As the Strategic Program Manager at Shelf Engine, no two days are the same for Bryan Mitchiner. That’s because he spends his days helping different teams within the company set up and automate systems and workflows to make their jobs more efficient. Shelf Engine helps food and beverage businesses increase sales by accurately predicting the perfect amount of perishable goods to order.
“I work with our field, accounting, sales, product teams, and typically have three or four different projects going on at once.”
In fact, before joining the team at Shelf Engine, he ran and successfully sold two product businesses. During that time, he used Glide to streamline operations in his small businesses. When he joined the team at Shelf Engine earlier this year, it was a no-brainer that he would use Glide.
One of the biggest challenges Bryan dived headfirst into was rebuilding Shelf Engine’s Insights app. This internal app for their 25-person field sales team is designed for field reps to track inventory for the stores they work with, and also serves as a check-in/check-out tool and route map. The old solution they used was clunky and only captured insights. Despite not being a software engineer, Bryan built a new version in a few days that turned it into a fully-functional workforce management tool where each sales rep can see their route for the day, click on each store and get Waze directions, and add in all of their insights all with a few clicks.
“One of the nice things about Glide is that it's very user intuitive,” says Bryan. “We can dream up a way to present this to the team and then tinker with Glide until we get what we want.”
In fact, the entire system was built with Glide and Google Sheets. These days, between 200 and 300 insights are added to the app every day. Plus, the company saves approximately $50,000 in software and labor costs. With the success of rebuilding the Insights App, Bryan got to work building a second app, Shelf Vision. This Glide app presents data to retailers from all of the insights gathered.
"We take that same data that the Insights app gathers, and we update how it is presented, and then customers can log in and see those insights,” says Bryan. So, the retailers now have more visibility and transparency to see what’s happening on the ground at each store.
Using Glide makes Bryan’s job easier and gets him much praise. He says, “I get a request from someone that says, ‘Hey, can we do this?’ and within 5, 10 minutes, I can make that change because it's so easy in Glide.”
Today, he uses Glide to make additional, one-off apps all the time, including a makeshift mobile app game for an upcoming trade show. He has even convinced his friends and family to use Glide to build apps for their jobs and passion projects.
“Glide is a great tool. It’s super simple and easy to use. It allows us to build tools that eliminate manual processes so employees can do their work and eliminate a bunch of manual steps along the way.”