In the competitive virtual coaching market, speed determines survival. Enterprise coaching platform EZRA needed to quickly test and validate new capabilities without the lengthy development cycles that could make or break a startup. The solution? A strategic no-code approach that complements their core development efforts and delivers features 80% faster at one-third the cost.
EZRA, part of the Adecco Group’s HR tech ecosystem, has grown into one of the top companies in virtual coaching over six years. With a global network of more than 4,000 coaches serving enterprise clients worldwide, the company faced a common challenge: how to innovate quickly while maintaining the technical standards that enterprise customers demand. Their answer reshaped how they think about software development — expanding their toolkit to include Bubble for faster, more nimble solutions.
From skepticism to strategic advantage
Five years ago, EZRA CTO Sean Paley faced a common enterprise challenge: The engineering team was focused on the core product, but business stakeholders needed quick proofs of concepts for new coaching-specific features like progress tracking assessments and reporting capabilities. Rather than burden the pro-code development team with experimental projects, Sean explored low-code solutions as an additional capability and chose Bubble.
The decision wasn’t immediately obvious to everyone on the team. Paul Stamou, VP of Engineering who leads EZRA’s broad engineering platform with multiple development teams, admits he was skeptical of the approach. “I’ve been in engineering for close to 25 years now,” Paul said. “And I’ll admit I’m a pro-code snob.” The idea of building customer-facing applications without traditional code went against everything he’d learned about software development. But the business pressures facing a startup in a competitive market ultimately proved more compelling than his technical preferences.
The original plan was straightforward: build prototypes in Bubble to validate market demand, then port successful concepts to the main pro-code platform. But as Paul discovered, that strategy evolved significantly. “Over the years, Bubble has matured quite a bit and we often don’t need to port it over. We can actually integrate it,” he said.
Building enterprise-grade solutions with Bubble
Today, EZRA operates multiple Bubble applications that integrate seamlessly with their core Azure-based platform through APIs. Their most sophisticated implementation is Cai, an AI-powered coach that connects to Azure OpenAI services to provide both one-on-one coaching and scenario-based practice sessions.
“The actual Cai product is broken up into two different categories,” Paul explained. “One is one-on-one coaching, but it also has scenarios we’ve built so managers can practice dealing with difficult situations — like an employee wanting to work remotely when the business needs them in the office. You can go through a simulation with our AI agent to help leaders have better conversations.”
The technical architecture demonstrates Bubble’s enterprise integration capabilities: The Bubble frontend communicates via APIs with AI engines running in Azure, maintaining the user experience standards that enterprise clients expect. This hybrid approach leverages Bubble’s rapid development while preserving existing infrastructure investments.
Beyond Cai, EZRA has built assessment tools, reporting dashboards, and their “nudges” application — an engagement platform that enhances the coaching experience through interactive questions, articles, and AI integration.
Innovation speed meets enterprise scale
The numbers speak for themselves. With just three Bubble Developers on the team, EZRA is delivering solutions 80% faster than traditional development approaches while achieving 3X cost savings. Meanwhile, EZRA's main engineering team can focus on core platform development. This efficiency gain has been crucial for a startup competing in the rapidly evolving coaching market.
“EZRA is a startup penetrating a new space of virtual coaching,” Paul said. “We can’t spend a lot of time building out a two-year roadmap for development. Bubble’s giving us an edge in delivering features quickly, testing out an area of the market, seeing where it has value, and then supporting that across our business.”
The speed advantage extends beyond development to market validation. Rather than investing months of the core team’s time in building features that might not resonate with customers, EZRA can launch proofs of concepts in weeks, gather real user feedback, and iterate rapidly. For features that prove valuable, they can choose to integrate the Bubble application permanently or rebuild it natively, depending on the specific requirements.
Looking forward: Enterprise no-code at scale
As EZRA continues scaling, they’re focused on using Bubble as a true enterprise solution rather than just a prototyping sandbox.
“We have to develop a lot faster, and low-code solutions should complement your pro-code solutions. Thinking in a binary way just doesn’t lead to benefit."
Paul’s experience reflects how many enterprise engineering leaders are thinking about expanding their capabilities. “Times are changing,” he said. “We have to develop a lot faster, and low-code solutions should complement your pro-code solutions. Thinking in a binary way just doesn’t lead to benefit. If you do everything in pro-code, it’s going to take longer and you’ll have to do rework because you can’t test it in the market. What I’m trying to do is get the best of both disciplines.”
At EZRA, that complementary approach has delivered measurable results: faster delivery, lower costs, and the agility to compete in a rapidly evolving market.
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