Disrupt Social

We revamped the Airtable solution for scalability, laying a solid foundation for future enhancements.

Overview

Disrupt Social, a performance marketing agency specializing in delivering value for direct-to-consumer (DTC) brands through innovative, creative, precise media buying, and data-driven strategies, faced a challenge with a client’s Airtable-based solution.

This solution, aimed at tracking investors and individual investments in a forex investment fund, lacked scalability, prompting them to seek our expertise in redesigning it for long-term effectiveness.

Problem

Automation Design Limitations

Their existing solution incorporated automation to calculate weekly changes in investments based on the fund’s overall profit/loss. However, this approach necessitated the creation of new columns each week to capture data such as starting investment value, growth amount, and final amount.

Consequently, this design led to inefficiencies in data management and posed challenges in maintaining the system’s scalability.

Scalability Concerns

As the investment tracking commenced in 2023, the client soon encountered limitations with their system. They realized the impracticality of continually adding columns to accommodate weekly data, particularly as the year progressed.

Moreover, the existing solution was constrained to handle only up to 100 investments, a restriction that became increasingly problematic as the fund approached its capacity with nearly 80 investments.

Reporting and Dashboard Integration

Recognizing the imperative for comprehensive reporting and dashboard functionalities, the challenge extended beyond scalability. The client required features that would enable them to generate meaningful insights and reports from the investment tracking solution.

Integration of dashboard capabilities was deemed essential to facilitate informed decision-making and enhance overall analytical capabilities.

Solution

Maintenance and Automation Tools

The client expressed a preference for maintaining the solution in Airtable and utilized Make for automation workflows, which proved invaluable in our solution-building process.

Experience-Driven Database Construction

Drawing from our extensive experience in constructing robust databases for various applications, we employed similar techniques to create an Airtable solution for the client. Central to our approach was the development of a weekly tracking table with a simple yet comprehensive data structure, capturing essential metrics such as opening balance, profit percentage, calculated profit value, deposits or withdrawals, and closing balance.

Leveraging Automation with Make

Given the limitations of Airtable automations, which operate on a per-row basis, we relied on Make to establish inter-row relationships that are crucial for our solution. Make facilitated the automation of calculations and data population, ensuring seamless tracking and continuity between weekly entries.

Optimizing Make Operations

Understanding the cost implications of Make’s pricing model, which charges based on the number of operations, we devised strategies to optimize its usage. Initially, the solution lacked consideration for the number of Make operations, potentially leading to escalating subscription costs.

To mitigate this, we developed two variants in Make: one for comprehensive data population and another for limiting operations to a defined number of weeks. This approach ensured consistent Make operations per week, preventing unexpected subscription escalations.

Results

The successful implementation of the solution significantly impacted the client’s business, as evident from the delighted response of the fund managers. By ensuring seamless operation within Airtable, without migration, we minimized disruption and maintained familiarity for the fund managers, resulting in minimal retraining requirements.

Moreover, our ability to retain and integrate existing tables facilitated smooth transitions and encouraged confidence in the solution. Furthermore, the client’s request for additional enhancements to support parallel investment classes within the same Airtable underscores the positive impact of our solution on their operations, demonstrating its adaptability and scalability to meet evolving business needs.