Method

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

CAPTRUST provides investment advisory services to retirement plan fiduciaries, endowments and foundations and wealth planning services to executives, business owners, and families. I am Senior Manager of brand marketing.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Skookum?

Skookum was hired to redesign and develop a new corporate website for CAPTRUST

What were your goals for this project?

updated UI, better mobile responsiveness, better search features

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

RFP

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

CAPTRUST partnered with Skookum to complete an Engineering and Design Phase that created the creative and technical artifacts necessary to begin development of a new website experience that aims to drive increased site traffic and improve customer digital engagement.

What was the team composition?

Product Strategist, quality analyst, software engineer (2), designer, and delivery manager.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The result is a simple and beautiful way for clients and prospects to access information about CAPTRUST and our people and get at all of our great content—with sleek, modern imagery and clear, concise messaging.

The new CAPTRUST.com boasts enhanced navigation, sitewide search capabilities, enhanced bio pages, regional office landing pages, branded and compliance-approved article reprints, better security, and a stylish hub for VESTED articles and videos. Importantly, the new website will also provide better lead-generation capabilities, with web traffic, video hits, and visitor information captured in CRM for Telemarketing follow-up.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

Basecamp was used to help communicate and share files and progress. Very effective!

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Their people and expertise set them apart!

Are there any areas for improvement?

better QA and QC.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the senior director of merchandising at American Tire Distributors. We’re the nation’s largest wholesale tire distribution company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Skookum?

Most recently, we worked with Skookum to build a national website for our group of franchise dealers. The legacy website of our franchise program was one dimensional. Basically, it was purely informational. We wanted a website that was modern and had full e-commerce capabilities.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Skookum ideated, designed and helped to develop our franchise website. They helped us to create the overall scope of the project, providing ideas for the website’s features and UI/UX. Their team guided us to establish the platform’s look and feel. Then, their team created digital mockups.

Having a long-running partnership with Skookum, we developed the need for a lead person to be full time on this project to help drive it forward and direct an Agile approach. Historically, we worked in a waterfall environment but our timeframe for the project was short. Skookum dedicated a full-time resource who worked in our building for the entire duration of the project. That resource coached us and pushed us forward to get the product out the door.

Skookum also helped to develop information and materials for our meetings when we explained the website to our franchises. Their team aided us in creating the PowerPoints for those communications.

What is the team composition?

We had a main point person—Patrick (Product Strategist, Skookum) who worked on the project full time. We had a corporate contact and I was in touch with Chris (Software Engineer, Skookum).

How did you come to work with Skookum?

Years ago, their team completed a small project with our former e-commerce team. When I needed someone to ideate for an application project, I reached out to our e-commerce team for a recommendation. That’s when I got in touch with Chris. I’ve kept their name at the top of the list here.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent around $150,000 on this particular project. Their prices are reasonable.

What is the status of this engagement?

This project started in February 2019 and it ended in October 2019. The website launched two weeks previously to the end of the engagement.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

In every engagement, their work is amazing. They’ve been a key partner over the past number of years. We have presented this to our franchise locations and all locations adopted it. They’re extremely excited about the platform’s look and feel. Each dealer gets their own page to customize. Skookum’s designed are what created the excitement. At peak campaign, we average 100–115 sessions per week. Overall, the website’s successful.

How did Skookum perform from a project management standpoint?

Skookum used our tools, which was amazing. Patrick worked in our environment because our team developed the product. He learned all of our different applications that we use such as JIRA and Confluence. Greg was on site once a week to help drive the project. Their communication was outstanding too.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their skilled team separates Skookum from other providers. They have a unique culture where everyone feels welcome. Their team includes amazing people. In comparison to other consultants, Skookum’s a breath of fresh air.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, I can’t think of an area. We’re not as technologically advanced as them, which has been the only challenge. Our industry’s catching up whereas Skookum’s the frontrunner in advanced analytics. However, they’re teaching us constantly.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

There’s nothing I can say but to give them a shot. The partnership comes effortlessly. We’re in different locations, but they’re more than willing to come to us.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the Chief Strategy and Innovation Officer at the YMCA of Greater Charlotte.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Skookum?

Initially, we were looking to identify the best way to engage with our customers via digital platforms. 

Later, we needed support in developing our vision to install innovation labs throughout several chapters of the YMCA throughout the country.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

In our first engagement, after we let the team in on our goals to connect with our client base digitally, we shared our retention data. After conducting an analysis, Skookum identified an opportunity around a mobile app to most effectively utilize technology to drive customer retention. 

From there, they helped us through the process of developing our vision for the app, strategized with us, and produced wireframes that we could bring to developers.

The team provided a similar level of consultation for the innovation lab project, guiding us and providing creative direction with a national pitch to raise capital.

What is the team composition?

We worked most closely with Jason (Director, Skookum), Chris (Partner & Sales Director, Skookum), and Michael (Director of Innovation Strategy, Skookum). We also met with Joe (President, Skookum). 

How did you come to work with Skookum?

I was familiar with Skookum’s brand and the reputation they have in our community. We decided to partner with them because we admired not just their work, but everyone on the team.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent over $60,000 on various projects with Skookum.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our most recent project with Skookum lasted from August-October 2019.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The depth of expertise and vision that Skookum brings has been extremely beneficial to our organization. 

Though their team didn’t develop the app that we consulted with them on during our first engagement, the guidance they provided saved us a great deal of time and money when we actually did start moving forward with the project. 

We had a similar experience with the innovation lab project as well. When we started conversations with other YMCAs around the nation about extending our reach in the innovation sphere, I was extremely comfortable jumping at the opportunity to turn to Skookum for help.

Their assistance with the pitch ended up being instrumental in us securing funding for the labs.

How did Skookum perform from a project management standpoint?

Working with Skookum feels more like a partnership than a client-vendor relationship. Throughout any of our projects, I’ve been able to call the team or send a late-night email with any questions, and I always knew they wouldn't hesitate to get back to me.

We had frequent communication, usually either daily or weekly contact depending on our point in the timeline. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

The approach, thoughtfulness, curiosity, and experience that the people at Skookum bring truly sets them apart. 

For instance, we had one particular meeting during the innovation lab project where our two teams were having a little bit of trouble connecting with one another. Jason, who had been listening and engaged throughout the meeting, stood up and walked over to the whiteboard. He mapped out what he understood as the direction we wanted to pursue, and further demonstrated how he would frame the opportunity based on not just his own expertise, but input from the group. 

It was impressive to see him choose to listen and identify what we specifically needed to move forward and build from there, rather than relying on his experience to hand us a cookie-cutter approach. His collaborative direction in that moment changed the trajectory of our entire project.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I have nothing but high praise for Skookum. Whenever we were stuck, they provided the leadership to get us moving again.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Make an effort to be transparent and give Skookum all the information and materials they need. They can’t give you the kind of help they’re capable of providing if they don’t fully understand what your issues and opportunities are.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a VP for a financial services company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Skookum?

We’re regularly solving problems with disruptive technology with our product teams. It’s a field with a lot of known unknowns, which makes it hard to staff and identify our needs. We reached out to Skookum to help us find resources for these projects. 

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

In any given project, we’ll start by looking at a piece of disruptive technology. We want to identify how it works and how it can impact our company. Working with Skookum as a part of our team, we’ll often work through the entire development life cycle. The goal is usually to develop a proof of concept for our partners to potentially launch.

What is the team composition?

We work with Tiffanie (Senior Product Strategist, Skookum) who runs the team and serves as our daily point of contact. We also work with Kate (Senior Delivery Manager, Skookum) as well as a developer and a designer. The designers and developers have swapped around pretty frequently, but our strategist has stayed consistent.

How did you come to work with Skookum?

I’m not sure. My company started working with Skookum before I joined the company.

What is the status of this engagement?

The collaboration started in August 2017 and is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Skookum can think through a problem without us providing them with a defined solution. We enter a project knowing our focus but not knowing exactly what we would build. Their team is willing to co-solve a problem with us at a higher level than many consulting engineering teams we’ve worked with.             

How did Skookum perform from a project management standpoint?

Skookum communicates with us daily. We use the same communication channels—primarily Slack and Jira. They’re as much a part of our team as our in-house development team.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Skookum’s ability to solve known unknowns impresses me. They can dive into pieces we don’t understand or technologies we haven’t worked with before. That’s not typical of consulting engineering roles. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

When someone’s not working on the team or something just doesn’t seem right, Skookum is quick to fix it once we ask. We appreciate that.

Any advice for potential customers?

Have open and consistent communication.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the manager of Denver Startup Week, which is a week dedicated to free events focused on entrepreneurship and innovation in Denver, Colorado.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Skookum?

We were seeking a fresh redesign of the digital interface for the events.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

A team of 6–10 engineers redeveloped the frontend of our longstanding website. They worked together with my in-house backend engineer.

During the engagement, we collaborated on Slack and would exchange powerpoints to review during standups. We also tracked progress on Google Sheets.

What is the team composition?

In addition to the fluctuating team of engineers, we had a primary engineer and a primary product manager who were our main points of contact.

How did you come to work with Skookum?

We had worked with them previously for startup week; they had previously donated some time to create a functional app called Startup Crawl. We’d been great partners since then. We brought them on for this project because we trusted them to be collaborative, effective, and efficient. They had also received a large sponsorship which made their work possible.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent around $180,000 in total.

What is the status of this engagement?

The website development lasted from May–June 2019.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The finished product is pretty incredible–one that many people can use without there being any hiccups. Last week, we had somewhere around 100,000 visits to our website. We’ve experienced no errors or glitches, and the feedback for the site has been amazing.

How did Skookum perform from a project management standpoint?

They were very honest with us at every turn about what they needed from us to hit the agreed deadlines. We really appreciated that they didn’t hesitate to clarify our expectations or communicate their needs.

Seth (Software Developer, Skookum) couldn’t have been a better leader in helping us understand what could be accomplished with the allocated time and resources.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They excelled at giving us direction and mapping out the project structure. Without their excellent communication skills, it would have been difficult to understand exactly what they needed.

Carl (UX Strategist & Researcher, Skookum) was another engineer who gave us scintillating insight into their engineering approach. Their execution was really spot-on.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, not really. If anything, we could have improved in our responsiveness to them. The engagement was amazingly smooth.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the Director of Product for a national media organization that has a presence in nearly every major and mid-sized city throughout the United States.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Skookum?

We hired Skookum to develop a web application that we used to enter the professional services space. As a B2B media organization, our customers rely on us to grow their businesses, advance their careers, and simplify their professional lives. This application would fulfill that mission outside of our core offering, which is content.

What were your goals for this project?

Our goal for this project was to create a web application that would allow hiring mangers to evaluate whether or not their candidates had the innate strengths to become top performers for a given role.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

We selected Skookum after an exhaustive local and national search of web development agencies. Ultimately, we felt Skookum was the best choice for us because of their staff expertise, proximity to our corporate HQ, commitment to excellence, and of course, pricing.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

UX, development, and testing for a web application in Laravel / JavaScript using Agile methodologies.

What was the team composition?

The team was composed of a dedicated product strategist, UX designer, full-stack developer, and QAs.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

The project management was absolutely stellar, and our product strategist was amazing to work with. Her attention to detail, responsiveness, and genuine desire to see us succeed went above and beyond.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Skookum has a talented staff of people that seem to genuinely love what they do and support their clients. Everything from UX to development to QA and delivery was above and beyond expectations.

Are there any areas for improvement?

There was very little that could have been improved. Skookum was fantastic to work with.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We are a financial services company that operates as a private label and co-brand credit card company. We serve large retail brands, and we also have an online bank. I'm the SVP of Enterprise Customer Engagement, and I run a customer experience journey and practice for all lines of our practice.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Skookum?

My goal was to create a made-to-scale, agile operating model for my business. I needed a partner to help develop a journey-based methodology, rooted in human-centered design, prototyping, and visual design skills.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They base-lined all the journeys across our organization, and they brought research techniques and experiences to life for our business. For each project, they helped research and determine what level of quantity/quality we needed. Each opportunity comes with unique development concepts within our design process.

They assisted and sometimes led journey mapping, which included developing high-level process maps, front- and backend identification of systems. They tracked the data we use to identify and test concepts that resulted from our ideation phases, and helped prototype and run user testing for selected concepts. They worked extensively with our IT team to design and develop API’s.

What is the team composition?

We worked with four dedicated resources, including an engagement leader and a managing partner.

How did you come to work with Skookum?

They're a small, local design firm, and they had a good market reputation. Their partnership model aligned well with how we work. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We started this work in September 2018, and we continue the relationship.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The work they could do in three weeks took other consultancies ten times the money and effort. Their production schedule is almost unbelievable. I'm completely blown away by their abilities. Their speed and finality are much better than anything we've seen in the past.

How did Skookum perform from a project management standpoint?

All of our interaction is in Trello. We also use a communication board on a daily basis. We work in sprints, with weekly status summaries. About 25% of our synchronicity goes through me, and the rest of their interaction is with our innovation and technology teams

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their expertise, curiosity, and execution.  They had a plan, and then were able to execute on it with speed and ease.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They are a small company, and I wish they could scale more.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

As with any firm, it is important to integrate them into the team.  They are a great partner that will help anyone sleep easier at night. 

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We are a multifaceted company whose primary business is classic car classifieds, both online and in print. We post classified for old cars, parts, and advertisers, and we recently started a new division for online auctions. I'm the director of auctions, and I oversee digital products, sales, and the other important aspects of that part of our business.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Skookum?

We hired Skookum to evaluate our needs and build out our digital auctions platform.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We told them what we had in mind and what our needs were. Through that discovery process, they made suggestions for the engineering phase and what we needed to build. They spoke with over 30 people in different positions to find out what was important for us, and they outlined our competitors in the market. After evaluating some off-the-shelf products, they recommended the features we should build and gave us timing and cost estimates.

We took a phase-based approach, and we asked them to tackle the first two phases over the course of about 15 weeks. They used their agile processes and moved much faster than we expected. The product they built is solid and provided everything we needed to go live. We were a growing business, and they built out other features and functionality in a third phase while we expanded our team. They also performed user testing. The backend of the site is a Laravel PHP setup, which made sense in our stack. The frontend is JavaScript, accelerated by some off-the-shelf products.

What is the team composition?

The team included a product owner, an architect, a QA team member, a designer, and a tactical product specialist. In the second phase, the designer was more hands-off, and we reduced the team by one product owner.

How did you come to work with Skookum?

Our parent company worked with them on a previous project. They did a great job, so they were the first group we spoke with. Their offices are very near to ours, and they had the personalities and expertise to provide what we wanted.

How much have you invested with them?

Our total expenditure for all three phases was over $500,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

The initial buildout ran from December 2018-May 2019, and the third phase went from May-June or July 2019.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The product they delivered is much more robust and secure than anything else on the market, which is particularly important when our inventory is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Our product is user-tested and user validated, and each phase fit within our budget and timeline. They were flexible and worked with us to get us what we needed.

They sent us dashboard readouts of the pace and time spent, and they were very thorough in the statistics. We had no unexpected change orders, and everything met or exceeded expectations and was delivered on time. We're very happy with the way the site works, and feedback is overwhelmingly positive. The site's UX works well and feels very modern. We continue to iterate, but they delivered a solid product that needs very minimal tweaking.

How did Skookum perform from a project management standpoint?

The team was fantastic. Their architects were passionate about their work, and they were constantly trying new things and teaching us new tools. With their guidance, we learned new processes and grew as a brand.

We had weekly status meetings in person or over the phone. For daily communication, we shared a Slack channel. We could communicate minute to minute, and they let us know whenever there was a block in the process. They were very responsive, and they always kept us up to date.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They're wonderful consultants, and they engaged us and drove us toward key points. They had great personalities and were easy to work with, and they never lost sight of the goals or the value. They always felt like a member of our team. It's hard to quantify how good they are, but they took us further than we could have hoped and were an absolute pleasure to work with. They were open to changes and adjustments, and the process was very easy.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I can't think of anything they should improve. We didn't hit any snags in the process, and things ran smoothly from our vantage point.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Be transparent and tell them what you need. Explain your stakeholders' motivations and make them a complete member of your team. They will make more informed recommendations and suggestions that will help resolve your whole problem. The more information you give them, the better they will be able to help you.