AF.agency

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We are an e-commerce company with a social portal for young women who are pregnant or have small children. Our online store trades baby accessories and toys.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with AF.agency?

We needed to develop our website. We had tried to do it using our in-house team, but the result didn’t work well. We decided to use the help of a professional agency. A more up-to-date design was our main consideration. Also, making the site web responsive was important.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

AF.agency has designed our website, as well as our company logo, corporate identity, banners, and marketing material for our online store. We are using a prebuilt CMS [content management system], for which AF.agency has produced custom designs.

We were given three conceptual designs, out of which we picked one and developed it into a final product.

Four people from AF.agency’s team were engaged for our project, including two managers, one graphic designer, and one coder.

How did you come to work with AF.agency?

I sent a few requests to around five or seven companies. I received quotes and had meetings with some of them. I saw the websites AF.agency has built for other customers and liked the design they presented. We sent a price inquiry for our e-commerce store and received a good price. We had a long discussion about the scope and reached an agreement. Communication was important because we wanted the partner to understand what we wanted to do.

How much have you invested with AF.agency?

The cost of AF.agency’s work was around $50,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with AF.agency in the second quarter of 2010. The project was scheduled for two years and completed in December 2012. We have an ongoing collaboration.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

We reached 8,500 active users on our social site, after launching the new site.

How did AF.agency perform from a project management standpoint?

We had scheduled phone calls for setting milestones and used Bugzilla, which is a project tracking service that allowed us to enter all the items which needed to be worked on.

What did you find most impressive about AF.agency?

AF.agency has a very good insight into how a website should look, and they are professional in maintaining our timeline. Everything was delivered on time, and we never had problems explaining what we needed.

Are there any areas AF.agency could improve?

There is always something to improve, but I don’t remember any crucial elements which might have caused problems for us.

What tips or recommendations could you share that might increase the likelihood of success with AF.agency?

I have used AF.agency for subsequent projects after finishing the main website. They’ve always performed well, and the fact that we’ve been collaborating for seven years is an indicator of their strength. Any client starting work with AF.agency will likely use them for multiple projects.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Verax Systems Corp. is a provider of software enabling end-to-end IT & Telco service delivery, assurance and compliance. Verax Systems provides a comprehensive set of integrated applications covering the entire lifecycle from service definition through provisioning and monitoring to billing. I am the CTO of the company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with AF.agency?

We needed help with our online marketing collateral, including website, presentations, creative work, and, interestingly enough, application design.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

AF.agency has designed most of the graphics, icons, and color palette for our common application look and feel. They have also designed and partly built our website, and, anytime we needed something on the creative front, like designing a layout, icons or graphics and presentations, we reached out to AF.agency.

Our new nextian.com brand website was built using WordPress/Motopress, and also has some custom PHP coding for functionalities like saving forms data to databases for automation and data mining. The site also uses additional plugins like Documentor. Past work was based mostly on own PHP code and jQuery/Bootstrap.

How did you come to work with AF.agency?

One of our former employees was friends with a co-founder of AF.agency.

How much have you invested with AF.agency?

The cost has been significant over our ten-year relationship, amounting to between $25,000 and $50,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with AF.agency in 2005, pretty much from the onset of our company. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

We’re quite happy with what AF.agency has done for us. I recommend them highly and plan to use them for future business. I couldn’t provide any objective metrics, but I have really enjoyed working with AF.agency. They know what they’re doing on the creative front, and deliver high-quality work.

The only challenge is that they are based in Poland, and the European mindset is somewhat different to the US. Companies there deliver high-quality results, but the customer service could use a bit of improvement. For instance, we sometimes had to push AF.agency to get a status of our work. Having said this, whatever AF.agency delivered was good, and they fixed everything we didn’t like.

How did AF.agency perform from a project management standpoint?

We’ve had to manage the project ourselves, to some extent, reaching out to AF.agency proactively, and asking them how everything was going. This can be a bit of a challenge. It was nothing terrible, and we never decided to replace AF.agency with another vendor, but there is definitely a challenge in working with agencies from across the ocean.

What did you find most impressive about AF.agency?

AF.agency’s key strength is the creative portion. When we wanted to have a particular template, graphic or marketing collateral, the results were top-notch. I don’t recall situations of having to change AF.agency's work completely. Certain pieces have needed to be tweaked, but the overall deliverables were really high-quality.

Are there any areas AF.agency could improve?

Project management is the improvement point. AF.agency has met our deadlines, but the communication within the project could be improved. As a customer, I expect updates between the current moment and the delivery date, which is two months from now. To be fair, though - we have never been a big customer of AF.agency.

What tips or recommendations could you share that might increase the likelihood of success with AF.agency?

If the client is located on this side of the pond, they need to be prepared for a different experience, compared to what would be expected from a local, American agency. The quality will be there, but, in terms of project management and communication, things may not be as smooth. This difference needs to be factored into expectations.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the owner of a small interactive advertising firm working in the same field as AF.agency.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with AF.agency?

We handle development ourselves much of the time, but we are a small group and need to outsource some projects. One of them was for a customer who needed to develop a large social platform. Since we didn't have a big enough team for such a project, we needed to find a partner to collaborate with on building that solution.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

AF.agency handled the entire design and development scope of that project. They also developed interactive components using Flash, which was a popular technology at the time. Another project they helped design was an animated children's help book. We didn't have any in-house animators, so this wasn't a service we could provide.

AF.agency’s resources develop in CakePHP MVC framework which is the same language used by our team. They also use JavaScript, jQuery, HTML and so on.

How did you come to work with AF.agency?

I was looking for an agency in Poland that could provide comprehensive solutions. We considered a few software houses that could provide good PHP code, but they had limitations in terms of creative ideas. It came down to a choice between AF.agency and another local company. After looking at their digital process for creating timelines and communicating with customers, I trusted that AF.agency was the best choice.

How much have you invested with AF.agency?

The cost of AF.agency was under 1,000,000 zloty. [$250,000]

What is the status of this engagement?

Our biggest project ran from 2012 until 2014. The first production version was launched after one year, after which we continued to work with AF.agency on new iterations. The platform is still being developed, but we are no longer involved in the project.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

AF.agency's work became one of the projects in our portfolio. The most important thing for me was that they did their job and that we were able to deliver for our own client. The quality of their work was good, and they stuck to our schedule. There were only a few small delays, nothing serious. We ran both a production and a testing environment. We did identify some issues on the testing side, but nothing was made live until we made sure that it would work fine. The collaboration proved to be good, and I was satisfied with the quality of the work and the timing.

How did AF.agency perform from a project management standpoint?

We had many channels for communication, the main one being email. I like to have everything in written form, which would be useful in case of any possible issues. We also talked with AF.agency's team over the phone.

What did you find most impressive about AF.agency?

I appreciated the communication and atmosphere on AF.agency's side. It made for a good collaboration. We have worked with AF.agency as partners, rather than as client and provider. They listened to us, reacted accordingly, and suggested ideas. Beyond the great atmosphere, I found AF.agency's members to be good professionals, while at the same time friendly and communicative.

Are there any areas AF.agency could improve?

There have been no problems outside of some small development issues. Every company can deliver better, faster and cheaper, but I can't state anything specifically about AF.agency.

What tips or recommendations could you share that might increase the likelihood of success with AF.agency?

I don't have anything in particular. Clients should simply try working with AF.agency; they won't regret the decision.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Nextian provides Salesforce consulting, development and implementation services as well as Salesforce-based vertical solutions.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire AF.agency?

AF.agency was contracted to build Nextian website as well as the documentation website as well as other creative/branding work (document templates, graphics, etc.)

What were your goals for this project?

Initial website buildout and on-going maintenance with elements of SEO

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

Prior experience recommendation

Describe the project in detail.

Nextian provided only content all other deliverables were responsibility of AF.

What was the team composition?

There was one point of contact on both ends

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

The communication was very good, and all of our expectations were met.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

It was good, mainly call based due to timezone difference

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Creative skills, knowledge of HTML/Word Press and SEO

Are there any areas for improvement?

Delivery could be a bit quicker