For a client in working commercial real estate, we designed and developed a proprietary market analysis tool.

This tool is the result of many hours of consultation with the client, observing and discussing their existing market research practice. The previous technique required lots of manual data transfer and entry -- a significant amount of repeated work that we recognized was a candidate for automation.

Much of the previous work was done in spreadsheets, but it was clear that the clients needed more database-like functionality. That said, the spreadsheet-like view of the data was useful. We ended up developing a custom Python-spreadsheet UI engine, effectively creating a software-capable spreadsheet.

The new software provides the familiar spreadsheet-like functionality, but integrates database-like functionality that is not possible in spreadsheets. For example, previous year market analysis data can be viewed inline with current data, to allow in-application viewing of long-term market trends. Comparisons can also be made between markets, rather than restricting work to one market at a time.