Knack Empowers Organizations to Adapt Amidst Coronavirus Uncertainties

For years, Knack users have been leveraging our no-code/low-code platform to rapidly adapt to evolving business needs. As Coronavirus changes the world as we know it, the Knack community has been quick to use our tool to respond to new challenges in their companies and communities.

Maintaining Critical Business Functions

Knack partner CH Project Support provides rapid development for a firm that supports critical network infrastructure for some of the largest companies in Europe. The firm had previously adopted Knack as a core solution to help them manage order intake, project tracking, resourcing, compliance, training, and inventory management.

By early March, the reality of the then-epidemic’s impact was beginning to set in, leaving many companies scrambling.

“It was apparent that Covid-19 was going to have a profound effect on our day-to-day operations,” said Carl Holmes, Director of CH Project Support. “We needed to understand the impact operationally as well as ensuring the safety of our staff.”

The first step was to create a mobile-friendly web form that allowed his client’s firm to capture up-to-date information about their large employee base.

As the pandemic rapidly developed, they quickly updated their Knack application to support daily employee health, location and availability updates. This information was then automatically rolled into reports that the senior management team could access from any location.

Tracking the Unknown

Bart Bolkestein was frustrated by the lack of early information about the spread of Coronavirus in The Netherlands, and turned to Knack.

“It started as a study on how to structure the unstructured information about the first Covid-19 cases,” Bolkestein explained, “making use of Knack’s map and reporting facilities.”

After receiving significant positive responses, Bolkestein made the site public and continued to develop the application to meet shifting needs.

“The input for the tool changed from manually processed news-items, to an import of the daily official Dutch figures, enriched with data from other sources displaying figures nobody else is presenting,” he continued, “The tool is able to adapt to the constant changing information and present new figures based on it.”

Moving Education Online

Naomi Caselli, a Deaf Studies professor at Boston University, is using Knack to address the changing needs of an often underserved community.

“Many companies who typically sell educational materials have made their products temporarily free in order to support parents who are suddenly homeschooling their children,” she noted, “Unfortunately, these materials are often not well suited to teach deaf children”

Knack’s no-code platform enabled the professor to create a public library where deaf educators and the broader deaf community are now curating educational materials, including videos of storytelling in American Sign Language, games and other resources.

When Working Means Working-From-Home

UK Knack customer Emanuel Spence Maintenance Services had a recent stroke of bad (and good) luck.

Yorkshire-based team member John Spence broke his ankle, which kept him tied to a desk instead of servicing customers at their locations. He used the time to leverage Knack to develop a completely custom CRM and Job Management solution for his company. It included a mobile app for engineers to certify gas installations.

Now that Coronavirus has hit, Spence jokingly calls his Knack app their “Legionalla Management Suite.”

“When the Covid-19 virus landed and we had to close our main office. We could immediately deploy our gas and water engineers to work from home. This is enabling us to give the community an emergency service for those in need.”

Without Knack, he says, operations would be “a complete nightmare.”

“The great thing about writing your own program with Knack is that you can update and alter the same ongoing to cope with new events,” he explained, “Well done, Knack.”

The Only Certainty is Uncertainty

“The Covid-19 pandemic is a stark example of how difficult it is to future-proof business operations and technology platforms in the face of the unknown,” observed Knack Founder and CEO Brandon Griggs, “Just a few weeks ago, organizations were conducting business as usual in the face of a looming threat. And suddenly, everything changed.”

Rigid, mass-produced software can’t quickly adapt to the unique, rapidly developing needs of organizations affected by the Coronavirus pandemic. But Knack users are already doing it for themselves, every day.

For Knack customers, the more things change, the more their apps change with them.