6 different types of internal tools to consider

Internal tools come in many shapes and sizes. Let’s break down six types of tools you can create for your internal workflows.

Streamline workflows and improve productivity

Building internal-facing apps allows you to tailor each tool exactly to your workflows. You’re not stuck with a one-size-fits-all platform that requires lots of configuration, a lengthy learning curve, and endless blockers.

These tools can also deliver strong ROI by increasing team productivity. When employees face fewer blockers in their work, they’ll be less frustrated and perform better.

Misha Abasov, the COO of Rise People, explains how internal tools can directly impact the employee and customer experience:

“The tools you build for your colleagues affect the customer experience and their relationship with your company and its products. The quality of your internal tools reflects on company morale, your department’s reputation, and your ability to drive positive change at your company.”

Gain more control and flexibility to customize

Buying an external tool means you can only do so much to configure it for your needs. It’s difficult to customize most software to fit your requirements. Plus, you might even have to spend more to access better customization options.

Instead, building custom tools allows you to design capabilities based on your use cases. And you can iterate these features to adapt to your team’s evolving needs.

Essentially, you create a solution around your pain points instead of doing the opposite.

Maintain greater data security and compliance

Security is a key priority when buying software, especially for enterprise teams. In fact, security (48%) is the second-most decisive factor for software buyers after price (49%).

With internal tools, you can protect confidential data more effectively. It’s a lot easier to implement security measures and maximize compliance since you have complete ownership of these tools.

Break down internal silos and build team alignment

You can build custom apps to automate processes and standardize workflows at an org-wide level. As a result, different teams will have greater visibility into different projects and be on the same page.

Put simply, internal tools can create more transparency in the way your company functions. This would bring different departments together and improve collaboration.

Nick Vessella, a former Product Designer at Chewy, shares his take on using internal tools to coordinate better internally and prevent delays or mishaps:

“My experience in internal tools spans startups, insurance, and the financial sector. In my experience, internal tools save your company money. They make sure there are not 2,000 pounds of dog food sitting in a random warehouse, they help insurance companies identify false claims, and they help financial companies automate painstaking manual processes.”

Save costs and increase ROI

For many teams, the choice between building or buying a tool would ultimately boil down to cost.

Building internal tools can prove cost-effective for larger organizations, especially when you need specific features that third-party solutions don’t offer. For smaller teams, creating internal tools can replace expensive out-of-the-box solutions.

These custom apps can also provide a better ROI when compared to external software. How?

Vandana Pai, a Senior Product Designer at Spotify, explains the impact of internal tools at Spotify:

“We’ve seen user satisfaction go up with classic NPS tests and efficiency scores increase with feature updates to internal tools. We’ve seen a workflow that originally took a user seven different tools to complete over the course of weeks be reduced to a matter of days with a single tool that was built internally. We’ve seen the cost of outsourcing a workflow to external agencies be reduced tremendously by internal tools.”

Identify pain points and use cases

Internal tools are designed for your own colleagues. That means your end-users are just a Slack message away.

Zi Yuan, a former Product Designer at Facebook, shares that the ease of access with an internal product’s users makes the development process more seamless and faster.

“It’s pretty special that people who utilize our designs are fellow Facebook employees. Therefore, our colleagues serve as the early adopters of new features, and, as designers, we have the ability to apply their experience and direct insight to inform the next steps.”

Remember to use this power well to discover what your colleagues truly want to achieve. Then, use this insight to guide your internal tools development process.

Start by understanding the need for any solution and identify the pain points you want to solve with this tool. You can conduct a needs assessment test to get an objective idea of this tool’s purpose.

Kazden Cattapan, a Product Designer at Shopify, suggests shadowing your colleagues as another effective way to understand pain points and discover use cases.

“Before any design work, our team spent lots of time shadowing and talking to our colleagues on the operations team. We used co-creation sessions to increase our user’s direct involvement, literally designing concepts in collaboration with them.”

Shadowing can tell you the tools and processes currently used to perform a task. You’ll also get a chance to map users’ expectations for this tool accurately.

Collaborate with end-users to define goals

While you’ve already started communicating with your end-users, it’s time to sit together and chalk out the goals for your product.

This is a creative brainstorming and strategizing exercise to define the tool’s overall functionality, capabilities, and interface. Collaborating with your colleagues would ensure you’re aware of real-world workflows. It’ll also bring you closer to end-users objectives instead of building something they don’t need.

Besides defining goals and giving a better shape to your product, you also want to secure buy-in from the leadership team.

Nick emphasizes the importance of getting stakeholder buy-in for internal tools development:

“Executive buy-in is the first place any internal tool team should start. Make sure everyone is on the same page on the role of design. Designers don’t want to get stuck in sign-off territory — we want to actually design.”

This critical step can prevent unnecessary delays or miscommunication at a later stage in the development cycle.

Build and optimize tools for efficiency

Not every team can put their developers on an internal tool project.

That’s why you can use an intuitive no-code platform like Softr to build custom apps in minutes—without developer support.

With Softr, you can design and develop dozens of tools for different use cases. It’s highly customizable and easy to use, so you won’t need to spend hours learning your way around the platform.

Here’s a quick workflow to build a full-fledged app using Softr:

Step 1: Choose a template from a wide range of templates available for different teams.

Step 2: Connect to a data source. You can integrate Softr with apps like Airtable, Google Sheets, HubSpot, and more to build apps using data on these platforms.

Step 3: Customize the template to design the app any way you want. Softr’s intuitive editor makes it a breeze to create your app’s interface and build capabilities even if you don’t have design skills.  

Customize your app by:

• Adding dynamic blocks
• Creating new user groups
• Making new pages or features
• Specifying access permissions
• Changing the styling and design

You can also build a custom theme that matches your brand’s look and feel.

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Want to make this process more collaborative? Add your colleagues to your Softr workspace and create new elements together.

Step 4: Preview your app and get initial feedback to see if everything is in line with your users’ expectations. You can test out the app in different screen sizes to check its responsiveness across devices.

Step 5: Connect a custom domain (if required) and publish your app. Once published, your app can be shared with a simple URL. You can configure different settings, like notifications and SEO, or add custom code wherever needed.

Check out this detailed tutorial by Gareth Pronovost on building internal software using Softr.