Customer Case: World-Class Visual Creative Studio Empowers Global Workforce

Setting the stage for creativity and success across the business

The Third Floor is a globally recognized visualization studio, bringing cinematic and gaming stories to life before filming starts. From Marvel blockbusters to Star Wars sagas, their work powers the world's most iconic visual storytelling.

Following their successes, the company began to expand rapidly. But while their creative tools were state-of-the-art, their internal business operations were stuck in a tangled web of outdated systems and manual processes.

Betty Blocks hit every mark that we needed a low-code platform to hit bullseye on: database, integrations, clean UX. Other platforms didn’t come close.

jeremy-oddo

Jeremy Oddo | Global Director of Technology at The Third Floor

A challenger approaches: How can we scale without ensuing chaos?

The Third Floor faced challenges brought upon by internal software not scaling with the genius minds and products it harboured within its fold.

Though developers built world-class tools for artists, business departments like HR and finance were left behind, managing people data in Google Sheets, legacy FileMaker databases, and manual processes.

This is, of course, a stark contrast when the studio is responsible for producing the stunning visual effects seen in hit series like House of the Dragon. A rapid change needed to ensue. “We’d track the same person across four spreadsheets, with slightly different names. It just didn’t scale.” Jeremy Oddo, Director of IT, laments.

As project headcounts could spike by 25 people in a single week, onboarding needed to move faster. The only caveat is that onboarding processes could quickly get out of hand, seeing an increase in manpower and manual effort.

These were valuable resources that The Third Floor could not afford to miss.

The quest for a low-code platform that could keep up

Since The Third Floor is driven by unparalleled creative innovation, they demanded the same attention to detail from their software. Oddo and his team evaluated multiple no-code / low-code platforms. Their main priority was to be able to create applications around the needs of the company rapidly, but also be able to extend outwards to serve their remote workforce. In a saturated market, Betty Blocks stood out for seamless connectivity with platforms.

Betty Blocks makes it possible to seamlessly connect their custom apps with business software such as Adobe Sign through a GraphQL API. Third-party integrations allowed The Third Floor to boost its applications even further without resorting to building missing features from scratch. Other determining factors for choosing Betty Blocks as their go-to low-code platform are:

Rapid development

Enabled application development without extensive web/database expertise.

Ease of installation

Provided the necessary infrastructure without manual server setup.

Flexibilty

Offers flexibility for business-level applications with external access needs.

Platform compatibility

Ability to integrate with the existing platform database through a remote model type.

Developer IDE

Enable global developer environment access to support cross-continental teams.

UI development

Clean UI development that is automatically responsive on mobile and desktop.

People Hub App

A next-gen application featuring a database to help track their team of top-shelf creative people. The People Hub is a completely custom-built workforce management software suite for all employee matters. It focuses on unified employee data across departments and sites, supporting their offices around the world. Moreover, the People Hub is used to hire, rehire, or offboard employees diligently.

Key features of the People Hub application:

Candidate tracking

Candidate tracking and profile creation.

Document management and automation

Offer letter generation and contract management and automated accounting provisioning and email setup.

Notifications

Email notification and Slack updates when a candidate moves to a new hiring stage.

Project Tracker App

A tailored application that makes tracking projects across their global offices a breeze. Seamlessly links people to projects, eliminates silos, and fosters greater collaboration between both internal and remote teams.

Key features of the Project Tracker application:

Detailed kick-off tasks

Create detailed project kick-off tasks that include crucial details such as which software needs to be used and which people need to be involved.

Automation

Automated emails and Slack messages are sent out to the relevant stakeholders once a new project ticket has been created.

Integrated guardrails

Integrated guardrails, such as flagging missing field information, to ensure that tickets are created with the correct information.

Creating a new internal standard for global applications

A year later, business users say they can’t imagine going back. Apps do the work of multiple admin hours per hire. Processes are consistent, trackable, and scalable.

“Our HR team now gets automatic calendar reminders—30 days after someone starts—to do check-ins with new employees. These things just happen now. Without Betty Blocks, we’d need to hire more people just to keep up. Now we build what we need—and fast.”

There’s a lot hanging in the balance when working with state-of-the-art video and visualization technologies, be it software or hardware. Having a low-code platform that adapts seamlessly to these modern needs is what helps The Third Floor achieve results faster. Betty Blocks empowered a dev team with little web or infrastructure background to create enterprise-grade tools, without touching AWS or writing SQL.