Resonetrics

BACKGROUND

Could you briefly describe your organization?

I work for the Consortium on Gender Security and Human Rights. We're an organization located at the University of Massachusetts in Boston. Our core mission is to bring knowledge to bear on the effort to end armed conflicts and to establish long-term, sustainable peace.

What is your position?

I’m the special projects manager.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

Could you describe the business challenge(s) you were attempting to address when you initiated the relationship with Resonetrics?

We were attempting to join the 21st century in terms of brand experience. We needed a dynamic, compelling website that was both interactive and informative. We wanted the end-user experience to be intuitive and simplistic. Building our Drupal site was the basis of the whole project. 

SOLUTION

Could you describe the scope of the project? For instance, did it involve custom visual design, backend development, training, support, etc.?

The scope of work has been fairly enormous and bigger than Sam [Moore, Resonetrics president] initially thought it would be. We had a relationship with a previous Drupal developer before my time that [Dr.] Carol [Cohn, Consortium on Gender Security and Human Rights director] had worked with. That vendor was responsible for the basis build of our site. Then that relationship ended, and Sam came on board and picked up a site that was in its initial stages of being developed. He inherited a considerable scope of work and it only kept expanding as we moved forward. The relationship with Resonetrics has really evolved over the course of time in parallel with our website initiatives. 

How did you discover and select Resonetrics as your solution partner?

It was our associate director, Phoebe Randall who performed all of the legwork of finding Resonetrics. I don’t know what her process was, to be honest. 

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

Overall, the website will probably end up landing somewhere in the ballpark of $10,000 to $15,000. And we have a retainer in place for ongoing support and case-by-case enhancements or modifications. 

When was this site launched?

The site is still not live for public viewing. We are hoping, tentatively, to do a soft launch in the next two or three weeks. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

In terms of results, could you share any statistics, metrics, or anecdotal feedback that would demonstrate the effectiveness of the work they've delivered?

I suppose the answer would have to be no, not yet. We haven’t had the chance to retrospectively evaluate our progress, because it’s not live. I can tell you, however, that the entire process has gone over very smoothly. Sam and his team really know what they're doing, and they provide great insights to us. 

They've really exceeded our expectations. It has been so wonderful working with them. I really can’t overemphasize that and in my brief conversation with Carol when she let me know that she wasn’t going to be able to do this interview, she made sure to remind me to stress that they've just been an absolute pleasure to work with.

When working with Resonetrics, is there anything you would consider unique or special about them compared to other vendors you’ve worked with?

Part of the souring of the relationship with the previous vendor, at least my understanding of it, is that often as a small nonprofit, pricing has been a significant barrier for us. With the previous developer, we would bring questions to the table, and the answer was always, “that’s outside the scope of what we’d already agreed upon, and anything more will have an associated cost." 

Our experience with Resonetrics has really been the antithesis of that. They've been willing to be a creative partner with us in developing the site. They've really helped us hone our priorities with the website, and they offer creative solutions for all of our initiatives. 

In retrospect, are there areas that you think they could improve upon, or are there things you'd do differently as the client before approaching this type of project?

No. I have to say this has really been such a pleasant experience. I don’t really have a lot of negative feedback.

Do you remain confident that the Drupal CMS will meet your business needs into the foreseeable future?

Yes, I do. As to why it was selected, I think the Solr search capacity was essentially what made that decision. That was, unfortunately, before my time, so I can’t really speak it in great detail. We have a large intern cohort every semester that is going to help us do a lot of the content development and editing. I’ve definitely found Drupal to be very user friendly and Sam has been great about creating instructional documents for us. 

BACKGROUND

Could you briefly describe your organization?

We’re a nonprofit spay-neuter clinic for cats and dogs. We do high volume, at a low cost, and we offer it to anybody, but we do provide just a spay-neuter surgery along with some other services.

What is your position?

I’m the office manager.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

Could you describe the business challenge(s) you were attempting to address when you initiated the relationship with Resonetrics?

None of us here had the background or the expertise to start a new website, and we realized that one of the best ways to get involved to get more involved in the community and spread the word about our clinic was through an online presence. We hired Resonetrics to build that for us from the ground up. 

What platform did Resonetrics build your new website on?

They created it on Drupal. 

Was there a rationale behind selecting the Drupal content management system over some of its competitors?

Honestely, we put our complete trust into Resonetrics to use whichever platform they felt was the most expedient. None of us here are really highly experienced in building websites or using their backend functionality. Resonetrics recommended Drupal because it's easy to use, accessible, and offers a wide range of customization options for us to utilize down the road, should we choose to do so. 

SOLUTION

Could you describe the scope of this project? 

Basically, the design of the site is easy to use and comfortable on the eye. There are photos of dogs and cats that draw the viewer into it to give them just an idea of what we’re about. We, obviously, don’t show pictures of animals having surgery, but we do have pictures of loved animals that are on there. We also have information regarding, not only our services, but some educational stuff about what it is that we provide. What we provide is not only a spay-neuter sterilization surgery, but we also offer certain vaccines, a couple of simple blood tests that can be done while the animal’s here, and some other services that people might need.

Other resources [are available] so that people have information on animal care, questions that we run into on the phone all the time, so we figured if they can refer to our website, they can get the answers easier and quicker than trying to call us. We also have a contact page where if they happen to be on the site, and we happen to be closed or it’s a weekend, they can shoot an email to us and say, “Hey, I just want to get a hold of you. Just give me a call back.” It’s a great way to communicate with the public.

How did you choose Resonetrics as your solution partner for this endeavor?

An associate of Resonetrics is involved in animal rescue, who we’ve known for quite some time. So, they offer Web services. Her associate is the person who runs Resonetrics and suggested him. We looked around a bit, but we put our trust in them, because we already knew them on a more personal level.

Could you provide a sense of the size of this project in monetary terms?

They provided us a discount rate. I think a normal rate for a special project would be something like $6,000. I think we got a certain percentage off of that. 

When was this project completed?

We had it up and running in early to mid-August of 2012. Because we opened our doors on August 27 of that year, we had to have that all ready by the time we opened.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

In terms of results, could you share any statistics, metrics, or anecdotal feedback that would demonstrate the effectiveness of the work they've delivered?

We receive quite a few emails per day. We obviously will refer people on other rescue sites and other websites that are associated with animals. As far as visually, I don’t have statistics as to how many clicks and whatnot, but I do know based on us being out there that we get a fair amount of traffic on the website. We’re trying to develop a blog and to get even more people to visit the site, so even if they’re not going to end up using our services for spay-neuter, they might benefit from information that we might be able to help them with.

When working with Resonetrics, is there anything you would consider unique or special about them compared to other vendors you’ve worked with?

I can tell you that I’ve not really worked with other vendors in this capacity. But, one thing I can say about Resonetrics is that they’re very personable. When we need to have something done, and it’s usually nothing intricate, such as additions or a couple of changes, perhaps adding extra columns, they’ve always been there for us within 24 to 48 hours. If it’s not, they say: “Listen, we’ve got a project going on, but we’ll be right with you. Give us some more details.” They’ve really been very supportive.

In retrospect, are there areas that you think they could improve upon, or are there things you might do differently as the client before approaching this type of project?

I can’t think of anything. I don’t think that we have any other expectations because we’re growing and we’re learning what we can do.

Do you remain confident that the Drupal-based website will continue to meet your needs into the foreseeable future?

Yes. I do.

BACKGROUND

Could you briefly describe your organization?

I have a very long history in leading creative services and operations across all mediums including development. I work currently at Pepperidge Farm leading the creative services for package design. When I worked with Sam Moore [president of Resonetrics], I worked with him as the supervisor. He was our lead developer at the time. That was with TracyLocke, where he did work on Pepsi, Coke, Pizza Hut, and other Fortune 500 brands. I have also worked directly with Resonetrics on some freelance work.

What was your position at that time?

I was working with TracyLocke. Pizza Hut was our client. I was the general manager of all studio services, which included: print, development, and video. I was on the executive team. My studio consisted of seventy employees across three locations. The studio was called N-GEN Studios. We did work for TracyLocke clients as well as we were able to list our own clients. Sam did development for an N-GEN client called Oz Marketing. It was a very big operation. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

Could you describe the business challenge(s) you were attempting to address when you initiated the relationship with Resonetrics?

He just gave me one bit at Pepperidge Farm. It was a great solution. It was a great SOW [statement of work] but, unfortunately, they couldn’t put in funding.

When I worked extensively with Sam, there was one monumental project that he led, and it was groundbreaking that he used Drupal to bring in other products and make it one solution was for Pizza Hut. It won us a significant amount of business where he developed an online creative customization template, ones that were used by the franchise managers throughout the United States. And they’re still using it today.

SOLUTION

Could you describe the scope of the work for that particular project?

He was developing on the Drupal platform. He integrated an asset management system called Signet and an online creative customization tool. It basically created a Pizza Hut marketing center where the franchise managers would only have approved templates, where they can then grab only approved assets from an asset management system, and online into a final product that they would go to a local printer and print.

In this particular project, what was the rationale behind using Drupal as the platform?

[Resonetrics] led that decision-making process. They came to me, to be honest, and I have a tremendous amount of faith in Sam. He said, “I’ve been studying Drupal. That’s the platform that I recommend bringing all of these tools together on so that it has consolidated access. It’s very simple to utilize by the end-user.” I said, “Go with it.” We didn’t bring up other platforms to deal with.

How did you select Resonetrics as your solution partner?

At the time, he was working for me on the Pizza Hut. He was essentially working for TracyLocke under Resonetrics. I used to develop websites for other clients since he left TracyLocke to form his own business. 

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

I would say Pizza Hut probably ran between $300,000 and $400,000 in development. They customization template was developed by Sam and two other developers that he commissioned.

When was this tool launched?

I believe it was 2008 or 2009.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

I don’t have access to that kind of information any longer. However, I can tell you that they’re still using [the template he created] today. What I want to make clear is that because of Sam’s vision and his development skills, he changed the way Pizza Hut produced [content] throughout all their franchises.

When working with Resonetrics, is there anything you would consider unique or special about them compared to other vendors you’ve worked with?

They were extremely approachable. They know how to put technology into layman’s terms. He was definitely instrumental in selling it to Pizza Hut with an audience that was not technical. He’s extremely intelligent and visionary. 

In retrospect, are there areas that you think they could improve upon, or are there things you'd do differently as the client before approaching this type of project?

No. In fact, it was pretty Herculean, because we had to get it up and running within six months. He did tremendously well and was very committed through a very high-pressure type of deadline, and the timeline was extremely crunched based on the manpower that he had and what was involved in building this tool from the ground up.

BACKGROUND

Could you briefly describe your company?

I’m an editor at the Family Travel Forum. We publish family vacation planning resources, both in print and online.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

Could you describe the business challenge(s) you were attempting to address when you initiated the relationship with Resonetrics?

We’ve been in the online space since 1996, which means we had a lot of legacy content and a relatively obsolete infrastructure. We commissioned a separate company to build a responsive website for us and, prior to delivery, we thought that they were having problems with it, and we were also unsure of the quality. That's when we decided to hire Resonetrics in order to evaluate the quality and help us bring it to market.

SOLUTION

What platform was this site built on?

We transtioned from a Drupal 6 to a Drupal 7 responsive site.

What was the rationale behind retaining Drupal as your preferred CMS solution?

Having started in 1996, we’ve been through many iterations of websites. Because we are such a heavy content site, we have a lot of user contributions and forums as well as expert content written by editors. We had gone through different content management systems and ended up with an off-the-shelf one called VIVO that needed to be rebuilt because it wouldn’t support a user registration system with any social media.

At that point, we started looking around for a CMS that would provide the range of functionality we needed. This was in 2009. Drupal 6 was one of several systems that supported social logins. We had four independent sites at that time and we wanted to consolidate them on the same platform. We approached a developer with the intention of creating a new site using Ruby on Rails, but he recomended that we rebuild the site using Drupal. He explained his reasoning and we couldn't help but agree. Drupal seemed to be the best option for us, and it continues to meet all of our needs. 

Could you describe the process by which you selected Resonetrics as your solution partner?

You know, that’s a good question. A lot of our developers, although they’re American, live offshore and tend to work with tech groups that are lower-priced offshore workers, and they do the supervision. We reakky wanted a partner closer to home. We’re based in New York, and at drupal.org, I got introduced to the Drupal New York group. A close business associate instructed me how to post a project description and we were approached by several potential vendors, including Resonetrics. 

I had interviewed a lot of the big houses like Acquia to talk to them about doing this work. Then I started looking for developers through whatever job line drupal.org offers. I probably went through 50 to 75 resumes, about 25 phone interviews, and ended up with about five potential partners. I then went to get personal references on their project experience. Resonetrics rose to the top.

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

The original D-7 build with responsive design cost approximately $75,000. With Resonetrics, quite honestly, we thought it was going to be more of a maintenance job than what it’s turned out to be. As a result of that, our bills have been rather enormous. I don’t blame them for the cost. But, it’s been several thousand dollars a month, and we’ve only worked with them for a couple of months, so I have no way to predict what the investment will be. 

When was the most recent project completed?

The project remains ongoing. Only the very beginning phases have been completed, but there's still considerable work to be done. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

In terms of results, could you share any statistics or metrics that would demonstrate the effectiveness of the work they've delivered?

What we do is we have users basically complain to us that things don’t work. Then, Resonetrics is able to repair them and users are happy. But, as of now, the site’s only been live about 12 days, maybe a little bit longer than that, so I can’t tell you. I can tell you traffic has plummeted, and every single page in the site has lost all PageRank in Google and can’t be found. None of the new content is being indexed.

At this point, it’s not like we’re seeing the upside. I can tell you, however, that the things they implemented have taken our previously broken software and made to entirely functional. That's the point at the end of the day. We needed a website that was functional and up-to-date. The content and all of the rest will come later. 

When working with Resonetrics, is there anything you would consider unique or special about them compared to other vendors you've worked with?

I’ve worked pretty much one-to-one with Sam Moore [President of Resonetrics]. I think he’s very creative, and he’s a great problem solver. For me, I would consider myself, I’m sure any dev would, a high-needs client, and he’s very responsive to that. My favorite part is his and their team's ability to bring creative ideas and possible solutions to the table. I can approach them with an idea and they'll come back with some probing questions and then recommend other approaches. They really take the time to understand our business process and our challenges before they begin to suggest potential solutions. Overall, they're extremely cost effective, and they're always in tune with their clients.

In retrospect, are there any areas that you think they could improve upon, or are there things you'd do differently as the client before approaching this type of project?

That’s hard to say because I didn’t get a bid from them. Normally, we’re very thorough in the bidding process and really try to look for a fixed bid with a scope of work that’s very clearly defined. However, because we entered with them on a maintenance contract on an hourly basis, things sort of progressed naturely into a much larger scope. 

BACKGROUND

Could you briefly describe your company?

The organization I work for is the Manhattan Kayak Company. We are a service organization that provides guiding, instruction, and rental services to the public here in New York City. We have an operation that exists on the Hudson River waterfront.

What is your position?

My position is as the general operations manager. I used to be a co-owner of the company. I sold my own interests back to the company, but I continue to manage it for the founding owner.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

Could you describe the business challenges you were attempting to address when you initiated the relationship with Resonetrics?

I had left the business for a couple of years and then I came back to the organization. Prior to my leaving, they had done everything though a paper registration process, and they took processing and payments at that time of the event. By the time I came back, they had expanded probably 200 percent compared to what they used to do in terms of clientele and annual revenues. They had transitioned to an online processing system. Unfortunately, their processing system was not functioning properly. We were not getting the reports that were necessary. We could not make decision changes on a number of things that happen with online processing as well as taking payments, being able to track payments and link data with the CRM [customer relationship management] tool.

The developer that they had used to do this was out in Portland, Ore. That company actually developed a lot of custom modules on Drupal. The problem was that they were in Portland. Getting them to work with my staff here and interfacing properly was the issue. Online interfacing and collaboration simply was not working out well. I needed a resource that was local. I needed someone who could understand what was unique about our business, and why it could not just fall into an out-of-the-box process. A number of firms attempted to sell me an out-of-the-box solution, but I said, no, it does not work. It’s just too unique a commodity, and it’s too unique an environment here. It was at that point that I distributed several RFPs [request for proposals] to various developers in the area. We then evaluated the proposals we received and prioritized vendors based on expertise, capability, and price. 

Out of all of that, we ended up with Resonetrics. It was an arduous and time-consuming process. We were confident that Resonetrics could deliver the solution we needed. We were quite impressed with their approach and methodology. We had a sense that their team would be able to collaborate effectively with us.

SOLUTION

Could you describe the scope of this project?

With the Drupal system, what they’ve done is taken our online registration and streamlined it in Drupal to process online transactions. We only launched a registration fee last year and this year what we’re doing is we’re expanding to taking full payments for trips and deposits and stuff like that where we will have a menu of price lists that people can then simply choose from. 

What we needed was a tool that was going to produce for us the appropriate reports for tracking both our sales and registrant figures. The registration system is entirely done in Drupal. We have not done an informational system with Drupal. We've relied on WordPress and a separate vendor content development and online marketing initiatives. 

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

In dollar terms, we were looking to keep it under $15,000. We pretty successfully came in close to $15,000, maybe a little bit more. But, the scope of it was that we had to take an old module and completely redo it. Because they didn’t originally develop it, there was a lot of components that they couldn’t quite decipher. Resonetrics was able to connect with our previous developer in order to make sense of the components in question but, at the end of the day, we weren't able to use the majority of the work completed by the other developer. 

When was the project completed?

The project was completed probably by June of 2013. Then there was a whole bunch of maintenance that we needed to do, but it was really minimal because we just fine-tuned the system, and then kept it going through the end of our season, which ended in October. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

In terms of results, could you share any statistics or metrics that would demonstrate the effectiveness of the work they've delivered?

Not specifically, I don’t have the metrics in front of me. What I will tell you is that I worked with the old system, and we've probably seen a growth of approximately 120 percent in our second year. A year later, we were at 180 percent growth. We couldn’t have done it without the efficacy of the online registration system because it’s just not possible to deal with that volume of transactions and customer data. We have a single employee responsible for administration. In order to maintain that staffing proportion, we had to have a system in place to deal with increasing volumes and transactions. 

In retrospect, are there areas that you think they could improve upon, or are there things you'd do differently as the client before approaching this type of project?

It’s easy to work with them. In today’s world, people are so quick to turn around and say, let’s do an online meeting. Let’s do this. Let’s do that. But, for a lot of small businesses, it’s really important to be able to see people face to face. It’s really important to deal with people who don’t have the capacity to think like a programmer, who are turning around and saying, I need to be able to take this, and I need to be able to change that price, and how do I keep track of that, and when do I get my customers.

Resonetrics was very good at pointing out where are the gaps like you might want to make sure that you take care of this because you’re going to want that information about your customer later on. At the same time, I could definitely have used more time with them onsite, really understanding what it’s like to deal with the challenges of online connectivity. There are a lot of things that happens when we’re dealing with something on the fringe, like an outdoor sport. Because we’re on the waterfront here in New York City, we got hit by [Superstorm] Sandy, so we ended up losing all of our land data lines. We ended having to go to a wireless system. In switching to a wireless system, we then didn’t have the necessary bandwidth to manage our volume loads.

The problem is you can’t replicate that much traffic and say to your developer, "this is when it goes down." We were experiencing server overloads because we had too many registrants at certain times. That's when our system would go down, but when the time would come for Resonetrics to be on site, we wouldn't have that problem. To some extent, this issue is beyond the realm of their control, but having a development team on site the majority of the time is definitely preferable. 

It's also important to have developers that are well versed in business. I'm not a technology professional, so when I describe my goals, methods and challenges, it's all in terms of our specific business processes. Having developers that can do nothing but program and understand the backend mechanics of a website isn't of use to us, which is why I greatly appreciated collaborating with Resonetrics. Our previous developer lacked that capability and I think it was a primary contributor to the flawed development of our system.