Introducing Tailor: The Low-Code Platform for Crafting Custom Headless ERP Solutions

Our Origin Story

Traditional ERP offerings from companies such as SAP, Oracle, and NetSuite tend to be ill-suited for the needs of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). These traditional systems often overwhelm such users with their broad array of features and convoluted UIs, leading to a maze of inefficiency and inflated costs.

The development of these systems was a herculean task that was indirectly linked to revenue generation, but was critical for scaling businesses. It became clear that there was a necessity for a tool that could streamline backend development and eliminate the need for continuous overhauls.

That's why we created Tailor at Y Combinator—a Headless platform to help businesses quickly build customized backend solutions, drawn from our own repeated challenges, in the hope of supporting others with the same needs.

We're excited to announce that today, Tailor is making its debut on Product Hunt this Thursday!🎉 Product Hunt is a hub for tech enthusiasts and innovators like you, and we're looking forward to your engagement. Your insights and feedback are incredibly valuable to us, as they play a crucial role in shaping and refining our product. Check our Product Hunt listing for a special offer: a free custom app built from the ground up by Tailor. Find all the details in our Product Hunt post.

What is a Headless ERP?

A Headless ERP represents an innovative strategy for Enterprise Resource Planning and other business support tools, separating the core processing and data management from the front-end user interface. This adaptable approach is particularly beneficial for organizations that employ various SaaS platforms to manage their operations and are looking for flawless integration between these systems, as well as for those in need of custom-tailored business tools.

Tailor's Headless ERP streamlines the customization process on the client side, making frontend personalization a breeze for clients. Complementing this, its API-first approach ensures that it easily meshes with existing systems or third-party services, fostering a seamless integration environment

Introducing Tailor

As companies expand, the complexity of managing their operations with tools such as Airtable or Google Spreadsheets can become overwhelming. The transition to an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system becomes imperative, but the selection process is daunting. After experimenting with various SaaS products and off-the-shelf ERPs like SAP, many customers ultimately opt for Tailor due to its superior flexibility and effortless integration capabilities.

Tailor provides Headless ERP applications alongside a robust platform for customization, granting developers the power to swiftly customize and roll out bespoke solutions. As your enterprise scales, so does the intricacy of your data architecture. The Tailor Platform is meticulously crafted to align with your specific business needs, offering a dynamic solution that adapts and grows in tandem with your business. Leveraging schema-defined Templates, our applications enable developers to make on-the-fly modifications and push them directly to production.

Moreover, the integration of a GraphQL API endpoint streamlines the development of front-end graphical user interfaces and bespoke SaaS solutions, making the entire process more streamlined and developer-friendly. Tailor has proven its worth within enterprises that have achieved revenue in the hundreds of millions. Now it's your turn. Whether you need a CRM, SCM, WMS, HRIS, or Client Portal, Tailor empowers you to build applications tailored to your unique business needs.

Tailor Key Features

1. ⚡️ Instant API Creation:
   • Tailor Platform offers CRUD API creation with built-in search, sort, filter, and pagination features. It also ensures data integrity with validations, handles both default and computed values, and smoothly manages relationships and nested fields
2. ⭐️ Beyond CRUD:
   • Tailor offers versatile methods to integrate both existing and new business logic:
     • Chained Queries: Leverage the power of GraphQL for executing business logic in a streamlined manner. You can set up query and mutation sequences, conduct data manipulations, and craft custom APIs for specific operations.
     • Event Triggers: Automate your workflows by setting up triggers on the Tailor Platform that respond to API requests or database modifications. These triggers can initiate custom scripts or set up scheduled tasks akin to cron jobs.
     • State Machines with Authorization: Manage and automate your record-keeping and approval processes with ease. Our platform allows you to define a state machine within the schema, offering record-level authorization that adapts according to the record's status, all accessible through a GraphQL API.
3. 🚀 Tailor Console: Empowering Developers with Customizable Flexibility
   • At the core of Tailor's platform is the developer console, designed for ease of use and developer empowerment. It provides an efficient system for creating custom ERP solutions, enabling quick adaptations to changing business needs, ensuring solutions remain relevant and closely aligned with each client's specific processes.
4. 💨 Quickly Embed and Execute Custom Business Logic:
   • Tailor provides multiple ways to expose existing or new business logic in your domain, including pipeline for business logic execution, event triggers for custom script execution, and state machine for handling record states.
5. ✅ Easy Workflow Management:
   • Users can configure and launch bespoke data models, develop sequential workflows for intricate business tasks, and build business applications that fit their specific requirements.
6. 🛠️ Seamless Integrations:
   • The Tailor Platform is engineered to complement your established systems and SaaS products, offering smooth connectivity through interaction APIs. Applications crafted on Tailor can operate as integral components within your present ERP infrastructure or serve as the single source of truth for your other systems.
7. 🎯Fully Customizable ERP Templates
   • Starting with a robust boilerplate template, Tailor equips you with a foundational frontend structure, incorporating a Next.js library, a GraphQL client, and essential configurations for a seamless development experience. This boilerplate acts as a springboard, accelerating the creation of a user interface tailored to meet your specific business needs.

AI for Frontend

The thought of constructing the front-end UI from scratch might seem overwhelming, but the right backend infrastructure can turn it into a straightforward task. Tailor's backend platform is precisely engineered to make the development of a bespoke front-end UI not just possible, but also enjoyable.

1. 🤖 AI-Powered Frontend
   • The innovation doesn't stop there; AI-assisted tools leap into action, leveraging your ERP’s GraphQL schema to facilitate introspective comprehension by AI systems. Such tools can autonomously generate front-end code that's in lockstep with your backend API, requiring minimal guidance to cater to your specific use cases.
2. 🎙️ Natural Language Interface
   • And when it comes to user interaction, Tailor's integration with AI interfaces like ChatGPT means you can interact with your data through natural language queries, offering a seamless and intuitive experience even for those with little to no technical expertise.
3. 💻 Low-Code
   • Beyond the template, Tailor integrates with user-friendly low-code development tools such as Retool. This tool provides a 'what you see is what you get' (WYSIWYG) interface complete with pre-designed React components, enabling the assembly of custom UI elements and workflows without delving into complex code—ideal for internal applications where UI intricacies take a back seat. For organizations that require a custom UI but lack extensive in-house development capabilities, this feature is a game-changer.

In essence, with Tailor's suite of developer-friendly tools—including a foundational boilerplate, low-code options, AI-driven code generation, and natural language processing—you're well-equipped to craft a front-end UI that resonates with your operational needs. Dive into our Developer Documents to discover more about how Tailor can elevate your business's software solutions.

Test Drive

Tailor envisions the headless ERP as not just a trend but the definitive future of enterprise resource planning. By decoupling the front-end presentation from the back-end computation and data handling, we empower businesses to vastly improve user experiences, achieve effortless integration with an array of systems and services, and tailor-fit their ERP systems to their distinct business landscapes. More importantly, headless ERPs are built with an eye towards growth and adaptability, ensuring that as a business's needs evolve, its systems can scale and adapt with equal agility.

To delve deeper into the world of headless ERP and discover what it can do for your organization, check out our detailed docs or book a demo with us. And for tailored, direct support, our Discord community is ready to welcome you.