← Case study
Technical answersOnnu Engineering · customer self-service

Freeing IP to work directly for customers

Engagement that allows engineering and sales departments to focus on the leads that really matter, while improving customer experience.

Return on investment
22New leadsGenerated in the first two weeks after launch.
44Engineering hours savedNot spent building feasibility estimates by hand, in the first two weeks.
0Leads missedEvery enquiry is captured the instant it's submitted, with no wait on an available engineer.

An instant answer, not a queued one

Prospects get a credible CAPEX and P&L estimate the moment they ask — with no engineer or salesperson on the other end.
Background

Complex calculations every customer needs

Onnu Engineering builds and sells CarboFlow, a pyrolysis technology that converts biomass into biochar, carbon credits, and recoverable heat/energy. Its customers are prospective plant operators — landowners, agribusinesses, waste-handling companies, and consultants — who want to build a biochar production plant, and who need a specific, personalised answers on cost, technology and production projections before they can develop their project.

The challenge

Every enquiry needed an engineer before it could be qualified

Every serious enquiry, “what would a CarboFlow plant cost and return for my feedstock and site?”, required manual engineering and sales effort: feedstock analysis, building a CAPEX estimate, and modelling a P&L, all before anyone knew whether the lead was even qualified. Spreadsheet-based versions of this work existed, but each one had to be run and interpreted by an engineer for every prospect individually.

01

Slow, high-touch sales cycle

Even exploratory prospects, many of whom would never convert, consumed engineering time before they could be qualified.

02

No self-serve entry point

A prospect couldn't get even a rough, credible number without first getting on a call, which limited how many leads the business could realistically engage with at once.

Mainspring solution

A self-service Project Assessment Tool

[One or two lines introducing the tool — to be completed] A prospect answers a structured set of questions about their feedstock, site, energy goals and financing, and the tool computes a live, personalised project estimate.

  • A guided, self-serve calculatorMainspring built a Project Assessment Tool that replaces the manual back-and-forth — a guided web calculator a prospect can work through on their own.
  • Structured inputs, live estimateA prospect answers a structured set of questions about their feedstock, site, energy goals and financing, and the tool computes a live, personalised project estimate.
  • An instant, complete results pageThe prospect gets a results page that states the pyrolysis units required, CAPEX, a full P&L, Mass Energy Balance and a plant specification — instantly, with no engineer or salesperson required.
The outcome

Sales moved from bespoke to self-serve

The Project Assessment Tool changed how Onnu Engineering's sales pipeline runs, in ways the team has already documented:

A prospect can now get a credible, personalised CAPEX/P&L estimate without engineering time being spent, at any hour and before any sales conversation happens.
Every enquiry becomes a trackable lead, including partial or in-progress ones - a visitor who abandons halfway still shows up in the lead pipeline, rather than disappearing with no record at all.
A consistent, error-checked calculation engine replaced multiple parallel spreadsheet tools with one validated source of truth.
A lower-friction top of funnel: the free, no-signup teaser calculator gives any website visitor an instant number, which the business did not have a way to offer before.
CarboFlow CAPEX calculator results screen

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Dinara Dassanayake · Consultant