AppIt Ventures

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the VP of PASCO

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Help families care for their loved ones

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire AppIt Ventures to accomplish?

• Build a respite matching web application

SOLUTION

How did you find AppIt Ventures?

Online Search

Why did you select AppIt Ventures over others?

• Close to my geographic location
• Great culture fit
• Company values aligned

How many teammates from AppIt Ventures were assigned to this project?

6-10 Employees

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

Discovery, design, and development of caregiver and client matching application

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

• User test scoring of 8.5 overall 
• On budget Pride of quality and ease of use of application

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

The VP of AppIt was amazing. She identified our needs before we realized them, made thoughtful and experienced recommendations, and helped guide us to an ever better deliverable than we could have imagined.

What was your primary form of communication with AppIt Ventures?

Virtual Meeting

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

Our initial consultation and the thoroughness of the discovery. The enjoyable team and culture. We were impressed with their amazing collaboration and communication.

Are there any areas for improvement or something AppIt Ventures could have done differently?

None

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I'm the co-founder of a company focused on improving the youth sports experience since we recognize coaches have the biggest impact on athletes. Our goal is to help sports associations, organizations, and municipalities deploy more automated tools that coaches can leverage to standardize their practice. Our aim is to help them save time and help recruit better coaches for our kids.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with AppIt Ventures?

We needed to create a cloud-based application for sports associations and a companion mobile app for coaches and parents.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We initially had a discovery process with AppIt Ventures and then moved into an iteration process that lasted a few months. The team has conducted functional iterations of the design mock-ups using Figma. Then, we've moved to the cloud-development phase, and we'll soon move into mobile development. AppIt Ventures develops our software from scratch.

Our cloud app will enable sports associations to assign a level of skill to their teams, and in the backend, the team will develop a sports curriculum in conjunction with subject matter experts. The app delivers automated practice plans based on the skills progression required for each sport along with video and text content.

The app also has a component that allows coaches and parents in their respective apps to provide sentiment feedback on the athletes' performance, and this data is fed back to the sports organization administrators so they can see if there is a correlation or a discrepancy between the parents and coach's sentiment. The app also asks questions at the end of each practice to get sentiment and qualitative feedback.

We've worked with Aspen Insititute, which has a PhD in coaching, and spent a lot of time discussing coaching concepts. The specialists told us each practice can focus on three or four aspects, and coaches can track each practice in the app. Our software aims to provide transparency about what's being coached. Users can check an option to get notified when additional skills sessions are held.

We can aggregate that information, and the association can use it to put out job listings for coaches specialized in specific skills, for instance. 
What is the team composition?

We work with around six teammates from AppIt Ventures, including the owner, developers, a project manager, and an account executive.

How did you come to work with AppIt Ventures?

We found AppIt Ventures through a Google search. We interviewed various companies before selecting this team. AppIt Ventures has teammates, including the owner, who are sports parents or coaches and seemed genuinely interested in our project. The teammate we first engaged with was incredibly responsive and immediately demonstrated a very personal understanding of our project. He also was straightforward about the team's service offer and capabilities. Other companies weren't as responsive. 

How much have you invested with them?

We've spent around $100,000 on this project.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with AppIt Ventures in August 2023, and our engagement is ongoing. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

AppIt Ventures's work quality is outstanding. The team brings a lot of creativity to bear on this project and is highly collaborative and open-minded. AppIt Ventures delivers work we haven't even conceptualized. 

How did AppIt Ventures perform from a project management standpoint?

AppIt Ventures delivers work on time and on budget. We've changed the project's scope once, which required a change of order, but aside from that, the team has met deadlines. AppIt Ventures is very responsive via meetings, phone calls, and email. We also use Trello and Figma to collaborate.

Are there any areas they could improve?

AppIt Ventures can improve managing our expectations regarding design work. We've addressed this with the team already, but seeing older design files on Figma with new designs throws us off. Eventually, the team realized what was happening, which was a minor issue considering the overall engagement. 

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

My general advice is to spend a lot of time defining your project's objectives and budget upfront before engaging with AppIt Ventures since software development isn't cheap.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

 I am the Software Developer of a consumer products company 

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Analytics reporting for CPG brands.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire AppIt Ventures to accomplish?
Create front end app skeleton

SOLUTION

How did you find AppIt Ventures?

Referral

Why did you select AppIt Ventures over others?

• Pricing fit our budget
• Good value for cost
• Company values aligned

How many teammates from AppIt Ventures were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

We used Appit to create a react app skeleton which was used to embed various reporting tools.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

We got our app!

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

They did deliver on time. In particular, the developer worked closely with us on a day-to-day basis.

What was your primary form of communication with AppIt Ventures?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

The developer we worked with was very responsive.

Are there any areas for improvement or something AppIt Ventures could have done differently?

Not sure exactly!

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Marketing of a business services company

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Class VI Pathfinder™ offers strategic guidance for entrepreneurs with a sale or capital raise 6 months to 10+ years on the horizon. Improve market position and maximize value, while making your business more enjoyable to lead.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire AppIt Ventures to accomplish?

• Implement data warehouse
• Visualize in Power BI
• Automate manual report building

SOLUTION

How did you find AppIt Ventures?

Referral

Why did you select AppIt Ventures over others?

• Close to my geographic location
• Great culture fit
• Company values aligned

How many teammates from AppIt Ventures were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

To provide the foundation of our data gathering efforts via a data warehouse, visualize that data, and provide an automated report to the data provider(s).

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

To reduce human hours collecting, sorting, and reporting on data.

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

Their project management style was very transparent. Milestones were set, and achieved. They responded on time and with purpose.

What was your primary form of communication with AppIt Ventures?

• In-Person Meeting
• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

Their high touch project management style. We were always well advised on progress and decisions that needed to be made.

Are there any areas for improvement or something AppIt Ventures could have done differently?

No.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

BridgerAerospace is the leading aerial firefighting company in the United States. We operate a fleet of aircraft providing aerial reconnaissance and wildfire suppression services. We are a rapidly growing organization in a highly technical and service-focused environment where information saves lives. I am the internal technical lead supporting in-house and contracted application development.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire AppIt Ventures, and what were your goals?

AppIt Ventures has been an essential partner in helping to address our needs for internal business systems and external web application development. Internal systems include flight and maintenance tracking systems which are unique to our industry. External web application development has allowed us to leverage proprietary data gathered through operations to provide commercial and public services for increased situational awareness (saving lives) and an improved understanding of wildfire impacts.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

Vendor selection occurred before I joined BridgerAerospace but, after working with the AppIt team, it became obvious that on-shore business expertise and development governance were primary factors. Delivery of a small initial project was well recieved and AppIt had become a trusted partner to take on additional, business-critical projects.

The most important of these projects, FireTrac, required a strong understanding of web and mobile technologies. AppIt Ventures demonstrated the required business understanding and had a team of developers with the experience to take on the technical requirements to deliver cutting edge web and mobile products.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and technologies used.

For the FireTrac project, the scope of work was to provide a web/mobile application that allowed users to register, view/access information, and upload data. AppIt Ventures followed software development best practices and assigned a Project Manager who initiated a kick-off meeting to create various artifacts (charter, RACI chart, business requirement documentation, project plan, etc.)

Once project resources were identified, application requirements were then captured via several meetings with stakeholders. This was then followed by a formal requirements document along with storyboards and wireframes. Upon approval of initial requirements, the AppIt team defined development sprints along with associated deliverables. Reviews were conducted for each sprint and the project quickly moved forward.

AppIt provided a team of development resources, each with a known purpose and skill set (experience with Node.js, Angular, Flutter, SQL, and AWS). Architectural designs were submitted, approved, and implemented. Throughout, the Project Manager provided the communication necessary to keep the project on track.

Upon successful completion of user acceptance testing, AppIt Ventures compiled developer documentation for transfer to BridgerAerospace's internal development staff. On-going maintenance/development is provided by BridgerAerospace but the AppIt team remains a vital resource for support or major application enhancements.

How many people from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

Several people from AppIt Ventures worked on this project. This included the business manager, project manager, designers, AWS architects (infrastructure), and a broad team of off-shore developers including a dedicated project lead and several skilled full-stack developers.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

The quality of the deliverables (specifically the code and the environment in which to execute it) was very good. After accepting the product deliverables, we soon realized that business requirements were insufficient for a marketable product. AppIt Ventures worked with us to quickly modify the application in a way that would address many of the business requirement's shortcomings.

This allowed our internal development team to then work on extending the application in a few key areas (push notifications, enhanced mapping, etc.). The quality of AppIt's code allowed us to efficiently introduce enhancements that align with business expectations.

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timeliness.

AppIt Ventures' Project Manager was highly responsive and provided thoughtful insight into many design and operational issues. He did this by bringing AppIt team members into discussions as needed. If design changes were needed, the designers would join Zoom calls and then present storyboards to illustrate their ideas.

If we had technical issues, he would even coordinate after-hour discussions with the off-shore staff. He ensured that any concerns were addressed thoroughly before committing to implementation timelines. We always knew where we stood.

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

AppIt Ventures is disciplined. Not just in their approach to project management, but throughout the development process. This is exhibited in the architecture and implementation of both code and infrastructure. AppIt has defined "best practices" and uses them to deliver quality. AppIt Ventures is truly a one-stop-shop where attention to quality results in easy-to-use and maintained deliverables.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

No, we're big fans.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

We are a rapidly growing Aerial Firefighting Company. We work with various states and the US Government to fight fires in remote locations across the United States. My role in the company is the collection, quality control, and analysis of data across the company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire AppIt Ventures, and what were your goals?

As we grow more and more the amount of data flowing in and out is rapidly growing. The need for the operations dashboard was the centralize all of the must-know information into one centralized location so anyone through-out the company can access this data in a quick and meaningful manner. We did not have an in-house developer to tackle this task. For that reason we reached out to AppIt to help build and develop the dashboard.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

We have worked with AppIt Ventures before as a company. We knew a few of the team members from the past project and know how the company operates. From the cooperation and knowledge from past projects we decided to work with AppIt again.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and technologies used.

We started by having an initial meeting about what we were looking for, an operations dashboard. After providing some of the data and a draft mock-up for some general ideas, AppIt created a Figma document to start the process of designing and laying out the dashboard. After a few iterations we agreed on the design. One major step for the dashboard was the integration of a third-party API. This third-party application plays a key role in our daily operation. Having this data pulled and displayed is a great feature and helps consolidate the areas in which our data is reported. AppIt was great on working with us and helping communicate/troubleshoot any problems we had with the integration. When this was complete we just had a few minor design changes we had wanted. After agreeing on all aspects of the design and functionality we launched the dashboard internally.

How many people from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

A project manager was our main point of contact. Also, there were two developers working in the background. We did have some communication between us and the developers when working on the API integration or things more on the technical side.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

Throughout the company there was positive feedback that all of our daily important information is now housed in one place. This allows for anyone to quickly look at the dashboard the get the info/data they need.

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timeliness.

When first starting the project we had almost weekly calls to discuss ideas, designs, or anything we wanted to change. As the initial design was set, the communication moved to emails. AppIt was always willing to setup phone calls to discuss anything, but the emails seemed to be sufficient. The only part I have comment on, was the timeline for this project. We went over the initial timeline but this was due to the API from the third-party not being fully setup at the time. They were incredibly responsive throughout.

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

I found the ability to work alongside a third-party company and integrate the API within the dashboard was great. Although using an API is not a challenging feat, their agility to help us through the process when we had a lack of knowledge was impressive.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

The only comment I have for this section, would be the working times. What I mean by this is the company's developers are overseas, not a problem other than the time difference. The only time the developers would be available is during the early morning, since this was later afternoon for them. This meant if anything came up by noon or later it wouldn't be addressed/seen by the developers until the middle of the night our time. Not a problem just more of an inconvenience.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the technology officer for a Public Relations company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire AppIt Ventures, and what were your goals?

We have a legacy Microsoft Access application that that we are looking to turn into an online application.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

We found them on Google. Their sales team (Ryan) was knowledgeable, prompt, and not pushy.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and technologies used.

The deliverables were the design and user stories for the new web application. They used Whimsical for user flows, and Figma for product designs.

How many people from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

I worked with 4 team members:

• 1 Business Development
• 1 Project Manager
• 1 Team Lead
• 1 Developer

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

AppIt exceeded expectations. The design of the application had a great fell and user experience. And their in depth user stories prove that they took the time to gain a full understanding of the software.

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timeliness.

Weekly Zoom calls. Worked great!

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

Very personal style. We could tell the team was invested in the project.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

Not that I can think of

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am founder and CEO of a SAAS event management company based in Denver

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire AppIt Ventures, and what were your goals?

We needed a re-write of a mobile app utility for our clients. Our previous shop was unable to complete the task properly and within our deadline. We needed significant attention to UX and UI (which we had designed) and a full understanding of our API.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

Appit's reputation precedes them in Denver. After meeting with their team, the choice was obvious. The results validated our choice in the end.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and technologies used.

React app for iOS and Android.

How many resources from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

The PM and lead dev.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

It's too soon for data but in a demo webinar, 50 attendees were extremely pleased with the new look, feel and function of the app.

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timeliness.

Lucas is easy to work with. We used Trello.

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

They got it done, right, fast, and at a reasonable price.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

No.