As businesses grow, they often struggle to keep up with the demands of managing their operations. This was the case for airCFO, a startup that at the time had 40 employees and 120 clients. With their sights set on significant growth, they required an organizational operating system that could standardize and largely automate their tasks and could scale with them. However, their existing Notion architecture was confusing, had nuanced workflows, and low adoption rates. This led to bad or in some cases disappearing data and unused workflows. All of this operational debt put together drove increased operating expenses and lower employee satisfaction.

Enter Notion State, a company that specializes in building intelligent operating systems in Notion. Notion State was brought on to be airCFO’s Chief Notion Office. Notion State drove efforts at airCFO centered around three main activities: workspace design, application development, and workflow standardization and enhancement.

We took a comprehensive approach to understanding airCFO's existing databases. Our team audited the existing functionality, interviewed users to understand what they were doing and what they wanted, and developed a deep understanding of the aspirational use cases. Based on this information, we designed a database architecture that could support both their current needs and future state aspirations.

We then morphed their existing system into the future state while maintaining the integrity of historical data and data in use. This was a critical step to ensure a seamless transition and uninterrupted workflow. Our efforts resulted in an underlying infrastructure that was intuitive and capable of building airCFO's desired applications at scale. By taking this comprehensive approach, we were able to build a database architecture that not only met airCFO's immediate needs but also had the flexibility to evolve with their business.

After interviewing their users, we understood what they needed and wanted. We designed, built, and deployed core applications within airCFO's Notion workspace to manage and operate their internal operations. The core applications Notion State has deployed to date:

These applications were designed, built, and deployed within airCFO's Notion workspace, enabling easy access to data and information, streamlined communications, and transparent individual and program management. By deploying these applications, we were able to create a comprehensive operating system that enabled airCFO to manage and operate its internal operations more efficiently and effectively.

Our final activity is not so final, it is an ever-evolving activity that we have observed to become more valuable over time, as airCFO’s team continues to adopt the tool. This activity is centered around workflow standardization and enhancement, where we focus on streamlining airCFO's operations by creating intelligent workflows within their workspace. We leverage database templates to scale applications by utilizing self-referential fields and pre-configured database views. By doing so, we were able to standardize workflows such as client onboarding, new hire onboarding, customer success client escalations, repricing exercises, and client management. We also leverage database templates to standardize meeting agendas and note collection for 1:1 meetings, group meetings, and client meetings.

We placed an emphasis on simplifying execution for menial tasks by leveraging these pre-built workflows to standardize execution. This approach allowed us to build the system for the workflows, rather than fitting workflows to the system. The result was cleaner data, time saved on every repeated task, and a standardized model for airCFO's clients to interact with airCFO employees, driving consistent and reliable delivery.

While Notion State’s efforts have driven significant value for airCFO, adoption was and continues to be a challenge for airCFO. To address this, we embedded tech tip segments into all stand-ups and all-hands meetings, built a tech tips newsletter aggregating all new Notion features, tips, and tricks, and created video walkthroughs for all core workflows, building a workflow library and embedding these educational materials in the workflow templates. These efforts drove significant adoption and resulted in a value of $6-8k per month in savings for airCFO.

By building a smarter operating system, Notion State enabled easier access to data and information, streamlined communications, and transparent individual and program management. The 10-15 minutes saved per day per employee resulted in significant cost savings for airCFO. Furthermore, airCFO now has an operating system that will support its evolution from 100 clients to 400 and 40 practitioners to 140.