Portland Webworks

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

Sappi is a leading producer of forestry products, including paper, chemical cellulose, packaging, and other biochemical products derived from wood. We have a presence in three continents and have an annual turnover of around $5 billion.

What is your position?

I am the IT [information technology] manager for North America. I am responsible for all customer-facing technologies, including web, mobile and electronic data interchange.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with Portland Webworks?

We needed a developer for our website.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement.

The first project we undertook with Portland Webworks was a refresh of our regional company website. They did a very good job, so we hired Portland Webworks for deploying our B2B [business-to-business] customer e-commerce portal. They outshined in that project as well, showing us what they could do. For that project, we wanted a global e-commerce portal that would be multilingual and have a breadth of functionalities aimed at our B2B customers. We also wanted a responsive design that could interface with our back-end ERP [enterprise resource planning] system. Portland Webworks developed a bespoke solution that met our requirements and was completely scalable. It has been a great success for our customers.

Portland Webworks provides support for us as well as developing new features. We have engaged them on another global project, namely revamping our international website. In addition to this, we're also deploying a portal based on the Drupal CMS [content management system]. The technology was based on Portland Webworks's recommendation.

We underwent a request for proposal process for this project, but Portland Webworks had the best bid. The initial list included 12 candidates. We received proposals from five of them, narrowed the choice to three and finally chose Portland Webworks. 

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

Our annual development, maintenance and support cost with Portland Webworks is between $100,000 and $120,000. Larger deployments like our e-commerce solution and the current CMS for our international site have separate budgets. We estimate the total cost for 2016 to be $500,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our first project with Portland Webworks started in 2009.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

We are a global company with offices in three continents, each one with its own IT department. Since engaging Portland Webworks, it has been recognized across the company that they're excellent, and they've remained the go-to choice for all of our global projects. The work done by Portland Webworks for our North America and Europe divisions has been better than what other vendors have offered.

How did Portland Webworks perform from a project management standpoint?

Portland Webworks is good at making estimates and sticking to them. They're been very flexible with their resources and have set priorities in order to meet our needs. Portland Webworks is a partner for our company. Other vendors have worked in a time-and-materials fashion. Usually, the first thing we hear from them is that something is out of scope. Portland Webworks focuses on bringing solutions and working with us.

Portland Webworks uses JIRA as well as a whole suite of other Atlassian products for their project management. They are an agile shop, which we've come to love. We use a different solution internally, namely TOPdesk. We haven't integrated it with JIRA, but it is something that we're looking to explore.

What distinguishes Portland Webworks from other providers?

They're been very easy to work with and very flexible. Portland Webworks has delivered very high-quality products for us.

Is there anything Portland Webworks could have improved or done differently?

They have a limited resource pool, so we've sometimes found ourselves struggling with sharing Portland Webworks's developers with their other projects. This doesn't happen all the time, but it does occur.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

The Department of Social and Health Services is involved with everything from child support to aging and adult family care. We have over 2.5 million clients and 18,000 employees. We're the largest state agency in Washington. Our website features 27,000 pages at the moment.

What is your position?

I am the Digital Brand Communications Manager. I am in charge of managing the relationship between the agency and Portland Webworks, while also managing all the content on our website.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with Portland Webworks?

We needed development resources for our organization's portal.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement.

Portland Webworks has developed our website using a combination of PHP, Apache, and a MySQL server over Rackspace. Our website was built using the Drupal platform.

Portland Webworks collaborates with us through an ongoing maintenance contract. We are allocated 60 hours per month, for which we pre-pay. Our strategy allows us to bank a maximum number of hours, which we've maxed-out on purpose, in anticipation to upcoming work.

We worked with 2-3 developers and a project manager from Portland Webworks. Our initial project manager was also a Drupal developer, so she virtually took care of any requests over the phone or immediately afterward. Our new project manager takes a bit more time to complete tasks, given the fact that she relays them to the developers. We were notified in advance of the departure of our project manager.

How did you come to work with Portland Webworks?

It was a careful decision process, involving a request for proposal. We had very specific requirements in terms of what needed to be done for our website development, which included migrating content from the old page in a short timeline and for a specific budget. We also needed the contractor to provide hosting services. Portland Webworks answered our request and scored the highest out of all other responses. We were basically compelled to choose them as a result.

Portland Webworks has a focus on government agencies, so the request for proposal was curated through specific channels.

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

The total development cost was 1.5 million dollars.

What is the status of this engagement?

We have an ongoing engagement with Portland Webworks.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

The fact that Portland Webworks was able to complete the project in the given timeline of 9 months is a testament to their fluidity and project management style. The job involved migrating 11,000 pages of content and rebuilding the whole platform. They were on-point with all of their sprints.

As far as real data goes, being nominated for a Webby Award was a huge deal for us. It solidified the fact that Portland Webworks was as good of a partner as we thought they'd be.

Because our timeline was so short, we did not engage in any user testing. We went into the work trusting how well Portland Webworks understood our administration and what our customers were looking for. We created "needs buckets" on the home page. Instead of clicking on the link for the Economic Services Administration, a user will click on a tile labeled "Food, Cash, and Medical". That, to us, was a huge gamble, given that we didn't test the page with users. Portland Webworks understood our clientele and ended up producing a high-quality product.

How did Portland Webworks perform from a project management standpoint?

Portland Webworks always delivered their assignments on time and within budget.

Portland Webworks hired a project manager that actually worked in our office, in addition to the project manager hired by our organization. They collaborated through SharePoint and also had access to Jira, which is an appropriate choice for our Agile methodology.

What distinguishes Portland Webworks from other providers?

Above anything else, my general feeling about Portland Webworks is that they're bigger than what is immediately apparent. I'm not sure of their exact size, but Portland Webworks made us feel as though we were their only client, giving off a small agency feel. I know that I am going to get a response at any time of day.

Is there anything Portland Webworks could have improved or done differently?

The transition from our first dedicated project manager was hard for us. I am glad that it happened after our website had already been launched for 6 months, and not during its development. I'm still happy with Portland Webworks' services, though. It's a part of business.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

The Idaho Department of Health and Welfare is the largest state agency in Idaho. We provide health and human services to the state.

What is your position?

I am a deputy administrator working for the self-reliance program. This division contains both our child support program and also what we refer to as integrated eligibility. In many state agencies, these aspects are split, but they all reside around the eligibility function. We cover TANF [Temporary Assistance for Needy Families], child care, food stamps, Medicaid, premium tax credit for the insurance marketplace, and other types of cash assistance. We assist with Medicare eligibility without working on the entire claims processing. On other programs such as child care, we handle administrative activities, program design, as well as eligibility. I operate within the finance and technology side of the department. I work with another deputy that works in the operations and policy side. I report to a politically-appointed administrator who oversees the division's operations.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with Portland Webworks?

The Affordable Care Act requires that state agencies administrating Medicaid have an online application portal. We tried to create one internally over a year's period of work. Our internal technologists were limited in their ability to create a solution in that particular space. We sought experts who had created similar websites.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement.

Portland Webworks was tasked with starting our project almost from scratch, going from design to development. We host the product ourselves, but its functionality, in terms of user interaction and the process of collecting information, needed to be created. We had been trying to get the project off the ground, but our solution had failed. One of the most important things we were requiring was consultation from an entity such as Portland Webworks, in terms of what we needed to do in order to achieve a task. We knew what we wanted to do, but didn't know how to get it done.

We had a collaborative process with Portland Webworks. They started an initially smaller version of the design. With the Affordable Care Act, Idaho chose to bring on their own state marketplace. We had to bring on additional functionality which would be associated with an online application for all health coverage, not just the Medicaid from our state agency. This happened because, once the legislature decided that Idaho would have its own exchange, we obtained approval to create a single, unified marketplace which tied into the state Medicaid agency's functions. A new partnership was created which brought along not just an application portal for the Medicaid component of the Affordable Care Act, but it was also related to applications for APTC [Advanced Premium Tax Credit], which is a program helping families pay a portion of their insurance. It related closely to the Medicaid agency's relationship to The Affordable Care Act.

We needed these types of services in areas of our child support program. We engaged Portland Webworks one more time through a request for proposal for ongoing development and maintenance of our web functionality. We have gone through a 4-step process.

In the last legislative session, a proposal came up but didn't materialize. We decided to use Portland Webworks for that work because, if the work were to be approved, we'd need to move very quickly. We had a budget of half a million dollars for developing a small piece of the overall initiative. Being able to call an external vendor like Portland Webworks was like having an extra tool in a toolkit.

The largest part of our development project during the 4-year cycle has involved around 75 internal developers. Portland Webworks came in addition to that, providing augmentation for the web-based function.

We've put out a contract for a different development project, which Portland Webworks also won. In a way, they've come to know us well enough to respond accurately to our requests. We offer one of the most innovative products available for health and human services, which we call the Live Better Initiative. Portland Webworks was one of two respondents to our request for proposal process. They won that bid and are currently providing a hosted solution which is external to our department.

Within all the elements involved in the Affordable Care Act and the functionality associated with an integrated solution, Portland Webworks' proposal won. The solution is a self-authoring service directory which allows providers throughout the state to publish content. It allows a user to reach an actionable step in order to get to a service within 3 clicks.

How did you come to work with Portland Webworks?

We started looking for an external firm who had expertise in web development and could rapidly help us build an online portal over a crisis period. We specifically needed to interact with the public around processing applications and managing public assistance benefits, which sometimes includes child care. Portland Webworks won our request for proposal.

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

We initially had a budget of 1 million dollars for Portland Webworks' work. Our emergency procurement umbrella was for 5 million dollars, but we didn't come close to that amount. The total cost for Portland Webworks' services has been around 5 million dollars over the last 4 years. Our two currently active contracts are valued at $500,000 and $1,500,000 per year, respectively.

What is the status of this engagement?

We're working through an ongoing development and maintenance contract with Portland Webworks at the moment. We also have an open contract with them for the Live Better program.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

Our work with Portland Webworks is divided into 2 halves: embedded systems and the application portal. We've traveled the country talking about our integrated processes, given that there is only one application in the entire State of Idaho that allows users to go online and make an application for healthcare assistance, namely the one built by Portland Webworks for us. They've also designed the front-end user interface for it.

I plan on giving a presentation on the Live Better initiative and we will also be giving a national presentation through an innovation program on the 7th of June. We've recently participated in a national governor's association conference in Salt Lake City, talking about how Live Better represents a way of connecting families to services, not just those in need. The product called Live Better and its website are incredible. The way in which this portal stands alone, as a state agency's successful attempt to keep access services in the application process for health care intact, in a single place, with no hand-offs, is also a great achievement. The costs have been kept reasonably low. We call the application portal idalink. It won an honorable mention in a government application contest category. It is a nice-to-use application portal.

How did Portland Webworks perform from a project management standpoint?

We don't allow any mismanagement to occur. We work together without the use of a systems integrator. Instead of going through a task list, we have an Agile software development process. We've been frustrated with Portland Webworks at times, so we called them up and let them know that a certain developer wasn't performing well or whatever else the issue was. They've flown from Maine to Idaho and participated in multiple tied-together sprints in a product category. We talk to Portland Webworks whenever there is a problem, and we fix it.

We use Jira as a backlog tracking system. All of our work is featured there and we work collaboratively on the backlog. We have combined team meetings and have daily standup meetings. We have rapid, 2-week sprint cycles for development and release.

What distinguishes Portland Webworks from other providers?

Traditional issues about changing project requirements have always been handled well. Their project management is great, too.

Is there anything Portland Webworks could have improved or done differently?

The experience has not been perfect. We've had problems and we solved them, but there wasn't something at which Portland Webworks failed.