Freestyle

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I'm the global growth director for a propane supplier.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Freestyle?

We hired Freestyle to provide custom software development services.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We needed to have a simple way for business units to assess their commercial maturity across a range of criteria. We needed a very easy tool for our commercial leads in every global business unit to fill this out. We could then start to benchmark our business units and identify areas for joint improvement and where we could work together to leverage opportunities across the group.

Freestyle provided a web-based assessment tool with a reporting functionality so that we could achieve our goals. We provided the content against some existing maturity assessment tools. Then, they placed it in a web portal that they designed and built from scratch. The portal has sign-on security ready for our commercial leads to complete the assessment and receive a report. The content was mostly on us. They did a little bit on the logic and criteria behind how the scoring mechanism worked.

We've made various new alterations to the maturity tool, and we are just on the verge of going live with the latest version in the next two weeks.

What is the team composition?

We've worked with four people from their team, including a solutions architect, design manager, account manager, and account director.

How did you come to work with Freestyle?

It was a personal recommendation from a colleague who had worked with Freestyle in a previous company. They're within two miles of where we're located, so it was an easy working relationship to start.

How much have you invested with them?

In total, we've spent roughly $100,000 on the project.

What is the status of the engagement?

We started working with them in February 2021, and we are still in partnership with them.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The feedback from our commercial leads was positive on the first release. However, we wanted to enrich it and put more into the tool, which is why we've done the second one. We're still waiting to go live, but we'll get some solid feedback once we do, so we can hopefully see some value out of the tool.

As of now, we haven't seen the value come through. However, the quality of the product has been strong, and we haven't experienced any latency issues or bugs.

How did Freestyle perform from a project management standpoint?

I always enjoy working with the account team because they're very responsive. They could be faster to respond sometimes in terms of the technical parts because we've been trying to get things over the line. In their defense, they've been waiting for me to deliver things back to them.

I feel that other agencies have been a little bit pushier on prompting the client, and I'd encourage them to do that more. Overall, the corporation has been very good. They've been very open about going over the budget when they've done so. Also, when they gave a quotation, and I felt it was not justified, we had a sensible conversation.

Their communication is strong. We tend to communicate via Zoom, Google Meet, and phone. From time to time, we have in-person meetings.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I think they've understood the requirements very well, which is good because it shows how closely they've worked with us. They've been enjoyable to work with, and the standard of the product has been good.

Are there any areas they could improve?

From a technical point of view, they could have maybe pushed us and prompted us a bit more, so we could get the project over the line faster.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Encourage them to be pushier with you, so you can ensure early delivery of the project.