Case Study

How Globalfy Delivered 172,000 Services Without Increasing IT Dependence

Globalfy simplifies the entrepreneurial journey for international business owners. But as the company grew, increasing manual work and an overdependence on IT & custom coding became unsustainable.

Case study summary

Five years after launching in 2015, Globalfy began to expand its services to cover entrepreneurs in all 50 U.S. states. This meant creating specific workflows for every state in order to accommodate its unique laws and regulations. Within a short amount of time, Globalfy’s processes and workflows increased in number and complexity. 

 

Unfortunately, the project management tool the company had in place wasn’t user-friendly or adaptable. Every time business teams needed new workflows or updates to existing workflows, those additions and adjustments had to be hand-coded by the IT team.  

 

As a result, delays were common, business teams lacked the autonomy to create the solutions they needed quickly, and IT teams spent their resources managing a never-ending backlog of new requests. 

 

Today, Globalfy uses Pipefy to manage more than 80 individual processes across departments like Operations, Finance, HR, Purchasing, and IT. With the ability to build and manage workflows with autonomy, business teams no longer have to wait for IT help each time a workflow needs to be updated or optimized.

Challenges

In 2020, Globalfy was in the process of expanding its services to support international entrepreneurs to break into the U.S. market. But this began to create complications for the company as each state has its own legislation and procedures for starting a business. 

To manage its operations, the company used a project management tool, but it made processes hard to visualize, track, and glean for insights. It also required manual coding for any customization, no matter the complexity.

 

Communications with customers were also managed via manual and repetitive emails by the customer support team, making growth even more difficult.

As a global organization with collaborators around the world, Globalfy couldn’t scale its operations while relying heavily on custom coding and manual work. The company needed a tool that could standardize their primary processes and supporting workflows while reducing its business teams’ dependence on IT.  

 

Globalfy’s wish list for a new solution included: 

  • Flexibility to handle many types of workflows.
  • Scalability to keep pace with business growth.
  • Responsive automation and conditional logic.
  • Ease of use to empower business teams.
  • Easy and agile customization.

In the end, Globalfy chose Pipefy because of its adaptability and intuitive interface, key features that empowered business teams to create and manage workflows and free up IT resources for other projects. 

Pipefy gave Globalfy managers more autonomy. Before we started using it, I needed to look up code on the internet when I wanted to try to customize our systems. With Pipefy, each department is able to create and improve their processes in a matter of minutes.
Eva Palatinsky
Co-founder and CEO at Globalfy

Globalfy & Pipefy: setting up clients for success

One of Globalfy’s first priorities was optimizing the client onboarding experience. Prior to implementing Pipefy, customers were often frustrated by a lack of visibility in this process and the inevitable delays caused by too many manual steps.

 

Improving this process meant that Globalfy would have to:

  • Create an intuitive customer interface.
  • Reduce the amount of repetitive or manual work.
  • Provide customers more visibility into their requests.
  • Streamline, standardize, and structure customer intake workflows with responsive automation and conditional logic.

To get started, they decided to focus on the first step of their key process: the sign up form. With Pipefy, Globalfy created a standardized start form that captures all the essential information required to begin their business setup.

Rules and conditionals ensure the form is routed appropriately, using attributes such as the state in which the business will be located or the type of business. Once the start form is complete, automation guides users through the process and helps teams avoid errors. 

Client visibility

Globalfy realized a structured form was just the beginning of creating better customer experiences. To improve the end-to-end process, they would also need to create a custom portal that centralized information for their customers. To be successful, the portal would need to integrate with existing stack components and deliver more visibility for customers. 

 

Through Pipefy’s API integration features, Globalfy’s customer portal acts as a one-stop shop where customers can access forms, check statuses, and submit requests. 

 

When a client’s request moves to another phase in the process, an automated email notifies them of the change. Today, the customer portal reduces the number of email requests and inquiries received by the support team.

Fewer errors

Prior to Pipefy, Globalfy  drafted and managed contracts manually. In addition to introducing the possibility of errors, it also added layers of review. 

 

With Pipefy, contracts are managed seamlessly by automatically collecting data directly from the process with the PDF creation feature. Contracts are now less susceptible to error and take less time to complete, meaning teams spend less time on manual work and reviews. 

Faster processing

In addition to automating manual tasks, Globalfy needed a way to create workflows that adapt in real time to meet different scenarios. For example, if an incoming request relates to a business in Arizona it may require steps and tasks that are different from a similar request for a business in New York.

 

In order to maintain state-specific compliance requirements, Globally applied Pipefy’s conditional logic to these workflows.

 

Pipefy also enables Globalfy to connect and orchestrate their processes and workflows, so that parallel flows can be triggered automatically and run simultaneously. Now when the process for starting a new business begins, supporting workflows like accounts receivable begin automatically and an integration with Google Drive automatically organizes and stores files for easier reference later on. 

 

Today the Globalfy team can provide faster service to their customers because there’s no need to make adjustments manually. In many cases, customers start their business in as little as two days.

 

Pipefy was a game changer for Globalfy. In 2021 alone, we delivered almost 54,000 services and each one of them was managed inside Pipefy.
Eva Palatinsky
Co-founder and CEO at Globalfy

Simplifying entrepreneur journeys with Pipefy

Since implementing Pipefy, Globalfy has transformed what were once fragmented and inefficient processes into standardized, automated processes that scale. After one year, Globalfy delivered 54,000 services (roughly 4,500 per month). 

Today, Globalfy team uses Pipefy for various departments — such as Operations, Accounting, Finance, Sales, Marketing, Human Resources, Purchasing, IT — to manage parallel services.

This progress is the result of Pipefy’s intuitive, no-code interface, which gives business teams more autonomy and helps them avoid waiting for IT resources to build the solutions they need. 

Key results

50+ active pipes to manage 80+ processes

Reduced pressure on IT teams to handle every workflow automation and improvement

Automated more than half a million previously manual tasks

Implemented more than 854,800 active conditionals to speed up processing

Delivered 172,000+ customer services to date (54,000 in the first year alone)

About Globalfy

Globalfy’s mission is to help entrepreneurs establish their businesses in the U.S., a challenge co-founder Diego Sampaio knows first hand. In 2014, Sampaio successfully relocated his accounting firm from Brazil to the United States, but not without some logistical challenges. This experience made him realize that other entrepreneurs could benefit from a simpler and more streamlined solution.

Founded in 2015, Globalfy aims to simplify the entrepreneurial journey and provide comprehensive support to companies facing the challenges of entering the U.S. market. 

 

Globalfy’s all-in-one platform is designed to empower tech and e-commerce entrepreneurs by combining accounting, tax management, and business overview solutions into one place — no U.S. residential address required.

By providing an all-in-one service for international business owners, Globalfy takes the guesswork (and paperwork) out of getting started. Today, Globalfy has helped more than 5,000 LLC and C Corp clients in 53+ countries unlock their global potential with support in three languages: English, Portuguese, and Spanish.