The FAVRs — Search Small MDE Sales Tracker
The FAVRs
2025 – 2026
The Organization
The FAVRs is an organization dedicated to supporting small and local businesses through programs, visibility, and community-driven initiatives. Search Small MDE is one of their flagship products, a structured sales and ambassador program that connects small businesses with resources and support. Operating across a bilingual (Spanish/English) team that includes sales reps in the field, community ambassadors building relationships, and management overseeing the full pipeline, The FAVRs needed infrastructure to match the scope of what Search Small MDE was becoming.
Please note: This case study reflects work completed during the active engagement. Metrics and systems reflect the platform as built and deployed during this period.
The Challenge
The entire Search Small MDE sales operation was running through a single Excel spreadsheet, one rep, one file, no real-time visibility. As the team grew to include multiple sales reps, community ambassadors, and a hybrid sales-ambassador role, the spreadsheet became a liability: managers couldn't see live pipeline data, there was no structured history of what happened to each lead, reporting required manual formula updates, and the ambassador referral pipeline had no home at all.
The goal was to replace it entirely, not patch it, with a purpose-built platform that reflected how the Search Small MDE team actually worked.
My Role
I served as the sole developer and systems architect for this engagement, responsible for every layer of the platform: database design, server infrastructure, UI/UX, authentication and role-based access, the reporting engine, and all third-party integrations. This was a greenfield build, every component was designed and built from scratch.
The Approach
The platform was built in four phases, each layering new capability onto a foundation designed for how the Search Small MDE team actually works.
Foundation & Core Pipeline
Before writing a single UI component, I designed the data model. The database schema was built around leads as the central object, each with a full status history, meaning every state a business ever moved through (Prospect → Contacted → Visited → Pitched → Closed Won / Closed Lost) was recorded as an individual timestamped entry, not an overwritten field. This gave managers a complete audit trail for every business in the pipeline. Authentication enforced role boundaries at both the application layer and database level: reps could only see their own leads; managers could see everything. Weekly and monthly reports were built as server-computed queries, replacing the manual formulas that had required someone to update the spreadsheet.
Multi-Role Architecture
The platform was built to support four distinct roles: Manager, Rep, Ambassador, and Sales Ambassador, a hybrid role combining full rep and ambassador capabilities. Each role received a purpose-built dashboard: reps track leads and submit handoff requests; ambassadors manage warm lead referrals, log events, and submit articles as required monthly deliverables; sales ambassadors see both views in one dashboard; managers get a team-level KPI overview, rep comparison chart, ambassador activity monitoring, and a warm leads panel for reviewing and assigning all incoming referrals. The handoff system always routes through management: reps cannot hand off leads directly to other reps.
Bilingual Operations & Auto-Translation
The team operates bilingually: reps and ambassadors add notes in Spanish; managers primarily work in English. I built a TranslateButton component, placed contextually on all rep-written and ambassador-written notes, that uses the Google Translate API to render an inline English translation on demand. No copy-pasting into Google Translate, no workflow interruptions. The platform UI itself is fully bilingual via next-intl, with Spanish as the default language and English as the secondary.
Historical Data & Advanced Filtering
I rebuilt the dashboard and reporting architecture to support a dashboard month picker (single-month selection via URL parameter, with a visual indicator when viewing a past month) and a multi-month report filter bar (select one, several, or all months to aggregate data across time periods). All filtering is server-side: the database query receives the month selection and returns only the relevant data, keeping the browser fast regardless of how much history exists.
Ambassador Program Module
The ambassador dashboard tracks six metrics across a dedicated KPI grid: Businesses Added, Events Attended, Articles Submitted (marked as Required), Insights Shared, Referrals Sent, and Referrals Accepted. Articles are the only metric with a Required badge, a visual indicator carried through both the ambassador's own dashboard and the manager's Ambassador Activity panel, including a red alert marker when an ambassador has submitted zero articles in the period.
Event logging captures the event name, date, location, and a required accomplishment note, so every Search Small MDE event has a documented outcome, not just a check in a box.
The Platform in Action
Weekly Report view showing pipeline metrics, visit tracking, and multi-week bar chart
7 tracked metrics per week: New Businesses, In Pipeline, Visits, Pitches, Sales, Onboarded, Conversion Rate
By the Numbers
50+
Businesses Tracked
Since launch
4
Active Users
2 reps, 2 managers
2
Daily Active Reps
Using the platform every day
4
User Roles
Manager, Rep, Ambassador, Sales Ambassador
2
Languages
English + Spanish (full bilingual UI)
30+
Fields Per Business
Tracked across the full lead lifecycle
6
Pipeline Stages
With full timestamped status history
2
Report Types
Weekly + Monthly, auto-generated
1
Spreadsheet Replaced
Entirely
Stack
Next.js · TypeScript · Supabase PostgreSQL · Vercel · Google Translate API · next-intl · Tailwind CSS · Recharts · NextAuth
What Performed Best
The server-side filtering architecture was the highest-leverage technical decision in the build. Switching to URL-parameter-driven server rendering meant the database does the work, the browser receives only what's needed, and the URL is shareable and bookmarkable, a manager can send a direct link to a specific month's pipeline report and it opens in exactly that state. The TranslateButton component proved immediately useful in practice: placing translation on-demand rather than auto-translating everything kept the interface clean for Spanish speakers while giving English-speaking managers full context in one click.
What We Learned
- Role complexity compounds quickly. Designing shared role-check helper functions early, rather than hardcoding role checks throughout the codebase, made adding the fourth role (sales ambassador) straightforward instead of a refactor.
- Zero-data users must be explicit, not assumed. Without deliberate architecture to include all users regardless of activity, managers would see only reps who had data in a given period, a false picture of who was inactive vs. who simply had no leads yet. Every team member appears in every report, always.
- Database-level access constraints protect against UI bugs. Enforcing permissions at the row level in Postgres means a bug in a component can't accidentally expose one rep's data to another, the database itself enforces the boundary.
- Required deliverables need visual pressure. Marking articles as "Required" with a badge, and surfacing a red alert in the manager's panel when the count is zero, turned a soft expectation into a visible accountability mechanism.
What This Built
Beyond the features, this engagement produced a platform The FAVRs can grow into. The database is structured to support additional roles, new lead fields, or new report types without rebuilding core logic. The Search Small MDE ambassador program module is designed to expand: event types, article categories, and referral workflows can all be extended without touching the rest of the app. The spreadsheet is retired. The infrastructure is in place.
The Search Small MDE Sales Tracker is an active, living project. It's actively managed, updated, and improved in response to real-world use and user feedback, so this case study evolves in real time as the tool grows. At Laura and Vie's Legacy, we're always looking for ways to refine our custom software tools and services for clients. We value your feedback and treat it as a core part of how we build, ensuring every tool keeps delivering the best possible service.