Ignitho Technologies

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

My role is that of IT director for all British Bodypower operations. We operate a number of businesses in the UK and across other parts of the world, mainly in Asia. Our biggest revenue streams are from Expos; we run the biggest health-and-fitness Expo in the UK and Europe, and possibly the world. We also have similar shows in Mumbai, India, and China.

Off the back of this, we also run a chain of gyms in India and own a company which sells products online, called The Supplement Store. We also own a company which produces and delivers fresh foods to customers, called Yolo Food Company. We are extremely influential in the fitness industry. I am responsible for all IT systems, the website and a lot of the marketing and digital services, working with an internal team and with third-parties.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Ignitho Technologies?

As with any business, the challenge was resourcing. We are a subject-matter expert in our area, but we are a small business. There is a need to iterate fast, and projects tend to come to the table quickly. With this comes the challenge of being able to scale resources up and down quickly according to the project. There are extreme costs around resourcing, either by contract or on a permanent basis, and finding resources which are capable of delivering at the right speed and pace is also a challenge. 

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Ignitho has worked on all our open-source technologies using PHP, MySQL and Semplice Linux. We initially used them to build web platforms, but I’ve given them more projects recently. They have made all the visuals for new websites we’re building.

What is the team dynamic? 

Ignitho has been running between 3-6 projects concurrently at any one time. There have been 10-15 people working on various projects, including a range of frontend and backend developers. Other resources have included project managers and business analysts assigned to the project for general organization and communication.

How did you come to work with Ignitho Technologies?

I was working with a partner called Crimson, who was developing our CRM platform. They suggested working with Ignitho Technologies, so we started a conversation, primarily around being able to offshore development resources. I worked with them in a limited capacity, on a very small, low-risk/low-value project in order to gauge how they would work, and what their business process was. I was pleasantly surprised to find that Ignitho was clear in terms of project deliverables, worked quickly, and had reasonable prices that were within our budget.

How much have you invested with them?

The total cost has been between £60,000 and £80,000. [$77,500 - $103,000]

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Ignitho around 8 months ago, at the end of 2016. The collaboration is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The websites have been developed much faster than what our internal resources were capable of. Deliverables on all projects are increasing in terms of quality. Ignitho has been producing some fantastic graphic design results that are universally better. There have been definite improvements in our visual mock-up process, through to the actual delivery of new sites. Compared to my internal developers, Ignitho’s work is well-written and thoroughly-documented. In terms of the quality-control process, I have no questions about the delivery. It’s very good.

How did Ignitho Technologies perform from a project management standpoint?

I enforced the project management process. We have our own toolset, around which Ignitho molded their own processes. There was a project manager on their side who kept things on track and delivered updates. We knew exactly where they were, and any red flags that appeared were brought to our attention. Rather than just sending us the problem, Ignitho came up with solutions for getting past it. They almost over-communicated with daily status calls, but this was good since we are a smaller company with limited projects. Ignitho’s communication has been second to none, from what I’ve experienced, better than any supplier I’ve ever worked with. 

More often than not, we’ve had tight, challenging deadlines. Ignitho worked as many hours as needed in order to finish particular projects. Their actual developers are in a different time zone to us, in southern India, but they are willing to work through the night and over weekends to make sure that the delivery is on time.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their business processes are very good. The thing which struck me was that they brought the skills, experience, governance, framework, and organization of an enterprise-scale company, and applied them to our medium-to-small business. We’re nowhere near enterprise level, but I want to run things at that level. Ignitho has the knowledge to run large projects and handle the business analysis side, and they have the ability to scale to the other companies they’re working with as well. It simply works—there is a lot of governance, there is clarity, and people know what they’re doing. Things run slowly at the enterprise level, so I was surprised that Ignitho managed to apply those processes to the small-business market, while still retaining the speed of delivery.

Are there any areas they could improve?

On the first couple of projects, we were finding our feet, and even though many things went well, there was a lack of understanding around how I wanted something to be built. I had it clear in my head how I wanted something to be done, but that didn’t really translate in the first instance of working with Ignitho. This is not a single-sided criticism; it came from both sides. We needed to be clearer on our side as well. Ignitho assigned an architect to our account on their side in order to resolve this. That person can fully understand our requirements and knows exactly what we’re talking about. They can quickly translate this into their internal systems and processes, and make it work.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I work as head of marketing for a finance technology organization based in the city of London.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Ignitho Technologies?

After I joined the company in late 2015, we performed a complete review of the company’s marketing infrastructure. A decision was taken to revamp the marketing messages, completely rebrand the company, and redesign the look and feel of the website, including introducing new content.  In 2016, we created case studies, and assembled product and solution portfolios.  We had everything nicely positioned to take our new messages to the market. At that point, we wanted to see what we could do to encourage a 'pull' of people to come to us to find out more about what we offer to the marketplace.  One of the ways that we pinpointed for improvement was SEO. We had very low Google search ranking results for our website, and we weren’t generating organic traffic. 

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

The project had a couple of phases. The first phase was an audit and consultation by Ignitho. After doing a complete review of our website, the team advised us that the platform on which we had our existing website wasn’t great for SEO.  They proposed a more industry standard platform and recreated our website on WordPress. It is open-source, and we can go in and make changes to the content ourselves, and Google can crawl that platform so that we can get the SEO results that we need. During implementation, they introduced some industry standard plugins to help support SEO like Yoast, and a couple of others that are used to support the program. 

How did you come to work with Ignitho Technologies?

We decided to find providers that could help with an SEO program, comparing various offerings in the marketplace. I had previously worked with Jijo and Roney [Ignitho Technologies], so they were invited to be one of the pool of companies we were looking at.  We ultimately chose Ignitho because they had all the expert skills that we needed to get the job done, and they were the best fit for our budget. They offered us a lot in terms of value for money.

How much have you invested in them?

We have spent about £25,000 ($32,000) so far.  

What is the status of this engagement?

Our relationship started in January 2017 and is ongoing.  

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

There are some results showing, although it is still early days. The SEO was the driving force for the engagement, to improve organic traffic.  3—4 weeks ago, we had our first report. At the moment, we are landing on page 2 of Google for certain keywords. We are on a path, and if I spoke to you again in 4—5 months time, I’m sure it would be a completely different conversation.

How did Ignitho Technologies perform from a project management standpoint?

We had very high expectations and standards with the product documentation that we wanted to see in place since we are a technology company that provides IT projects to our clients. Ignitho was very happy to adapt to our style and templates and did so successfully.

What did you find the most impressive about them?

Their speed of response is quite good. Although the tasks aren’t always completed immediately, Ignitho responds in a timely manner to acknowledge all requests; the timeframes in which they say they are going to respond are always met. This is very impressive in today’s world. All communication is very personal, and the information provided back to us is dynamic. Ignitho Technologies really gave us added value and knowledge about what we needed to do to improve our program of activities within our marketing campaign.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Their staff continuity could be improved. We have had 3 different points of contact; however, on the plus side, they have all been excellent. The team continued on with the project as quickly as possible. It was a slight frustration, but it couldn’t be helped.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am a principal consultant and project manager for an IT services company. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Ignitho?

The business goal involved improving employee quality engagement and communications and getting the right messages from the new chief executive out across the business. There was no real solution for doing that in the form of a corporate intranet. The client came to us with this problem, and we worked with Ignitho on delivering a new solution.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Due to some capital licensing constraints, we decided to use an open-source platform. Ignitho recommended Joomla, which is an open-source CMS [content management system]. It has been implemented by their team on Microsoft Azure for testing, but there is an intention to bring this to our on-premises environment. We have used five or six developers from Ignitho’s team—a mix of backend CMS resources, database administrators, infrastructure people, as well as UX and design people in charge of creating a look-and-feel for the corporate intranet.

How did you come to work with Ignitho?

Our client wanted to leverage an offshore, low-cost partner but also wanted to find someone who worked differently than the rest. Ignitho’s strength is their focus on the outcome, and we liked the sound of that. We thought that they would be a right fit and cared about this more than cost. We put together a joint-venture proposal for the customer and delivered on that basis.

What is the status of this engagement?

There was a pre-engagement phase in December of 2016, while the project itself ramped up from January of 2017 onwards. We’re in the acceptance testing and deployment. We plan to go fully live within the next three or four weeks. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

We’re not yet in full deployment, but we plan to look at the uptake and level of engagement with the platform. The general feedback is that we’ve given the client an easy-to-use, intuitive corporate intranet design and purposely made it look less like the corporate transactional website so that it could be more engaging. They’ve liked the style we developed and are happy with the work. The site will be accessible to all, whereas any similar solutions in the past were more closed-off to many employees.

How did Ignitho perform from a project management standpoint?

We worked in an Agile environment and filled in the gaps where necessary, coming back to the customer with proposals for how things could work. The customer was involved in meetings where we reviewed what had been done and gave us feedback and pointers. We went to the technical team and skinned the website in order to get the right look-and-feel. We used tools like ZOOM and other SaaS [software as a service] collaboration platforms. We used Microsoft SharePoint for collaborating on requirements documents and progress reports. ZOOM allowed us to collaborate across different continents, share screens, have meetings and discuss how the work was progressing, and deal with obstacles and bugs.

What did you find most impressive about Ignitho?

The key differentiator, and the reason we’ve continued to work with Ignitho, is that they’re outcome-focused. Many people use offshore teams because of the cost, but this wasn’t really why we chose Ignitho. We like their ability to show the right outcome for the customer. If a solution wasn’t right, they determined what proposals we could come back with. This was in opposition to simply taking something that worked from our perspective, as a technology and solutions provider, and telling the customer that’s the way it is.

Are there any areas Ignitho could improve?

There were times when we, as a technical delivery team, squirreled ourselves away too much when considering options and reworking things. We could have gone back to the customer more frequently and quickly, and it’s something we’ll consider when doing this again.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Oxford Innovation runs and manages innovation centers. I am one of the senior management board members, with the role of business support director.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Ignitho Technologies?

We run Innovation Centers where early stage businesses locate themselves after moving out of their home offices. We provide a business support service within our network of Centres, helping them to grow and develop sustainable business models their business. We recently opened a Center in Belfast, and our contract was extended to include the project design and management of 2 interim business support services to be offered across the city.

We were required to develop a bespoke management information system to automate the workflow of supporting approximately 350 businesses and manage a series of delivery partners over this four-month contract. We had just three weeks to find a development partner and actually get the system up-and-running before the contract started.

It was a quick turnaround, and we also had a limited budget. We pretty much knew what the workflow would look like, and also knew that we didn’t want to be paying user license fees. We wanted to develop something of our own, but we’re not developers ourselves.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We didn’t understand what the best platform to develop on would be, which was the first step in building a good relationship with Ignitho Technologies. They advised us, based on our requirements, on what the best platform would be.

Our system was written in PHP, and we used SQL Server as a database. We also didn’t want to be beholden to one organization, since we’d had trouble with website projects where the development company held the product to ransom afterwards. We also wanted a secure solution, so we chose Amazon Web Services as a separate supplier. We took out a support project with Ignitho Technologies for the maintenance of the site, but we checked it by our host, who performed a technical audit. It was an open box which could be picked up by other developers, should we want to make a change. We also want to potentially build on the platform, and implement other workflows into it.

We had a project manager working out of London. On the Indian side, we spoke to seven or eight different people. We had regular telecom conferences, with different resources each time.

How did you come to work with Ignitho Technologies?

I went to one of my contacts, a business coach in disruptive innovation, who talked me through different options and gave me the details of Ignitho Technologies.

How much have you invested with Ignitho Technologies?

The cost of Ignitho Technologies’ work was £13,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We have a monthly maintenance contract with them. Since this was an interim project, we don’t know when it will end. We have put in a request for a quote for a second project. We’re waiting for a timeline and cost estimate from Ignitho Technologies.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

We couldn’t have started the project without the information management system. In terms of client relationships, even though I don’t have any metrics, the results were very good. We did hit some problems, but, every time this happened, it was generally resolved within 24 hours. The program has been running smoothly, and we haven’t collected any measurements beyond this. Our main purpose was to have the platform support our work, and this has been highly successful.

The system is highly intuitive. We have multiple users, but haven’t had to actually train any of them. This is quite amazing, when thinking about it. We simply gave people a link to it, they registered themselves, and started to use it.

How did Ignitho Technologies perform from a project management standpoint?

The project was finalized in three weeks, which was absolutely amazing. Their commitment to timelines and quality made for a very successful project. We were guided well in the beginning, in order to make sure that we scoped it out fully, but Ignitho Technologies was flexible when we added extra functionality. The project became larger in scope, but still in-line with what we imagined in the beginning.

I thought it would be an undeliverable task in the beginning, but we finished the project on time. We didn’t use any project management tools. We had teleconferences at strange hours of the day and over the weekend, given the nature of our three-week delivery plan.

What did you find most impressive about Ignitho Technologies?

They are honest brokers for the beginning of a project. Ignitho Technologies can advise on what platform we should use, and they can highly-tune it to our needs. This is a testament to the fact that Ignitho Technologies has many different projects requiring different capabilities. They have a very high regard for customer service and relationship development, and can guide non-technical clients like us through the work. It was a very easy process for us, which was surprising.

Are there any areas Ignitho Technologies could improve?

The support cost came out slightly higher than I was expecting in the beginning.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We are creating a global crowdfunding platform which will allow investors to invest through cross-portal transactions. I'm the director of the platform.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Ignitho Technologies?

Our goal was to create a marketplace which would allow investors and startup companies to be listed, creating a matchmaking experience.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Ignitho has developed our platform using the AngularJS and Node.js technologies. On average, we've worked with 4-5 developers at any time, as well as with a project manager.

How did you come to work with Ignitho Technologies?

We approached around 7 suppliers, undergoing a rigorous cost, location, and team analysis. The primary reason for choosing Ignitho was the confidence we received from their CEO. Any IT project will have its challenges, but by aligning the right people at the top level, these challenges can be mitigated. Ignitho had a very personal and hands-on approach, which mattered the most to me.

How much have you invested with Ignitho Technologies?

The cost of Ignitho's services has been above $60,000 [50,000 GBP].

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Ignitho a year and a half ago. The fourth phase of our project has been completed. We're planning to start a feature upgrade and maintenance phase in January 2017.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

Ignitho was always willing to learn and try new approaches. They have a proactive nature in tackling any challenge before I addressed it, as a project manager.

How did Ignitho Technologies perform from a project management standpoint?

Aside from one issue with one of our resources, Ignitho has performed well. Whenever I needed something, I was able to pick up the phone and call Ignitho's CEO.

What did you find most impressive about Ignitho Technologies?

Ignitho has given me access to senior expertise which quickly solved issues that might have taken us 1-2 weeks otherwise.

Are there any areas Ignitho Technologies could improve?

We had an issue with one of Ignitho's project managers, but they were flexible in replacing that individual. Resource planning could be done in advance, which is something that I'm sure Ignitho will improve in the future.