Future Mind

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

We provide brand protection systems using RFID [radio-frequency identification] and NFC [near field communication] technology. The aim is to protect physical products against counterfeiting and to provide a level of intelligence to everyday products like wines and spirits, lubricants, pharma products, and others.

What is your position?

I am the CEO of the company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with Future Mind?

We were looking for a company that could help develop the software needed for working with RFID tags.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement in detail.

They developed our RFID system, created the customer interface for our website, and designed the look of our portfolio documentation and business cards. Future Mind has also developed a mobile application for interfacing tags with our system.

How did you come to work with Future Mind?

One of my company's co-founders worked with them in the past. Future Mind created an e-commerce platform that he was happy with. Also, they had a good reputation within the startup scene in Poland. Future Mind developed the mobile application for the Polish Post. We decided that they could help us with our current project and contacted them.

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

The total development cost of the first project was around $70,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We have completed one project with them and decided to start a second one, which is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

The system is working perfectly and it has been well received by many global companies. We've received good feedback about the user panel and the general functionality and speed of the system. It implies simply placing a tag on a product and bringing a smartphone in its proximity. The NFC will supply information about the product's authenticity.

We've encoded thousands of tags since the system's launch and never had a problem with its operation.

How did Future Mind perform from a project management standpoint?

Overall, I'm satisfied with Future Mind. Our communication was good, and they helped us not only from a development standpoint, but also gave us good ideas on how to bring our ideas to the market.

What distinguishes Future Mind from other providers?

Future Mind is a good asset within the conceptual part of product development. We've been so satisfied with the outcome of our first project that we've decided to use them for a second one.

Is there anything Future Mind could have improved or done differently?

Every company has something that can be improved upon. They were late by two weeks on a deadline for implementing the specific tag coding, but this is understandable given that we've made a product that's unique on the Polish market. There was no expertise in this area, so Future Mind had to study implementing the encoding and using the RFID tags in our application.

BACKGROUND

Envelo is a brand of a subsidiary of Polish Post, providing digital postal services for both B2C [business-to-consumer] and B2B [business-to-business] customers.

As a head of the mobile team, I'm responsible for whole mobile channel activities from design, development through promotions, and sales.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

The initial concept was to set up mobile channel along with custom-built digital postal services platform, and we were looking for a partner with mobile app development competencies since we don't have them in-house.

The mobile app was planned to consist of combined services from traditional Polish Post and newly developed Envelo services in one consolidated solution.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement in detail.

It was a full-scale project with designing app from scratch, which included concept validation, requirements validation, UI/UX [user interface/user experience] design, functional development, QA [quality assurance] testing, launch, and ongoing support.

[More specifically, it included] requirement analysis, development of mobile apps for iOS and Android, supervision on third-party developers for Windows Phone, development of several integrations with external systems like payment solution, and part of the back-end supporting the app and internal testing. They also support us in publishing the app in the App Store.

How did you come to work with Future Mind?

Future Mind was chosen after a rigorous competitive bid process. One of the key advantages of Future Mind was their agile approach and resource flexibility.

What is the status of this engagement?

The project has three main stages, each for about three to six months, with two to three months' development.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

Since we started, we gained more than 120,000 application installations and more than 20,000 returning customers. Customer ratings in the app stores are good.

How did Future Mind perform from a project management standpoint?

Several work streams were delayed due to additional work on our side, which impacted their work. Their ideas were so good that we accepted change during the development phase.

What distinguishes Future Mind from other providers?

I would say that their open-mindedness to challenges and issues and partnership approach, not like a client software house, but as a partner in business. They kept in mind our business goals throughout the whole project.