Ovation Planner & Estimator

From Quote to Factory on a Shared Graph

TL;DR

I designed and built two internal apps, Ovation Estimator (Sales) and Ovation Planner (Operations), on a shared, relational model of the business (Order, Task, Case, Feature, Status, Staff, Client).

They aligned Sales → Design → Build → Ops, reduced hand-over errors, and contributed to an ~80% lead-time reduction (12–14 weeks → ~2 weeks). At peak, the system tracked 1,273 orders, 9,549 tasks, 1,144 cases, and 8,865 case–feature links.

My role: Product & Design Lead (system modelling, UX, data design, delivery)
Organisation: Design Quintessence, Sydney
Stack: Google AppSheet + Google Workspace (role-based dashboards, structured sheets), light automation

Context & problem

Custom road cases are, by definition, bespoke. Our bottleneck wasn’t one heroic step—it was a chain of small inconsistencies: quoting from memory, design briefs missing details, jobs stuck between teams, and production asking “which version is the truth?”. The company needed a shared model of work and the right slice of that model on each team’s screen.

Goals

Make the work graph—people, orders, parts, tasks—legible and permissioned.
Replace email hand-offs with generated artefacts (estimate → design brief → work order).
Track flow and quality via dashboards & checklists; instrument what matters.

Users & surfaces

Sales: configure a case from a base template; price reliably; generate hand-over.
Design: receive a complete brief; attach drawing links; clarify edge-cases.
Production: see the day’s work with owners, blockers, and checklists.
Operations/Finance: track throughput, status, and exceptions.
Each team saw only their relationship slice (scope/permissions), not the entire data exhaust.

Domain model (entities & relationships)

Entities

Client, Order, Task, Case, Feature, Stock Item, Status, Staff, Case Type, Category.

Edges

Order → Task (1:N)
Task → Staff (N:1)
Task → Status (N:1)
Order → Client (N:1)
Case ↔ Feature (M:N) via a join table (USE CASES)
Task → Stock (e.g., material/item references)

Scale (selected)

Planner: 1,273 orders, 9,549 tasks

Estimator: 1,144 cases, 8,865 case–feature links, 195 features across 6 categories

(Counts shown to indicate scale; sensitive fields redacted.)

Solution overview

1) Ovation Estimator (Sales)

Start from base cases; add features (M:N) with design considerations and cost rules.

Export a structured estimate that doubles as the design brief (dimensions, case type, features, constraints).

Send seamlessly to Design → Planner without re-typing.

Ovation Planner (Design/Production/Ops)

Turn an Order into a relationship card: status, owners, tasks, next action, attached drawings.

Role-specific dashboards (Design, Manufacturing, Ops) with SLA badges and checklist gates.

Notes & issue log with timestamps, “raised by / resolved by / solution” (provenance).

Process

Discovery & mapping: shadowed Sales/Design/Factory; captured canonical objects and pain points.
Data design: normalised sheets; explicit USE CASES join for Case–Feature M:N; status dictionary.
Prototyping: built AppSheet views; iterated with teams in crit sessions.
Rollout: department by department; migrated live orders; trained super-users.
Governance: decision log, quality gates (a11y/content/latency), change notes.

Outcomes & impact

(Improvements reflect combined programme changes; these apps were a primary lever.)

Lead time: contributed to 12–14 weeks → ~2 weeks (≈ −80%) for a typical custom job.

Hand-over quality: materially fewer “missing info” loops between Sales→Design and Design→Factory.

Throughput & visibility: teams operated from one source of truth with daily dashboards.

Investment readiness: clearer operational telemetry supported factory expansion decisions.

Key UX patterns (Graph-first)

Relationship card: each entity’s “essence”, related edges (e.g., Order → Tasks), and compact actions.
Traversal: preview → details → neighbour (e.g., Case → Features → Feature spec), preserving context.
Scope & permissions: hide what you can’t see/do; grey only when temporarily blocked.
Provenance (“why this?”): source objects/time/agent on estimates and tasks; short rationale string; link to details.
Empty/loading/error: helpful empties (“add your first feature”), predictable skeletons, retry guidance.

⬆Top: Screenshots from Ovation Planner and different surfaces for sales, ops, design, and manufacturing managers and their staff.

⬅ Left: Ovation Estimator and relational price estimation based on a the case models, use-cases (features x dimensions), and quantities.