The Curve

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Director of Arithmagicians

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Makes maths games.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire The Curve to accomplish?

• To produce an online maths game
• To help me to start an online business

SOLUTION

How did you find The Curve?

• Online Search

Why did you select The Curve over others?

• Pricing fit our budget
• Company values aligned

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

At the beginning of the project the Arithmagicians concept and game existed only as a paper based version, but that didn't stop more than 15 schools from signing up to trial this Tech for Good project. The key challenge in this project was developing a web-based version of the game in which schools all over the country could access and use to help their students develop their arithmetic skills, whilst still enjoying themselves as they do. 

This project also highlighted various features that would also be key to the gamification of the Arithmagicians concept, one of these features would be the ability of students to earn and collect coins and badges on the platform after completing challenges and improving their ranks. 

Key considerations for this project included developing a portal in which teachers and students could log into their accounts whilst only accessing the areas relevant to them. For instance, students can log in and see the challenges they need to complete and the progress they’ve made but shouldn’t be able to access or see answer sheets, class progress and other user information.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

• All the requirements specified were successfully met and implemented within the given time frame, resulting in the completion of the game project on time, meeting the deadline.

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

I have onlyone word to descibe their management: outstanding. They kept me informed every step of the way. When there was a problem, they resolved it quickly.

What was your primary form of communication with The Curve?

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

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

They didn't just help me to create a maths game website, they also helped me to start a business.

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

No - I would definitely recommend them to friends and family.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the CEO of Schools Plus, a social enterprise that makes money for schools by hiring out their unused facilities out-of-hours

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

To transform our booking platform to enable self-service by schools and customers, together with a host of unique functionality

SOLUTION

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

We carried out a comprehensive, competitive tender process looking at potential development companies worldwide. The Curve won above all because we believed that the relationship would work well, which is the foundation stone for a long-running, highly innovative development project of this sort.

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

0.25 project manager 0.5 project administrator 0.5 business analyst, 3-4 developers 0.5 quality controller Aditional expert input and senior developer involvement as required

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

A quality, high performance software tool that will be ready for market.

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

Well managed approach, with realistic expectations set at each stage. Constructive feedback and suggestions to improve as we went along.

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

We're impressed with their commitment to getting everything right for us. Flexing on a number of key matters in order to invest in the relationship, Valuable contributions to our overall design thinking to help us create something even better than we had originally hoped for

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

Sure, but nothing for the public domain. If there had been major issues, I wouldn' t be giving them this write up!

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the Head of Digital at MattressOnline.co.uk LTD, we are the UK's leading online mattress retailer and have lead the way in the online sale of mattresses and accessories for a significant time. My role is to lead the development of our e-commerce platform, our onsite content and product range and to maximise our organic ranking, traffic and conversion rate on site, as well as to maintain the business systems that enable our operational side of the business to function efficiently.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

We have a bespoke system developed to suit our particular needs and have worked on this in house. With the growth the business has undergone accelerated dramatically by the move to more e-commerce shopping through the pandemic, we needed to increase the rate at which we were able to deliver improvements to our platform. Our goal was to identify pieces of work that were independent that could be outsourced to another provider allowing our in-house team to focus on delivering longer more involved projects where the requirements were less clear.

SOLUTION

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

We reached out to trusted network connections and via the Sheffield Digital organisation for recommendations for providers in the region with the appropriate skillset. The Curve were selected based on recommendations, attitude and ability. We felt they understood what we were trying to achieve and they were a tech focussed business led by tech focussed leadership. We felt a long term relationship would be possible and our projects in safe hands. We felt comfortable we would be able to collaborate with them.

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

Initial projects were small discrete changes to our business systems written in PHP running on a LAMP stack. We have a fully containerised development environment. We identified a high level brief of what was required, provided an onboarding process for our tech stack, laid out our preferred development process and agreed on an estimate and delivery date. From this point, we have been able to establish some business/domain/technical knowledge of our scope of solution with the Curve and can leverage that to brief more projects more rapidly as they have a growing understanding of our platform.

So far, the team at The Curve have delivered a range of improvements to our Business System used by our Dispatch, Commercial and Customer Service teams, uplifted our payment gateway to a new platform and worked on the re-brand of our current site front end in HTML/CSS/JS and are now engaged in rebranding our new tech stack which is implemented in REACT.

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

Primarily we have worked via the CTO with one engineer from the team involved in the projects as well. We now also engage with a Project Manager and more members of the technical team.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We have a measurable improvement in capacity for our commercial and dispatch teams from the changes to the business system, avoiding the need to recruit more resource to take on manual effort. The implementation of a new payment gateway has given an uplift in conversion rate for e-commerce customers and unlocked the ability to deploy Apple Pay and Google Pay which have further improved our conversion rate.

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

We have been providing project briefs giving functional requirements with some technical pointers to where these implementations are needed and the technical architecture. The team at The Curve assess this and respond with an effort estimate and delivery plan, which we then approve and the work is executed.

We then received deliverable as Pull Requests in our Git repository which we review, test and provide feedback as to any changes. We choose not to be involved in detail in their planning or progress monitoring, and they are consistent at sticking to commitments. The PR deliverable process is again by our choice as we will be maintaining the code ourselves also.

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

They are a tech-focussed team that is able to adapt and provide solutions without significant input from our team. They are helpful in increasing our delivery velocity at very little overhead in our time.

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

Our main challenge is capacity to define the work to be briefed out to the curve further in advance so our ambitious timelines can be met.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the MD of a privately owned insurance broker.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire The Curve?

As a new start up in 2015 we relied upon manual spreadsheets and analysis to identify trends, issues, opportunities and make decisions. As we grew to a reasonable scale spreadsheets were no longer practical and took too much resource that should have instead been spent developing the business using the business intelligence.

SOLUTION

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

The vendor was recommended by a trusted friend with relevant experience, based on their knowledge of how The Curve operated, their capabilities and previous experience working for a financial services business in data analytics.

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

We needed to amalgamate all of our various product and client data from separate policy systems, merging into a single view of the customers overall relationship, interactions, product holdings and value to our business. The data needed to be cleansed, transformed, enriched, structured and securely stored with tightly controlled access.

Automated reporting was needed for all types of internal MI as well as external partner reporting, as well as integration with CRM platform.

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

One of the founders was our main contact.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The project has been very successful and was implemented within the pre-agreed budget and timescales and delivered our requirements. The Curbe were very easy to work with, it was a collaborative agile approach and we are using the infrastructure as a central part of our business. We continue to develop further functionality with them.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

They demonstrated an extremely effective project workflow.

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

The team are very professional, well organised, highly intelligent and very articulate. It’s been a genuine pleasure to work with them.

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

There is nothing I would have done differently other than find them earlier and make this leap sooner. It has been a very collaborative and constructive relationship to date and we have continued to invest in wider projects outside of BI.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the MD of a software company, we have developed a product for the manufacturing industry to improve documentation and training.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire The Curve?

We needed CTO level assistance with some challenges, we were seeking advice rather than hands on development work. We also needed assistance with hiring a developer, particularly with creating a test and having the assistance in interviews.

SOLUTION

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

We were looking for assistance from a Sheffield based company that were happy to be flexible and hands on. The Curve took the time to understand our needs and intensively supported our goals.

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

They created a programming test for candidates to complete as part of their application. They then reviewed a candidate's CV and test, providing feedback and questions to dig into deeper in an interview. They also joined for interviews to ask questions and provide feedback. We also used the Curve's assistance for advice on technical issues, their level of knowledge and ability to research was excellent. They quickly gave us recommendations on how to approach challenges.

Describe the recruitment process in detail.

They created a programming test for candidates to complete as part of their application. They then reviewed a candidates CV and test, providing feedback and questions to dig into deeper in an interview. They also joined for interviews to ask questions and provide feedback.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We were able to successfully hire a candidate who has remained with us since.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

It was very easy to communicate, the Curve were quick to respond and very insightful.

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

I found the mix of insight and depth of understanding of different areas to be impressive. Their flexibility and considered approach are a great credit to them

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 CEO of Fitwins, a motivational fitness app with innovative fitness challenges.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

At extremely short notice we we told that our third party app maintenance provider could no longer support us.

We were at a critical stage of our business growth and needed to minimise outage and avoid disruption for our users. The whole service and dependencies needed migrating smoothly, efficiently and within a very short time scale.

SOLUTION

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

The Curve were recommended to me by a very successful tech mentor, who suggested I would not find a more capable and reliable team.

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

The full tech stack for Fitwins needed to be made secure. Full transfer needed to be done as a matter of urgency. This required transferring all APIs, AWS, domains and full stack.

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

1x CEO and 1 x software engineer

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Minimal outage (a few days). Happy, satisfied users that are pleased with the continuity of service.

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

Emails and messages were delivered promptly. Very responsive and it's evident they care about our situation and support our product vision.

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

Ability to respond promptly to challenging situation, within tight timescale. Very agile.

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

None.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

E-Learning company CIC - CEO.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

Initially to develop the backend database, admin section and subscriptions. However, the Curve also helped to manage and develop the front end and games.

SOLUTION

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

Via a referral (Laura, Slanted Theory).

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

To create a Database to contain content such as video and audio. To create a subscription sign up and user admin system. To help develop the games in pure JS. To manage the whole platform.

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

2/3?

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Schools who used us regularly showed weekly progress in the spelling retention of their students.

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

Trello, slack and emails.

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

Their flexibility, efficiency, and professionalism were impressive. 

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

Mapping out the user experience from the start to construct a visual step-by-step wireframe. Although I know I should do this as a client; however, I struggle to articulate my vision sometimes.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Coding bootcamp, company director

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire The Curve?

The Curve provided training to our instructors and delivered some training to companies we work with. They have also helped us set up and manage our Cloud infrastructure and VMs.

SOLUTION

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

We trust The Curve

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

They went into great detail to ensure they delivered exactly what we wanted and needed.

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

CTO

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

It helped us grow and develop

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Perfect

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

I liked how competent and quick they were.

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

No