Box UK

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the director of JP Wales. We support primary care and general practices in Wales.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenges were you trying to address with Box UK?

Our business is website-based, and the primary service we provide is a SaaS product. They took over our company’s development services.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They built our website and helped with different components of our software platform. Everything was done through Laravel PHP. The features they worked on include booking functionality, invoicing, search parameters, notifications, and mail outs.  

What is the team composition?

I worked with an account manager, a project manager, three lead developers, one UX specialist, and one QA specialist. 

How did you come to work with Box UK?

We did a Google search. We actually chose a different company initially, but we changed our minds. The other company’s prices were more affordable, but Box UK ended up offering a better value for our money. 

How much have you invested in them?

We’ve spent about $370,000 so far. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in June 2020, and our work is ongoing. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We have absolutely no complaints about their performance. They’re open about how they approach their tasks, and we never have problems with anything they develop. The metrics are strong. 

How did Box UK perform from a project management standpoint?

We use Jira to collaborate with them. They’re very collaborative, and the project is well managed. They go the extra mile to keep up with requirements and deliver work quickly. 

What did you find most impressive about them? 

Their openness, authenticity, and integrity impress me the most. They’re always transparent with us. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

No. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I would just say definitely work with them. 

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

RS Components is a global high service distributor of industrial parts and electronic components. RS currently has operations in Europe, APAC and the Americas and was looking to expand it's presence into Vietnam and Indonesia within the APAC region. I am currently Head of marketing and strategic projects and have been with the company for 8 years working in both the UK, Hong Kong and China.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Box UK, and what were your goals?

Our goal was initially to launch a new presence in both IND and VN as quickly as possible, to take advantage of the huge market potential within our industry for the two markets. A website being the core method for customers to place orders.

As we dived deeper into the project we realised that we had a great opportunity to not only replicate the RS platform from other developing markets but go one better and create an intuitive, best-in-class platform that had navigation at it's core and had been built on key SEO principles that would greatly benefit the company moving forward.

SOLUTION

How did you select Box UK and what were the deciding factors?

Box UK have a longstanding relationship with RS and due to the complexity of the integration with the RS back end systems someone who understood how we worked and could be flexible in their approach was key. We also compared Box to many other competitors both locally and globally and found them to be competitive in their pricing and pitched to meet our exact needs.

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

This project is a significant investment in the SEA region by RS Components, one that will result in a streamlined, RS-owned online presence that enables the APAC team greater control and extensibility. To supplement this investment, Box UK will contribute regional ecommerce experience and a large pool of domain expertise developed over the course our seven-year partnership with RS.

Box UK will take a phased approach to delivery, the first of which will result in a robust core infrastructure for RS’ future SEA online presence. Once the Vietnam site is live, iterative improvements will be made to optimise the ecommerce experience and drive online sales.

Once launched, the team proposes to deliver detailed user research and further cultralization of the site.The bespoke AWS infrastructure will provide internal teams with greater control over hosting and performance, enabling RS to expediently optimise its offering across the SEA region.

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

• Vincent - Project Manager
• Courtenay - Account Manager
• Allie - Business Analyst
• Sam - Solution Archtect
• Dan  - Senior Designer
• Pete - Principal Developer
• Nick - Lead Systems Engineer
• Tim - Developer
• Michal - Developer
• Ian - Quality Assurance

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The websites delivered were built on the tech specified and from a design and UX perspective exceed our expectations at the start of the project. Both sites have now become revenue streams for RS.

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

Box UK were very clear throughout the project with their communication, all timelines were discussed in detail with the RS team and Box UK went to great lengths to ensure the project was delivered as quick as possible as per RS' initial expectations. Box UK were able to do this as well as deliver a far superior product to original scoped.

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

The flexibility Box showed throughout the project was excellent, RS accepted that scope changed as we moved into the project but Box were fully accommodating and always found a resolution. Box UK navigated the extremely complex internal environment and was able to get the project fully implemented quickly.

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

More direct communication would be a preference, I personally like to work with an agency that let's you know exactly where you stand at every step so I can make quick decisions or get additional people involved to bypass complexity. I felt Box at times wanted to keep RS, the client happy rather than deliver the good or bad news straight away.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the web program manager at RS Components. We are a global distributor of electronic and industrial products. My division is Design Spark, and we provide software packages for electrical design, 3D mechanical design, and more. We also provide other resources such as data sheets and application notes. 

We also have RS University, which is our way of trying to help students. Our team wrote semester documentation that universities, colleges, and their students can use for free. The courses teach students how to design PCBs and mechanical systems.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Box UK?

Our website never worked correctly. Every time we tried to fix something, something else would break.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Box UK provided web development and design services. Their team reviewed our code, looking into its structure and performing tests. The report came back with lots of errors, so we decided to build something new from scratch.

The Box UK team built the new site in PHP with a Symfony framework, incorporating elements from the old version. Then, they redesigned the site. They also moved our site from Rackspace to Google Cloud. 

We’ve continued to add features and performed more user testing with Box UK. From there, they’ve helped out with our data platforms and reporting. 

What is the team composition?

We have a dedicated project manager, a product owner, systems engineers, a solution architect, and a team of developers and QA engineers. We also work with their UX and design team.

How did you come to work with Box UK?

We worked with them 10–12 years ago on some ad hoc projects, including a project collaboration tool. This was the main area of our old site that actually worked properly. Since we had a good experience with them, we decided to work with them again when we redid the site.

How much have you invested with them?

We have invested between £3 million–£5 million (approximately $4 million –$7 million).

What is the status of this engagement?

Our ongoing engagement with Box UK began full-time in October 2013.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

One of the best things we did was add in automated and human testing. From the beginning of the project, we’ve had the same QA engineer, who probably understands our company better than anyone.

Box UK is very thorough. They catch all the little things that I would never spot.

How did Box UK perform from a project management standpoint?

They provide us and our key stakeholders with regular updates. Our teams have monthly catch-ups along with quarterly business reviews to make sure everyone’s on target. 

Last year was difficult given everything going on with the COVID-19 pandemic, so we are currently building a 3-year roadmap for what we want to achieve. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

They have exceptional personnel on board in every area. Their staff surprises us with incredible ideas and demonstrate a strong understanding of our objectives. They know our target audience as well as we do.

Are there any areas they could improve?

We’ve had some staff turnover, which does put you back a little, but it hasn’t been a problem. They hire good quality people.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

We get the best results out of Box UK because they understand our target audience and what we want to achieve. That’s not something you get to immediately, btu the quicker you can provide those details the better results you will get.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the head of product at Dexerto, an e-sports and gaming publisher.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Box UK?

Our old site’s tech stack wasn’t up to scratch anymore for the volume of site traffic we were getting. As a result, we decided to make a radical change to our tech stack to prevent any further loss in traffic and set us up well for future product development.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement? 

Box UK helped us from two angles: technical consulting and development. On the consulting side, they evaluated how our website was built, analyzing our product to define our traffic, user, and functionality needs. They compiled their findings into a list of tools that we would need to incorporate into our new MVP, and they also identified a new tech stack for our site.

From there, we went into development, which involved adding that list of tools to our new WordPress site to increase its performance. The team made sure that this iteration could withstand higher levels of traffic, too. 

What is the team composition? 

We started with four people: a product manager, two developers, and a QA tester. That slowly went down to three people as the main part of the project was completed, and then it ramped up again to four toward the end.

How did you come to work with Box UK?

I’d previously worked at a company that’d worked with Box UK in the past, which is why I reached out to them initially. 

Whereas other agencies weren’t confident in meeting our target goals, Box UK ticked off nearly all of the boxes we were looking to improve. Their team had a great portfolio of previous examples where they could show how they’d greatly increased the performance of sites under certain challenges. Likewise, they understood that our focus was to make sure that our site performance was at the top of its game, which would also affect how Google ranked us on search pages. 

The only downside to them was that they hadn’t had much experience with ad placements. Regardless, we took a leap of faith with them because their best practices were second to none. 

How much have you invested with them?

We paid them in phases. The initial engagement cost £18,000 (approximately $24,600 USD). We then went on to do further development iterations, which cost us about another £30,000 ($41,000 USD).

What is the status of this engagement?

The projects lasted from September–December 2020.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The biggest metrics we could speak to would our largest contentful paint (LCP, first input delay (FID), and page speed. All of these reached an all-time performance high after our work with Box UK. Our page speed increased by about 30%, our FID fell from 2–3 seconds to 1–2 seconds, and our LCP was within the acceptable Google threshold at around 1.5 seconds.

How did Box UK perform from a project management standpoint?

As part of the initial requests, I was involved from a product and project management point of view. Agencies don’t always have loads of time prior to working with you to understand your business goals, so I was there to make sure that the project's priorities best pivoted to focus on our business needs. To collaborate, we used Jira.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The quality of what they produce is second to none because they don’t overstretch themselves. Rather, they make sure that they’re delivering the best that they possibly can. While they might not have done anything that was necessarily mind-boggling for our project, the team did produce high-quality work that gave us a good ground to build upon. 

On top of that, the hand-over documentation was incredible. It made for a super easy transition as we moved away from them because we did have to ask too many questions about what they’d done.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They were a bit lacking in technical SEO knowledge because they hadn’t worked with many publishers beforehand. That was something we overcame together as we went through the project. 

I’d also add that they could’ve communicated more when it came to our budgets. I would’ve liked it if they notified us when we were going over budget or when we were working on a task that was excluded from the current budget. We ended up running into a couple of surprises when we were getting billed — nothing too extreme, but it was still a bit of an increase here and there that we weren’t prepared for.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Ask a lot of questions. Box UK’s team has a lot of knowledge but is obviously very busy, so you have to weave yourself into their group and get your point across. 

I’d also suggest making sure that they’re on top of the budget. They’re so engrossed within their work to make sure that everything is done well that the budget might slip their mind. It’s almost as if you’re assisting with project management, which you should be doing as a client anyway. 

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a product manager at Sodexo. We provide an employment benefits and rewards service.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Box UK?

We originally brought them on to oversee and advise on our new e-commerce platform. 

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We were building an employees benefits solution — a largely e-commerce-based platform — in house and needed advice. Eventually, we outsourced the development process to Box UK. The tool was initially built on CakePHP, but Box UK rewrote some parts in Symfony.

What is the team composition?

We work with a business analyst, a project manager, a QA manager, an account manager, three developers, and a technical support lead

How did you come to work with Box UK?

I’m not sure; I started on the project nine months ago. Box UK was working on the project before I joined the company.

How much have you invested with them?

We spend about £250,000 (approximately $311,000 USD) per year.

What is the status of this engagement?

The project started 2–3 years ago and is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We put together goals and metrics for any changes made on the platform to measure the success of their functionality.

How did Box UK perform from a project management standpoint?

They’ve done really well. I 100% would work with them again; I enjoy working with them currently. Box UK is keen to get things done on time and challenges us to ensure we meet our deadlines. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

Box UK doesn’t just take requirements and build them. They analyze the specifications, help us come to decisions, and use their expertise to push us to get the most out of our solution. They’re proactive so that we can avoid making any changes once things are completed.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Box UK has a very modern, agile approach and is good at looking at new methods of working. The only issue is that this can impact the way we work, especially if we’re not accustomed to the new process. It can cause delays, but it’s not a major issue; if anything, it helps us improve as a business.

Any advice for potential customers?

Work with them as if they’re part of the team. We’re quite close as a team, staying in constant communication. Take their advice, challenge them, and let them challenge you.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the Digital product manager for a distributor and retailer of single board computing and IoT hardware. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Box UK, and what were your goals?

To build 7 ecommerce web sites for a new brand and facilitate the delivery of a connected back office system and end to end infrastructure to 3pl. 

SOLUTION

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

We had previous positive experience working with Box UK on other projects and they had the right attitude to our goals. 

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

7 sites, 6 languages, 4 currencies, 1000 products. Using Wordpress VIP, Woo Commerce, Netsuite. 

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

10 people, Architect, products owner PM, QA various developers. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Delivered to scope on time and budget. 

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

Constant comms via Slack, progress tracking via Jira, agile ceremonies. 

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

They are truly invested at every level in the success that their clients have in achieving and exceeding goals. 

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

None.