosis. Brindisa’s brief arrived as a PIM project twice, from 2 separate referrers who’d both read it the same way. It wasn’t a PIM problem.
The call is 20 to 30 minutes. If it leads to a workshop day, that’s a day on your site. Our first read is back within 72 hours of the last workshop, and the written plan follows.
The people who do the work, not only the people who own the budget. Usually product, ops, buying or planning, and whoever maintains the spreadsheet everyone quietly depends on.
Then that’s what it says. Ask Minka Dink, who we sent to a different vendor for their ordering layer.
No. You own the plan and it stands on its own.
No, and it’s a common place to start from. Represent came to us 2 and a half years into a Centric rollout that never landed. Their core functions were running on Airtable 4 months later.
John Mantle at Golfclubs4cash put it better than we can: “The hardest part of moving to an Airtable solution is believing the simplicity and capability of it.” His previous system was an ERP that cost his business roughly £750k and never worked properly.
Confident decisions build momentum
Schedule a 30 minute consultationNOLO