CivicSoft

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the co-Founder and CTO of a SaaS cloud cost optimization company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

We have a need to extend our engineering team with senior talent that could accelerate our development. Civicsoft has the resources and talent to meet our demands and help us to market faster.

SOLUTION

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

We knew Quin and the reputation of the Civicsoft team. That was the first factor. Second, they were just easy to work with and get going on the project right away.

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

The project was to build the next gen cloud operating and cost management platform alongside our product and engineering team. Civicsoft supplemented the team and brought a level of seniority and experience we needed.

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

There were 1-2 people at any time. We would use Civicsoft to continue supplementing the team as we grow.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We were able to deliver a solid product to market in a very short time and continue to innovate on the platform with Civicsoft's help.

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

Communication is great; the team is very mature and professional and knows how to prioritize and deliver.

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

We have access to whatever we need - if something is missing, Civicsoft will find an expert and get them on a call. And we have direct access to the CEO to tap all of his experience and knowledge.

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

There's really nothing of note for the improvement of Civicsoft.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO of Shoshana Technologies. We provide business-critical management software for home care agencies. Our product, the Rosemark System, has functionalities that assist with billing, payroll, scheduling, and communications.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with CivicSoft?

Our system has an unusual backend programming language, and CivicSoft helped us find somebody who specialized in that.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

CivicSoft contracted a backend developer who had experience working with the kind of programming language that we use. The person CivicSoft found for us coded an entirely new version of the program. 

What is the team composition?

We worked with two people.

How did you come to work with CivicSoft?

CivicSoft was connected with somebody I had been working with on LinkedIn. Though they were not local, I thought I should at least have a conversation with them. I found that they were very interested and willing to take the project to the next step. They understood my needs, followed up with me well, and demonstrated a good level of tenacity, so I decided to use their services.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent around $60,000–$90,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

I started working with them around July 2021. We’ve set an end date for the engagement, but as of now, we’re still working with CivicSoft.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Since this is our first time working with a contractor, we’ve had to change some of our internal processes to get clear metrics on the success of the partnership. Because of our engagement with CivicSoft, we’ve reached a point where we’re able to have a clear idea of the numbers and deadlines. They’ve kept this project moving in a really positive direction.

How did CivicSoft perform from a project management standpoint?

We use Slack to communicate. I’m not privy to the exact documents that they produce, but all of that they manage through Jira. This enables our payroll and product owner to keep track of how the team spends their time and whether or not our goals are being achieved.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’re very patient and professional. I’m really happy with the partnership. We experienced some personality clashes at the beginning, and they’ve been able to help us work through that. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, I don’t think so. They don’t have a lot of experience in our space, but it has gone well considering all the things that could’ve gone wrong. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Be clear about what you need and set your own parameters well ahead of time. You could always use CivicSoft’s expertise to help you determine the best plan of action, but it would also be good to have something to start with even before getting into the project. 

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm a team lead at a software company that

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire CivicSoft?

We hired CivicSoft to develop a PowerBI dashboard to help us demonstrate the data collection capabilities of our product.

SOLUTION

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

We initially discussed this project with a handful of contractors and ended up deciding on CivicSoft because of their location, and also that they were able to appoint a specific developer to the project on their end that we could contact directly.

Describe the project in detail and walk through the stages of the project.

We started the project with a design proposal from our team, and then CivicSoft broke that proposal down into individual checkpoints throughout the project so that we could demonstrate progress internally. There was a close communication loop between me and the lead developer on the project as we worked through some of the idiosyncrasies of both our system and also the limitations of the PowerBI platform.

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

I primarily worked with Ian (developer), Quin (project manager), and Glenn (sales).

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The new dashboard has really been helpful in our discussions with potential customers about how they can best utilize the data that our systems generate.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

We communicated primarily using Slack and with weekly cadence meetings. I think this setup worked fine for us.

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

I liked the personal atmosphere of working with CivicSoft. It doesn't feel like working with nameless contractors, and they've gone above and beyond to continue fixing small bugs and making small changes after the closeout of the project.

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

I'd say generally everything was fine, though we had some technical difficulties and delays (well-communicated on their end, however).

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a software architect for a cloud management company. We host and manage private and shared cloud services in our data centers for other companies and people. We specialize in compliant and secure clouds.

If a company wants to have its private cloud or a service provider wants a shared cloud with their clients, we can give them the whole virtual infrastructure and host those services.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with CivicSoft?

We wanted to create a usage collection system and a billing engine. We used a comprehensive billing suite from another company, but we needed to replace it and extend its functions to encompass comprehensive usage collection and usage billing.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

In the beginning, Quin (Founder & Principal) helped us implement the design of our billing engine. He wrote background services in C# and .NET to integrate them into our existing software. With that modification, the billing engine was capable of taking usage data that we collected and transformed it into billing records. We could then import them into the rest of our portal to do the invoicing for our clients.

We then onboarded more people from CivicSoft to work simultaneously on three parts of the project. Some people worked with me on the usage collection side. Some people worked with Quin on the billing engine. Other people worked on the UI of our portal, extended the existing capabilities, and added new ones.

What is the team composition?

The first person that we onboarded for this project was Quin, who came to extend our team. After his initial involvement, we realized we had to scale up. He reached out to his recruiting team and brought in more people.

How did you come to work with CivicSoft?

Our recruiter found Quin through LinkedIn and reached out to him. He came in and we had an interview. I could tell within ten minutes that he was a sharp guy — I wanted him on the team.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent somewhere between $500,000–$1 million on this project.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with CivicSoft around October 2019, and the project was finished in June 2020.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We had a pretty successful launch given the scope of the work. We had to do a rapid transition from the old system to our new one, and these things tend not to go well.

The system was collecting almost a million records a day for 400 customers, but we had surprisingly few problems considering the size of the task — it went really well.

How did CivicSoft perform from a project management standpoint?

CivicSoft did a good job. It was a challenging project with a very tight time frame. I don’t think we realized how long it was going to take to accomplish what we set out to do, so there were some deadline challenges.

At the start of the project, we were in the office. Most of the work was covered prior to COVID-19, so we had CivicSoft’s team come to our office. They spent various days on-site, and we integrated and collaborated very effectively.

Working together in the office was really important for our communication. We’ve worked with teams 100% offshore before, and that always presented communication challenges. Having a team that was able to communicate with us effectively was really important.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Quin did a good job of finding talent to add to the team. We had one team member who wasn't as strong as the others, but I think we pushed him outside of his comfort zone, moving from a technology that he might have been more familiar with, to one he wasn't so familiar with. Otherwise, I think the candidates were really good and we got a lot of great work.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I don't have anything to say on that matter. Looking at the big picture, the project was handled pretty well.

Any advice for potential customers?

Keep the lines of communication open, keep a finger on the pulse of the expectations, and constantly revisit the project. Set the expectations, and measure how the delivery is stacking up against those expectations.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the president and founder of Evolved Experience Solutions. We provide experience analytics and consulting for real-life brand experiences, primarily sports and entertainment brands. We launched in 2017 and have been building out the company and our client base pretty aggressively since then.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with CivicSoft?

We built a proprietary software solution to automate our analytics. We had hired a different company that did not do the best job, and we ended up with a system that was about 80% of the way done. It had quite a few bugs and glitches, and the UI was a little wonky.

I needed a company that could help us navigate that better, fix our platform, and also help us scale it and build it out for the growth that we were expecting.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

CivicSoft helped us with our analytics software. We had a list of additional functionalities that we wanted to add in and have built out. We wanted to be able to not just perform aggregate analysis but also helped with individual issue resolution. Quin (Founder and Principal) and Richard (Software Engineer) really helped us design what that looks like, designed a user interface, and then built that out which has been awesome.

They primarily worked through that but there was also a lot of bug resolution that they needed to do.  The other company we worked with had cut a lot of corners so things just weren’t functioning like they should have been. CivicSoft went back in and fixed the code and the backend so it was a little more seamless and functioned properly. They did a great job of identifying those issues and also expanded on what the functionality was.

We implemented a real-time alert system that allowed our clients to be notified if one of their guests was having a service issue at their live event. It allowed them to provide that real-time touchpoint and to be able to understand what the issue was and respond.

A big part of what we do is real-time feedback. A lot of folks do post-event surveys, but people aren’t going to remember the details a few days later nearly as well as they would have if they filled it out on the spot in terms of cleanliness, how long they had to wait for food and beverage, and if people were friendly. We do it at the event and the client gets all of the data.

We also presented them with a couple of challenges, and they looked into them. We also had them do some AI work, automated sorting, and tech analysis, and it was stuff that they said they hadn’t done that way before. They really took it upon themselves to get familiar with it. Civic Soft really ramped up and came back to us as subject matter experts instead of sort of learning as they went.

What is the team composition?

We were in contact with Quin and Richard, who was our main developer, and he was fantastic. Quin supported where needed.

How did you come to work with CivicSoft?

While doing a LinkedIn search, I found that Quin, who popped up because he was connected to someone I used to work with. I reached out to him directly and asked him what his company did and if they could provide a solution for the build-out we were needing and we went from there.

How much have you invested in them?

We invested less than $100,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

The project began in January 2020, and we are still working with them but more in a limited capacity at the moment because of COVID-19. Due to the pandemic, there aren't too many sporting events going on. We only paused because of this, it had nothing to do with the quality of their work. I'd give them more projects if I could.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

They definitely meet our standards. CivicSoft takes great pride in putting together quality products and being very thorough in their designs. They often bring ideas to us and point out things that could be a potential issue.

In the beginning, they spent time getting to know our system and also our vision for where it was going. As we talked about new features or functionality, they were really helpful in letting us know what would work or what would be a potential challenge our clients might experience if we were to do it that way. They definitely produced a very good work product and they are very thorough. They have some really great experience which brings it all to life.

They are doing some tasks for the first time, but they definitely took the initiative to make sure that they had all their ducks in a row. They are very respectful of budgets and timelines and making sure that they produced a great quality product without the client incurring their learning curve.

How did CivicSoft perform from a project management standpoint?

CivicSoft is good at meeting deadlines, candidly, that is one of the things that they definitely improved as we worked together more. We learned their style and they learned ours, and they are very on point with DevOps and managing the flow through that and it worked really, really well.

We learned how to be very specific and articulate everything upfront so that we didn’t miss deadlines. Although we missed our first deadline by a little bit, I don’t believe we missed any after that. We figured that out and they were really good with the follow-through and the follow-up and were very aware of what our priorities were and were able to make sure that they didn’t over-commit and then delivered with what they promised.

We communicate probably 2–3 times a week. We have formal standing meetings on Tuesday and Thursday, and then we would have a longer prep meeting at one point during the week, and then emails as needed for the project. There is always a lot of open communication which is great.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I like working with them, they are nice people, which isn't always a guarantee.  Not to knock on developers, but sometimes they are focused on the product and the output more so than the relationship and the product as well.

Quin does a really great job of balancing the customer service and the client management and providing just a really great experience as well as a great product. He cares about delivering something that they can be proud of and is exactly what we want, and then he always cares about his staff and the clients and that really shows.

It isn’t transactional; it is more of a relationship. It feels like they are more of a partner throughout the process, and they care about our success as well which is awesome. We are a small company, and we are growing quickly, and the fact that they can come alongside us and help us achieve our goals has been really powerful and really helpful, and I think that definitely sets them apart.

They do great work. Many companies do great work, it’s just really how they go about doing it and that extra level of customer service and care that they deliver which is really cool.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I am sure there are areas they could work on, but nothing so glaring that it has been an issue. Early on there were a couple of bumps just in communication and that first deadline, and we resolved it which I think speaks volumes about their business. Some companies and vendors really can take a long time to resolve that, and Quin just moved very quickly to make sure that everything is well situated, and that the client relationship is really strong.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Have a really clear vision of what you are looking for and be able to articulate it. When I started working with developers, as it isn’t my background, I would say one thing and would soon realize there is so much opportunity for interpretation. Learn to wireframe and learn the basics so that you can really help them see the vision because they are great at delivering on it.

Having a clear vision and being able to articulate that just allows you to be most efficient which is probably the case for any developer. Come at it with that frame of reference and they are pretty quick learners, they are good at understanding and picking things up, but the more detailed you can be, the more efficient the experience will be.