How Scottish Sea Farms regained trust and control over their 12 Airtable databases

Challenges with gaining control over their Airtable databases

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Scottish Sea Farms is a pioneer in its industry. The company has taken its first steps into harnessing the power of no-code by implementing Airtable as its internal database. With the growth of the company, one database quickly turned into twelve, making it increasingly difficult to oversee all the data in one place. They also noticed that the most common issues with managing no-code — tracking dependencies, seeing latest changes, monitoring performance and fixing errors — were happening to them as well. With several employees having access to the company’s Airtable account, they also wanted to be able to see which changes had been made and by whom.

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To address these massive challenges and promote the usage of no-code across their company, Scottish Sea Farms opted for ncScale as the ideal solution for managing and monitoring their no-code applications.

“Easy to build a monster though - thankfully tools like ncScale help with automated system documentation”
David Anderson
Head of IT, Scottish Sea Farms

Addressing Scalability Challenges

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David Anderson is the Head of IT at Scottish Sea Farms and a proud no-code fan. Thanks to him, the company now leverages a blend of industry-specific apps and commercial off-the-shelf systems, such as Microsoft M365, Power BI, Airtable, Stacker and  Atlassian, to drive efficiency and innovation at every stage of the process. However, the risks of using no-code tools were apparent - lack of visibility, no control over eminent errors and automation breaks, general lack of trust especially when managing confidential information. When David heard about ncScale from a friend in the no-code industry, he was immediately hooked.

Leveraging ncScale for Scalability

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Within weeks after testing it for the first time, Scottish Sea Farms had connected all 12 Airtable databases to ncScale. They now use the observability feature to track dependencies between different no-code elements, inside and outside Airtable. This allows them to see the full impact of any changes before they are implemented which, in turns, prevents any breaks. They also use the Last Edited feature to see the changes that have been made by other team members. This allows the IT department to have visibility over all the data and eliminate Shadow IT from no-code apps.

Enhanced Collaboration and Alerting

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Last but not least, the company also uses the monitoring feature, allowing them to not only track, but also be alerted on any changes and errors to the schema of their databases. Once there is an error, the team can quickly communicate and troubleshoot, all from the Tickets tab.
Together, this has made Airtable a more trustworthy tool for the company and has allowed its use to be scaled to the entire company.

Achieving a Comprehensive View of the Infrastructure

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Using the Observability and Monitoring features together is how Scottish Sea Farms achieved a comprehensive view of all their no-code infrastructure. The most significant advantage for David was the ability to track changes made by other employees and to quickly see the impact of those changes, all in one place. This also eliminates the need to document any new no-code apps, since every change made on Airtable is automatically updated on ncScale.

Why ncScale?

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Scottish Sea Farms has chosen ncScale for its unique ability to document, monitor, and manage their no-code stack. Its observability and monitoring features allow for editing Airtable schemas and automations without fear of any breaks. Thanks to the dependency mapping functionality and the full-text search, Scottish Sea Farms is able to locate any elements in their no-code stack.

About Scottish Sea Farms

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Scottish Sea Farms is a medium-sized company in the fisheries industry supplying restaurants and households with top quality products. Established in 1960 under a different name, the company now operates over 60 farms and facilities across Scotland. With almost 250 employees, they have won numerous awards for their sustainability and contributions to aquaculture, especially when it comes to their salmon farming.

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