Perpetual

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the Founder of DogStays, a marketplace for dog parents and dog sitters. We are based in Luxembourg (EU) and provide a platform to ensure high-quality dog-sitting/ boarding services for dog parents.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Perpetual?

I hired Perpetual in Feb 2019 to provide Product and Technology Advisory services for my team. This was a 12 month engagement to help me plan and build out the Dogstays Marketplace platform from ground up (current MVP is live at https://www.dogstays.lu/, marketplace platform due to launch in Summer 2020).

What were your goals for this project?

I was seeking Product and Technology advisory and guidance on building out an MVP version of our marketplace platform. We needed someone to help define our technology roadmap, figure out the best process and team to implement the project efficiently and fit within our limited budget. Our main goal was to put a solid technical foundation in place to build out our platform. I also needed hands on support on my current site (dogstays.lu) to help optimize my daily tasks in running the business. One of the key items we needed support in the new platform was to conduct tech discovery on a third party scheduling/booking tool to allow Dog Owners to be able to easily book their Dog Sitter based on their location + available time slots vs manually performing these tasks on a daily basis.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

I was referred to Perpetual by a common friend who had worked with them before.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

- They helped carve out a Technology Roadmap for my product building and scaling the platform. - They provided me information on “the how” to implement features, what open source tools we could leverage/ reuse, provide high level estimation/tech complexity against each feature. - Technical Discovery of booking/scheduling tools, open source e-commerce and CMS packages for the platform. Defining architecture, technical stack and appropriate cloud hosting. - Contribute towards budget planning for platform build and selection of third party vendor.

What was the team composition?

1 Tech Advisor available part time for 6 months. 1 Product Manager part time for 2 months

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Perpetual team helped me understand the cost and effort of building the marketplace platform and were able to identify the technology challenges and risks which have been invaluable to me in implementation of the platform. They were able to define the technology roadmap to align with my business priorities which was great! The technical recommendations they made have positioned us well to build out the next set of features on our platform.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

Very efficient, we had regular meetings - status was discussed in the meeting along with blockers/priorities. They provided me detailed information on the status of items and any blockers that arose during the project.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Perpetual team has provided me the guidance and engineering best practices across people, process and tech - helping me find the right team, setup a lean/agile process and building our platform on a modern technology stack. The team has been very diligent and thorough through the project timeline. They know technology really well and seem to quickly understand my pain points in running the business to provide appropriate solutions and industry standard tools. They seem to always ask the right questions and challenged my assumptions at times (patient enough to educate me on the tech when needed!) I would highly recommend this team to any other startups.

Are there any areas for improvement?

None

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the product manager for a multinational financial services company with a range of desktop products, web products, and feeds. We’re primarily working on market data terminal type desktop products, focusing on a slice of content that those users are interested in. We provide quantitative and numeric data that involves news and broker research, focusing on ways to make it easier for users to consume.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Perpetual?

The company grew in a time where we had the news app, the filings app, the events app with earnings transcript were held, and a broker research app. Any time there was an emergency, people asked where they had to go within the four areas.

I put together a cross-content searching app as a proof of concept (POC). Being a POC, it had usability perspective issues, so we needed someone to assist with UX design.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

The team at Perpetual helped with the strategy and UX of the platform. Amish (CEO, Perpetual) was familiar enough with the core visual signature that we were working with. Within that, I worked with him and one of his colleagues to figure out our users.

We were in the process of adding a new feature that revolved around the use of a knowledge graph. During the process, we were trying to figure out how to visualize and integrate it. We wanted to use the app as a way to showcase new technology and functionality. The app itself is a bit of a demo. Amish was trying to rationalize the entire workflow while adding new features at the same time.

Their team built clickable prototypes in InVision, and then I would use those as part of my documentation for the development team.

What is the team composition?

I worked with Amish and one other person that was facilitating the core implementation. Amish had a good background in working with these kinds of financial apps.

How did you come to work with Perpetual?

My boss, at the time, had worked with them before. I wasn’t part of the selection process.

What is the status of this engagement?

We began working together in early spring 2018, and it ended at the end of 2018.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

I’ve been able to use pieces of the work to show other groups internally where we’re headed. I also had my own stuff in alpha and beta environments to show.

Amish was quick to turn everything around. Even though they had other projects going on, I didn’t find that inhibited their ability to deliver work to us. I never had to wait.

The trickiest part involved the knowledge graph. It’s hard to distill into a single view, so we were able to design it in a way where users could see what was important to them. People find this feature useful, along with our newly-designed landing page. There’s no way to assign revenue to it, but the usage has gone up three times over the last year.

How did Perpetual perform from a project management standpoint?

Their extensive use of InVision was excellent. The team at Perpetual introduced me to the tool as a way to communicate ideas. I could in and see updates.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Amish is an affable guy. We spent time together for a few weeks, which was nice.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I would’ve liked to break all the rules of the product to have something a bit more dynamic, but that’s not on them. It’s quite a straightjacket we were given. It was a good relationship all-in-all.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Their background in the financial sector helped me a lot. If you’re in that space, they’d be a go-to-place. I highly recommend them.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Design Bridge is a leading creative agency specialising in Brand and Design. My role as Creative Director is to oversee creative excellence across our clients here in North America.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Perpetual?

Perpetual were hired to help realise the build and custom development of a Brand site, to be built in Ceros, for one of our major consumer goods clients.

What were your goals for this project?

Seamless integration of our creative vision within the constraints of the platform, as well as using the Perpetual teams knowledge of other platforms to better understand where custom code/dev could be explored and brought into Ceros.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

Straight away the team at Perpetual felt like a good fit from a cultural perspective. They were also more than happy to work collaboratively and join us for in-person sessions which is how we prefer to work with partners. Their knowledge of the industry and previous experience with this particular platform was also a big part of the decision process.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

Perpetual advised and helped fine tune the design, then went on to build as well as bring in bespoke custom code into the final site. They were also a fantastic support with the project management of the project and also were more than happy to liaise with the internal client IT department as we migrated the site to their servers.

What was the team composition?

The team we dealt with regularly was made up of three people. But I believe a larger team may have been brought in at certain points along the way as like with most projects we had some busy moments getting ready for challenging client deadlines.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Despite having to work around some stringent client IT issues, this piece of work, which is literally going live right now ,has been a game changer for our client. The scale and reach of this brand is enormous and it was crucial that this project was realised and launched successfully and ontime in order to inspire and educate the global brand and marketing divisions.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

The project management was very effective and throughout the project we were regularly kept up to date with Google Docs containing the status of each and every element.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Having the team, who was actually working on this build, able to come in and spend time with our designers was a fantastic way to streamline this project both creatively and from a timings perspective. They were also very accommodating with additional rounds of feedback and always kept us up to date with what was going on at their end. I also felt a genuine excitement from the Perpetual team about working with Design Bridge on this one which is always nice.

Are there any areas for improvement?

Nothing major as the project has been pretty smooth for the most part. My only area for improvement would be in those initial meetings I think we could have all been clearer about licensing and software restrictions.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the founder of a design agency.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Perpetual?

We normally do our design and development in-house. Our team decided to get some outside help for development.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We had a client request an interactive educational site from us. We did all the design in-house. When it was time for development, we went through our designs with their team and put together some of the technical requirements for the site. It was an agile development with weekly cycles. We collaborated on the project, implementing designs into their code using Prismic and React.

What is the team composition?

My friend was the main point of contact. He had a team that I communicated with over standups. It was very conversational—I knew people’s faces. It felt like we were all one team.

How did you come to work with Perpetual?

I’m friends with one of the co-founders because we worked together at another agency in the past. He was the fastest to respond to our RFP and understand our business goals. He had a very accurate approach to evaluate the amount of work necessary.

We felt comfortable with their ability to deliver from the beginning. It was the right decision from day one. While meeting the team, we went through their portfolio. It was very transparent and fluent. After we signed the contract, they put together all the milestones. Everything happened very smoothly.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent under $25,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from November–December 2019.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We started seeing results pretty early in the United States. They were a huge help and very professional. From day one, we felt we were one team. All their work was spot on. With our combined experience, we understood how to address issues with interactivity and performance.

Aside from that, we just launched the project. The client is still updating the system for analytics. We don’t have any metrics yet.

How did Perpetual perform from a project management standpoint?

Since we worked in an agile process, it was very easy to iterate and keep the project going. The communication went very smoothly. We use Slack for daily communication and had standups three days each week.

On Fridays, we had a demo of how the website was progressing. It was a very well-crafted process. When we sent the feedback, they made changes quickly. They were always available.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They all have experience and know what they’re doing. The team has a good handle on all sorts of situations. Sometimes things need to be done fast, and they understood that. I felt they were part of our team.

Are there any areas they could improve?

One of their employees that was dedicated to the project left the company. They were very transparent and told us what was happening. They introduced the new team members that would be taking care of the project. It was a little nerve-wracking, but they did the right thing. We didn’t feel the impact of that.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I want to continue working with them and would definitely recommend them.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO of a company that builds enterprise blockchain software.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Perpetual?

We needed help with business and product development.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

After successfully raising a round of funding, we needed to do business development and outreach to both customers and developers. They helped us by jumping on phone calls with our various customers to onboard them onto our product. 

In some cases, they called potential investors and pitched our business as a possible investment for them. In order to run the project smoothly, they placed someone from their staff in our office to work alongside our team.

They also helped us out with product design for some of our e-learning courses. We were able to think through high-level design concepts with them to guide the direction for those courses.  

What is the team composition?

They placed one of their teammates in our office who essentially managed their end of the project and actively communicated with us. He handled the entire relationship. We also interacted with Perpetual’s owner.  

How did you come to work with Perpetual?

At the time, we were raising capital in New York. I’d worked with their owner in the past and enjoyed the relationship. While bootstrapping our company, I reached out to him to see if he could help us.

How much have you invested with them?

In total, we spent about $250,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from January 2017–October 2018.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

They helped us negotiate business deals worth millions of dollars. In that alone, they paid for their services many times over. On top of that, they provided feedback that helped us improve our core product.  

How did Perpetual perform from a project management standpoint?

Because they had a person physically working in our office, project management was done seamlessly. We never had to get in the middle of anything. They met all the deadlines.

What did you find most impressive about them?

It was incredibly easy to work with them from day one. We needed to ramp up fast, and they were very quick to help us.  

Are there any areas they could improve?

Nothing specific comes to mind because I was very happy with the ROI we got on the effort.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

If you can afford to have a staff member full-time, it will be a huge help. Their services are great, and I’d recommend them to anybody.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am Founder and CEO of an instructional design, content and technology agency. We were engaged by a leading Atlanta-based non-profit organization providing support to families undergoing life transitions (divorce/bereavement etc.).

We were brought in to develop an online portal to support co-parenting - coaching separated (or separating) parents to responsibly create the best possible environment for children in difficult circumstances.

My role was to define the learning strategy, create the course outline, course content and multimedia as well as to deploy an online learning platform that met the client’s (and user’s) requirements.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Perpetual?

We hired Perpetual to assist with the design, hosting and customization of the online learning platform. While we had the course content side of the engagement covered, we needed assistance with these complementary services. For design, Perpetual created and implemented a custom design theme for the learning platform matching Families First’s branding style guide.

The learning platform selected (Open edX) required advanced configuration on the Amazon AWS cloud services platform, including multiple applications and two databases, which the Perpetual team handled. Additionally, Perpetual implemented advanced customizations on the learning platform including additional payment options, a custom certificate and special question types.

What were your goals for this project?

Successful implementation of both content and custom payment and certification utilities.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

Highly recommended by former colleague and a leading consulting firm in New York.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

We relied on Perpetual to handle the technology aspect of the engagement in a turnkey model: They installed the software to the servers, customized it, hosted it and got it operational and ready for us to put up our advanced learning content for the customer’s use.

What was the team composition?

We worked with 1 Product Manager, 1 UX Designer and 2 Software Engineers.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The learning platform was launched successfully, satisfying the client’s needs and addressing the goals we set out for the Perpetual team. The platform is still up and running without the need for additional maintenance or support, which is a testament to Perpetual’s robust engineering practices.

The solution established and industry-first for co-parenting training: the ability to take learning sessions, make simple payments, and receive a custom watermarked certificate online from your home instead of having to travel to an in-person class. This increased convenience for the test-takers as well as the client Families First, resulting in several hours and dollars saved for all parties (on both the end-user side and my client's side).

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

What stood out from a project management standpoint was their organized process: each task was well defined, prioritized, estimated and scheduled in the project management tool. Any blockers were marked on the task, and communicated with our team for quick resolution.

They held regular meetings and prepared documentation for project milestones. The team was also easily reachable for out-of-cycle communication and project needs.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Perpetual is proactive, responsive, and have a versatile team to tackle the diverse needs of any tech project. They take into account overall dependencies for successful project delivery in addition to just doing the tasks assigned to them.

Very honest and upfront about roadblocks and always coming with solutions, not problems. Very easy to work with, project-managers highly competent and exude calm authority. Highly recommended.

Are there any areas for improvement?

Hardly any, at times more proactive communication from them would be helpful, but not a major issue at all.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the founder of Storage Seeker. We offer a website where consumers can rent a self-storage unit online.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Perpetual?

Our website has been around since 2008, but we recently changed the way we aggregated data from all of our clients. We switched to an API from a more manual process. We hired Perpetual to effectively rebuild the site using that API and a number of design changes.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We relied on Perpetual to connect this new data API to all of our existing self-storage properties. Additionally, they created a CMS that allows our staff to edit large portions of our website’s pages without having to go into the code. Lastly, we had them redesign the UX of several pages on our site.

What is the team composition?

We worked with three backend developers, a designer, and an HTML frontend developer.

How did you come to work with Perpetual?

I had worked with Perpetual on a different project in the past. I had a great experience with them before, so I hoped they could replicate that success with Storage Seeker.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent more than $10,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from February­–March 2019.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We launched our website in April. We have since seen a steady increase in traffic, which we attribute to the architecture changes they’ve made. We’ve also had lower advertising costs due to the increased readability of the pages through Google Ads.

How did Perpetual perform from a project management standpoint?

They were very communicative about what their steps were, and they had fast turnaround times to get demonstration products in front of us to approve or change. We’d use Slack and emails to communicate, along with twice-weekly Zoom calls.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They have artistic designers, talented developers, and organized project managers who could take my business case and convert it into a great product. The breadth of their resources to dedicate to the project was quite impressive.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, this was a quick and painless project.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

It’s smart to have some outlines or wireframes because that’s the easiest way to get started with most developers.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Scout Finance is the first to market mobile data terminal for investors. I'm the CEO and founder.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Perpetual?

We wanted to find a way to give finance professionals the data they needed on the go. There were no good options on the market, and we wanted to fill that void.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They augmented our staff with iOS engineers to accelerate development for this app. We wanted to create different modalities for the app to be more compatible with different devices and via the web. We asked them to refactor the code for those other approaches, which helped us capture a bigger market share and make a splash quickly. That refactoring lightened the burden and saved us from creating entirely new apps.

What is the team composition?

We had three developers and a project manager, who kept is on the same page.

How did you come to work with Perpetual?

I worked with our main contact a long time ago, so that relationship already existed. When I wanted to augment my staff, it was natural to speak with them about what they could offer. Perpetual also came up frequently in conversation as an excellent vendor.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent about $500,000–$600,000 on their services.

What is the status of this engagement?

The whole engagement lasted about six months, and we wrapped up around May 2015.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

They decreased our development time by about 60%, which saved us hundreds of thousands of dollars. We've won awards for the finished product, and a lot of their work went into that success.

How did Perpetual perform from a project management standpoint?

They were excellent communicators, and they finished all their work on time. If there were any issues, they were very responsive. They were there when we needed them, and they set us up well to work on our own. They were as good at management as they were at coding. We worked in Jira, and they had access to our Jira board. That allowed them to clean up some of our entries. They were also on Slack and introduced some helpful design tools and other technologies.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They're really amazing project managers, and they really offer a complete package. They were always as good or better than our own employees.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They were fantastic, and I don't have anything to criticize. I only wish there were more of them.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

See them as more than just coders. They can be true team members with broad sets of capabilities.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there. 

I’m a senior project manager at Special Operations, a creative agency located in New York. We do website, branding, and campaign work.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Perpetual? 

We have a client whose website needed refreshing. We’d originally designed the site about a year ago, but there were new technologies available. We wanted to make a few updates to ensure that they stay on top of their market.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement? 

Perpetual created new features for a venture capital firm’s website. They created dropdown menus to display information in a sleek and digestible way. They updated the news page to make it easier to pull articles. They made aesthetic updates to the team member page. They updated the layout of the homepage to make multiple items appear above the fold. They also offered input on UX for mobile design.

The project took place over three phases, and each phase focused on 5–6 updates. Whenever a feature was added or updated on the frontend, Perpetual also updated the code in the CMS on the backend. They wanted to make it easier for the client to go in and edit features as needed.

What is the team composition? 

Ryan (Full Stack Developer, Perpetual) and Amish (CEO, Perpetual) were our main contacts. In total, we had a team of four people working on our project. 

How did you come to work with Perpetual?

Our founder had worked with Amish before I was part of the team. As this project was for a high-profile client, we definitely wanted to go with an established company.

How much have you invested with them? 

With all the phases included, we spent between $15,000–$20,000. 

What is the status of this engagement?

The project took place from October 2018–March 2019.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The redesigned site is great. After the updates went live, our client was featured in the Wall Street Journal. The piece was very complimentary about the new site, highlighting the up-to-date branding. It was amazing to get that level of PR and eyeballs on the new site. 

How did Perpetual perform from a project management standpoint? 

Ryan is awesome. They kept a running tracker in Google Sheets so that we were always able to communicate with their team. The Sheet was constantly updated so we never had to question if a task was done. The entire process was very smooth.

What did you find most impressive about them? 

Perpetual was always willing to do additional market research in order to improve their background knowledge on the project. The first thing they sent over to us was a comprehensive spreadsheet of other VC firms. They’d done an analysis of features on their websites that we could incorporate, which was really helpful. 

Are there any areas they could improve? 

No. Perpetual is one of the best development companies I've worked with. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers? 

Before approaching any developer with an ask, get as much information from your client about the goals of the project as you can. It's a good rule of thumb that the more work you do before starting will result in a better project.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We’re a fintech company. I head up a product here for news and risk products.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Perpetual?

Our company had a product we wanted to grow. We were seeking new ways to tell the story of our product as well as redesign the experience to improve customer satisfaction.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Perpetual designed a sales collateral site and redesigned an existing portal. By showcasing our capabilities, they were able to adapt to our proprietary framework. There was quite a bit of ideation, and then ultimately, their team set up the end-to-end portal for video.

What is the team composition?

We worked with a dev team of four or five, along with a UX expert.

How did you come to work with Perpetual?

We found that Perpetua was keen to understand the problems we were facing. They were willing to get into the bulk of the work rather than finding a clear solution right off the bat.

How much have you invested with them?

The project cost around $100,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked with Perpetual from 2013–2015.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

There’s been positive feedback about their performance. Video views increased significantly. The sales team also appreciated the sales collateral work their team completed.

How did Perpetual perform from a project management standpoint?

Their project management style was efficient. Perpetual was timely and responsive, giving us a clear sense of milestones. Basecamp was the primary project management tool.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I think we covered it all. Perpetual did an excellent job.

Are there any areas they could improve?

There are always areas to improve, but nothing specific stands out.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Having an incremental approach and constant engagement is key.