Custom Objectives & Key Results App with a SaaS Model

Building custom apps is always a challenge, especially if you’re dealing with complex workflows like the one we’ve developed for a customer who needed an Objectives and Key Results (OKR) app with a SaaS model that scales based on how many employees their users have.

Although most online services make it seem natural and “easy” to do, developing an upgrade/downgrade system is actually pretty complex and it’s different for pretty much every business model.

Here’s how we built this complex OKR app…

Building a Custom OKR App

Apart from any marketing materials layered on top of the app, the first thing new business users will see is a screen where they can choose which plan to go for depending on the size of their team.

Each subscription plan has its own unique link. A disclaimer also warns the user that the system may need a few moments to sync the data back to the app, eliminating any first-purchase doubt.

As soon as they buy a membership, they can add their employees to the app individually who in turn will receive an email welcoming them to the app and giving them a link to sign up easily:

Customer onboarding is one of the most overlooked parts of building a business but it’s really a key component if you want to ensure a long-lasting relationship with your customers.

This is what these features are for.

Collecting Information from Employees

An OKR app exists to help businesses track their objectives and key results by gathering information from their employees on a weekly basis and turning that information into visualizations.

The app allows business owners to configure a weekly email reminder, asking employees to complete a weekly questionnaire where they’ll get all the information they need to track business objectives:

Admins can see all questionnaires from all team members, they can analyze trends on certain questions, and they are able to manage their subscription in full from within the app interface:

This is the core capability of the app, making it a powerful tool for small and medium business executives who may not always have the time to oversee employees’ work, keeping them accountable with a weekly review.

The Business Side of the OKR App

TeamSHEP is built like most SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) companies where you pay for a certain tier and you get X amount of features and capabilities for that tier until you run into a limited experience. The way the app ensures that resources aren’t wasted and that users are paying what the app is worth is by limiting the amount of employees that can be added.

When a team grows, the admin can’t add more users unless they upgrade.

Apart from its scalability, the app helps admins manage their team members, upgrade/downgrade their membership, and manage all billing information.

When a user clicks on the upgrade button, they are redirected to a screen that shows all info about their current membership, and an easy way for them to upgrade to the higher tier:

On the front-end, this concludes most of the feature set…

How the OKR App’s Backend Works

In the backend, we’ve worked on a pretty complex Integromat scenario which deals with pro-rated refunds (partial refunds based on upgrade timeline) and all other aspects of the billing cycle.

This also updates the admin’s plan to accommodate more users:

With SaaS becoming more competitive, me and the team over at LowCode Agency found it really exciting to work on building such a robust custom solution with both Glide Tables and Google Sheets.