Carbone : The perfect tool for developing IT solutions

Ignatius, General Manager at NextFluent, has leveraged Carbone for the past two years, experiencing significant time savings and efficiency gains in report generation.

About NextFluent: Innovating Custom Software and SaaS Solutions

NextFluent operates with two distinct yet complementary divisions:

• SaaS Product: Our proprietary SaaS platform empowers clients to intuitively build dynamic forms and assessments, configure business-specific workflows, and generate insightful custom reports.
• Custom Software Development: We specialize in tailoring software solutions for a diverse clientele spanning the pharmaceutical, retail, HR, and consulting sectors. Our technological expertise encompasses Python, JavaScript, TypeScript, and various SQL and NoSQL databases, along with seamless integrations with enterprise systems like Salesforce, SAP, and Microsoft SEM.

How did you discover Carbone?

Our initial search for a suitable dynamic PDF generator proved to be a considerable challenge. We evaluated several products, including a 'PDF generator API,' which we trialed for an extended period.

Unfortunately, this solution was overly rigid and complex to implement, with setup proving difficult. For example, generating a moderately complex report could take three to four weeks of dedicated development time, significantly impacting progress on other crucial tasks like database development and ultimately feeling like a misdirection of effort. Our continued search eventually led us to Carbone, which thankfully provided an effective answer to our needs.

Key benefits of using Carbone

Our SaaS product, AssessFluence, demands robust and flexible report generation. Carbone has proven to be the ideal solution, addressing several key requirements:

Advanced Data Handling & Formatting

NextFluent processes diverse data, including from our assessment solution, which can be SQL or NoSQL based. This often results in JSON data that needs sophisticated formatting. Carbone handles this seamlessly, also supporting multilingual reports (e.g., English and French from a single template) and essential on-the-fly calculations. We can retrieve data directly from our databases without prior modification, simplifying the entire workflow.

Effortless Integration & White-Labeling

Carbone's integration capabilities are exceptional.

Its straightforward and efficient APIs allowed us to easily white-label Carbone within NextFluent, a stark contrast to the complexities of competing solutions. This ease of integration translates directly into significant time and cost savings. Furthermore, Carbone's support for numerous template types (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.) makes it a versatile, format-agnostic solution adaptable to any scenario.

Superior Cost-Effectiveness

When it comes to pricing, Carbone stands out as the most cost-effective solution by a significant margin. Compared to alternatives like Windward Studios, Carbone not only offers substantial savings but, in our experience, also delivers superior performance.

Carbone usage and future improvements

Carbone is integral to NextFluent's daily operations, utilized by numerous customers – some with over 500 users generating multiple reports daily. Its reliability has led to its integration in nearly all our customer projects.

We've taken this a step further by embedding Carbone Studio directly into NextFluent. This empowers our customers to modify their report templates with ease and autonomy. We are also actively developing HTML templates, a feature now fully supported with Carbone version 5.

Closing thoughts and partnership perspective

Adopting Carbone has been transformative for NextFluent. It allows our technical teams to focus on core product development by saving precious time previously spent on custom report template production. The consistently efficient and available support from the Carbone team is a decisive advantage, providing a comfort and a guarantee of quality that enables us to build superior products together. Our partnership with Carbone is a key factor in our success.