Backend Development for Independent Consulting Business
- Custom Software Development
- $10,000 to $49,999
- Jan. 2015 - Ongoing
- Quality
- 5.0
- Schedule
- 5.0
- Cost
- 5.0
- Willing to Refer
- 5.0
"They value their clients and take interest in my success."
- Other industries
- Ireland
- 1-10 Employees
- Phone Interview
- Verified
Dedicated Developers assisted with multiple development projects, including an automated business consulting software, WordPress templates, copyright management tools, and a payment gateway.
Every product functions smoothly and generates significant profit. Dedicated Development delivers tight, proactive project management and exceptional value for money. The team develops ingenious solutions and communicates clearly and consistently, functioning as as seamlessly as an internal team.
A Clutch analyst personally interviewed this client over the phone. Below is an edited transcript.
BACKGROUND
Introduce your business and what you do there.
I’m the CEO of GrowthOracle, a management consulting business. I’ve used my 20 years of business experience to build a repository of information and automate some of our consulting processes into software.
My other company is an educational business that provides tutorial materials for Irish high school students. The two businesses effectively provide electronic products to virtual markets.
OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE
What challenge were you trying to address with Dedicated?
We needed help with multiple backend development projects.
SOLUTION
What was the scope of their involvement?
Dedicated has done all the backend work for two vertical products. I started by writing a functional specification of what I required for both product sets. One is for small and medium business owners, and the other one is for management consulting practices. I tend to not pursue business with larger firms.
Basically, these products automate the business analysis process and allow other consultants to use my software. They can complete early analysis, figure out what the business is missing, and determine its needs by benchmarking it against best practices. It’s a white label model that other consultants can use under their own brand. They can use the software to perform business analysis on potential clients without revealing that a third party is involved.
The second product is an educational tool focused on students who are completing state exams in Ireland. They designed a backend system that will protect the copyright of the materials that we produce and allow us to fulfill customer orders without any human intervention. I’ve automated that whole process on both of those products.
We just upgraded the education system’s backend with a brand-new dashboard and a whole new set of metrics. They build templates that allow me to build add any WordPress website to the existing infrastructure using a turnkey turnaround. I have another e-commerce website that incorporates full reporting capabilities. That’s built into the application.
They’ve integrated our product log-ins with the backend of multiple WordPress sites. Right now I have two trading entities on that platform, but there are no restrictions on the amount that I can have.
They also integrated a new payment gateway with Stripe. I’ve been with PayPal before and I don’t like the way they operate.
What is the team composition?
I tend to work with 2 or 3 core developers within the firm. The project manager on the business side, Vikas [COO & Co-Founder, Dedicated Developers], was my main contact if I had any development issues. When we were scoping out and pricing the project, I always dealt with Vikas. I worked with their lead developer on a daily basis.
How did you come to work with Dedicated?
I built earlier versions of my products in Ireland, which was expensive. I paid Dedicated 20% of what development would have cost in Ireland. They were prepared to step into projects that had run into some difficulty. The providers could not give me the functionality that I wanted or ran up very large time and materials bills to complete the product. Dedicated offered me a fixed price for development. We obviously had to pay for extra features that we decided to add later.
I met Eben Pagan, who teaches various online marketing skills, at a conference in California. Dedicated is quite friendly with him, and he gave them a high recommendation. I met them at one of his events.
While talking to Vikas’ brother, I mentioned that I had spent a lot of money on one piece of software. He offered to acquire the project, fix what was broken, and deliver the functionality that I needed. Very few software companies are willing to take on someone else’s code and all the accompanying issues.
They were prepared to commit to a fixed price and a fixed schedule, which I’d never seen in the Irish software industry. It’s always based on time and materials here, and the time element is almost infamous. It’s caused me a lot of grief in the past.
How much have you invested with them?
$35,000. In Ireland, we would have paid five times that.
What is the status of this engagement?
We started working together in 2015 and the work is ongoing.
RESULTS & FEEDBACK
What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?
It’s been phenomenal. The quality and the value jump off the page. I’ve always gotten what I’ve asked for, and have never given them a task they could not complete.
They delivered exactly what I wanted within the time frames upon which we had agreed. The education business has generated an entirely automatic six-figure income. I answer an occasional email from customers, but I usually don’t need to do a thing. They even transfer money into my bank account at the end of every week. When a student buys the content, it is delivered in two formats. The first is a PDF, which is easy to rip off. The other format is MindGenius, a mind mapping software application that I have locked down.
Dedicated put the name of the purchasing student onto every page of every document, which amounts to over 1,000 pages of content. Students are more reluctant to distribute copies because their name is on it. I’d rather stop people ripping us off. We had that before and we didn’t have names on it. Even teachers copied documents and gave them to students. That cheated us out of 30 purchases, creating a copyright and security issue for us. Using a few of my ideas, Dedicated selected a tech stack and solved the problem. I did a lot of the testing to keep costs down.
The consulting product is smaller. It’s a subscription model where customers pay $500 a month for unlimited use of the platform. Your average small consultant pays me $6,000 a year. You don’t need many customers to get a pretty decent return from that. We offer multiple cost levels, including a standard mind mapping packages for $10-$12 and a consulting subscription of $500 per month. They’re two different verticals, two different markets, and two different prices. It gives us a decent return overall.
How did Dedicated perform from a project management standpoint?
I talked to Dedicated about technology choices and then we worked within an Agile environment. Every few weeks, we would sprint to get to a certain level of functionality with an MVP. From there, we’d make refinements on the product once we got to a stage where I felt all the functional specifications have been met.
Their managers are based in the United States, their developers are from India, my web developers are based in the Philippines, and I’m in Ireland. We work around the clock, but it works well.
They have an automated project management application that facilitates interaction between everyone and manages all documentation. If I found bugs during testing, I reported them on that system. I had almost daily contact with the lead developer, especially during the latter stage of the project. The entire process was very hands-on. Even though I never spoke to him on the phone, we had a terrific online relationship and he was very responsive to my needs. Everything that I wanted was completed to a high standard.
The pricing was also way more competitive than I could have gotten in Ireland. It was almost like having my own development team. It was a great experience with good communication. I highly recommend them.
RATINGS
-
Quality
5.0Service & Deliverables
-
Schedule
5.0On time / deadlines
-
Cost
5.0Value / within estimates
"I'd give them a 10 if I could."
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Willing to Refer
5.0NPS