SaaS platform that cut internship evaluation workload by 65%

The situation

An institution running structured internship programmes for hundreds of students per cohort was managing the entire process through email and spreadsheets. Supervisors assigned tasks verbally or by email and had no structured way to track completion. Assessment at the end of an internship required manually reviewing notes, emails, and attendance records before writing up an evaluation — a process that took supervisors an average of three hours per intern.

Certificates were designed and emailed individually. When a student lost their certificate or needed a duplicate, someone had to find the original file, edit the name, re-export, and email again. At scale, the administrative overhead was consuming more time than the actual internship supervision.

What we built

Multi-role access (Admin, Supervisor, Intern)

Three distinct portals sharing a single platform. Admins manage cohorts, assign supervisors, and review aggregate performance reports. Supervisors manage task assignment, track progress, and submit evaluations. Interns see their task queue, submit daily logs, and download certificates.

Task assignment and milestone tracking

Supervisors create tasks with deadlines, descriptions, and deliverable requirements. Interns submit work directly in the platform. Each submission triggers a notification to the supervisor and enters a review queue. Completion status is automatically aggregated into an intern's progress profile.

Structured assessments and rubrics

Configurable assessment rubrics per department and internship type. Supervisors score against criteria rather than writing free-form evaluations, which standardised quality and reduced the time per assessment from hours to under 15 minutes.

Automated certificate generation

When an intern completes all required milestones and receives a passing assessment score, a certificate is generated automatically using a Puppeteer-rendered PDF template, stored in S3, and emailed to the intern. Duplicate requests generate a new copy from the stored record in seconds.

Technical decisions worth explaining

PDF generation via headless browser

We chose Puppeteer over a PDF library because the certificate design required precise layout matching a provided brand template. Headless Chrome renders HTML/CSS pixel-perfectly, and the resulting PDFs matched the approved design exactly. Generation time averages 1.2 seconds per certificate — acceptable for an async background job.

Results

• ~65% reduction in manual evaluation workload per supervisor
• ~50% faster assessment processing time (rubric-based vs. free-form)
• ~40% improvement in reporting efficiency for programme administrators
• Zero manual certificates — 100% auto-generated and delivered
• Cohort onboarding reduced from days of email coordination to one CSV upload