A client-facing portal that turns service delivery into a small SaaS product.
~75%
Less time spent on pipeline-status conversations
6+ hrs
A week the team used to spend answering status questions
The brief
A boutique recruiting firm placing around eighty candidates a year across twenty-five to thirty active client briefs at any time. Clients kept asking the same question, where is the candidate I shortlisted last week?, and the team was spending six-plus hours a week answering pipeline-status questions across email, phone and WhatsApp.
The firm wanted to stand apart from larger search houses on responsiveness, but its responsiveness wasn't scaling. Every client portal product on the market was either built for high-volume staffing agencies or required ripping out their existing ATS.
The build
A multi-tenant client portal, a small SaaS product owned and operated by the firm, sitting on top of their existing ATS. Each client logs in to see their open briefs, the live candidate pipeline (sourced, screened, interviewed, offered, placed) and the firm's curated shortlists for each role.
An AI layer writes short candidate summaries from CVs and consultant interview notes, so the client reads the consultant's narrative rather than a raw CV. Clients can leave inline feedback on shortlisted candidates (“not for us, the commute”), which writes straight back into the ATS as a structured note. The portal replaces an estimated 75–80% of pipeline-status conversations.
The firm now leads sales conversations with the portal (“you'll get a private dashboard for your search”), which has moved the conversation away from headhunter-fee anchoring.
Stack
What changed
- Pipeline-status conversation time cut by ~75%. Most clients self-serve before they email.
- Candidate-feedback loop tightened: client feedback writes into the ATS as structured data instead of getting buried in email.
- A sales differentiator. The portal is now part of the engagement pitch from the first meeting.
- The firm retains every line of code. Praxline operates the retainer; the IP belongs to the firm.
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