Clarity Ventures

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

At goAfrica, I was the Co-Founder and CEO. At African Priorities & Smart Skills Training I am the Founder and Chairman of the Board. Well, the company itself originally was that we were not sure what to do with something like ecommerce in Africa and we were thinking about things that were benefiting from having access to numerous corporations, numerous organizations, and as we understood better what e-commerce helped before we began to zero that down a bit.

What we were most interested in was making sure that people were attracted to what we were trying to present because operating only in Africa, people don't pay sufficient attention to, let's call it routine advertising. You had to find a better way to make an attraction and we felt that working with e-commerce was a better way to describe what e-commerce was all about in Africa.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

I think the goal actually was to be the best of the e-commerce operations. And bear in mind that when we first began with this in 2014, early 2015 e-commerce was just beginning in Africa as we built along a bit Jamaica became both successful and growing fairly rapidly.

So although we started out with the idea that we didn't have any direct competition, we quickly had one in several different African countries. What we wanted to make sure was that people recognize that if there were more than one or two e-commerce platforms, that one of them would be Go Africa. We were also named the best B2B e-commerce platform for 2019 in Kenya.

SOLUTION

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

We looked at a total of six different possibilities, and we worked through that fairly carefully and determined that Clarity was by far and away the best of the options, both in pricing and in terms of the experience that they with regards to our global business needs.

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

Clarity helped us create an executable business plan as well as what steps would be needed in order to seamlessly adopt the new platform once launched. Working with the Clarity team is actually very effective and very easy now. One thing that we loved, was that Clarity has a way of setting up both the agendas, scheduling, and the timing, and they always met those requirements, and we always appreciated that.

This high standard of service was provided from the project hand-off, discovery, and re-estimation, throughout the entirety of the project, and all the way till we launched the project. One of the key points were Clarity helped a ton was building a national directory of 42,000 companies in Africa, then we were able to market to them to sign up and get their own storefronts in the marketplace.

And then that's how we started really moving the marketplace to get adoption. This made our post-launch a huge success.

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

Typically there are six or seven people. Account manager, project manager, and business analyst, based on the technical needs will add in a designer, security/hosting specialist, front-end engineer, back-end engineer, and integration specialist, and typically faces off with a QA engineer. As your project goes into production and maintenance is planned.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

What we wanted to make sure was that people recognize that if there were more than one or two e-commerce platforms, that one of them would be Go Africa. We were also named the best B2B e-commerce platform for 2019 in Kenya. So in the end we were able to successfully achieve our goals both on the project but also as a business.

After we built a national directory of 42,000 companies, then we were able to market to them to sign up and get their own storefronts in the marketplace. And then that's how we started really moving the marketplace to get adoption. With Go Africa I think that from the beginning we looked at all of Africa and the, the competition tended to be located in some of the major African economies.

So they might be in South Africa or they might be in Egypt, they might be in Nigeria. We were trying to be evenhanded, both multilingual and also taking a full look at all of Africa in terms of how we posted a presentation which looked at Africa and not looking at individual markets.

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

Working with the Clarity team is actually very effective and very easy now. One thing is that we loved, was that Clarity has a way of setting up both the agendas, scheduling and the timing, and they always met those requirements, and we always appreciated that.

Everything was quite well organized, you know, from the outset with Clarity, so even if we couldn't get a hold of someone directly, we always could find a response very quickly back off to when we could have this conversation and what might be the outcome. So I think in terms of how they handle the let's call it the background support and the ongoing support between us as a client and you as a provider was five stars.

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

I have to think about that for a second. I'm more familiar with it now as well. So I think in terms of how it's presented in the whole process going from beginning to end, it's well laid out, very intuitive and it contains sufficient information to take you from one step to the next.

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

I have no recollection of anything I didn’t like. I think the software is first class.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Vice President of Elysee cosmetics and President of Professional Payments

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

Multiple projects. The first was a quick recovery of our crashed site, so we could resume online sales. The second was a redesign/rebuild of our entire site and eCommerce system.

First, to get the crashed site back up so we could continue taking online orders. After that, it was to completely re-do everything with a site that would not just support our business but help to drive new business and sales.

SOLUTION

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

We interviewed quite a few different development companies, but liked what Clarity offered and their unique business model, which I’d never seen before.

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

The first was to recover our crashed website, that our past vendor we were working with could not recover. All sales were online, and we had no orders coming in. We were down for more than a week, then we engaged Clarity and within a couple of days, they had us back up and running.

We decided that the old site was not up to our standards, so we engaged Clarity to design us a completely new site, re-do all our graphics, content, product information and SEO content. We expanded from one payment option to five payment gateways and much more. We then continued with ongoing SEO work to help increase our visibility and online revenue.

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

I was driving the project from our side but worked with many people at Clarity. It started with sales, then a Project Manager. They had a Business Analyst do our technical discovery, while I worked with a designer on the new design. Then they had a couple of developers working on the website, ecommerce, and integrations with the payment gateways.

I also worked with their marketing team throughout to re-do our SEO content. I provided a few keywords, and they did all the research, wrote most of the new content, optimized the site, then put together our ongoing plan to market the site.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Absolutely. Aside from the professional design and professionalism of the site, we immediately saw a significant increase to our online revenue. The site drew interest from investors, and with Clarity’s help, we were able to sell the company.

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

Amazing. I couldn’t have accomplished what we did without them. I had no idea it could be so successful, so quickly.

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

I was impressed by the fact that they had such a wide and deep knowledge of everything we needed. They didn’t just build me a new website. They helped redesign the branding of the whole company online image. Put that into a new and amazing site, adding in a ton of new abilities, and with their marketing help, drove our huge revenue growth, that ultimately helped us sell the company.

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 the office manager at my law firm. I take care of many different tasks throughout my days, of all kinds. Finding a company for this project happened to be one of them.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Clarity Ventures?

Our website was very out of date and it wasn't easy to maintain or use on our end or for customers. There were several glitches and customers were finding it a burden to use our online tools. We were trying to switch most of our business to an online portal instead of via telephone or in-person visits.

What were your goals for this project?

Our goal with this project was to make an online portal for our business to come to life. We wanted to hire a company that would be able to do this, as well as do so following our instructions, opinions, and views. We really just wanted our customers and company to have a better and improved platform.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

We found Clarity Ventures on the internet, along with some other companies that caught our eye. After doing our research and gathering information on each, we narrowed down the list due to different and certain things we were looking for in the company we wanted. In the end, we chose to proceed with Clarity Ventures.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

We hired Clarity Ventures to completely re-do our website to a more user-friendly platform, that would also be easier for us to maintain and operate. We also wanted a mobile app designed to match and run similar to the website. We gave them plenty of ideas to base their work on. We planned to be involved with most of the process. Clarity kept us updated throughout the time we worked with them and provided a design and a plan a few months in.

What was the team composition?

I'm not sure how many people were assigned to this project. We had conversations and interactions with about three different team members.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any information that demonstrates the impact that this project has had on your business?

The completed project exceeded all of our expectations. The new website was flawlessly implemented and has made using online tools much simpler and efficient than before. All website functions are working correctly. Our new app is also better than we expected. Not only can customers do most of their tasks online, but the app also offers the same functionality. We're able to pull several different reports to see the performance of the site and the app.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

Clarity did a great job with the project management. We thought we'd have to be much more involved than we were. The team members handled the project and followed our instructions almost perfectly. We barely had to do anything.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Clarity Ventures was very communicative, responsive and attentive. We came to realize how important this was throughout the project. Communication was always a strong point with Clarity throughout the campaign. Everything was explained in detail, every question or concern was always addressed in a timely manner and very politely and Clarity never missed any detail - big or small.

Are there any areas for improvement?

As with all companies, there is always room for improvement. Clarity handled our project really well and we're really happy with the outcome.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the vice president of finance and operations at a distribution company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Clarity Ventures?

All of our digital assets were damaged during a flood, so we were looking to rebuild everything as quickly as possible. Our priority was setting up our e-commerce website so that we could improve our online visibility.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We asked Clarity Ventures to build a user-friendly e-commerce website with product filters and category pages. They were also expected to integrate basic SEO tactics within our web content. This was all mapped out in a functional design document, which we reviewed with them in great detail. Everything went according to plan in the beginning; they would show us their mockups and how the pages would function on the site, and we would edit their work and supply them with content for the upcoming stages. Four months into the project, and only a few weeks away from our anticipated launch date, we discovered that the website that they were building for us did not work at all. We hoped that they would fix their errors and finish the site, but after two years of back and forth, we realize that it’s unlikely.

What is the team dynamic?

Our account was assigned to several different people over the years, so we tried to keep their CEO involved for consistency’s sake.

How did you come to work with Clarity Ventures?

We discovered their business while sleuthing for vendors online. While we preferred to work with a local company, we were highly impressed with Clarity Venture’s design portfolio. They also had a bunch of positive references posted on their website.

How much have you invested with them?

About $147,000 CAD (approximately $113,000 USD) was spent on this project.

What is the status of this engagement?

The first phase of the project was initiated in March 2016, and their progress came to a halt in August 2016. We attempted to work with them up until October 2018, but we eventually cut ties with them in June 2019. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Describe the impact this engagement has had on your business.

Our experience with Clarity Ventures was horrific. They assured us that the website would be up and running in six months, but they failed to deliver on this promise. More than three years have passed, and the site is nowhere to be found. It’s extremely frustrating because we invested a lot of money into a product that we can’t use. Clarity Ventures abandoned our project and left us to pick up the pieces.

How was project management handled?

The amount of time that they wasted on this project is unacceptable. During the first few months, Clarity Ventures was highly responsive to our needs. They were active on Basecamp, and they scheduled meetings with us regularly. Eventually, their workflow became sporadic, and their deliverables were either unsatisfactory or missing. We would drop everything to gather any information that they needed, but they did not offer us the same courtesy. When we started to voice our concerns, they became less responsive. They cycled us through several different project managers before ceasing all communication.

Is there anything that the vendor did well or that you would consider a strength?

There are no positives to speak of.

In what specific areas can they improve?

Clarity Ventures led us to believe many things that weren’t true. They told us that they could deliver an incredible site, but they can’t even keep their own website from crashing consistently. We also noticed that the stunning portfolio and rave reviews that were featured on their site were removed soon after we hired them.

What advice do you have for clients with similar needs to yours?

I would never risk working with Clarity Ventures again, and I would advise other companies to do the same. We looked online to see if our delayed project was an isolated event, and found many other businesses voicing similar complaints. There was no clarity and no trust.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the marketing manager at a global B2B leader in thermal management solutions for electronics.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Clarity Ventures?

Our existing e-commerce platform was problematic and was starting to create some business limitations for how we wanted to grow, especially online and in our digital landscape. We contracted with Clarity Ventures to remove the e-commerce portion of our site and create a standalone e-commerce site that could be managed separately.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We provided a statement of work and a basic mock-up of the direction we wanted to go. We requested a site that addressed our various shipping issues; improved search capabilities for our consumers; was better at sorting our products; and could be easily managed on the backend by a non-technical individual. The platform also had to provide a means for our sales staff to send quotes and have them be recorded within the system.

Clarity Ventures presented us with a design about three months into the engagement. We were satisfied with that progress. However, once they started to develop the e-commerce platform and build out the product catalog, we encountered several problems and had numerous disagreements. Ultimately, they fulfilled none of our requirements.

What is the team composition?

I’m unsure of their exact team size because there were several changes. Most notably, Clarity Ventures appointed a new project manager three or four months into the engagement—between signing off on the scope and the beginning of the development.

How did you come to work with Clarity Ventures?

One of our VPs at the time worked with them at a previous job on an e-commerce site, and he recommended them.

How much have you invested with them?

Clarity Ventures operates with a time and materials structure of payment, but it was never clear how or where our time was used. In all, we spent between $100,000–$150,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our engagement began in October 2016. In February 2018, we agreed to one final payment so that they could finish their open tasks, and then we could part ways. They did not complete that work until June. We then experienced problems switching our hosting services, which we finally resolved in August 2018. We consider that to be the end of the engagement. We have since hired another vendor to correct and complete Clarity Ventures’ work.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Our website, as constructed by Clarity Ventures, does not meet our expectations and does not embody the product Clarity Ventures said it could deliver. Our sorting and search functions do not work, and half of the products are not displayed correctly. The sales staff is unable to send quotes, and they are barely able to receive order information.

We are unable to determine if we have a higher abandoned cart rate because that reporting function is not operational. But we have seen our online revenue be cut in half despite the traffic numbers remaining largely unaffected.

What problems arose and what did Clarity Ventures do to address them?

We started running into issues when the platform did not work as their team promised it would. Instead of this becoming a custom platform for us, we essentially paid for them to develop their own software, which didn’t suit our needs. They became aggressive when we said we weren’t happy.

How did Clarity Ventures perform from a project management standpoint?

The project management was incredibly poor, and we ended up doing most of it ourselves. They didn't provide any tools to aid this process. We ended up doing a substantial amount of QA ourselves.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They must manage client expectations more appropriately. They need to feel comfortable telling a client that something cannot be achieved. Otherwise, the Clarity Venture staff ends up in a situation like this where they have overpromised, and now their developers are being pushed beyond their abilities, which leads to mistakes and poor deliverables.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I didn’t find many reviews of their work during our preliminary research. I would recommend that others do their due diligence. We liked what they had to say in our initial meetings, and I’m sorry to say I was a bit naïve.

BACKGROUND

Please provide a description of your company. 

We are a human capital methodology company. We work primarily with larger corporations, providing solutions to address their challenges in developing and coaching their employees.

What are your role and responsibilities?

I’m the chief operating officer. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What was your goal for working with Clarity Ventures?

Our company offers several different product packages to address our clients’ needs, and we wanted three different product-specific websites to better differentiate our products. We needed websites that had a modern look and feel while, at the same time, communicating the uniqueness of what we do. No one on our staff has any IT [information technology] or Web development expertise. All of our people are business, marketing, or behavioral experts. This made even choosing a service provider difficult.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their work.

Clarity Ventures helped us build several stand-alone branded websites that have a unique market focus. We needed to make sure that we satisfied our intellectual property owners, licensees, and end users. So, we had to convey three different messages with each site. Clarity Ventures did a very nice job up front to make sure everyone had a clear understanding of what exactly we would be doing.

What was your process for selecting Clarity Ventures with which to work?

Our initial objective was to find a company in New York City, where many of our staff are located. Unfortunately, the company we hired failed us miserably. Even though we paid them a considerable amount of money, they made very little effort to understand who we are and what we do. I’m located in central Texas, so I decided to find somebody I could meet with face to face here. I did a lot of Web searches, saw several positive reviews of Clarity and decided to go with them.

Can you provide a ballpark dollar figure for the size of the work that they’ve done for you?

Our budget was $5,000 to $10,000 for each website. Clarity was willing to train us on how to do some of the work ourselves, so we were able to come in under budget and ahead of schedule.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the results of the project?

We’re incredibly happy. The websites look spectacular, and the feedback has been great. The sites are very attractive, easy to find and easy to navigate. They have everything that we wanted. 

Do you have any statistics or metrics to track improvement from the project?

In the month of December of 2014, we had our single biggest month ever of direct sales from the websites.

Is there anything unique about them that really makes them stand out, compared to other companies?

The thing I like most about clarity is that they have a genuine customer focus. They’re not afraid of losing a few thousand dollars by teaching us to do something ourselves, knowing that this would be best for us as the client. I found that very refreshing.

In addition, they adapted well to our style and needs. They have offices in California, New York, and Texas, so we could talk with them in almost any time zone. They really adapted themselves to our communication preferences.

I am actually writing a case study about Clarity as an example of how to treat customers. I cannot recommend them highly enough.

Looking back on the work so far, is there any area that you think they could improve upon or something that you might do differently?

I only wish I would have found them earlier. 

BACKGROUND

Could you briefly describe your organization?

I’m an independent consultant. I work in the medical device and healthcare industry sector, offering sales and marketing advice. A lion’s share of that is in the area of digital marketing. I work with clients to help them build Web applications. I help them strategize how they’re going to move to digital marketing platforms. I work with folks like Clarity in development capacities, having had a lot of experience with them before on some other projects. Together, we work on projects in the orthopedics industry. We currently work with some very large medical associations and societies as well as small startups in different sectors of the medical device and healthcare industry.

What is your position?

I’m the founder and lead consultant.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

Could you describe the business challenges you were attempting to address when you initiated the relationship with Clarify Ventures?

I actually met them at least three years ago when I was the director for marketing for a spinal devices company. We needed to rebuild a new global website. We had seven regional sales and marketing organizations across the globe that we needed to consolidate and synchronize. I was tasked with completing that project for the company. In the process, I started to work on identifying potential suppliers. I vetted at least half a dozen suppliers in Europe and Clarity Ventures was one of those six. They very quickly became one of our prime candidates. Once we finished the vetting process, we felt confident that Clarity Ventures would be the right firm to partner with.

There are two big reasons. One, they have a very large bench or deep bench of in-house developers. Their talent pool is great. We didn’t want to work with a firm that was subcontracting their development. We wanted to have a strong internal team that we could depend on. I liked their business model of bidding and selling blocks of development hours. From a project management standpoint, they gave me an incredible amount of flexibility with changing priorities.

SOLUTION

Could you describe the scope of the project in greater detail?

They completely rebuilt our website with DotNetNuke, which is the content management system we chose to use. We wanted to have a system that enabled our different regions to manage some of their own content. Our original system required all of our regional managers to submit their content updates through one IT channel to ensure that it was done correctly. That process was extremely cumbersome and time consuming. The majority of their work was custom development and system configuration. They helped us migrate all of our content once the new site was built, and they helped us reorganize some of it to make it more intuitive.  

Could you provide a sense of the size of this project in monetary terms?

Our total budget from beginning to launch of the seven portals was probably $60,000 or $70,000.

When was the new site launched?

It was September of 2012.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

In terms of results, could you share any statistics, metrics, or user feedback you’ve received that would demonstrate the effectiveness of their work?

We were happy when it launched. The site solved all of the problems that we were trying to solve at that point. Anecdotally, the site has been well received by customers and investors alike. Our unique traffic has definitely improved since launch, and we receive more inquiries and information requests than we ever did with our older site.

When working with Clarity Ventures, is there anything you would consider unique about their approach or development methodology that distinguishes them from other vendors?

The big plus is they have a very skilled team of developers. They have a broad set of offerings, whether it’s backend development, user interface, finance, and creative design. I’m currently working with their graphic artists on a rebranding project for a large medical association. Their pricing is also extremely competitive, especially considering the quality of their custom development work.

In retrospect, are there areas you think they could improve on as a service provider?

I would go back to their business model, the development hours. While that’s one of the greatest advantages of working with Clarity Ventures, it’s also, administratively, complicated to monitor and manage. You have to interact with their project management system in deep, deep detail to understand the process. Their reports are rather complex because of how they operate. The advantages and disadvantages are in the same area, but it been well worth it from my perspective.

BACKGROUND

Can you provide a brief description of what your company does?

We work with school districts in Texas and Ohio specifically. We’ve worked with other states in the past, but right now and specifically this office, we only work with Texas and Ohio. We work with special education departments and school districts to help with two areas of their work. One area is their student documentation. We have software that helps track and maintain all student documentation needed for the special education program. In the state of Texas, at least, there are about 150 pages of documentation that could be needed for any one student. Ultimately, our software helps them organize and track that documentation and store it in electronic format, where we can run reports on it and whatever is needed for the districts.

Our main software is pretty much service delivery tracking software that the users will use to track all services provided to their students. We then take that information, and based on the user’s credentials and other qualifying factors, we can send Medicaid claims on behalf of the school districts to be the given state for Medicaid reimbursement for services provided to their students.

Essentially, we have two software packages; specifically, our main one is the service delivery, tracking, and billing software package that we essentially bill for these clients.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What was your main goal going into the project with Clarity Ventures?

We have used in-house development for about 15 or 16 years. We are a small business, so we’ve only ever been able to afford one developer on hand at one time. There have been brief periods where we were able to get a few developers in-house on a short-term basis to ramp up certain software or completely overhaul our software.

In the past several years, this company had gone through several ownership transitions. We’ve been under the same owner, but specifically, it was a family-owned business; the family split up the business and gave away different states to their family members. So, this owner got Texas and Ohio; with that transition and knowledge, we’re projecting our growth in the near future. We felt that it would be good to outsource our development. That way, we can get a whole lot more done.

We knew the upfront investment would be more than actually having an in-house developer. However, we realized that at any one time, we have a team of developers that can jump and resolve an issue much more quickly. That’s why we opted to go with outsourcing our development and ultimately in our review process, we selected Clarity as our best option for what our company needed.

SOLUTION

Could you tell me a bit more about the work they did for you?

Specifically, we’d had about 30 or 40 different development projects that we’ve worked on with them since about May 2012. We’re going on about the fourteenth month of our relationship now. Ultimately, it’s varied in the type of work regarding whether it involves building tools to process and parsing our data from the actual state agencies, or if it’s database management and optimization. Also, we’ve had several projects that fully implement and overhaul the reporting area of our software that graphically displays reports for our users, so that they’re not just looking at numbers.

We’ve had probably about 25 or so different project tasks related to beefing up our invoicing module, which is another of our software packages that allow school districts to track the specific services provided by their partners in their school districts. They might have contracts with the service providers; thus, they’ll invoice the service providers directly after they’ve received reimbursement from the state, or after the service providers have received reimbursement from the state for the specific services they’ve provided. With our software, they’re just a giant list of different directions they’ve gone into.

Another hefty project that they’ve worked on with us is developing a mobile app that essentially manages the functions of one area of our software that handles the calendar and service tracking. Ultimately, our users have the ability to do that through a simple mobile app, and Clarity was the main builders for that app.

How did you originally find and then choose Clarity Ventures to work with?

We’re located in Austin, Texas, so knowing that we wanted to outsource development, we still wanted them to be close by, so that if there’s any reason why we needed to have an in-house meeting, have them come to our offices, wherever it might be. We didn’t want to outsource outside of the city that our office was in. We specifically were looking for developers within Austin that ultimately we can outsource our development.

In our initial research, we probably reviewed about five or six different development shops here in Austin. We also interviewed with a couple of development shops that were just outside of Austin or in Texas knowing that by interviewing them, we might not be able to have the advantage of having them in an in-house meeting, wherever it might be. However, we wanted to ensure that we could compare the quality of the development teams that we were talking with, to other development teams that we contacted, from other companies that they had worked with and that were generally outside of our area.

After doing that whole process, we really liked Clarity. We liked the vibe that we were getting with the meetings with them. We really liked the confidence that we had about the direction they could take our product. So ultimately, we chose them based mainly on the confidence that we had with them; as a bonus, they did have some of the more competitive pricing. They weren’t the most expensive development shop we talked to, and they certainly weren’t the cheapest development shop we talked to, but they’re right up there in the medium to almost a medium-high range. Still, the quality that we were expecting to get out of it was certainly worth it.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

So far, how do you think that Clarity Ventures has performed?

Looking at the entire 14 months we’ve worked with them, we’ve been very pleasantly surprised with them. Having seen a lot of single developers at the time, and most of the time having them as the one source to tell us how long certain line items would take and whatever it might be, the quality of work we were getting wasn’t too good from the previous developers. Also, the delivery timelines were often extended. They’d be working on major projects, and the timeline would continue to move over three or four months. In our previous development cycles, it was just too slow for us.

Moving on to Clarity, we expected that we could expedite some of the development. However, we also expected that it would come at a much higher premium, because we’d be paying for hours and sometimes three or four developers working on our project at any one time. What we did find is not only was our development able to be released much more quickly, but also, we often didn’t have to bring in multiple developers on any one project. They would have a single developer. However, because they were tracking each of the hours so meticulously and making notes on it, we found the quality of those hours were much better than we were getting when it was a single developer in-house. And that partly is on management that was overseeing the in-house developers. But it’s also from the fact that with Clarity, we know that although they have a single developer working on any one project, they do go through a coterie process. They do have to document everything within the code and document the activities they participate in. So they’re held accountable to that.

There have been instances where we might have internally questioned someone in the house that a certain project with Clarity took. Ultimately, we were able to get down to the granular form—look at each individual hour, look at everything that happened. At the end of the day, if Clarity felt that, yes, after their code review and their time review that it did go over budget, they actually made up for that.

One of our main projects was the mobile app. After a full review, the timeline was extending and part of it was because internally, our staff members were changing our mind on some items. So Clarity would fully build one area and then we would change our mind and say, actually, we don’t really like it that way; let’s do it this way. So a lot of the extra time was spent in sometimes changing directions, and it wasn’t the fault of Clarity. It was because of us doing it internally.

One main developer that was working on the project left mid-project, and so it got transitioned to another developer. And in that time, during the transition, we felt that the quality of hours during that transition time weren’t of the quality that Clarity had been delivering. Ultimately, after those meetings, Chris at Clarity stepped up and admitted that he felt that the time spent there wasn’t of the quality that they expect internally. So, they credited us hours for that time.

As a whole, we’ve been very impressed with the amount of output and work that Clarity’s been able to provide. Previously, whenever we did releases, our customer care center would instantly get a giant influx of calls for different areas of bugs because the previous developers weren’t doing good testing. With Clarity, it’s very rare that we have a post-release bug. If we were to have a post-release bug, oftentimes, those bugs are resolved within about five to six hours. They’re able to release and we’ll be back, fully up and running in a certain area that might be throwing the bugs.

We’ve been impressed, and in the times that we’ve had any issue whatsoever with Clarity, they’ve been very open to sit down with us and go through the review process. In the few times that we’ve done it, they’ve actually come in and said, you know, we agree that this wasn’t what it was supposed to be, and they’ve actually credited us for those hours.