Case Studies
Operational Improvement in Practice
Every business works differently. That is why we do not start with a standard automation or a predetermined technology.
The examples below are real operational systems designed and built by the team behind Kanso. They solve very different problems, but follow the same principle: understand how the work actually happens, simplify the process, connect the information people need, and automate the parts that should not depend on manual coordination.
ADK.lv
Connecting Orders, Production and material planning
Industrial Distribution & Manufacturing
ADK supplies industrial products and also converts materials into finished products for customers. An order can therefore involve more than simply taking something from stock and shipping it.
Some products are already available. Others need to be produced. Production can require specific materials, sizes and specifications. Different people are responsible for sales, production and fulfilment, while stock information also exists in the company’s accounting system.
The challenge is not one individual task. It is keeping the whole order moving while making sure the right information reaches the right people.
What We Built
We designed an operational system that connects customer orders with the work required to produce and fulfil them.
A sales order becomes the starting point for the rest of the process. Individual order components can be tracked separately, production can see what needs to be made, responsibilities are visible and material requirements are linked back to the orders creating the demand.
Relevant stock information from Horizon is also brought into the operational process instead of leaving production and sales to work from disconnected information.
How The Process Works
1. An order is entered
The order records the customer, salesperson, products, quantities and relevant delivery and payment information. Customer-specific information can be carried into the order automatically rather than entered again each time.
2. The order is separated into the work that actually needs to happen
Individual components can follow different paths. An item may already be available, need to be ordered from a supplier, require production or be waiting because the required material is unavailable. The system therefore tracks the status of the actual work rather than treating the entire order as one undifferentiated record.
3. Production sees what requires action
Items requiring production flow into the relevant operational views with the specifications and quantities needed to make them. The people doing the work do not need the entire sales database. They see the part of the process that requires their attention.
4. Material requirements are connected to demand
The system links production requirements to the materials needed to fulfil them. That creates an operational view of material availability based on what is actually required by current work.
5. Horizon stock information is brought into the same process
Stock information from Horizon can be matched with the materials used in the operational system. The integration also deals with cases where names do not match perfectly, allowing ambiguous material records to be reviewed rather than silently treated as correct.
What Changed
Instead of treating sales orders, production work, and material information as separate activities, they form one connected operational flow. Sales can see what is happening with an order. Production can see what needs to be made. Material requirements can be traced back to actual customer demand, and relevant accounting-system information is available alongside the operational process. The technology supports the handovers between people rather than simply making one individual task faster.
Process areas: Orders · Production · Material planning · Operational visibility · System integration
How We Helped a Construction Company Digitize Time Tracking and Implement a 100% Transparent Employee Performance Evaluation System
About the Client
A construction and installation company with multiple teams working across different sites, specializing in installation and finishing works of varying levels of complexity.
The Challenge Before Our Collaboration
- Subjective employee evaluation: Site managers manually assigned performance coefficients to individual workers, often leading to perceptions of favoritism, dissatisfaction, and conflicts within the team.
- Inaccurate time standards: Work completion times and daily productivity targets were estimated based on personal experience rather than actual performance data and historical statistics.
- Inefficient and error-prone data entry: Manual marking of holidays and days off, endless spreadsheet scrolling, and the risk of data-entry errors, such as incorrect decimal formats.
- Difficulty evaluating team performance: It was challenging to determine each individual worker’s contribution when tasks were performed in pairs or as part of a larger team.
Our Solution
1. Automated time tracking (Timesheets)
- Implemented automatic recognition of public holidays, shifted working days, and days off, eliminating the need for manual spreadsheet formatting.
- Added automatic highlighting of the current day and data validation to prevent incorrect hour entries.
2. Simplified data entry through digital forms
Developed a convenient input form that allows users to record start and end times with a single click, while automatically linking the data to the relevant employee, project site, and type of work.
3. Objective performance rating (Sports analytics model)
- Developed an algorithm that calculates an employee’s actual work speed relative to the average performance of their colleagues.
- To ensure that speed does not come at the expense of quality, we introduced a quality adjustment coefficient (Good / Satisfactory / Poor), recorded by the site manager.
4. Dynamic time standards for teams
The system automatically calculates the estimated completion time based on the specific team composition and the historical performance of its individual members.
Results Achieved
- 100% transparent compensation: Internal conflicts and concerns about unfair evaluations were eliminated, with employee bonuses and performance coefficients based on objective data and actual performance.
- More accurate project planning: The company can accurately forecast installation timelines and estimate new projects based on real-world time standards.
- Higher employee motivation: The public performance rating created healthy internal competition and encouraged employees to work both faster and to a higher standard.
- Administrative time savings: The data processing and payroll calculation process was fully automated, eliminating the need for manual spreadsheet updates and data re-entry.
COURTCREW.eu
Matching Customer Demand With Available Capacity
Recurring Sports & Membership Services
CourtCrew runs basketball and volleyball sessions across different locations, days, times and playing levels.
A new player cannot simply be placed into the next available session.
The right option depends on when they can attend, where they can play, their sport and level, which sessions still have capacity, existing reservations and sometimes whether a regular member will be absent from a particular session.
That creates a recurring coordination problem: who should be offered which place, and when?
What We Built
We designed a system that manages the process from a new player’s application through to identifying an appropriate session, making an offer, recording the response and updating what should happen next.
Instead of simply maintaining a list of people and another list of training sessions, the system connects customer suitability with actual capacity.
How The Process Works
1. A new player provides the information needed to place them
The process captures relevant information such as sport, playing level, available days and when the person is ready to start. Restrictions can also be recorded. A particular location, day or individual session may not work for someone.
2. The system determines where capacity actually exists
Available capacity is not simply the nominal number of places in a training group. The system also considers existing members, known absences, occasional participants, outstanding offers and recently accepted places. That produces a more useful picture of where someone can genuinely be added.
3. Suitable sessions are identified and prioritised
The system compares the player’s circumstances with the available sessions.
It can consider factors such as:
- sport and playing level;
- suitable days and locations;
- how soon the session takes place;
- existing reservations;
- how many places remain;
- whether that date has already been offered.
Rather than presenting every technically possible option, it helps identify which options should be considered first.
4. Responses become part of the process
An offer is not the end of the workflow. If the person accepts, that affects remaining capacity. If they cannot attend, the reason can affect what should be offered next. A person who cannot attend one particular Tuesday is different from someone for whom Tuesdays never work. That information stays attached to the process instead of being rediscovered in future conversations.
5. Exceptions remain visible
The process deliberately handles situations that do not follow the normal path. Sessions can become unavailable, people can change their availability, temporary places can appear when members are absent and an offer may need to be paused or overridden. The system automates predictable decisions while preserving manual control where judgement is useful.
Connecting Attendance Back Into Capacity
Attendance and reservation information is also reconciled with external operational data.
This helps the system distinguish between the places that theoretically exist and the places that are genuinely available for another person.
What Changed
The process no longer has to be thought of as separate tasks such as:
check a form → look at the timetable → count people → remember what was already offered → send a message.
Those decisions are connected.
A new application, current capacity, previous offers, customer preferences and responses all contribute to what should happen next.
Process areas: Customer intake · Capacity planning · Matching & prioritisation · Communications · Reservations · Attendance · Exception handling
EXPAND IN BALTICS.EU
Turning B2B Prospecting Into a Structured Sales Process
B2B Sales & Market Development
B2B prospecting becomes surprisingly complicated once it moves beyond a small list of companies.
Before somebody can contact a prospect, the business needs to decide:
Is this company actually relevant?
What does it sell?
Who does it sell to?
Is there a genuine sales opportunity?
Who is the right person to contact?
Has somebody already contacted them?
Is the email usable?
Which campaign should they enter?
Does this company fit a standard approach, or does it require individual research?
At scale, those are not separate research tasks. They are one operating process.
What We Built
We designed a B2B prospecting system that connects company research, qualification, contact data, verification, campaign preparation and outreach status.
The working database now contains more than 6,000 companies and 12,000 contacts, while preserving the information needed to decide which companies should actually progress toward outreach.
The aim is not to automate sending as quickly as possible. It is to create a structured path from potential company → evaluated prospect → appropriate decision-maker → verified outreach-ready contact.
How The Process Works
1. Companies enter a central database
Companies can come from different research sources and markets. The system brings them into a common structure containing information such as company, website, country, industry and available contacts. Potential duplicates are identified so the same organisation does not quietly become three prospects because someone typed the domain differently. A surprisingly advanced achievement for databases everywhere.
2. The company is assessed before outreach
Not every company deserves the same amount of effort. Companies can be assessed on factors such as B2B suitability, likely sales need and the commercial universe they could realistically target. Research can also identify what the company sells and which types of organisations are plausible customers for it. That allows poor-fit companies to be filtered before time is spent preparing outreach.
3. The right contact is selected
Companies and people are linked rather than maintained in independent lists. Contacts include roles, seniority and other information that can be used to prioritise who should be approached. The process can distinguish between a relevant decision-maker and merely an email address that happens to exist.
4. Contact information is checked before it enters outreach
Email verification is part of the workflow rather than an unrelated cleanup exercise afterwards. The system tracks verification status and can route uncertain addresses for additional checking instead of treating every available email as equally safe.
5. Companies are assigned to the appropriate outreach route
Not every prospect receives the same treatment. Some companies can enter a standard campaign. Others have characteristics that justify additional research or more customised communication. The system therefore combines automation with explicit manual-review stages rather than trying to remove judgement from the process entirely.
6. Outreach status flows back into the company record
Once a company is selected for a campaign, that becomes part of its operational history. The system can distinguish companies that still require research from those that have been selected, verified, prepared or already contacted. That reduces the need to reconstruct history from separate spreadsheets and sending tools each time someone returns to a prospect.
What Changed
Research, company qualification, contact selection, email verification and outreach preparation operate as stages of one process.
Automation handles repetitive movement and checks where rules are clear. Human review remains where commercial judgement matters.
The result is not merely a larger contact database. It is an operating system for deciding who is worth approaching, who should be contacted and what should happen next.
Process areas: Company research · Qualification · Contact selection · Data quality · Email verification · Campaign preparation · Sales operations · Human review
Different Businesses. The Same Underlying Problem.
ADK, CourtCrew, construction company and Expand in Baltics have almost nothing in common as businesses.
One deals with industrial orders and production. One manages players and recurring sports capacity. One manages B2B prospecting.
But operationally, the pattern is remarkably similar.
Something happens.
Several people, decisions or systems need to respond.
Information has to move from one step to another.
Some cases follow predictable rules. Others require judgement.
As volume increases, somebody ends up holding the process together manually.
That is the type of problem Kanso is designed to solve.
We Improve The Process First
We do not begin by deciding that you need Coda, an integration, an AI agent or any other specific technology.
We first understand how the work moves from beginning to end, where information gets repeated, where work waits, which decisions can be standardised and which exceptions still need human judgement.
Then we build the simplest operating process that solves the problem.
Show Us One Process That Takes Too Much Manual Work
We’ll look at where it can be simplified, connected or automated.