Droptica

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

The Polish Football Association is the largest sports association in Poland. Several hundred thousand players take part in the games organized by the PFA every year. The Polish Football Association has been conducting an intensive development of digital projects since 2018.

On the basis of many analyzes, we decided to use one global CMS, which will be made in headless technology. We wanted to find experts in CMS Drupal.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

The idea behind our project was to create one global CMS that would be tailored to the needs of many editors. Additionally, we wanted the new CMS to be part of our architecture with a data bus at the center.

SOLUTION

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

We decided to cooperate with Droptica because they are the best company in Poland from CMS Drupal. In addition, we wanted to work with the company on a partnership basis, and at the stage of conversations with Droptica, we immediately felt that we speak the same language.

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

Generally, our project is still under development. We started with the CMS itself and the first website. Since then, several websites and internal applications have been running on the CMS created by Droptica.

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

Due to the time we work together, the team has a different composition, but the core team has always been the same. The Droptica team is like members of our team to us. We work with the same people and we appreciate it very, very much.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The most important change for me is the satisfied editors, i.e. end users. What's valuable, the Droptica team has always been helpful and supportive :)

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

We don't have any comments, it's always great to work.

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

They are perfectly prepared, competent, and committed. We even happened to do joint performance tests at night and watch many hours after starting a new CMS.

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

Be yourself and keep developing. I am very proud to see the development of a Polish company that has global customers and at the same time operates as a small family business. It is not only a service company but also family friends :)

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I’m the CEO of X-Coding IT Studio, a software development agency and IT consultancy.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Droptica?

We engaged Droptica to help us build a hotel’s management platform. The solution needed a booking system, a sales platform, and intranet for the end client’s employees.

What were your goals for this project?

We needed to connect the intranet to the rest of the platform to enable seamless communication between hotel staff.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

We maintain the business relationship with Droptica since 2010. Their technical skills and ability to deliver on time is what we value the most.

Can you go into detail about the services they provided and the scope of the project?

The project had four stages. First, our team learned our client’s hotel infrastructure. Droptica then designed and implemented changes. They connected the hotel’s intranet to the management platform to enable discussions between staff.

What was the team composition?

The scrum team included a scrum master and several developers. The end client’s product owner and Dropitca’s scrum master were our main points of contact.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The client responded positively to the platform. The solution decreased response time for inquiries and provided better control over the reservation booking process. Additionally, Droptica seamlessly integrated the intranet into the whole system. The communication functionalities increased the staff’s satisfaction with their workflows.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

The team composition ensured short communication lines with clear information. We progressed through the timeline without any roadblocks.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Their technical skills were crucial to our success. The team was also communicative and sincere with our client. Droptica worked hard was dedicated to achieving quality results.

Are there any areas where they can improve?

No. Both teams understood the other well.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the director of operations of Wydawnictwo WAM, the oldest Catholic publisher in Poland. We own a self-contained publishing house, a network of, bookshops (including an online store), and a fully-developed distribution system.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Droptica?

Our online clients are growing rapidly, so we needed to develop our e-commerce platform's front- and backend.

What were your goals for this project?

We needed the platform to be well designed, easy to use, and have a highly optimized UI. We also needed automation of certain features and a custom integration for our enterprise resource planning (ERP).

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

We were already collaborating together with Droptica for the earlier stages of this project.

Can you go into detail about the services they provided and the scope of the project?

Droptica developed and launched a new frontend for mobile users. They began with a discovery workshop to understand the business challenges and goals. We approved their workflows and mockups, and they started their two-week sprints. Their team developed functional versions that were ready for user testing and feedback every two weeks. Presently, we are working on optimizing our order processing.

What was the team composition?

The project team consists of three developers including a project manager, who was our direct point of contact.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

After launching their mobile improvements, we had a 50% growth in revenue.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

Droptica communicates effectively and uses Slack every day to deal with small issues. We use Google Hangouts for weekly meetings. We also use an agile development approach, which allows us to quickly build and test different versions of the app.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

They are flexible to our ideas, suggested solutions, and internal business requirements.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

We provide a compliance and regulatory platform for the financial services industry.

What is your role or position at the company?

I am the head of IT.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with Droptica?

We needed to migrate from Drupal 6, which is an administrator site, to Drupal 7, a client-ready and feature-rich site.

What were your company's specific goals for the project?

We wanted to make a Drupal 7 site that could be as feature-rich as possible and could make huge administrative and time-efficiency gains.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement in detail.

Our list of goals included to move a very complex database from D6 to D7; huge administrator efficiency gains; develop industry-leading features; full-faceted search with new alert notifications; set up a tailored email alert for every individual user; and create many complex views/pages.

How did you come to work with Droptica?

We received a glowing reference from other people in the Drupal world.

Could you provide a sense of the size of this initiative in financial terms?

It was in the $50,000 to $200,000 range.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started in summer 2015, and the project is still ongoing but close to completion.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

The site is looking awesome, and we can't wait to relaunch. We have untold efficiency gains now. For example, a task that may have taken three hours now only takes one minute. The site's speed is fast, which is always crucial.

How did Droptica perform overall?

I could not rate Droptica highly enough. They have genuinely helped our dream service become a reality.

What distinguishes Droptica from other providers?

Yes. They delivered what was asked and more. They listened, read the brief and wireframes, went away, came back with a few questions, and just got it built.

In hindsight, are there areas in which they could improve or things you might do differently?

Genuinely, we had no hiccups.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

We run a complex e-commerce site. It features a large database and complex PHP code.

What is your position?

I am the founder of the company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with Droptica?

I needed to undertake a complex technology migration from Drupal 6 to Drupal 7, which amounted to more of a rebuild. I also needed to develop the site further, getting it up to best practices.

SOLUTION

Droptica rebuilt a website as part of a migration from Drupal 6 to Drupal 7. The team also completed the website theme and additional upgrade developments. They were selected for their expertise.Please describe the scope of their involvement in greater detail.

Droptica rebuilt my entire site. Although Drupal 6 to 7 migrations are called migrations, they're complete rebuilds in effect. Droptica also handled the site theming, based on our designer's work.

How did you come to work with Droptica?

I did a lot of research. Droptica was their country's sponsor of DrupalCon, which is the main annual meeting for Drupal specialists. I knew that their company would have good expertise in the area, given their sponsorship. We conducted video interviews and moved forward.

Could you provide a sense of the size of this initiative in financial terms?

The annual cost for their work is around $50,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in 2015. Our work is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

Droptica is an amazing company. I've worked with Drupal specialists in the past, given that it's by far the most complex content management system available. I've hired shops in both San Francisco and offshore. Nothing worked in terms of quality and value, but they hit the sweet spot. They provided good-quality code at a reasonable price point. They know the technology well, but they also have a broad set of skills, including PHP, HTML, and CSS web development.

How did Droptica perform from a project management standpoint?

They have a lean management team, which I find to be a positive. I don't like interacting with 7 project managers and one developer at once. Their manager also has a development role, and Droptica uses a good, solid ticketing system.

What distinguishes Droptica from other providers?

Along with having a technical skillset, they have excellent communication skills. There are no language barriers at all.

Is there anything Droptica could have improved or done differently?

No. Just on my end, if I had more time and money, I'd go visit them to build a personal relationship on-site.

BACKGROUND

We are a US-based marketing agency that provides web design and development as part of our overall consulting services.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

We had limited internal resources to handle Drupal development for a large global client, so we needed a reliable team with deep Drupal experience to support the development of numerous sites for this multi-national client, including multi-language site experience.

We needed a team that could help develop custom Drupal features and modules to meet the unique customer requirements. We also wanted our development partner to be flexible in terms of availability and billing, so that we could scale up and down to match the project workload and client requirements.

SOLUTION

Droptica has provided us with back-end and front-end web development services, primarily using Drupal, PHP, JavaScript, CSS, and so on. They have also assisted with providing site staging environments, code management, and version control solutions.

Droptica approached us about Drupal development work when we were in the midst of looking at some US firms. We had several calls, checked references, and found that their multi-language experience was a key requirement that US firms did not have.

They've done five projects for us over the past 8 months. Three are completed, and work is on-going.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Droptica has performed very well, and we would absolutely recommend them to other agencies or companies. Communication has been excellent, and all work to date has been delivered per our agreed schedule and within budget. When problems or issues were encountered, Droptica was always available and eager to promptly review and resolve the issue.

Droptica's multi-language site experience, Drupal specialty with deep expertise, and reasonable rates are the things that stand out to me.

In some cases, quality assurance and testing could be improved. But overall, we’re quite pleased with their work.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

We develop web and mobile applications.

What is your position?

I am the CEO and owner of the company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with Droptica?

We were working on a big project for which we didn't have sufficient resources. Droptica offered additional developers to us.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement in greater detail.

When we need a helping hand in a project, we will reach out to Droptica.

One example of a project is when we were building an online booking system. They lended a hand on the frontend part of that project, which was a complicated task involving database queries and delivering a lot of information to users based on filters and other elements.

From there, we started collaborating on a new project involving a content-selling platform for publications. Users are able to read and listen to media on the website. We've had to build a new payment gateway for it.

How did you come to work with Droptica?

I was actually approached by their owner initially. I hate the typical selection process which has to be adopted, especially for new and bigger projects. It's a lengthy, bureaucratic process. We're simply two development companies working together. If we can skip any of the steps which need to be made with our usual clients, things will work for the both of us.

Could you provide a sense of the size of this initiative in financial terms?

The biggest project that I've worked on with Droptica had a development cost of $34,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in November 2015. We have an ongoing relationship.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

Droptica has done a good job, and they provide good availability for their developers. They usually answer my requests promptly. The project on which we're currently working will make the product ten times better than it was before, in terms of user experience, interface, architecture, database structure, and so on. All of these elements will be redone from scratch with their help, so their contribution is significant.

How did Droptica perform from a project management standpoint?

They use tools for issue tracking and GitHub as a code repository, which is a good way of tracking changes in code. Droptica provides me with progress reports broken down into hours spent per task.

What distinguishes Droptica from other providers?

Droptica's quality is very good, considering their hourly rate. I have gotten good value for my money. I'm sure that there are better companies available, but I wouldn't want to pay four times as much.

I am from Finland. In my country, there are development companies with hundreds of employees which build software for airlines, mobile phone manufacturers, and so on. Compared to those, Droptica is the better choice for a small- to medium-sized business. They could also prove to be a good choice for a larger enterprise with unique requirements.

Is there anything Droptica could have improved or done differently?

In terms of hour tracking, it would be nice to see exactly which developer does what. Droptica could add more detailing in their reporting.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

We are an interactive agency that also owns and operates a few web properties.

What is your role or position at the company?

I am the co-owner and senior developer.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with Droptica?

I was short on staff after one of my front-end developers took another job, and two contractors who I had been utilizing for a few years became less reliable. Rather than take the time to hire internally, I reached out to Droptica to see how I could utilize their services.

What were your company's specific goals for the project?

I mainly needed temporary development help, but I've ended up using Droptica continuously for the last few years since I first engaged them.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement in detail.

Droptica has provided us with back-end and front-end web development services, primarily using Drupal, PHP, JavaScript, CSS, and so on.

How did you come to work with Droptica?

My agency has some developers on staff already. I was looking for another agency that used similar tools and was already well oiled in terms of programming in a certain manner and with a certain consistency.

Could you provide a sense of the size of this initiative in financial terms?

The most I can divulge here is that they've been working full time – at least one developer on a web app for the past one and a half years, in addition to supplementing my development team when needed. I would say we have two or three developers full time.

What is the status of this engagement?

I have utilized Droptica on numerous projects for the last few years, even to supplement my own team on some things. Some of the projects they have worked on are done, while others are still ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

How did Droptica perform overall?

They performed great, and I still use them.

What distinguishes Droptica from other providers?

They are dynamic and can adapt to new requirements easily, even to new technologies or paradigms.

In hindsight, are there areas in which they could improve or things you might do differently?

No. Not that I can think of.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

I work in education and research for the mathematical institute of a university.

What is your role or position at the company?

I am the web development coordinator.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with Droptica?

We needed to update and upgrade our web page to introduce a new project.

What were your company's specific goals for the project?

Specifically, I wanted to set up a new web page using Drupal CMS [content management system] to implement a modern graphical project with extensible design.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement in detail.

We needed a Drupal web server that retained all our available functionalities from before.

How did you come to work with Droptica?

We researched web developers specializing in Drupal, and we preferred that they were based in the same country as us.

Could you provide a sense of the size of this initiative in financial terms?

The project cost around $5,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in 2014. It finished in two months' time, although an extra one month of analysis was needed.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

We have a very well-organized web page and Drupal capabilities now.

How did Droptica perform overall?

Droptica performed very professionally.

What distinguishes Droptica from other providers?

I found it very useful that we were able to exchange multiple emails during the course of the project to specify and discuss all the needed tasks.

In hindsight, are there areas in which they could improve or things you might do differently?

For both myself and Droptica, I think we could have had better project responsibility regarding the SQL [structured query language] database underlying the Drupal structure.