Award-winning piece of software has liberated a company from spreadsheets and is now helping it to open new markets

“We have opened up new markets by moving from spreadsheets to a digital audit system with the software built for us by Green Gorilla Software,” says Ruth Waring, CEO of Labyrinth Logistics Consulting and co-creator of SilkThread® – a consultancy providing regulatory compliance audits in the logistics market.

“We started the process with a 40-page specification of a 3D, gamified, maze which would guide transport managers through the process of gaining an operator licence. However, costs to deliver that were prohibitive.

“Green Gorilla excel at telling you stories that illustrate where you want to be and how to get there. I remember one which illustrated that you can get a system live without a billing engine because you’ve 30 days to sort that. These stories helped focused our minds on several fronts.

“We also judged that regular users would tire of ‘gamification’ over time. Green Gorilla encouraged us to stop building a ‘cathedral’ and to start building a ‘chapel’ instead, coaching us to find the minimum viable product. (The smallest possible value a product can have for people to be willing to use or buy it, with enough promised future value for them to retain interest).

“By creating a digital version of the audit process, clients are now able to view multiple site audits on one SilkThread® dashboard. The methodology was complex – both in terms of the gap analysis and audit framework – and it took time to get it exactly right.

“Green Gorilla became fully immersed in our business. We began by taking them to various clients to see what our industry has to deal with daily.

“As a result, Green Gorilla has provided us with a system that is functionally far more sophisticated than any of our competitors’.”

**How they did it ** “We have to be brutally transparent,” says Paul Rhodes, founder and managing director, Green Gorilla Software. “When you really tune in to what a business owner’s looking to do, you get to the root of their problem. Nine times out of ten, we’ll end up recommending either another partner or an off-the-shelf piece of software rather than our services.

“The key is finding those people who have had an idea – sometimes for years – and they can’t find the software to do the job. We’ll develop the unique code which gives them a competitive advantage.

“Another key is aiming is to create the minimum viable product. That’s a basic version of the system which quickly tests a client’s potential return on investment and provides feedback to guide and hone its future development. It paves the way to finding the absolute optimum route to innovate, automate and grow.”

Commenting further on working with Green Gorilla, Ruth Waring of SilkThread® added, “As soon as we met Paul, we knew he was the partner we wanted to work with. Every time we discuss any development, his position is clearly in our long-term interests. He’s the first to question whether we actually need them to do what we envisage. My background is with Mars (confectionery) where I learned that a mutual benefit is a lasting benefit and Paul truly embodies this.

“We thought SilkThread® would lead customers to do more ‘self-auditing’ – where their teams’ complete the audit and send it to a central source. But we’ve been surprised to find that many of our clients still prefer an auditor on site. It’s only now – three years after SilkThread®’s launch – that ‘self-audits’ are taking off.

“SilkThread® is returning on its investment and was made possible by the Department of Transport’s, research and development (R&D) grant and Warwickshire’s Growth Fund. Some serious players are now interested in what we’re doing. We know we’re on the right track as a big logistics company fed back that it is the first time that he has seen audit software that looked and felt as though it had been designed by an experienced and fully qualified auditor.

“SilkThread® stage 1 digitised our core product: O-Licence compliance but in stage 2, Green Gorilla is making it possible for us to amend the audit questions so we can now take the functionality of this and roll it out into other logistics-related products and other compliance markets such as environmental and ethical compliance. SilkThread® has already opened doors for us in the transport arena now it’s opening new markets.”

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