Case Study: Building "The Board Matrix" — A Multi-Tenant SaaS Platform for Executive Board Recruitment

Client: US-based marketing & media agency (Ohio) Industry: Marketing / media / executive recruitment services Engagement: Fixed-price, 7 weeks (Dec 5, 2025 – Jan 23, 2026), with continued retainer Verified Upwork contract — 5.0 / 5.0 mutual rating, $200 client bonus, ongoing engagement

The brief

The client is a US-based marketing and media agency that works with companies across retail, manufacturing, consulting, and hospitality. As part of their service offering, they help client companies recruit board members and executive advisors — a process that's notoriously subjective, slow, and dependent on whoever happens to be running the search.

They came to me with a specific problem: they were running this entire workflow in offline Excel spreadsheets, scored by hand, with no consistent methodology across clients. They wanted to productize it — turn their internal hiring methodology into a branded, multi-tenant platform their end clients could log into and use directly.

In short: they wanted to take their consulting service and turn it into software.

The problem

The existing process broke down at every layer:

No consistency between clients. Every client engagement was scored slightly differently because the methodology lived in a consultant's head, not in a system.
No structured methodology for evaluating candidates. Scoring was largely subjective. There was no way to say "this candidate ranks higher than that one because of these specific factors."
No client-facing surface. End clients had no portal of their own — every interaction was email back-and-forth with the agency.
Excel didn't scale. Adding a new client meant duplicating a spreadsheet. Adding a new board position meant editing a tab. There was no way to operate this at volume.

The agency needed a system where any of their clients could log in, post a board position, define what they value in candidates, evaluate applicants against that definition, and get an objective, ranked output — without the agency having to touch each evaluation manually.

What I built: The Board Matrix

A multi-tenant SaaS platform for executive board recruitment.

Published at boardmatrixscore.com — a fully branded, client-facing portal where the agency's end clients log in, manage their companies and open positions, define evaluation criteria, evaluate candidates, and receive ranked results.

The data architecture (Airtable backend)

The system is built on a fully relational, multi-tenant Airtable base with 12+ interconnected tables:

Clients — the agency's end customers
Admin Access — per-client login and permissions
Companies — company entities under each client
Positions (Requisitions) — open board roles per company
Attribute List — the master library of evaluable attributes
Trait Table — the master library of personal traits
Matrices — per-position scoring matrices
Matrix Attribute — attributes weighted into specific matrices (A/B/C/D scoring tiers)
Board Members — registered candidate pool
Applications — candidate applications to specific positions
Candidate Attributes — attributes claimed by each candidate
Candidate Attribute Ratings — per-attribute scoring per candidate
Matrix Final — the calculated ranking output

The scoring methodology

For each open position, the client defines a custom matrix of attributes, with each attribute weighted A through D (where A is the highest weight). Each candidate is also profiled against a set of personal traits, scored 1–5. The system applies the position-specific weighting to each candidate's attribute and trait scores and calculates a final weighted ranking — surfacing the top candidate per position automatically.

This replaces what was previously a subjective consulting judgment with a transparent, defensible scoring methodology that the agency can explain to its clients.

The client-facing portal (Softr layer)

The first version used Airtable Interfaces. As the project scaled, I migrated the entire client-facing surface to Softr — published to a custom domain with full white-label branding, per-client logins, role-based access control, candidate intake forms, application views, and ranking dashboards.

Each end client logs in and sees only their own companies, positions, and candidates. The agency oversees the entire ecosystem from the admin layer.

The automation layer

Seven automations run the platform end-to-end:

New board members created in Softr automatically sync to the Airtable backend
Board member updates trigger downstream record updates
New matrix attributes auto-propagate across relevant matrices
Matrix changes trigger scripted attribute synchronization
Attribute additions cascade across all matrices that should inherit them
Matrix sync flags ensure scoring stays current as criteria evolve
Candidate ratings auto-update on matrix saves

Every layer of the platform is keyed off these automations — no manual data entry, no scoring drift between clients, no inconsistency.

Tech stack: Airtable (relational backend, 12+ tables), Softr (client-facing portal, white-labeled at boardmatrixscore.com), 7 production automations, scripted matrix-syncing logic.

Build time: 7 weeks. Engagement continued post-launch with a $500 retainer for design polish and platform optimization.

The outcome

A consulting service was productized into a software platform. What was previously billable consulting hours is now a system the agency's clients use directly — freeing the agency to take on more clients without proportionally more overhead.
Subjective scoring became transparent and defensible. Every ranking can be explained back to the client with the underlying matrix and weights.
Multi-tenant from day one. Adding a new client is a configuration task, not an engineering task — every new account inherits the same scoring infrastructure.
Days saved per recruitment cycle. What used to take days of manual spreadsheet work per position now happens in real time as candidates apply.
Still in production today. The platform is live at boardmatrixscore.com, the client continued the engagement with off-platform follow-on work, and they paid a $200 bonus on top of the contracted scope.

What the client said

Verified Upwork review, January 2026 — 5.0 / 5.0:

"Very responsive and willing to quickly address any issues. Committed to success."

The client tagged the engagement with: Committed to Quality · Solution Oriented · Clear Communicator · Accountable for Outcomes.

What this means for you

If you run a consulting or services business that depends on a methodology in someone's head — there's almost certainly a productized version of your service that can run on Airtable + Softr. Multi-tenant. White-labeled. Operated by you, used directly by your clients. Built right, this is how a service business turns into a product business.

If you're a marketing or media agency offering recruiting, evaluation, or scoring services — there's a version of The Board Matrix for whatever you're trying to systematize. The architecture is the asset. The domain is just configuration.

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