Finding the Conversion Funnel in Legal Compliance

1. Before building anything digital, you spent three years as a nurse in intensive care, oncology and urology wards in the NHS. What from working in an environment built entirely around procedure, documentation and getting details right under pressure ended up shaping how you approach compliance software today?

That’s a great question. The NHS, as a care organisation, definitely contributed to who I am today. It taught me about systems, documentation and the patient care cycle and software development cycle can look loosely similar; your assessing what is needed, planning, implementing and evaluating. Intensive care definitely taught me to work under pressure whilst keeping a clear head.

2. Guest registration in Spain is not one system but several: SES.Hospedajes nationally, plus separate requirements from Mossos d’Esquadra, Ertzaintza and TURESPAZO depending on the region. What does building a single product on top of that patchwork actually require that a property manager assumes is simple until they try it themselves?

That’s a very good question and, indeed, bureaucracy in Spain is fairly complex, and it becomes even more so when different regions each have their own systems and submission formats. Our challenge is to make sure our clients — and therefore their guests — have the same experience whether they’re checking in to a property in Barcelona or a hotel in Marbella.

That means keeping the product alive. These platforms change: SES.Hospedajes has kept evolving, Mossos d’Esquadra have modified their system several times, and the Ertzaintza API has also changed in recent months. On top of that, required fields expand and regional requirements shift. We absorb that constant maintenance so that the host notices no change at all and guests are never affected.

In that sense, we don’t just guarantee a correct connection with the relevant police authority, we also provide time and peace of mind: a Check-in Scan client managing properties across several regions can comply with the regulations of all of them without being an expert in any.

3. You describe yourself as someone who is ultimately obsessed with the numbers and with conversion. Compliance software does not really have a conversion funnel in the traditional sense. What does that instinct actually translate into when the product you are optimising is legal risk rather than sales?

I think it’s a balancing act. But I would say that we still have a funnel, just that ours is slightly more tricky than say a CRM or an ERP where the funnel and end objective is clear from a sales point of view. In contrast, we need to get our clients to experience their “aha moment” in the midst of the legal compliance workflow and this requires them connecting up their authorities connections etc and scanning guest ID’s which depends on them trusting the platform as well as scanning their next guest which depends on having an arrival at some point soon. So our sales funnel is not a straightforward journey but we make it work.

4. Before Check-in Scan you had already built and run businesses in wireless telecom, real estate marketing in Slovakia and freelance web design. After that string of ventures, what made this the one you stayed with for eight years?

As a founder and entrepreneur you can struggle with being very creative and having a hundred of great ideas and wanting to chase them all and balancing the need to execute them. I’ve always been very creative and entrepreneurial and have had degrees of success with all of these ventures. I think as I was starting Check-in Scan, and after reading many books, I came to the realisation that narrowing my focus, being persistent, consistent, and becoming more of an “executer” of one idea and giving it my all was the way to go and it’s definitely shown to be the right decision.