mindz

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the CTO of a high end Italian design retail showroom. Our sales scale from single product sales to full turnkey interior design projects from residential to commercial homes. We have three locations in West Hollywood.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire mindz, and what were your goals?

separate different systems. While there are existing systems on the market but none really fit to our needs. So, we implemented a custom solution to our retail data entry problem.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

We were referred this vendor. We had worked with other IT solution companies before. Mindz were the most cost efficient and result oriented. While the interaction with their team is always good. Documentation of scope, work and hours is one area that they can improve on.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and technologies used.

They designed and developed a pos with integrated wms business solution. We first overhaul the entire website frontend and specify functionalities that we envision. That give us weeks of flow charts and design mock up to go through. Once we got the green light, they worked in 2 weeks springs, allowing us to play around in the beta while further developing in the sandbox. The final product to date automated data entry and can generate live reports as well as online check outs.

How many people from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

There were 4 people in the core team. The owner Chris is very hands on person. Then we have a scram master, 2 senior devs front and back. Then other team members would be in and out as needed.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

We were able launch the product after 2.5 years. Having e commerce, WMS, and POS is no easy task and it was completed. The platform is used day to day by our team and has reduced data entry by 60%. The product information is streamlined from the client to our internal team, it is centralized for easy access.

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timeliness.

The project manager / owner Chris is very hands on, solution driven person. Before he provides a solution to any problem, he would have thought through all possible scenarios where errors can occur and guide you to the optimal solution to the problem at hand. They regularly meet goals and expectations, we communicated thru Jira, Zeplin, MS teams, Zoom and emails.

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

Being in direct contact with the owner felt very special. Chris’ insight and intelligence is invaluable to the process. They made sure that we knew what to expect and made sure their team met all their deliverables and timelines.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

While the interaction with their team is always good. Documentation of scope, work and hours is one area that they can improve on.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I was a chief marketing officer at one of the biggest grocery retailers in Europe.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with mindz?

We needed a company that could develop an automated online engine for consumer contests.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

This project involved building a fully-automated online engine to power all of the contests and lotteries we organized for our clients. We provided them with a brief detailing the concept and the set of functionalities we wanted the product to have. mindz then designed and developed the concept, wireframes, prototypes, and user experience design. They were involved in all aspects of the project, from concept development to implementation. The app is available for both desktop and mobile devices.

What is the team composition?

I worked with three people from mindz, including two managing directors and one solutions architect.

How did you come to work with mindz?

We found mindz through a formal agency pitch.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked on this project from January 2016–February 2019.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Our customers praised the product’s design, speed, and functionality.  After this project, we ended up signing another contract with mindz because of their excellent work.

How did mindz perform from a project management standpoint?

mindz performed well in terms of project management. They were very reliable — they were efficient, always on time, and tended to exceed expectations. They were also highly responsive and accommodating of scope changes and requests.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We were impressed with mindz’ quick turnaround time and strict adherence to our established timelines and budget. We also appreciated how responsive they were and proactive in solving our problems.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, I have no complaints.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Just do it. You can be certain that they will deliver quality on time and within budgets, and you will have no issues with communication.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I work for a chiropractic clinic which specializes in alternative healthcare techniques including spinal manipulation as well as dietary and lifestyle management to optimize a persons state of health. I managed multiple websites for this clinic, I help produce online content such as articles and videos, and I handle all the social media accounts associated with this clinic.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire mindz, and what were your goals?

We hired Mindz for a few projects over the years. First they completely redesigned a personal website for our main clinician Dr. John Bergman. Then Mindz help us build a very large and complex website that is designed to train chiropractors. This website is a membership website with multiple tiers which have different levels of access to various aspects of the website. This website also has a map with a search function for patients to locate chiropractors trained in our technique system anywhere in the world. This was a very complex website to design and execute because we wanted many different functions such as the ability to search through all of our training videos as well as articles and e-books. We are currently still in the develop stages of this website and Mindz has helped us in every way possible over the years.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

We searched for many website developers in the United States and elsewhere in the world. We discovered that US developers are often very over priced and the results were sometimes underwhelming. So we started searching for developers in other countries and we ended up hiring a Polish company. This turned out to be a compete disaster because the company never produced a website for us and they took all of our money. Then a friend referred us to Mindz, which hired a lawyer for us and they were able to get all of our money back. Mindz then took over the project that the other company failed to complete and they did a fantastic job.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and technologies used.

We met several times in person and online to trade ideas about what the website should look and function like. The team at Mindz, worked with us every step of the way to refine every aspect of the website that we wanted. Most of the 8 months of work that we did with Mindz was mostly planning in detail each function of the website. They were very patient with me as we slowly worked through every page and function of the website. Once the planning was done, the actual coding work that Mindz did, went extremely quickly.

How many people from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

My contact at Mindz was Krzysztof Ptaszek, who is the manager and has many programmers working under him. Depending on the task we were trying to accomplish, we sometimes had between 2 and 4 programmers working on the project.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

We have built several websites over the years most of which were very simplistic sites built with Wordpress plugins. These websites were always developing problems especially when there was a high percentage of traffic. The websites that Mindz developed for us were built with a type of coding that is very advanced that will apparently future proof our sites so we won't have these kinds of problems in the future or at least that's how it was explained to me. Now our websites are very customized and modern looking. And best of all, they can handle a large amount of content and a high number of visitors.

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timeliness.

Krzysztof at Mindz, was always very quick to respond to any questions I had and any problems that we encountered were solved efficiently. We kept in constant contact throughout the entire process and Krzysztof was very patient with me. This was my first time trying to develop a very complex, custom website and there were many things I didn't know how to do. This might have been the only reason that it took as long as it did to develop the website. The slowest person in this website development process was actually me because Krzysztof had to walk me through each step of the process.

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

The most time consuming part of this process was actually the planning stages. I had no idea how complicated it was to develop a website from scratch. I was used to Wordpress Plugin type website that automatically generate every function and look for you. As I mentioned already, they were very patient with me during this process. What was most impressive about Mindz is that as soon as all the details were figured out, the actual coding and development of the website was incredibly quick.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

Once the website was fully developed, we had a few minor issues with certain functions of the websites. This was during the testing phases of the website as we started to upload content and work through all the aspects of the site. A couple programmers from the Mindz team worked with us for a couple weeks to fix any majors problems and now our site is working perfectly.