Neev Information Technologies (Out of Business)

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

We provide online education to pre-kindergarten through to age twelve students, across the United States and internationally, through both public and private schools.

What is your position?

I was the product manager for the consumer line.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with Neev Information Technologies?

My department is focused on homeschoolers, and people who need some sort of supplemental education to whatever fulltime program they're currently enrolled in, whether it be public, private, homeschooling, or otherwise.

As a way to reach this audience, we have an e-commerce site that we use to promote and sell individual courses and materials. The one that we had at the time was pretty outdated. It was built roughly eight years ago and we hadn't done a lot of development on it. We hired Neev to help us update the overall e-commerce and shopping experience on it.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement.

They designed all the visuals and also migrated the content of the previous site. We worked pretty quickly with them in order to move our entire catalogue over to the new Magento site. They did a fantastic job in helping us move over a lot of content and established a very beautiful shopping experience that has made the customer a lot more educated upfront about what they're actually purchasing; all within a very quick timeline. It certainly has had a positive impact on our company.

I think there were a very low number of developers assigned to our project. I worked with only one or two people on a daily basis. There were a few others involved in the background, either directly with me, or subcontracted. Given the scope of all that we did, I'm guessing that there were three to five developers.

We did some level of quality assurance [QA] with them. Unfortunately, I don't have a big team: there's myself, and a few people in the marketing department that support the consumer business side part-time. The consumer practice generates about 6 million of a 900 million dollar business. We're pretty tiny by comparison. Only about 30% of that comes through e-commerce.

For the migration process, I essentially gave them an Excel document that had all of our courses and product descriptions, durations, metadata, and so on, that they could upload into Magento. The migration was pretty simple, but in the process, some formatting got kind of wonky. We could have done a lot more in terms of external QA and consistency across the course descriptions. For example: some might have had a bold heading, and some not; inconsistent bullets, etc. We had a very short timeframe, so that was good enough for us. If we had more time we would have been able to correct those items before launch.

How did you come to work with Neev Information Technologies?

On our old site, we were using Drupal; our entire solution was proprietary. We made an internal decision to switch to Magento. Prior to engaging with Neev, we had gone through a cost and capabilities process, and worked with the likes of Oracle and about a dozen others. We found that we really liked the flexibility that Magento offered. At the time, we engaged some US-based groups, but couldn't get the funding together, so we ended up stalling for about a year. We picked it up again after coming across a review board for Magento. I think Neev had a gold or silver star rating.

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

We spent about $100,000 for the project.

What is the status of this engagement?

Since completing the project, we've continued the relationship. We essentially built an e-commerce site that didn't have e-commerce functionality, due to limited funding. What we had at the time was a beautiful website that educated the customer upfront, but didn't actually allow them to purchase anything. Lo and behold, people didn't actually buy stuff. We were able to prove our case, in that the site is better, but now we needed more time and money for building the e-commerce portion. That started two weeks ago, and we will be investing a further $90,000 to give it credit card functionality, and throw in some more bells and whistles like reviews and such.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

We didn't do a lot of user testing. Again, it was funding related. We tested internally, using my team, the team from the private tuition department, operations, systems, marketing, school services, etc. We had a few people try it out and the feedback was very positive. The user experience is a lot more intuitive, the branding was more aligned with our main website, there's a lot more information upfront, and it was easier to navigate. Aside from not being able to process credit cards, it certainly matched what most people think of when they envision an e-commerce site. What we had before was woefully outdated. This is more in-line with industry standards.

How did Neev Information Technologies perform from a project management standpoint?

They provided us with direct access to Redmine. We used their tool for project management issues, task delegation, progress tracking and resolution. They always managed to deliver on time, usually before the due date, and certainly within budget.

What distinguishes Neev Information Technologies from other providers?

I haven't worked with many other e-commerce vendors. They were very eager to meet our requirements and collaborative in how they wanted to come to a solution.

Is there anything Neev Information Technologies could have improved or done differently?

We mostly communicated through Skype. On occasion it would not work; overall I found connectivity wasn't always what it needed to be. I found that the way we held meetings, on occasion, was not the best: it was me on one side of the phone, and a bunch of people on their end, using Skype (which is already questionable connectivity-wise). We would lose calls sometimes, or there would be static. Many people in a room with an echo and a single person on the other end was not ideal communication, but it was the best we had.

In some ways, I would have wanted them to be more prescriptive. It's a tricky line, as a client dealing with vendors. You need a website, or e-commerce site, and have certain expectations, but you don't understand the technology being used to build it. I have no scope of the cost of building a recommendation engine, or a product detail gallery. If I don't know the capabilities of Magento, it's hard to know what to ask for. I found that, on occasion, they went too far in saying they can offer whatever we want. We can't afford everything we want, so it was frustrating to have them propose solutions that weren’t within our price range.

Other times, they let the functionality hold them back: they tried to remain too true to the Magento way of doing things, avoiding the effort needed sometimes to comply with our specific requirements. For example: pricing, in our business, is different from most companies. Instead of charging for a single course, we could sell it with a payment plan. This is done in the back-end, because we're not optimized for consumers yet. This pricing approach would get us some push-back from Neev, and some other vendors, because of its complexity. We wanted to keep it as it is, rather than simplifying it.

I do think that there was some miscommunication on the threshold of quality. For example, one of our requirements for this site was the search capability. I should be able to search for 'math', and have math courses pop up. The approach that they had proposed, and the only one that we could afford, was to retrieve every course which included the word 'math’, 'The History of Math', for example. Because of the broadness of the search terms, it turned into an unusable feature. I found that that was one area where we had no more time to improve, due to our constraints. It was a combination of me not knowing well enough how to establish requirements, and them not being more upfront with what they planned to deliver. There were a few instances of that occurring, but, overall, it was a good experience.

I wanted to be a bit more flexible with what we were trying to accomplish, and they were somewhat resistant. Overall, they were very accessible and knowledgeable. They gave us more or less good guidance on how to accomplish our goals.

BACKGROUND

Could you provide a brief description of your organization?

I work for a 65-year old wholesale distribution company, selling to the laundry and dry cleaning industries.

What is your position?

I’m the chief executive officer.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

Could you describe the business challenges you were attempting to address when you first approached Neev Information Technologies

We needed to have our Magento platform migrated to an AWS [Amazon Web Services] hosting service, but we didn’t have the necessary technical expertise to perform the migration in-house. We knew we needed to find someone that had the experience and know-how.

SOLUTION

Could you describe the scope of work in greater detail?

It was really moving our entire Magento platform and database search, from an existing hosting provider to Amazon, as well as getting all of the security elements in place, backups, and monitoring of the site performance. It led to a lot more Amazon-related work, too. There was some considerable data preparation and conversion involved, along with some custom backend development, configuration, and testing.

How did you select Neev Information Technologies as your solution partner?

I did a lot of Web searching, reading of some industry blogs, and things like that. Their name and their site came up for what I was looking for on several occasions. I decided to investigate their offerings further [and] their previous work. Their site seemed to indicate that they had some extensive experience working on site migrations, so I decided to give them a ring. I was pretty impressed with that they had to offer and based my decision on that.

Could you provide a general cost estimate for this particular project?

We spent about $15,000.

When was the last project completed?

The project was completed in June of 2014.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

In terms of results, could you share any statistics, metrics, or user feedback that would demonstrate the effectiveness of their work?

I don’t have any specific metrics or figures to share. Our site has been up, problem-free. The search function works far better than it did beforehand, just by separating our solar search engine from our database engine. They knew enough about that, especially on the Magento side, to optimize performance for us. Before it was just a hosting environment, period. They were able to leverage their deep platform knowledge to our benefit, and we weren’t expecting to have that happen. It was a pleasant surprise.

When working with Neev Information Technologies, is there anything you’d consider unique about their approach or development methodology that distinguishes them from other vendors?

Nothing so unique now. From my perspective, they’re very responsive with regards to their relative distance and time zone differences. We had some initial hesitance and unease about using an offshore provider, especially because of cultural differences in workflow [and] project management, but also with regard to timing and consistency. We haven’t experienced problems with any of those things.

In retrospect, are there areas in which you think they could improve as a service provider?

No. They’re good at what they do from a technical side. I think a lot of companies want to do everything: Design, technical, creative, strategy, and more. But, Neev Technologies know what their strengths are. We told them from the outset that we have another company we work with on the design side, and they’re not trying to take that business away. I respect that. They know what they’re good at, and they’re sticking to it.

BACKGROUND

Could you briefly describe your organization?

I work for an online educational startup. We’re only about a year old. We provide alternative education for skills that are in demand. We focus on data, data analytics, ecommerce, and the 21st century skills that are required in the workplace today. We conduct these courses that result in certificates for the students.

What is your position?

I’m the vice president of technology. I’m responsible for the strategy of technology and the products that we have.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

Could you describe the business challenges you were attempting to address when you first approached Neev Information Technologies?

When we first approached Neev Technologies, we had only three or four of us with the founding team. We did not have anyone else working for us on a full-time basis. That’s when realized we’d need our own platform to deliver our courses and we couldn’t build this ourselves. We looked at the results and figured out Neev could meet our needs. The challenge was then to build a learning management platform. We wanted a solution partner that could potentially take control of delivering it. Our original intent was that they would be a trusted advisor and a technology partner for us.

SOLUTION

Could you describe the work in greater detail?

Our contract with them was to develop the MVP: A multilevel product of a platform. The contract was really to design and develop our technology platform. Because we did not have our own technology team, we looked to them for technology expertise that would move us from conceptualizing the product to designing the product to delivering the product in the acceptable manner.

How did you select Neev Information Technologies as your solution partner?

It was through some business contacts we had at the time. A close business associate of ours had used Neev Technologies in the past and recommended that we investigate their offerings. We did so and decided they’d be good to contact. We felt confident in their capabilities after speaking with them about their previous work and how they’d approach our own project.

Could you provide a general cost estimate for this project?

We spent between $60,000 to $80,000.

When was this project completed?

It was finished at the end of May [of 2014]. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

In terms of results, could you share any statistics, metrics, or user feedback that would demonstrate the effectiveness of their work?

Not yet as we’re just launching the product. The project started sometime in November and then went onto until the end of May. We’re launching the product right now. The initial feedback on the product is that it doesn’t look too great, especially in the U.S., people are telling us that it looks OK; nothing great. We have received some positive feedback regarding the functionality of the solution, which is nice, but the visual part could have been done better.

When working with Neev Information Technologies, is there anything you’d consider unique about their approach or development methodology that distinguish them from other vendors?

I think they’re really approachable folks. Our initial experience was that they were quite approachable and accommodating.

In retrospect, are there areas in which you think Neev Technologies could improve as a service provider?

Neev could have played a greater role in the end-to-end delivery of the product. The version that was produced at the end of the engagement was not what we had originally expected, although it was working fine. As a startup, we were looking at Neev to play a customer advisory role but that was lacking. They have a solid organization, and we know they have the capabilities to deliver.