Why a Software Consultant Has Recommended Knack to Clients for 10+ Years

Mike Moore & Livesey Brothers

Examine most small- to medium-sized businesses and you’ll find it: the spreadsheet that holds everything together. Orders live on one tab, work-in-progress on another, and a fragile column hides rules that only one person understands. What happens when that file becomes the system? What happens when the spreadsheet your company is built on starts slowing it down?

Mike Moore is an independent software consultant in the UK who meets companies at that precise moment. His mission is to help businesses like Livesy Brothers, the UK’s biggest supplier of exotic mushrooms, turn their outdated spreadsheet-run operations into production-ready applications that match how the company actually works — quickly and without code. He’s been doing that with Knack since 2014.

You can literally build an entire app [with Knack] without writing a single line of code. No lines of JavaScript, no lines of CSS.

Meeting the business where it stands

A typical engagement for Mike starts with a tour of the business and its systems: production boards, inventory lists, order trackers, and a set of spreadsheets that hold the process together. Mike looks for the places where teams copy data across tabs, where columns carry hidden rules, and where version control is a memory game. He asks what must be true for tomorrow’s work to go right—what needs to be captured, who needs to see it, and where the handoffs fail.

He then narrows the scope to something that matters now. One workflow, one department, one painful handoff. The first milestone isn’t a grand design; it’s a working version the team can touch.

The apps that you build with Knack can be used straight away by people with no training at all.

Building the first version (and the second, and the third)

Mike uses Knack to assemble the pieces: a structured database, sensible pages, clear roles and permissions, and the logic that mirrors how work moves. Because iteration is cheap, design becomes a conversation. If a list view hides what the floor manager needs, he tries another layout. If a rule should fire sooner, he moves it.

You can develop an app so quickly you can try two or three different designs and figure out which one is going to be the best for the business.

Across clients, the themes repeat: production management that tracks jobs and stages without extra columns; inventory control that follows stock and locations without side files; lead management that routes, records, and reports without duplicate entry. Different companies, same goal — replace brittle spreadsheets with a system people trust.

Connecting the tools teams already use

Knack rarely works alone. Mike leans on Knack’s 500+ integrations to cut manual steps and keep data moving without asking everyone to change tools at once. He leverages Make to orchestrate syncs and notifications, then ties into Salesforce or HubSpot when sales needs a clean handoff. For Microsoft-centric teams, SharePoint and OneDrive sit in the loop so documents and data stay close to where people work.

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Security, reliability, and the quiet test that matters

Many SMBs worry that “no code” means “not serious.” Mike has watched multiple clients run penetration tests with Knack and come back satisfied. With Knack, role-based access keeps the right data in the right hands — and hosting, authentication, and encryption are handled automatically, so the team can focus on the system itself.

Once you’ve built them, [Knack apps] are rock solid… they are secure.

Results that show up in daily work

According to Mike, the payoff isn’t a flashy dashboard. It’s the first week a manager stops asking, “Which version should I use?” Or a production meeting that runs on current data without a scramble, a sales report that matches what’s actually in the pipeline. Time-to-value shortens with Knack because there’s no code to maintain, adoption climbs because the app matches how people already work, and risk drops because the process lives in a structured system, not in someone’s head.

And now with Knack’s AI builder, the starting line moved even closer. Business users can describe the app in plain English, get a working scaffold, and then tailor that system to fit their business precisely.

So—what would you rebuild first?

Mike came to Knack looking for an all-in-one platform that was truly no code. He stayed because it lets him deliver full applications—database, pages, logic, and permissions—without waiting on a developer queue, and without asking users to learn a new language to get work done. His approach to identifying outdated processes, building a working Knack app for them, integrating and iterating where needed, and seeing real improvements in a matter of days (instead of months) has been the bedrock of his consulting career. 

But it can also work for you. If you can point to a spreadsheet that carries real weight in your operation, you’ve likely found your first app. If any of this sounds like the kind of progress your team needs, start by asking the same question Mike does on day one: which spreadsheet do you depend on most—and what would it change if it became a real app? Try it now with Knack by starting a free 14-day trial.