Plenty of companies can’t easily answer a simple question: who here can actually do this? And the question right behind it is even harder: whose certifications are about to run out?
That second one is what pushed me to build SkillVortex. Certifications expire quietly. Nobody gets a warning, nobody notices, and you only find out when a customer asks for proof, an audit comes round, or a vendor checks whether you still meet their partner requirements. By then it’s too late to do anything about it.
So I built a tool to fix that.
What SkillVortex does
SkillVortex is a skills matrix for companies that run on Microsoft 365. People sign in with their normal work account, pick their area, and rate themselves against a list of skills from 0 to 10. They can add their certifications too, with the expiry date and a link to the certificate.
From there it does the work nobody has time for:
- Reminds people before their certifications expire, so renewing is planned rather than a scramble.
- Asks everyone to reassess once a year, so the matrix doesn’t slowly go out of date like a spreadsheet does.
- Skill Finder. Anyone can pick a skill area and see the people who are strongest in it. No more asking round the office.
- Reports for managers, with AI written summaries of where the team is strong and where the gaps are, and scheduled email reports so the numbers come to you.
- An ISO evidence report. If you’re working towards ISO 9001, you need to show you know your people are competent. This pulls the records together for the auditor.
Access is based on roles. Alongside a normal Admin there’s a Category King, who looks after the skills list, and a Reporter Slayer, who gets the reports. The names are a bit of fun.
The feature I’m proudest of: partnership tracking
If your company is a partner with a vendor, that partnership usually depends on having a certain number of certified people. Lose one or two of those certifications and your partner status can be at risk, often without anyone realising until it’s flagged.
SkillVortex lets you enter those requirements (for example, “we need two people certified in this”) and shows you straight away whether you meet them, based on who actually holds the certification right now. Put that together with the expiry reminders and you can see a problem coming months before it lands, instead of after.
The hardest part: making it look good
I’ve spent my career in infrastructure. Servers, networks and automation are my comfort zone. Design isn’t. And it turned out to be the hardest part of the whole project, for a few reasons:
- I’m not a designer. Getting it right meant a lot of trial and error.
- It had to feel simple. A skills matrix only works if people actually fill it in. If rating your skills feels like a chore, people put it off, and the data goes stale. Every screen had to be quick and obvious.
- It had to look professional. Companies won’t pay for something that looks homemade, however good it is underneath.
- So it took a lot of redesigns. It went through version after version before it felt right, including a full redesign of the interface.
The back end was the part I was confident about, and design was the part I had to grind at.
How it runs
Every customer gets their own completely separate copy of SkillVortex, with its own database. Nobody’s data sits in the same database as another company’s. When someone signs up for a trial, the platform builds their copy automatically, and when a trial ends it’s handled automatically too. Databases are backed up every day.
Sign in uses Microsoft Entra ID (the Azure AD you already use for Microsoft 365), so there are no extra passwords for staff to remember. Each company also gets a local admin login as a way in if their Microsoft sign in ever breaks.
Built with AI, directed by me
I built SkillVortex with an AI coding assistant. I decided what it should do, how it should work and how it should look, and I reviewed and tested everything. The AI did a lot of the typing.
That probably won’t surprise anyone who has read how AI helps me work smarter with dyslexia. It’s the same idea on a bigger scale: AI takes away the friction between an idea in my head and the finished thing, and I stay in charge of the decisions. It’s what makes it possible for me to build and run SkillVortex on my own.
What’s next
SkillVortex is live, and I’m still adding to it. Next up is more flexible email reports. If knowing who can do what (and whose certifications are about to lapse) is a headache where you work, it’s £10 per person per year with a 30 day free trial at skillvortex.co.uk.
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