How ApFusion Saved $8K/Month & 3 Weeks of Development Time with Coefficient
I couldn't survive without Coefficient. If I ever took another job, signing up with Coefficient would have to be a non-negotiable fringe benefit — I wouldn't work for them otherwise.
Michael Kolodin
Growth Operations Manager at ApFusion
ApFusion, a rapidly growing e-commerce platform, faced a critical challenge: their operations team needed internal tools, but developer resources were tied up in core product features. When Michael Kolodin attempted to map out the build of a messaging portal tool in Retool, it was going to take 2-3 weeks to develop and would potentially require weekly bug fixes—a timeline and maintenance burden the lean team couldn’t afford.
By leveraging Coefficient, Michael built the tool he needed in under a day using Google Sheets, creating a solution that was both faster to build and more adaptable. Today, ApFusion runs multiple business-critical processes through spreadsheet-based applications, including syncing 150,000 eBay listings daily and identifying revenue gaps worth $8,000 per month—all without requiring developer support.
The Challenge
Building internal tools took 2-3 weeks in Retool with ongoing maintenance requirements
No developer resources available for operational reporting needs
Manual ETL processes required Python scripting and constant maintenance
The Solution
Used Coefficient to create spreadsheet-based mini-apps with live data connections
Empowered operations team to build their own tools using familiar spreadsheet interfaces
Implemented Coefficient as lightweight ETL pipeline between database and HubSpot
The Result
Reduced build time from weeks to hours while eliminating weekly debugging sessions
Operations team now self-sufficient, building complex workflows without developer support
Automated syncing of 100+ properties hourly, saving days of manual work monthly
- HubSpot - CRM
- Google Ads - Ads
- Intercom - CRM
- AWS S3
- MySQL - Database / Warehouse
- eBay API
ApFusion operates an e-commerce platform that connects buyers and sellers of automotive parts. As an intermediary platform, they manage complex workflows including messaging portals, inventory management, and marketplace integrations. The company has experienced rapid growth, requiring scalable operational solutions that don’t burden their development team.
Use Cases
- Messaging Portal Visibility: Real-time conversation viewing without user impersonation
- eBay Inventory Management: Daily synchronization of 150,000+ product listings
- Revenue Leakage Detection: Automated monitoring identified $8,000 monthly in underpayments
- Customer Health Dashboards: Dynamic reporting on user performance and engagement metrics
- ETL Pipeline Replacement: Spreadsheet-based data syncing between database and CRM
- Return Label Tracking: File attachment visibility through hyperlinked URLs in sheets
Interview Highlights
On building decisions & timelines
“The biggest thing is 80% of it comes down to time and resources. Something like Retool can make pretty UIs, but it can take a lot of time. And if you don’t do it right, it can take even more time to debug it. With a spreadsheet, it’s pretty straightforward no matter what kind of tools you’re using.”
“That spreadsheet took me less than a day to build. The Retool application took 2, 3 weeks full time and I still have to go back to it on a weekly basis and fix a bug here and there.”
“If I build the spreadsheet first, one of two things is gonna happen: either a month down the line we’re gonna realize we don’t need a UI, or over that month we’re gonna make changes and realize that if I had done this in Retool initially, it would have been completely different than what it needed to be.”
“Don’t confuse the word low code with low effort. You might not have to build a full blown back end and a react application. But it’s still gonna take a significant amount of time.”
On ETL-lite
“We used Coefficient consistently as our sole source of our data pipeline for about a year, and it worked perfectly fine. We had 2 or 3 different spreadsheets with about 10 different tabs of data syncing every hour.”
On daily operations
“People spend so much time building spreadsheet reports. And the first step of that is always pulling a bunch of data together from different places. If you never have to think about that again, then you can spend 100% of your time building really awesome dashboards.”
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