Laser Focused Solutions

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the director of Connected Retail. We provide software solutions for retailers around the world.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Laser Focused Solutions?

We previously outsourced our software development needs to a different company to avoid the heavy prices of those services in London. After a few years with that company, we realized a decline in the quality of their work. As they grew and took on larger projects, they began to use our engagement as training for lower-level employees. We experienced a high staff turnover rate, which affected the continuity of our results. We decided it would be best to look for a new partner to take over our development needs.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

First, we had to transition all of our technology from our previous partner to Laser Focused Solutions. They made it as painless as possible. They were given a lot of poorly put together and incomplete projects, but they willingly took on the responsibility.

Now, in terms of development, Laser Focused Solutions handles all of our needs. We described our requirements and the team is working to find the necessary resources for those solutions. The team manages our 24/7 desk support service that supports about five of our clients. Additionally, they’ve provided frontend and backend development, completed Magento integrations, and worked on other bespoke development projects. The team supports ongoing maintenance operations and handles any other tasks we assign them. If we find any bugs, they are immediately corrected.

What is the team composition?

We speak with the owner, but we mainly work with a project manager who has a team of about 20 developers with a variety of skillsets. We’re able to reorganize the team according to the requirements of each individual task.

How did you come to work with Laser Focused Solutions?

After making the decision to look for a new development partner, we reached out to Laser Focused Solution. The owner was an employee at the previous agency we partnered with, that had left the company and started his own software agency. In an early discussion, we shared our problems and listened to their solutions. We approved of their ideas and decided they were a good fit for our company.

How much have you invested with them?

So far, we’ve spent around £500,000 ($642,000 USD).

What is the status of this engagement?

We officially entered into a partnership in August of 2017 and the work is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The ultimate example of their success is our clients’ level of satisfaction and engagement. And, because we’ve outsourced the work, we’re getting these results at a very competitive price. I’m in the process of introducing them to other people in the company with the hopes of tapping into the other services they provide.

How did Laser Focused Solutions perform from a project management standpoint?

The owner of the company is very hard-working and innovative and he passes those traits on to his fully-trained staff. They provide high-quality work and meet their estimates in terms of both time and cost. They leverage their depth of knowledge and technical skills in their service.

Laser Focused Solutions prioritizes customer satisfaction. They’re always engaged and available. We mainly communicate through day-to-day project management tools, but also have scheduled updates. Each week we share an email update and every two weeks we have a Skype conference. Occasionally, we have Google Hangouts or face-to-face meetings.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I appreciate the speed of their workflow and their team’s eager approach to tasks. They complete each project with a smile.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, it’s been a fantastic engagement so far. We’re lucky to be working with a team that produces such high-quality work. We’ve built a fantastic relationship and they’ve made a huge impact on our company.

Any advice for potential customers?

I highly recommend clients fully and openly engage with the owner of the company and his team. Allow them to contribute their own original ideas because they are very knowledgeable and can add a considerable amount of value to your product.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the president and CEO of a technology firm. We are a security-focused service provider and technology reseller.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Laser Focused Solutions?

We had a local resource shortage and needed 24/7 coverage of our support system.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They provide a team of people to manage after-hours support and escalation. They manage our client security and technologies and handle system requests. We have a cybersecurity intelligence and operations center here that they duplicated in Ukraine. We gave them the specs and designs and they facilitated the build out of a highly secure parallel facility over there.

What is the team composition?

We have a team of seven or eight and will get two more by the end of the year.

How did you come to work with Laser Focused Solutions?

A friend referred them to us.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent somewhere between $300,000–$400,000 for their services.

What is the status of this engagement?

We signed a contract with them in December 2016 and started work in February or March 2017. They still provide support for us.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Before we started working with them, we lost people because of the overnight shift. I no longer have that problem and we’re able to run support services around the clock. Customer satisfaction scores have increased and they’ve done a great job improving our service delivery.

How did Laser Focused Solutions perform from a project management standpoint?

They’re very responsive and we talk several times a week. We’re just starting to use Jira now but used to work with a different ticketing system. We also communicate by phone and video conference and through Cisco Spark.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their talent retention and the skill level of the people they offer are excellent.

Are there any areas they could improve?

The only struggles we’ve had are with Ukrainian tax laws, but that’s not something in their control. Everything they’re responsible for is going really well.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Have a conversation with them and set up an atmosphere of trust. They’re very trustworthy and it helps to get to know them.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the VP of business development for a cannabis dispensary based in Canada.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Laser Focused Solutions?

We wanted to develop a proof of concept (POC), exploring different designs and implementation methods for online dispensaries. At the time, no e-commerce solution had an adequate inventory nor price management system that suited our needs, so we sought resources who could build an e-commerce platform using custom-written code.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Initially, we had a consultation with them. After their business analysts reviewed our parameters and objectives, they created several possible scenarios for our POC. We chose the simplest option, which involved modifying our WordPress site into an e-commerce platform that met both our requirements and Canadian shipping logistics.

From there, they built the POC within about 60 days. They did the layout and used our feedback to modify the template designs to match our requirements. The platform featured custom code that allowed us to manage and sell our products by the gram. Once completed, we tested the POC with trial groups to see if our end users would like it. We’re currently looking into working with Laser Focused Solutions again to build the final product.

What is the team composition?

The team size varied depending on the task, but we worked with 10 resources total, including a project manager.

How did you come to work with Laser Focused Solutions?

I’d met the owner years ago in Toronto. He reached out to me by email, and we started talking about my project. He wanted to give it a shot and prove that they had expertise in this area.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent between $15,000–$20,000 CAD (approximately $11,500–$15,400 USD).

What is the status of this engagement?

Their work lasted from January–April 2018, but we plan to re-engage them for the next project.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We received a lot of great feedback from our focus groups about our brand positioning: they liked that we worked sustainably with growers and that we made lesser-known strains more accessible. Laser Focused Solutions helped us implement those comments in a new direction for the final site.

Rather than being just a local dispensary, we’re going to install terminals with a web frontend as well as tablets that use our platform in other dispensaries. We intend to profit share with different nonprofits and NGOs, brand different cannabis strains, and associate them with specific good causes.

How did Laser Focused Solutions perform from a project management standpoint?

They did well, and we had no complaints from our side. We primarily communicated via Skype and email, but I’d also met them in-person.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I appreciate their professionalism. Whenever we had a problem, they contacted us within the first 15 minutes of their business day.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Be specific in your purpose while still being flexible and willing to explore different options to achieve your goals.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the product manager for a travel platform.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Laser Focused Solutions?

We needed an online shop for vendors to sell tourism activities such as diving and surfing. We wanted the platform to have a ticketing validation and verification system.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Laser Focused Solutions started with marketing analysis and then developed the system architecture, design, and user design. The team did the full cycle of development with a CRM, a custom Magento platform, and multiple integrations for the Zoho finance software.

The team built the platform from scratch. At the end of the project, we had several training sessions for managers who had to work with the platform.

What is the team composition?

We worked with up to 10 people including several Magento developers, two frontend developers, one designer, one QA specialist, one business analyst, and one project manager.

How did you come to work with Laser Focused Solutions?

We communicated with multiple companies to find the best solution and Laser Focused Solutions answered all of my questions. They were able to handle the entire project.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent $130,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in November 2016 and work ended in June 2018.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

When Laser Focused Solutions delivered the system, the tool only had two bugs. Our vendors liked the system’s functionalities.

How did Laser Focused Solutions perform from a project management standpoint?

They were one of the best teams I’ve worked with. Laser Focus Solutions did more than we requested to deliver the best results possible. The QA specialist was especially talented. We used Jira to review next steps on a daily basis; that information was always clear. We communicated via Skype and email.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They delivered the project with the promised deadline. The team completed tasks quickly and delivered a high level of quality. We also had workshops with them to define our business needs and they displayed good problem-solving skills during that stage.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

They excelled at building a new product from scratch. The team also accommodated all of our needs. I recommend them to new businesses.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the president of Microtherapy, Inc., a software provider in the Canadian advertising space. We supply software rating analysis, sales proposals, invoicing, contracting, and other kinds of solutions related to radio advertising.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Laser Focused Solutions?

We had a lot of legacy code and existing systems that were based on Component Object Model (COM) and Visual Basic 6. We had to get into .NET and we had no one on staff that could handle that.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We took a lot of code from our existing software solutions to them, and they reverse-engineered and rebuilt those from the ground up in .NET. They took care of all facets of development, sometimes even design.

RADIUS, our main product, is a desktop- and not a web-based solution because it works as a massive number grinder; trying to do that on a server simply wouldn’t happen. The users are 90% sales reps, or people who buy and sell radio airtime. The remaining 10% is made up of the research types who work on market analysis and everything that goes along with that.

We’re expanding into some cloud-based services at the moment, which will be add-on products. This is new development happening right now, using the same team. We’ve morphed from a conversion project to development. In fact, they're now the only development department of our business.

What is the team composition?

At this point in time, we’ve got two developers, two QA testers, and even our system operator is based out of Laser.

We have one more resource, who came from them and who works directly for us, on-site. We’re based in Canada and they’re in Ukraine, which made the collaboration a little challenging; by having one of their people here, on a full-time basis for the duration of the project has certainly helped a lot.

How did you come to work with Laser Focused Solutions?

I went with the recommendation of a friend in the Toronto area. He had worked with Laser for quite a while, and he proposed introducing us to get the ball rolling. This was the way to do it, rather than staffing up, as far as he was concerned. I was skeptical at first, but I quickly found out that they learn extremely fast.

How much have you invested with them?

I don’t know the exact number, but around $2 million–$2.5 million.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Laser in February 2013. The same body of work is still going on; we’re adding to it and bringing in new products. We’ve scaled back staff-wise because we didn’t need that much to continue with this phase, but the collaboration is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Anyone who’s used Laser’s software has only good things to say about it. One email we received states: “We’ve been using your software for a year, since the new version came out, and we’re loving it. Keep it up!”

The system involves a lot of heavy math, and the way they’ve structured our calculation engine is incredible. Our old system was an industry standard in Canada for decades; they’ve taken it to a whole new level in terms of performance, flexibility, and what we can actually do with it.

One of our internal developers has been diving into some of the existing engine’s code and everything else associated with it. His comments to me yesterday were that Laser’s approach to building the platform is incredible. He was trying to understand the internal structure of the calculation engine, and he was stunned by its simplicity, elegance, power, and flexibility. He’s been a developer for 30 years and he recognized the quality of it at the code level. It’s solid code and Laser stands behind every part of it.

How did Laser Focused Solutions perform from a project management standpoint?

We hired developers from Laser, but I’m the project lead, so it's a bit of a strange dynamic. They've definitely been on top of resource management, in terms of people, systems, and anything else required. The project management has been split between the lead developer and me.

We typically use Skype for communication with the developers and QA resources. There is a 7-hour time difference between us and them, but we can reach out and call during reasonable business hours. They’re like an extension of our company, for anyone involved. We’ve been working together for five years, so everyone’s on a first name basis.

What did you find most impressive about them?

If I had to pick one thing, it would be their dependability. There are no surprises: they say what they’re going to do, they do what they say, and nobody disappears. If we need to get hold of someone, we can. I find them to be a dependable shop.

Are there any areas they could improve?

It's all going in the right direction. Their English has kept getting better over the years, both the developers' and the QAs'. I can deal with anyone in the organization now; they have English tutors coming in at their office, so there's no longer any issues.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

Make sure to provide them with lots of background info, legacy source code, and anything else related to a project; nothing will get wasted.

I find them highly trustworthy. This was a problem I had in the beginning, as I’d worked as a sole developer forever, so sharing my code with people I didn’t know was rather uncomfortable. I held back some information in the beginning, thinking about the risks, but that was a waste of my time. I should’ve just opened up the folder and handed everything over to Laser. It took me a couple of months to get to that point, which slowed things down in the beginning.

Be upfront, open, and let it all go; don’t hold on to it. It’s in good hands.