This Showcase Project also appears on Bubble.io

Government services aren’t often renowned for their speed and efficiency. But when Justin Cullifer, co-founder of Atlanta-based consulting group APG Emerging Tech (APGET), and Lucas Bennington, founder of Bubble agency Codi Technologies, met at BubbleCon in October 2023, they quickly recognized there was an opportunity to change that.

Justin had been working with the City of Atlanta’s Department of Procurement for the past year, brainstorming ways to update and streamline their very manual operations. Come late November 2023 — one month after BubbleCon — and the teams were hard at work developing their first Bubble app for the city. By early January 2024, it was officially live. 

Today, Lucas and Justin’s partnership with the city has bloomed beyond procurement optimizations to accomplish additional workflow orchestration, a 50% cost savings relative to traditional coding, and licensing opportunities for other cities around the country.

Building a solution to support “billions” of spend

Think of Atlanta’s Department of Procurement as the conveyor belt for how the city sources and purchases goods and services for organizations like the international airport, police department, and public works. “Billions of dollars and spend every year go through this department,” Justin says.

“Bubble came into the picture when we decided to introduce workflow automation and build a much better user interface."

From the beginning of the city’s partnership with APGET, everyone knew that the city would benefit from modernizing their procurement platform. “Historically, they've relied upon phone calls, emails, and a number of different manual methods for keeping track of procurement requests,” explains Justin. “It makes things very, very challenging.”

The city’s system of record was — and remains — an Oracle database. “Bubble came into the picture when we decided to introduce workflow automation and build a much better user interface,” says Justin.

So APGET and Codi Technologies partnered to use Bubble to accommodate the city’s needs. The teams started planning in mid-November 2023, began development the last week in November, and deployed phase one — an app called GovAutomations Procurement — to production the first week in January 2024. 

Bubble shines as a “terrific candidate” for the frontend refresh

“GovAutomations Procurement is a portal that facilitates two things: First, suppliers can request a meeting with the Department of Procurement and explain who they are, what they do, and why they want to meet,” explains Justin. “And second, external companies can invite the Department of Procurement to attend and speak at their events. We built a gateway to bridge those introductions. After all, municipalities win when they have more qualified suppliers engaged with them and bidding on their projects.” 

Because the Oracle database drives processes outside the Department of Procurement as well, the Bubble frontend needed to fit neatly on top of the system and give users an easier way to interact with it. So Codi Technologies also built a robust administrative experience that integrates directly into the procurement staff’s day-to-day workflows. Through APIs, they configured the solution to push data, pull data, and present it in a user-friendly manner. 

Lucas says Bubble was a “terrific candidate” for layering on top of the legacy database. “We were able to turn around this really nice, beautiful application in sync with APGET and the City of Atlanta,” he emphasizes. “It was truly a team effort.”

Supporting government services through speed and efficiency

“Bubble was a great fit because of the speed at which we could deploy,” says Lucas. “It would have required many more developers and hours to accomplish a similar result [if designed and coded traditionally].”

Justin says the team is “extremely enthusiastic" about starting phase two of the project, which will lend a higher level of productivity and transparency to existing procurement workflows. For example: Today, it’s up to an individual to track whether a form was submitted, notarized, and so on. After phase two is complete, the system will guide a user through that process so nothing falls through the cracks. “We can easily see who owns what item at what stage. Think of it as an intense workflow orchestration, plus the Oracle integration, to ensure the two systems are in sync.”

What’s next? Expanding no-code’s reach

Justin and Lucas saw so much success with this project that the two have launched classes to help educate others on the possibilities with no-code. “There's so much opportunity for using no-code tools to build these kinds of solutions,” says Lucas. “Especially when companies need to modernize their systems to meet the needs of their customers and teammates.”

“We’ve done things the hard way for years. But now, everything is moving toward the no-code space.”

Plus, this partnership with the City of Atlanta has unlocked a whole new industry vertical — and demonstrates a different type of development outsourcing option for large-scale government and enterprise organizations. At the city’s request, APGET agreed to retain ownership of the platform the teams built so the city doesn’t have to maintain it themselves. Cities and municipalities interested in licensing and customizing the platform for their own needs can visit govautomations.com to learn more.

“We’ve done things the hard way for years,” Justin reflects, thinking about the time and resources he and others have poured into traditionally built projects. “But now, everything is moving toward the no-code space.”