Sembit

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the co-founder and CEO of Grantstone Ventures, and PickleballRatings.com is our primary software product and service. We use the common Elo algorithm to process player ratings for tournaments and clubs in the fast growing sport of pickleball, which is the offspring of a passionate night spent between tennis, ping-pong, and badminton.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

We built a custom piece of software to integrate three platforms, in which the platform (tournament software) that was the primary data source was a legacy piece of software. This was a daunting project, and when it was all complete and functioning, we sought bids for an independent valuation of the cost to replicate this effort.

SOLUTION

How did you select Sembit and what were the deciding factors?

Shaun and his team at Sembit blew away the competition -- it was clear right away that Sembit was willing to do the deep dive into our project and the code to really understand what was needed in this project and how we accomplished it.

The other agencies we looked at, frankly, wanted to tell us how great they were. Sembit instead asked a lot of probing questions and provided the kind of consultation that really made us comfortable in hiring them.

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

Here is what we shared with the agencies that we reached out to: Application will be a 3-party API integration between tournament software vendor, ratings processing vendor (self) and governing body of sport. Scripts will run each week to pull updated source data from governing body membership data and tournament results and player data.

Tournament match results can be exported per-tournament as HTML, but each match result shows player names (first/last) in the HTML output. Will need to dig into existing Perl web app code to change that output from first/last to instead output a player's unique record ID. Internally the existing software has a flat file database for tourney data, and a separate SQL database for player data.

Additionally, there is a large subset of match results where a player's unique record ID is not linked, this is because some tournaments' data get "imported" through an external-data-import process. Need to dig into existing Perl web app code to try to re-link these orphaned player records.

In addition to parsing match outcome data from the HTML data, also need to identify matches that end in forfeit or withdrawal so they can be not-included for ratings changes. Other tournament data such as tournament title, date of tournament, name of individual brackets/events needs to be parsed from the HTML data.

Tournament sanctioned-status needs to be retrieved from the flat-file database for purpose of weighting the Elo algorithm more heavily for sanctioned tournaments. This will be a new, separate Perl script in the existing Web app, it will expose a JSON dump of tournament IDs with the sanction field value.

Tournament results will need to be classified as Men's Doubles, Women's Doubles, Mixed Doubles, Men's Singles and Women's singles. Need to write an algorithm that looks at the title of each tournament event and parses it into one of these 5 classifications. A given player can have 1, 2 or 3 ratings: gender doubles, mixed doubles and singles.

Tournament results will need to be sorted by date so they can be processed for ratings in chronological order.

Tournament player data (as opposed to match results) can be exported as a JSON dump from the SQL database, the master player database contains normalized tournament entrant data, so there is only one player record for many tournaments.

The master player database contains many duplicate entries for players, some players have 2 or 3 accounts and other players have 6 or 8 accounts, need help identifying and reconciling player data problems so that ratings engine combines all match results together for a given player even if they have 2 or more player records.

To create the initial Elo "starting point" ratings for players, we want to write a program that looks at the first bracket they played in, up to 3 years ago. It would look at the other players in the bracket and average the other players' ratings to create a players new rating.

After establishing initial ratings for all players, we want to "re-balance" the distribution of player-ratings. We will provide percentages for the expected amount of 3.5, 4.0, 5.0+ etc players, we are looking for a custom program that will allow us to move players up and down at the outset, to create the correct numbers of players at different rating levels.

After the ratings system is launched, when new players play in a tournament, they will get a new rating based on the average of the ratings of other players in their bracket. When tournaments are processed each week for the purpose of ratings-changes, will need to expose an API where weekly updated ratings can be downloaded in two formats.

One format will associate governing body member ID (is available in the master player database) with the player ratings (up to 3 ratings per player). This format will be used to update the governing body player database.

The other format will associate the player unique ID with his updated ratings for the purpose of updating the ratings as they appear in the tournament player master database. This output will have to accomodate any players who have multiple/merged player accounts. Need to create a web app for displaying each week's ratings processing per-player.

This web app will have 5 reports for each week's ratings, one for each of the 5 classes of ratings.

The report will list all of the players and ratings in a searchable/sortable list, clicking on an individual player will show the details of all of that players match results going back 3 years, including the rating-change for all four players in each match and will include a visual graph showing the players rating history over time.

This web app will need to have user-authentication so only administrators can view the ratings. When tournaments are processed for ratings changes, need to check the sanction field for sanctioned status and "weight" the Elo algorithm so that sanctioned tournaments have a full effect but unsanctioned tournaments will have 60% effect on ratings-changes.

Need a web app for overriding ratings when players appeal to governing body. Need to be able to override a 4-digit rating before the week's processing begins. Also need to override 2-digit rounded ratings (which are established/re-rounded/preserved at the end of each week's 4-digit processing).

The web app for overriding ratings will operate on ratings data in the tournament vendor's Perl application - those ratings will be compared to the prior week's ratings to detect changes and relay the changes to the governing body's web site.

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

VP Shaun Davidson was our exclusive contact at Sembit, though I believe he utilized members of the Sembit programming team to assist with this project.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Sembit delivered exactly what we asked for -- both a high level analysis as well as a detailed breakdown of this project, and of course a "cost to build" bid.

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

Shaun was very consultative and asked a lot of questions before laying out expectations such as Sembit's bid to complete this task and the timeline on deliverables.

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

We appreciated Shaun's professionalism and how easy it was to communicate with him, especially after having to listen to the other agencies we talked to tell us how great they were while asking us very few questions.

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

We really can't think of any!

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO of Enviral Tech. We offer viral surveillance for buildings, primarily focused on COVID-19.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Sembit?

We collect samples from our customers’ buildings, test them in our lab, and return results back telling them whether or not we’ve detected a virus in their building. All of that data was being collected in Google Sheets, which was very unstable. 

We reached out to Sembit to create a laboratory information management (LIM) system to collect, analyze, and report our data. 

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Sembit built us a LIM system that goes from uploading the data that we’re collecting, all the way through sending the reports out. We continue to work with them on refining it, updating it, and adding features as needed. 

Currently, we’re considering having them put together a portal for us, so that our customers can go onto our website and get the data that way.

What is the team composition?

We work with Nathan (Founder) most often. We also work with Shaun (Vice President) and another team member.

How did you come to work with Sembit?

They came recommended to us by another lab we work with who had partnered with Sembit in the past. 

How much have you invested with them?

We spent roughly $20,000 to get to the beta version, and we’ve spent about $15,000–$20,000 more since then.

What is the status of this engagement?

We hired them in June 2020, and it took them nine days to deliver our alpha version. After that, it took them another five days to refine it so we could launch it fully. We’re still working on updates and adding new features.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The LIM has worked really well for us. Sembit was able to deliver something that met our needs within our budget, and they’re working with us to continue to improve it. 

It would’ve been really hard to have gone with any other company. The fact that Sembit was able to deliver in such a short period of time something that we could actually use was remarkable. 

We’ve continued to work with them on a weekly basis to make changes, updates and modifications. They’re always right on target with what we want them to do. Even if we struggle to describe exactly what we want, they’re able to understand us no matter what.

How did Sembit perform from a project management standpoint?

They’re really responsive, which is huge for us because we’re a startup trying to move really fast — especially because we’re delivering results around COVID. It’s really critical for our customers that we’re timely and fast-working, which Sembit is. Also, the team is always available, which is super important. They’re always there to answer the phone, day or night, weekday or weekend.

I’ve really loved working with them. Sembit always delivers what they say they’re going to deliver, in the time they say they’ll deliver it. Whenever we have a deadline for a task delivery, the team gives us detailed and frequent updates about their progress. It’s been a great partnership. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

We’re most impressed with their speed, quality, and accuracy of delivery. When we need something, we can always count on Sembit to be able to deliver. I completely trust them to accomplish what we need accomplished.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I like the idea of having a collaborative project management tool. Right now, we do everything via email or phone calls, and having some dashboard visibility to that would be great.
Also, I think one of the main things I’m missing with Sembit is that they’re not a full-stack engineering and design house. Sometimes it makes it difficult when I have web design things I need to be completed and connected with our backend data systems. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Having really clear specifications or requirements going in will be very helpful. We were very specific about what we needed, which allowed Sembit to go really quickly.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

We manufacturer and wholesale lumber products out of the Pacific Northwest to all areas of North American and various international regions. I am the Director of IT for the organization and oversee our business development group.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Sembit ?

We reached out to Sembit to design and implement a new order entry application that ties into our existing sales and inventory system.

What were your goals for this project?

We had three primary goals:

1. Reduce data entry errors,
2. improve processing times for users, and
3. Automate integration points associated with third party electronic data interchange connections.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

We have a long tenure with the Sembit, and they have proven to provide cost effective, efficient, and user friendly solutions that have run on stable platforms for over a decade. We selected Sembit as our software vendor to ensure the quality of the product would be impeccable.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

Sembit started by performing a business assessment of our needs and requirements for the interface, and then outlined a strategy and design related to the order entry workflow, and reporting. Upon development, Sembit created the application, managed the source control, and coordinated the deployments for our testing and production environments.

What was the team composition?

The team composition was an overall small group, made up of 1-2 Sembit software developers, along with some internal IT representatives to oversee design, security, and testing, along with internal user groups to provide assessment and feedback to the newly developed application. Sponsorship of this project was overseen by our sales team.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Upon initial deployment, our sales team was able to recognize the overall gain in efficiencies in relation to our order entry process. Newer employees were able to increase their order entry submissions by 60%. Over time, with ongoing modifications the sales team now completes 80% of all sales order through the order entry tool, with a consistent decrease of users errors.

99.5% of all orders entered through the order entry tool are clean and free of data entry errors. Significant gains in processing times allows for employees to focus on higher level business decision versus simple repetitive tasks.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

Project managed was managed internally, however Sembit managed and coordinated there resources effectively to stay within designated timeframes.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Sembit brings a very versatile and logical perspective to our projects and solutions. They constantly consider user performance and effectiveness and design solutions to meet the needs of the business along with the user experience. The Sembit staff have a strong experience background and therefore they have the ability to create solutions in an effective and timely manner that helps keep costs reasonable.

Are there any areas for improvement?

No suggestions at this time.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO and founder of Master Clinician Network, an online education company that’s been in operation since 2011. We provide clinical videos to students in speech-language pathology programs at universities across the country.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Sembit?

We needed help cleaning up and modernizing our website.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Sembit redesigned our website. They went through the code and made bug fixes. The team integrated the site with Stripe for billing purposes and added renewal features. They used Angular and Go.

My company streams video via Vimeo, and Sembit streamlined that process quite a bit. They made the site’s search features more functional. The team also improved user-to-user interaction; for instance, students can post reports, and faculty can easily respond to them.

What is the team composition?

We primarily work with two team members: Nathan (Founder, Sembit), who has worked with us on the overall layout and billing components of the project, and Dean (Software Engineering Consultant, Sembit), who does development. We work with Dean very intensely every day.

How did you come to work with Sembit?

There are a lot of design companies in Portland, Oregon, so we did some online searches on Clutch and other sites. We interviewed around five companies and felt that Sembit was a good match.

How much have you invested with them?

My company has spent close to $100,000 at this point.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our work together began in April 2019, and it’s ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

By adding renewal features, we’ve increased revenue by almost 45% over the last couple of months.

How did Sembit perform from a project management standpoint?

Sembit is as good as you can get. The team is timely and very transparent in terms of cost and process. Each week, we receive a clear report that lays out what they worked on over the previous week and how many hours we have left in our monthly budget. They’re spot on.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The biggest thing is that they’ve really taken ownership of the process; it doesn’t feel like they’re working for us, so much as they’re part of the team. While they’re working on one component of the project, they often see something else and get an idea, which they present to us. That’s been invaluable because these ideas usually encompass things we hadn’t considered.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I can’t think of anything.

Any advice for potential customers?

Spend time upfront thinking about what you want and listen to what they have to say. When they make suggestions, take them seriously; they know what they’re talking about. Sembit’s team is intelligent, creative, flexible, and honest. Just paying attention to what they have to say is beneficial to anyone who works with them.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the president of CreateForLess, which is a division of Petersen-Arne, a craft and sewing supply distribution center. They work with retailers and do business online.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Sembit?

Our own programmer took a job with another company, so we decided to outsource that work.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We have over 60,000 different products for sale on our website. We place the orders on our website and then transfer those to the warehouse who ships them out for us. We do all the customer service, handle the returns, and we do the marketing. We have a newsletter and most of our business is organic. We don’t do a lot of marketplace business because our products have a very low price point.

They have made a lot of simple changes on our administrative site, and they have also done bigger projects like cleaning up some of our code. They enhanced a set of admin tools which we use for such functions as canceling orders and running reports.

They also worked on a backorder project. Our website offers items in large quantities, and typically larger quantities than can be found in a retail store. A customer might want 100 to 1,000 of one item, and we didn’t have the ability to have a backorder in our website or the functionality to manage it.

We also had an issue with PayPal. When a customer was hitting a minimum order, it wasn’t providing free freight. They helped us to address customer experience issues like that.

They worked to improve our loading time for web and mobile and assisted with page views. We worked with Google Optimize.

What is the team composition?

We work with Nick (Lead Software Engineer, Sembit), and Nathan (Software Entrepreneur, Sembit).

How did you come to work with Sembit?

I did some research and spoke to friends from my local industry, and they recommended Sembit. They came and met us in person, which impressed us. We met their diverse programming team, which features different types of talent. We thought we would give them some small projects and the relationship grew from that.

How much have you invested in them?

We have spent about $120,000 this year.

What is the status of this engagement?

We began working with them in February 2017, and it is an ongoing relationship.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Over the last couple of years, our sales have declined, but that’s been intentional as we’ve chosen to focus on profitable business. We used to accommodate every order. We had low-priced items and a lot of people would order a package of one item which didn’t cover shipping and handling fees, nor the labor cost and freight cost of shipping one package of .69 cent wiggly eyes. Sembit helped us identify which orders were unprofitable and made our sales more efficient.

They’ve cleaned up the older versions of our software and made our website run more smoothly. It was a pretty significant project which we spent quite a bit of money on, but we now have new functionalities which allow us to grow our sales. One of our value propositions to our customers is our capacity to support large orders, and Sembit’s work has expanded that.

We are planning to do a site rewrite this year. We also want to extend our backorder offering to pre-sell products, or offering online sales of products we don’t yet have in stock. We only work with one warehouse right now which is our own, but we are going to branch out and work with some other warehouses, so we need to increase the functionality of the website to be able to ship from multiple warehouse locations.

How did Sembit perform from a project management standpoint?

They have been exceptional and they’re good communicators. If the site has a glitch or a bug, they address it within 15 minutes. If we can’t reach Nick, we can reach Nathan quickly. We all have each other’s personal cell phone numbers, so we can get in contact if we need to. Their understanding of our site and our business has been really impressive. They know where to look and how to be responsive when we have issues. They ask us good questions and sometimes suggest things that we haven’t thought of.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’re easy to work with. Maybe it is because we are both from Oregon, but we just get along. We don’t get excited, we’re not aggressive—we all listen and understand each other. They know their craft and they are talented.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, we’re completely satisfied.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

They’re the perfect choice for any e-commerce company.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I’m a business development manager at DENSO, an automotive components manufacturer. My division focuses on barcode & QR code business services and scanner sales. I promote QR code business services in North America.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Sembit?

Current QR code creation services aren’t structured in a user-friendly way. We wanted to develop a simple and easy UI to promote this service.

What were your goals for this project?

We wanted to launch an easy-to-use interface that works with our current system structure, as well as develop service management features such as credit card transaction capabilities. We also need to monitor and manage user interactions with the service system.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

Sembit had already worked with our company on a different project, and we felt they’d be a good fit for our needs.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

They developed the framework for a web-based UI. They also modified our current data flow and custom QR code creation method and demonstrated how it works.

What was the team composition?

3–4 people are working on this project. Sembit also assigned a project manager to be our point of contact.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Due to a limitation on our part in providing them with key software source code, the second feature of the interface—decoding QR codes using a mobile application—has not been developed (although they have tested the feature using a third-party software, which we don’t want to use). There was a fundamental miscommunication regarding the interface’s structure.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

We communicate via email and conference calls, though we did have face-to-face meetings initially. Both parties have been busy other things as well, so this was somewhat effective. We've benefitted from the extra time, using it to communicate with our development team in Japan and collecting their feedback.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

They’re quite knowledgeable and smart. They always respond to us promptly.

Are there any areas for improvement?

Being provided with more visuals (i.e., diagrams, flow-charts, and write-ups) before, during, and after conference calls would be helpful. The same goes for email conversations.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I'm the head of IT for an automotive company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Sembit?

Our e-commerce website was outdated and had security issues, so we were looking for a company to help us enhance our site.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

First, they analyzed our website and identified the problems. Then, they mapped out technical and business requirements for our site. They're our preferred vendor when it comes to website support, so they handle most of the new enhancements and expansions of our site.

In addition, they provide recommendations and educate us, helping us understand and improve the user experience. (For example, we didn't want our users to go through 12 clicks to reach the content they needed, so Sembit helped us reduce the number of clicks to two or three.) They also give us feedback about how we can use landscape on our website properly, without adding too much data noise.

Our website is mostly focused on automotive parts for small and medium-sized companies. Our clients have access to their own profiles and can see their credit limits and the status of their orders. We're now adding services, such as repair for robotics and mobile automotive components, so Sembit is helping us deploy those services. They mostly use .NET and Java for development.

What is the team composition?

We've worked with a project manager, their leadership team, and technical resources.

How did you come to work with them?

I worked with them in my previous job in the healthcare industry. They were very responsive and aware when it came to the controls and regulations pertaining to healthcare products and provided proper documentation and testing, so they earned my trust. There are a lot of vendors around, but Sembit is the top choice for us.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in October 2016 and the relationship is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Our website used to go down three times a week, but now it's more secure. Also, more and more of our customers visit our website instead of calling our customer service. And when they do call us, they've already gone on the website and understand where they stand.

How did they perform from a project management standpoint?

They go above and beyond for us. They're able to understand our business and deploy solutions without physically be here, which is impressive.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They do their best to understand their clients' needs and take their time to develop a proposal and provide feedback. They're not just looking for work, they want to bring real value to the project they're working on and they'll refuse to do a project that is too high-risk.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Nothing comes to mind.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the owner of Sterling Network Solutions. We provide computer and network support to small and midsized businesses.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Sembit?

As a network administrator for a local medical clinic, we were in charge of developing an online portal to store and manage electronic medical records (EMR) and other patient files. We needed more resources to build, design, and implement the platform successfully.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Sembit worked in conjunction with the medical staff and the programmers who were developing the EMRs, so they started the project by defining their scope of work. Their tasks were to create the site’s content and design the front- and backend. They collaborated with the other parties to integrate security features and EMR modules, and they even helped the medical staff become EMR-certified. We launched the site five years ago, but their team regularly adds new features and updates. Most recently, they built a payment feature that allows patients to pay their bills online.

How did you come to work with Sembit?

They’ve been our primary web development company for the past 14 years.

How much have you invested with them?

Developing and maintaining the website cost us less than $15,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We launched the website in 2013.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

More than half of the clinic’s patients are using the online portal and all of its convenient features, which is approximately 5,000 users. We’ve only received positive feedback, so we’re delighted with Sembit’s work.

How did Sembit perform from a project management standpoint?

Viewing the project with a wide lens helped them break the exhaustive job down into manageable steps. Whereas many developers get attached to trivial tasks, their team moved the project along without my prompting. Collaborating with Sembit was easy because they have a simple way of articulating their complicated development process.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their technical skills are astonishing, but their customer-oriented approach to business is their greatest strength. I’ve worked with many web developers, but none were as accommodating as Sembit.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Set clear expectations at the beginning of the project and Sembit’s team will perform and deliver accordingly.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Kashi Clinical Laboratories is a clinical lab primarily focused on transplantation immunology. In other words, we provide compatibility testing between donors and recipients for bone marrow transplants, and we offer our services worldwide. It is predominantly genomic testing for the purpose of establishing the best-fit donor. We are a confirmatory lab, and I am the laboratory director and the CEO of the company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Sembit?

We needed help updating our laboratory information system.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

The laboratory information system that Sembit built for us, in our line of work, is really the most important tool that we can have because it automates the data in a closed loop. A client, usually a hospital, puts the demographics of any donor or patient into a secure portal and sends us a vial of samples to be tested. The samples can travel to us from wherever they originate, inside or outside the US.

When they come in, the portal entry serves as a requisition form for us. It shares the same database as our information system, so we can access the information when we scan the barcode on the sample, making it really simple to proceed with testing.

In essence, the daily acquisition of samples is a real-time automated system that connects to all equipment in the lab, and we can easily access all data through the information system. Every step of the way, the data is collected and we can analyze it.

At the end of this closed loop, the system generates a final report that determines the suitability of a given donor for a given recipient, and that gets uploaded to the same portal the samples originated from. It sends an email directly to the client, letting them know that the data is awaiting them. Then they can log into the system and get the information they need.

For one of our departments, we did have an older language lab information system in place. And then, we had a brand-new department for which we didn’t have any system. Sembit generated a brand new system as well as revamped the existing system. Over a couple of years, they rewrote the whole thing and consolidated the two systems. So right now, we have the same source for all of our departments, and we are still using Sembit on an ongoing basis. Anytime a new test is added or new machines and technology are added, they build a new module.

How did you come to work with Sembit?

Sembit came recommended to us through the IT manager of the IT firm we use. I interviewed one of the Sembit programmers, and we gave them this extremely important project which would impact the survival of our laboratory. I had been interviewing and talking to three other firms, but they couldn’t really grasp what we were doing. One of them took three months and I didn’t really see the outcome, and we were up against a deadline. This is why I feel very indebted to Sembit for as long as I will be alive and for as long as this laboratory will be operational, because they had a very short deadline for this project. We would have become out-of-compliance had they not delivered on time.

When we were referred to them, quite frankly I thought my explanation would fall on deaf ears again. To my absolute pleasant surprise, he spent four hours here. He listened without any interruption and he said he could do what we needed. I wasn’t sure, but he came back a week later to put everything in a QA environment. I was astonished that, in such a short period of time, something that other companies had taken months to understand, this company was able to execute. Since then, we have never looked anywhere else. I would never consider another company. This is how much we believe in them.

How much have you invested with Sembit?

We’ve spent between $130,000 and $150,000 per year with Sembit. I meet with Sembit’s CEO on an annual basis, we make a projection and I sign a contract with him. We always leave room for exceeding that amount. His estimate has been right on the money for the past number of years, unless something comes up during the process.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in May 2011, and the work is ongoing. They have done solid work for us since then.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

They have never disappointed us with their timeliness. Our urgencies have always been Sembit’s urgencies.

They have a sufficient number of programmers. There are two of them that are very dedicated to most, if not all, of our work. We are a clinical laboratory with an expected error rate of zero, so everything is staged in a QA environment for days, or even weeks. We run hundreds and hundreds of cases to ensure that nothing fell into a glitch. If there’s something that doesn’t work, we don’t go to production until everything has been debugged, and they have been on top of that.

The impact of that in the clinical lab is significant. One of the reasons I didn’t go to buy an off-the-shelf lab information system was because the problem with those, at least from my 30 years of experience in this field, is that when they want to sell you, they are fabulous; but once they are sold, you are on their time, not the other way around. The patient population that we serve is such that we really must have real-time help. That’s why I chose Sembit, and I spent the time and the resources to make it this way.

I would say that we are very satisfied. I wouldn’t rate them below 95%. Personally, 100%. The 5% is for the fact that nobody is perfect. We have never heard any of our clients complaining. If they want to request a change, they actually directly communicate with one of Sembit’s programmers. We have received very positive feedback.

How did Sembit perform from a project management standpoint?

They come on-site and listen precisely, look at what we do and hear our process flow, and then that’s all they need. They move on. They develop based on what they understood. They run it by us, and it’s always good. They put it in a QA environment and we go on a quality assurance path of validating, and then we go to product. If there are still things that need to be adjusted, it’s an immediate adjustment. We communicate primarily by email and phone if necessary. They have been very, very responsive. Sometimes I catch them on the weekends, believe it or not. They are very attentive.

What did you find most impressive about Sembit?

They are super smart. If somebody can get our field, more power to them. They are smarter and more attentive than anybody else that I have ever worked with.

Are there any areas Sembit could improve?

They have been so responsive to any need of this laboratory, but I also firmly believe everybody can always work to go above and beyond. Nothing comes to mind. It has been a perfect relationship for a number of years of reciprocity and respect for the field that we are in. They recognize that.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am a senior web designer within the office of public affairs and communication for the University of California, Santa Barbara. Our office is the central marketing facility for the entire university. I was also the project designer for the website.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Sembit?

Most universities have a website that allows people to make online donations. At that time, we had a very rudimentary website. It was necessary to update it, streamline the process, and make it more engaging. Our overall goal was not necessarily to raise more money—it was to connect with more donors. We wanted to turn our site into a storytelling platform that gave reasons why someone would want to donate to our university. We wanted to provide a good user experience so that people can connect with the specific fund that they are passionate about.

To answer this challenge, we were looking to build a database site with a content management system. We didn’t have any specific requirements but were leaning towards Drupal. Our needs were quite specific and would have required modifying a standard content management system extensively. It ended up being quite complicated on the backend.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

The site was built between January and April 2016. We started the negotiations with Sembit around four months prior to this. The university system is typically slow to get started on these projects since there are many internal moving parts, chains of approval, and so on. We knew that we’d be going with Sembit; it was just a matter of getting the contract signed.

Once we got the go signal, I provided Sembit with a skeleton of how we wanted things to work. The main developer was able to implement my design directly from Illustrator files. We figured out the design early on, but many of the functionalities were not specified. We ended up building a custom form for people to donate. It featured a lot of custom information and if-then cases.

We went back and forth over several meetings on the functionality of the CMS, especially about the best way to structure it for a nontechnical user. We have nontechnical staff who administer both the content and the various funds. They needed to update blog posts and create stories with a hero image, body text, and inline graphics. Each post also had a sidebar with the specific funds that are relevant to that particular article.

There were many areas where something could potentially go wrong, so Sembit built a two-part system. This allowed us to preview the content and check it for errors before publishing. We also kept a record within the system of who edited the site, who published specific articles, and so on. Sembit provided multiple usernames and accounts along with other critical functionalities. They made it easy for us to have a hierarchy of editors and administrators managing the site.

The site was finally launched in November 2016. We’ve had a slow transition process since this is new territory for the university. UC Santa Barbara has 75 sub-departments, each with its own funds and donation pages. All of those pages were linked to the previous site. We spent the last year helping people redesign and reconfigure their sites in order to take advantage of the new page. There was also a huge marketing component which went along with this. We’ve been working on that aspect more slowly.

We’ve also identified a number of functionalities that we didn’t originally intend to develop. We maintained the original scope, but we also started a second scope on a parallel path. We have many phase-two and phase-three ideas for the site.

How did you come to work with Sembit?

We reached out to a number of different firms and got prices that were outside of our ballpark. I had worked with Sembit in the past for a furniture company, so I threw their name into the mix. Based on my previous experience, I knew that Sembit’s custom work would be a good fit for us. Sembit also excelled at providing custom solutions, so I was comfortable recommending them.

During our initial conversation, we were told that Sembit doesn’t provide Drupal work. However, they do focus on custom content management systems. It gave us something to consider since we were getting bids outside of our range for Drupal work. Besides the budget, I also took into consideration that Sembit had a smaller, more hands-on team. I only had 3–5 people in my core team, so we were a good match.

How much have you invested with Sembit?

For the initial phase, we paid around $50,000 for Sembit’s work. We’ve signed agreements for additional functionalities.

What is the status of this engagement?

We’re in contact with Sembit to this day, and we are keeping them on retainer.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

The new website has definitely opened people’s minds. The feedback on campus has been overwhelmingly positive, both for the design and what it represents. While we weren’t looking at monetary value, I’m sure that we’ve had a 50% increase year over year in online donations. Our main goal was finding new donors, and the site has definitely been a success.

From a nontechnical standpoint, people are seeing the value of the site. We’re a bit decentralized, so we didn’t impose that people adopt the new site. However, people from other sub-departments now want to provide content and be featured on the storytelling engine. They definitely want to take advantage of the new form and the ease with which people can donate to the university.

Sembit’s resources were very responsive and were always available for a conference call. This was new territory for our team, so it was important to have a weekly call. I felt that I could give them a call or contact them on Skype at any time, even for the slightest questions. It felt like we were their only client, which was nice. It also helped that Sembit’s team was patient with us. They were really good at listening, figuring out exactly what we were trying to do, and providing the best way to do it. I’m well-versed in developing a website, but Sembit was a good ally in explaining to the rest of my team what was and what wasn’t possible.

How did Sembit perform from a project management standpoint?

It was a seamless and collaborative process. We made it clear from the start that we didn’t have the capacity to do project management. They assigned a project manager who took a look at the overarching project. We just gave a timeline, and they were very helpful in pushing us to make decisions.

What did you find most impressive about Sembit?

Most of the other developers I’ve worked with were limited to canned content management systems like WordPress, Drupal or Sitefinity. The advantage with Sembit was that they built a completely custom CMS that would have been hard to replicate on Drupal or another platform. It was built specifically for us. When someone logs into it, everything will be geared towards exactly what we want to happen. I’ve seen many Drupal instances that required a lot of prior knowledge on the side of the user. On our site, a nontechnical person simply needs to log in, go to the funds category, and edit the description of a fund. Everything is neatly organized. Sembit also added a skin to the CMS that is similar to our main site. It’s familiar and follows our visual identity. People really feel that they’re logging into a UC Santa Barbara system.

Are there any areas Sembit could improve?

Getting the site implemented on our server was a challenge, but it was partially the university’s fault. In some instances, we were working with outdated technology, including the server version. There were also some things that were easier to handle in person, but that is the nature of a long-distance relationship. One of the attractive things about the local companies we were looking at was having face-to-face meetings and a potentially better site hand-off. These are the only things that come to mind.