From prehistoric Google sheets to Tabidoo: 5,000 business cases in one system

Tabidoo brought us from the Stone Age into the modern era.

Jiří Zmidloch, Founder of Z-AGENCY and TerraHunt

A small team, hundreds of events and a lot of data

Z-AGENCY has been organizing corporate events and team-building activities since 2010. Its flagship offering is Treasure Hunt programs, which eventually led to the creation of its own gaming platform, TerraHunt. Today, Z-AGENCY is one of the largest providers of treasure hunt games in Central Europe.

And yet, there are only six people in the office. Around them is a network of more than 60 external instructors, artists, specialists, and lecturers, working together to deliver hundreds of events across the Czech Republic every year. Each one requires the right people, equipment, and information to come together at the right time.

A small in-house team. A large operation. Exactly the kind of company where spreadsheets work perfectly. Until there are too many of them.

Ten years in Google sheets. Then they stopped being enough.

Sales. HR. Inventory of equipment, activities, and props. For nearly ten years, a large part of the company lived in Google Sheets. They were interconnected and did their job well for a long time. But the company kept growing. And with it, so did the amount of data, people, and processes.

Suddenly, it wasn’t easy to see how many inquiries were open, what stage they were at, or who was handling them. Client history wasn’t stored in one place. Coordinating external collaborators was split across more spreadsheets and Facebook groups.

And when Jiří wanted to know about seasonality, proposal success rates, or how many clients were coming back? Instead of data, he had estimates. The spreadsheets still worked. They just no longer worked well enough to run the business.

There were plenty of CRMs. Just none built for Z-AGENCY.

In 2020, Jiří started looking for a replacement. Sales came first. He tried Raynet, Pipedrive, Caflou, and other tools. The problem wasn’t that they couldn’t handle CRM. It was something else: Z-AGENCY would have had to adapt its processes to the way the chosen software worked. And Jiří wanted the exact opposite.

What caught his attention about Tabidoo was that it wasn’t another ready-made template the company had to fit into. It was a building kit. Instead of asking, “How do we need to change our business to make the CRM work?”, the question became: “How should the app work to fit our business?”

Sales first. Nearly 5,000 business cases later.

The first custom app was Sales. But it’s more than just a CRM. In Tabidoo, Z-AGENCY built a combination of a sales system and a process board designed around the way its sales process actually works.

Each business case follows the entire journey: lead → inquiry → order → final invoice payment. Everything in one place, connected by tags and notifications so that no case slips through the cracks.

Since 2021, nearly 5,000 business cases from more than 2,400 companies have passed through the app. More importantly, what started as a system of record has become a management tool. For each year, Jiří has dashboards showing revenue, the number of inquiries handled, individual salespeople’s success rates, and comparisons with previous years.

Sales is no longer managed by gut feeling. It’s managed by numbers. And when a client comes back after two years? The team can see their entire history: which program they booked, where it took place, and how much it cost. A new proposal can be prepared in a fraction of the time it used to take.

„Who can run Bond for us?”

Sales was just the beginning. People came next. Alongside its six in-house employees, Z-AGENCY works with an extensive network of external collaborators – freelancers, students, contractors, specialists, and external companies. And knowing just their name and phone number isn’t enough. The team needs to know what each person can actually do. Junior or senior? Core team or support? Can they lead an entire event? Which programs are they trained for? Can they run an online event? How good is their English? Can they drive?

That’s why Z-AGENCY created the HR app. Today, when putting together a team for an event, they don’t have to rely on whoever happens to come to mind. They can filter people by what they can actually do.

Now find the box for Sherlock

The warehouse is perhaps the best example of how Tabidoo works in practice. Standard inventory systems assume that a company buys and sells goods. Z-AGENCY needed something completely different – a way to keep track of a large number of team-building programs, activities, and equipment stored across several locations. Plus tablets, phones, AirTags, SIM cards, electronics, and even the contents of first-aid kits.

Before an event, the instructor opens the Warehouse app and selects the relevant program. For example, Escape from the Castle, James Bond, The Cases of Sherlock Holmes, or Indiana and the Holy Grail. Tabidoo shows them the specific set, which warehouse it’s stored in, the box label, its contents, and the quantity of each item. They arrive. Find the right box. Grab it. Head to the event. The system also helps track missing or damaged equipment and, for first-aid kits, expiration dates.

The Warehouse app wasn’t built perfectly on the first try. Jiří first had to work out its logic – from the smallest inventory unit to its connection with a specific program. He kept refining the system until it matched what Z-AGENCY actually needed.

And that’s the whole point of a building kit. You don’t have to force your process into the system. You can shape the system around your process.

A contract in four seconds

Once the data is in the right place, it can start doing more. That’s why Z-AGENCY gradually connected Tabidoo to automations and other internal systems via API. In HR, this now means onboarding with a single click. A new collaborator receives a form, fills it in, submits it, and their details are automatically added directly to the HR app.

No manual data entry. And when an employment agreement needs to be created? One click. Four seconds. Done. The complete agreement is generated automatically, including a notification.

What once had to be put together manually with Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V now takes just a few seconds.

It started with spreadsheets. Today, AI works with the same data.

Since Z-AGENCY started using Tabidoo, the world of business software has changed dramatically. And Jiří has changed with it.

Today, he makes extensive use of automation, custom AI systems, and agentic frameworks. Via Tabidoo’s API, data is used for instructor payroll, internal e-learning, and marketing segmentation. AI agents also work with sales data when preparing proposals and analyzing sales performance.

You might expect that after six years, it would be time for another migration. But Tabidoo isn’t going anywhere. It remains the source of truth. Its data is combined with sources such as sales emails and mailing tools, providing the foundation for customer segmentation and sales strategies.

People who want to work directly with the data use Tabidoo. Those building automations or AI systems access the same data via API. One data foundation. For people and AI.

“Tabidoo brought us from the Stone Age into the modern era. And even though the development of software systems is now accelerating exponentially thanks to AI, Tabidoo definitely won’t be left behind. It has prepared extremely well for this new era.”

Jiří Zmidloch, Founder of Z-AGENCY and TerraHunt

What runs in Tabidoo today?

• Sales. Nearly 5,000 business cases from more than 2,400 companies, plus dashboards that make it possible to actually manage sales based on data.
• HR. In-house employees and more than 60 external collaborators, including their competencies, training, and qualifications.
• Warehouse. Programs, activities, props, electronics, and first-aid kits, including exact locations and quantities.
• Petty Cash. A smaller agenda that doesn’t require introducing another standalone tool.
• Automation. Onboarding without manual data entry, contracts generated in four seconds, and data powering other internal tools and AI.

And the biggest advantage? When 60 people need access to the system

There’s one more thing that matters to Z-AGENCY. More than 60 external collaborators need access to certain information, some of them perhaps only for a few minutes every now and then. With traditional SaaS software that charges a license fee for every user, Jiří says this model would quickly stop making economic sense.

Tabidoo doesn’t charge based on the number of users. This means Z-AGENCY can give access to everyone who actually needs it, without every additional external collaborator adding another monthly license fee.

A company shouldn’t have to adapt to its software

Z-AGENCY started looking for a new system because it had outgrown spreadsheets. It could have ended up with a CRM. Then added an HR system. Then warehouse software. And eventually more tools for everything that didn’t quite fit into any of them.

Instead, Z-AGENCY built sales, HR, warehouse management, and petty cash in Tabidoo around its own processes. And six years later, that may be the best answer to why the company is still using it.

The company didn’t have to learn how to work around the software. The software learned how to work around the company.

Is Your Company Still Living in Spreadsheets?

Maybe it’s your sales pipeline. Maybe your warehouse. HR. Approvals. Or that one specific process that no off-the-shelf software has ever quite fit. You don’t have to force it into another one-size-fits-all app. Build an app around the way your company actually works.

Describe in your own words what you need to track, manage, or automate. Tabidoo AI will help you build an app around your process.

First, a sentence. Then, an app.