Case Studies

Portobello Behavioural Health

"Rapid Indigo built a system that helped us both to scale and have a more efficient, effective way of working to use our data in a much smarter way.”

From complexity to confidence: Scaling operations without chaos

We don’t fit into a neat model of service provision, so an off-the-shelf solution was never going to work for our complexity. We managed, but the volume of work felt like it could hamper our ability to continue to scale the business.

Rapid Indigo built a system that helped us both to scale and have a more efficient, effective way of working to use our data in a much smarter way.

- Nicolay Sorensen, COO and Partner, Portobello Behavioural Health

Portobello Behavioural Health was spending hours every week managing a complex and disjointed system for tracking coaches’ invoices, payments, and client billing. Three months later, they have a unified operations platform that connects all their tools together and makes billing simple for both coaches and admins.

Now they’ve got a scalable operational backbone that preserves the nuance and humanity of their work.

The Challenge

Portobello provides comprehensive mental health care, but coaching is the most complex service. It can mean regular one-to-one sessions through to driving someone to rehab, spending 24/7 with a client, or crisis support.

With 50+ coaches logging over 4,500 hours per month, and each coach submitting their timesheets and invoices in their own way, administration is complex, slow, open to error, and difficult to scale. Leadership spent valuable time verifying timesheets and invoices and there was the niggling concern that some work wasn’t getting billed.

So, the company was stuck:

Leadership was juggling tedious admin
Sensitive data and critical operations were spread across disconnected tools
Admin workflows couldn’t scale
Hiring more admin risked more opportunity for errors

They needed a joined-up system that standardised submissions, made verification simple, payment runs fast, and connected to billing. But there still needed to be room for the human judgment that’s central to their work.

Their options and why they chose Rapid Indigo

No off-the-shelf software could capture the coaching complexity without forcing Portobello Behavioural Health to bend their process to fit the software. They explored every possibility:

Hire more admin staff
Adopt a big SaaS platform (but coaching didn’t fit the mould)
Use PeoplePerHour-style marketplaces (expensive and a rigid work style)
Commission fully coded software (could take over a year and is expensive)

“We knew a bespoke system would work better. But where do you start? What if you invest and it still isn’t good enough? Or gets abandoned halfway because it got out of hand?”

Then a trusted connection introduced Nicolay to Rapid Indigo - the best of bespoke software with the speed of low/no-code delivery. But it was their approach that stood out:

“Rapid Indigo was willing to understand our needs before telling us the solution. They wanted to build a system that worked for us, not force us to restructure how we work.”

What they built

Over three months, Rapid Indigo and Portobello worked hand-in-hand from discovery to prototype to rollout. Instead of reinventing the wheel, they connected best-in-class systems into one coherent workflow:

A bespoke coaching platform (Noloco front end, Airtable backend)
A unified activity and reporting workflow, linking every coaching action to its corresponding report
Automatic generation of billable items
A direct integration into Xero for client invoicing
Bulk BACS payment file creation so PBH could pay coaches in one click
Coach-level compliance management (DBS, public liability insurance, documents)
A CRM for assigning coaches to clients to make sure each person was getting the right support

Now, everything works together.

“They didn’t try to change how we work. They made our multiple systems talk nicely and built around how we actually operate.”

The Results

Immediate: standardised submission processes, fast verification and super-fast weekly payment runs.
Long-term: a scalable system that can support double the number of coaches with minimal additional admin.
Strategic: clear, reliable operational data informs decisions at every level.

What was once a mess of exports, spreadsheets, and manual checking, is now a standardised process. There are fewer issues and queries and validation checks are fast. Plus, the payment runs take minutes instead of an entire evening each week.

“We could double our coaching team tomorrow, from a systems perspective. The platform could handle that now.”

The new system gives the team confidence that nothing is missed, unreported, or unbilled. They’ve got total oversight and control. It’s also become a blueprint for improving other parts of the business.

And because the tools now speak to each other, there’s a wealth of data that can inform the growth of the business.

“All the information I might want, I can now access. It gives me a very clear picture from every angle.”

Crucially, the system still allows the team to override automation when human judgment is needed.

“We don’t sell widgets; we deal with humans. The system can’t dictate everything. It has to allow for nuance.”

Portobello Behavioural Health now has a scalable, reliable, and human-centred operational engine that supports every aspect of their coaching. It’s freed their team to focus on what matters most: the people they serve.

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