Rendin is a startup that has set out to be the safest and most convenient rental agreement platform in the world. Rendin offers a modern, safe and efficient solution for long term home rental agreements for signing, managing and securing tenants liability with insurance. Furthermore, landlords can take advantage of Rendins pre-screening of possible tenant candidates.
Having been in operation now for about a year and a half, Rendin today serves hundreds of clients in multiple markets. By today, their number of templates in use has grown to an impressive 50-60 templates in various languages, which makes Rendin a prime target for writing this case study. To find out what value we create for Rendin, we recently hopped on a call with Alar Mäerand, CTO. Here is what he had to say.
Alar, what was the problem you set out to solve?
Just as with your other clients, we needed a solution to generate documents – in our case this means creating document templates in various languages, layouts and containing various data. The types of documents include contracts, certificates etc. Also – we were looking for a way to modify these templates without the need of developer involvement.
How did you find PDF Generator API?
We tested one other solution, but one of the upsides of your product was definitely its straightforward pricing and high degree of flexibility. Using PDF Generator API helps us keep our fixed costs under control due to your transparent pricing setup – other solutions we looked at came at a high monthly fixed cost, but your product gives us the flexibility to scale up as our business grows.
What type of requirements did you have for the solution – technical or other?
I guess the main requirement was that a non-technical person would be able to use the product. Another one being a simple to use and reliable API – we would just send the data and get the final document back – without having to worry about what goes on under the hood. Initially we considered building something similar ourselves, but after evaluating our resources and your already-mentioned transparent and simple pricing logic – we opted for an external service.
Which feature within PDF Generator API would you highlight as a main reason for choosing the service?
It must be your browser-based template editor. One which any user of the system is capable of handling on their own.
In terms of security – what were your main concerns when looking for a possible solution?
These days data security is obviously on top of everyone’s mind. Large-scale data breaches have become a normal part of our lives. So we wanted to find a solution which would let us sleep at night knowing the data of our clients is handled with care and is safe. This applies especially to data that is considered delicate.
Let’s talk about your implementation process – how long did it take you to integrate PDF Generator API with the other systems in use already?
As most of our systems are based on Google Cloud, similarly to you, then all that had to be done was to format our existing data from Google Firestore according to your guidelines, send it over along with the template JSON file, wait for a reply and save it into our Google Cloud storage. So that process is very well streamlined – I would even say that getting to know the editor took more time.
How many internal stakeholders do you have that were either involved in the decision making or implementation process? How many now use it on an everyday basis?
On the technical side about 5 people were involved in the implementation and another 5-6 are inputting data – so altogether around 10 people. The decision to go with you was reached quickly – as is the case in most startups I believe.
How long was the whole implementation period?
The process took maybe a week, but most of the time was spent trying to figure out how to implement your product on our side – how to build the queries, where to save the received document and issues related to making it work in our Google Cloud. The rest was easy.
Would there be anything to make it even easier?
One idea would be to implement the possibility of uploading the JSON file to the environment, so we would not have to send it to our developers in other countries over email. They would just retrieve it from the system.
Did you have to make any changes to your own processes when implementing PDF Generator API?
As we were only in the beginning of trying to figure out how to build our product technically, then there were really no processes that were set in stone. Rather, implementing your product allowed us to build our own processes on top of it along with the rest of the stack.
As you can see, PDF Generator API is truly a flexible product that adapts to the needs and requirements of its customers, regardless of the sector – independent of whether it is implemented on top of an existing stack or used as a building block for something entirely new.
