From spreadsheet to web app: how acosorb put cost estimation in every dealer's hands
acosorb develops and applies seamless acoustic sprays and plasters for walls and ceilings, reducing reverberation without compromising aesthetics.
In renovation tenders and architecture bids, a slow quote is a lost deal. That was the risk acosorb faced every time a dealer outside headquarters needed a cost estimate. So we built the solution differently: a fast, visible process, built together with the people who'd use it every day, that took ten weeks from idea to a live tool.
The challenge: scaling quoting across a global dealer network
Every growing company has one of these: a spreadsheet so critical that the business quietly depends on it. For acosorb, that spreadsheet was a project calculator: a detailed Excel model that took product choices (sprays, plasters, textures), surface dimensions, coating thickness, labor and installation variables, waste factors, and shipping, and turned them into a precise cost estimate.
It worked. It just didn't scale.
The calculator lived at headquarters. Dealers in Berlin, Mumbai, and Singapore didn't have access to it, so every new assignment meant a manual request back to HQ: a spreadsheet emailed here, a rough approximation guessed there. That back-and-forth was inconvenient and costing acosorb deals.
Leadership was clear on what they needed: independence for dealers to calculate materials and costs on their own, less friction between dealers and HQ, and a solution that didn't require the six-to-eighteen-month timeline of a traditional custom software build.
The solution: an offer configurator built in weeks, not years
We took a different approach: build the tool with acosorb, not for them, using a low-code platform that let us go quickly from Excel logic to a working, dealer-ready application without a traditional multi-month software project.
Efficiency and predictability were non-negotiable for acosorb. The process itself needed to deliver on its promise, not just the end result, so we worked in three short, visible phases over roughly ten weeks: a fast prototype built directly from the existing spreadsheet, a round of validation where we walked real dealers through it on live calls, and a final build shaped by exactly what those dealers said they needed.
"We've all heard horror stories of software projects that took years and delivered nothing. We wanted and got the opposite: our dealers had this tool within a quarter."
— Caspar ter Bille, founder acosorb
The Excel calculator itself wasn't thrown out, but we used it as the blueprint. Every formula, every dependency between product type and coating thickness, every waste-factor rule carried over faithfully. We didn't just copy it into a new interface, though; we translated it into something that fit how a dealer actually works day to day, and fit acosorb's own practical, entrepreneurial character rather than a rigid corporate system.
How the offer configurator works for dealers and customers
The result is a clean three-way flow.
acosorb keeps its calculation spreadsheet exactly as it always has, internal only, holding the master data and calculation rules. The sheet remains the ideal starting point precisely because it let the team move fast.
Dealers get an online offer configurator, sitting behind a login, that exposes a deliberate subset of that information and those calculation rules, with scope continuing to expand over time as the tool matures.
Customers, in turn, don't have to wait days for a quote, they get one on the spot. Dealers build it with the configurator, and fine-tune it before it goes out the door.
Nothing left HQ's control. Dealers just stopped waiting on it.
The results: faster quotes, fewer errors, more independent dealers
The offer calculator turned a single point of failure — one spreadsheet, one team, one location — into a shared, self-service resource. Dealers no longer wait on headquarters to move a quote forward, and the numbers on both ends of a deal now come from the same source of truth. It's early days for measuring the full impact, but the direction is already clear: faster quotes, fewer errors, and a much lighter operational load on the central team.
"Our dealers can now turn around a quote while they're still standing in front of the customer. That changes what's possible in a sales conversation."
— Caspar ter Bille, founder acosorb
The calculator has become part of the sales conversation itself: dealers work out the numbers live, in front of the customer, instead of waiting until after the meeting to figure out whether an opportunity is worth pursuing and how much product it actually needs.
"When I'm talking with a customer, I play with the calculator right there and get a sense of what it'll cost per squaremeter and what the opportunity is worth. I've used it to work out a project needs 300 or 500 bags, then gone straight to the warehouse to check what we have in stock."
— Gareth Howell, Sales Lead Asia
It's also started shortening the distance between a sales conversation and a decision about stock and shipping, which is something the original brief never asked for.
acosorb didn't set out to build a piece of software. They set out to stop losing deals to slow quotes. With the right approach and a process validated with real users at every step, it can become software your whole network uses, built in weeks, not years.
Got a spreadsheet running your business?
We build custom web apps in weeks instead of years, so your whole team can use what used to live in one file. Let's talk about what's possible.
