SEP

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the COO/CTO of Audiochuck

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

True Crime media prodcution

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire SEP to accomplish?

• Development Team Augmentation
• Fan Club App Roadmap Development

SOLUTION

How did you find SEP?

Referral

Why did you select SEP over others?

• High ratings
• Great culture fit
• Good value for cost
• Company values aligned

How many teammates from SEP were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

SEP partnered with us over the course of several years to update and enhance our mobile app. Their team provided comprehensive services including design, product management, and application development. Key deliverables included a refreshed user experience, robust functionality improvements, and ongoing implementation support. Throughout our engagement, SEP was outstanding—delivering on time, communicating clearly, and contributing valuable expertise that elevated the final product.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

product roadmap and finished application

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

SEP's project management was excellent. We moved forward confidently at every stage. Communication with their team was outstanding—updates were timely, clear, and proactive. SEP consistently held to our agreed timelines, delivering work as promised without delays. Overall, their organization and responsiveness made the process smooth and productive.

What was your primary form of communication with SEP?

• In-Person Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

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

SEP demonstrated exceptional value alignment and a consultative approach throughout our engagement. Their team actively contributed ideas and expertise, guiding us at each stage rather than simply performing assigned tasks. The quality of services provided was consistently high, and SEP's proactive participation ensured our collaboration was strategic, focused, and productive.

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

Nope.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Director of Product of Woven

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Woven is a technical assessment platform that goes way beyond code to help engineering leaders vet and hire experienced engineers.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire SEP to accomplish?

• Level up our free trial experience to increase conversions
• Convert a complicated sales process into intuitive product

SOLUTION

How did you find SEP?

• Referral

Why did you select SEP over others?

• High ratings
• Great culture fit
• Good value for cost
• Company values aligned

What was the size of SEP’s team?

2-5 Employees

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

Woven had a basic free trial, but really needed to take part of our sales process and make it possible in the free trial so that prospects could see value without having to get on the phone with someone on our team. Deliverables: design of the website experience and in-product experience for a particular activity in the sales/onboarding process.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

• SEP helped us identify high-impact, low-effort wins in our website design that could convert more reliably to our free trial. They also used their process to help our team think through the problems we were trying to solve collaboratively so we could arrive at the most productive solution with limited resources.

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

SEP is super reliable. It's a team of smart, diligent people who are eager to get to work and deliver milestones on time. They're flexible with communication methods and are sure to define action items for the next step at the end of every interaction.

What was your primary form of communication with SEP?

• In-Person Meeting
• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

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

The emotional and intellectual investment from everyone on the team really sets SEP apart from your average consultants or contractors. I have a hard time even referring to them as such, because they feel more like members of your team when you're working with them.

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

I think this is more something that we could have done differently, but is good to know all the same. SEP has a (flexible) process for ensuring you are building the RIGHT thing, not just the thing in your head. If you have a firm idea of what you'd like to accomplish and just need an executor, SEP may not be it. They're partners and strategists. Sometimes I think our ideas of what we needed to build were too exact and not suited to SEP's process.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the DevSecOps Capability Lead for a Rolls-Royce Defense. We manufacture power solutions for many applications throughout the Defense industry.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

We've worked with SEP for a long time and they've always handled ambiguous projects well. In this project we had an idea for a way to use a common industry policy management tool in a very different way to help us manage data access and management. We asked SEP to help us build up a proof of concept, determine whether this solution was viable for our use case, and to help us understand the pros and cons of starting to use this architecture in the future more broadly.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

We've worked with SEP for more than 30 years and they've always delivered quality results. They also have a deep bench of technical people who can help out with an ambiguous project such as this one.

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

We had an on-site workshop discussing the idea with a pretty detailed whiteboard session. We discussed cloud services, technical stacks, technologies, networking, latency concerns, etc. The people SEP brought to the table were familiar with the various parts of our proposed tech stack and were able to contribute fully right away.

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

We worked with 2 full time people from SEP (a Sr. Architect and a Sr. Software Engineer) in addition to bits of help from probably 5-8 other people as necessary.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The proof of concept itself was a success. We not only learned what was good and bad about the idea, but that it would likely work for our use case. The team also implemented a couple of other solutions which will improve our development process and save us a lot of time with some auto-generated code. We're going back to SEP at the moment to spin up a larger project to "Productionize" this proof of concept and plan to make it a core part of our software efforts going forward.

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

SEP joined us in our collaboration tools, development tools, and project management tools. We had ad-hoc meetings, daily standups, etc. They molded into our normal ways of working smoothly and didn't force anything additional. We did talk about improvements of our current working practices and we got some good ideas for future improvements.

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

SEP is very informal and open/transparent in a good way.  They were honest about what and how they could do some work. They're open about doing tours through their facility, letting you talk with their teams, and will show you exactly how they do what they do. This is refreshing. Other software vendors we work with have a very secret attitude as if there is a general fear that if they show you what they do, you could just re-create it for yourself. In some ways this fear is valid... but it makes for a very contentious and tense working relationship.

SEP seems to thrive in the industry "the right way" by being honest and technically competent in the things they do. There will always be more work to do and they're playing the long game by freely explaining things and giving away information that might otherwise earn them some project money. Make no mistake, this is the right way to do business and it will ensure we continue coming back when we need technical and software engineering help.

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

There were the normal growing pains of onboarding and getting a deeply technical team to join up with the work of another team, but they've done this numerous times before and were great as we worked through those initial issues.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the SVP of engagement for TechPoint, a nonprofit that works to grow the tech ecosystem in the state of Indiana. We work with different tech companies and main players through public and private partnerships to advance the overall industry and economic drivers for the state.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with SEP?

Part of our work is running talent programs to help students find jobs and internships in the tech sector. Because of this, we have a tremendous amount of data about the students’ hiring experience and their long-term hiring. 

We realized we needed a better way to look at the data and analyze it over time to make strategic decisions about our programs, who we served, and how to improve to be more successful. 

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We worked with SEP to create a custom database. They developed it from scratch and spent some time in the discovery phase to decide which long-term solution would work best for our organization. We equipped SEP with our existing data, and they determined they needed to build a custom solution because of our information’s unique nature.

SEP cleaned the data we gave them and built a database using PL/SQL and PostgreSQL. They linked that with reporting capabilities in Google products so we could visualize it and run reports. 

What is the team composition?

We first worked with SEP’s CEO, project manager, and design lead. They then passed the project on to their software and senior engineer, who developed the database. 

How did you come to work with SEP?

SEP’s team is active in the Indiana tech industry, so we’ve known them for a long time. We chose SEP for this project because of their ability to listen to a client’s needs and customize a solution for them.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent around $10,000 on the initial project.

What is the status of this engagement?

SEP developed the database from June–August 2018. They continue to provide web maintenance services and troubleshooting as needed.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

SEP was a fantastic partner to work with. The existence of this database was an improvement for our organization since it allowed us to show our impact and results, something really important for a nonprofit. 

We can now provide ongoing and meaningful data to our funders about our results. The system is sustainable and continues to house critical data that we lean on to show other companies why they should be part of our program. 

How did SEP perform from a project management standpoint?

Project management was one of SEP’s strengths. Their team asked many smart questions and listened to us to find the best solution to our problem. We had in-person meetings and communicated through emails and phone calls.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I was most impressed by SEP’s staff. Every team member I worked with was a great person. Overall, SEP was a great communicator and listener. When I engaged with them, I felt confident I’d get an outcome that fit our organization’s needs and was productive.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I can’t think of anything for SEP to improve. We had a great experience working with them.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I recommend you start with the best sense of clarity about their project and trust in SEP’s process. SEP will help you get in the right direction with their experience. 

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm Director of Engineering at Greenlight Guru, which builds a suite of products that medical device companies use to bring products to market.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

In our core Greenlight Guru application, we needed to accelerate the development of two key new features to bring them in far sooner than estimated. We asked SEP to be our partner and integrated their developers and testers into our existing teams.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

SEP has a strong reputation in Indiana, and after working with them we see it is well deserved. We needed a partner who could deliver on par with our internal teams with rapid ramp-up, and we narrowed our selection criteria to vendors who we believed could do that.

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

We had two major product features to develop and deliver. We brought in SEP developers and testers to work within our existing teams, as if they were regular Greenlight Guru employees, to design, build, and test these features. Our technologies are Java, Spring, Spring Boot, Ember, Typescript, Postgres, Mongo, all running on AWS.

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

We worked with six from SEP, four engineers and two testers.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We achieved our simple goal: we pulled these two projects in from late 2022 to end of Q1 2022. This was huge for Greenlight Guru's ability to meet customer expectations and expand our ability to sell our product. SEP did terrific work. We wished they could have become permanent members of our teams!

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

SEP adapted to our project management style, which is Agile Scrum; and to our communication tools, including Jira, Confluence, Slack, and email. SEP's developers and testers were delivering at or beyond the level of the teams in which they were embedded within two sprints.

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

We valued the level of expertise SEP was able to bring to our projects. This isn't a company that finds projects and then hires new-to-them consultants to staff them. They have an experienced team of people with well-known skills and experience, and they are able to bring the right people to your project.

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

We have no critical feedback for SEP. They blended in perfectly to our teams and delivered strongly.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm a software engineering manager for a company that manufactures connected devices (IoT enabled hardware) as well as Software applications, APIs and SDKs to control these devices.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

To help accelerate the adoption of one of our native mobile SDKs, we sought to design and build a lightweight application that shows how the SDKs are used or can be used.

SOLUTION

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

We found them through an internal referral. SEP has provided similar support for our embedded software team with great results. We needed a vendor that could get moving quickly with little oversight and SEP was a known quantity with good experience from other members in our engineering group.

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

SEP designed and engineered a mobile application to consume one of our SDKs. Technically, there were 2 mobile applications designed and developed. One for iOS in Swift and one for Android in Kotlin. Based on very high-level requirements, the engineering team that SEP provided were self-starting, curious, creative and very efficient.

The team rapidly self-educated on our SDK, providing feedback and improvements to the documentation. In consuming the SDK, the team identified minor bugs and fixed those in the SDK itself while developing a mobile application to showcase the SDK's features. The SEP team scheduled regular demos (fortnightly) to stakeholders within our company. Feedback from stakeholders were 100% positive and our company has found SEP a pleasure to work with.

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

There were 3 core people from the SEP team and 1 project manager that helped respond to the original SOW and communicate status throughout. The core team consisted of 3 engineers. One of the engineers also provided basic scrum master type functions, facilitating meetings, demos, stand-ups. The interactions with all SEP team members have been a positive experience for myself and the rest of my company.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Project was executed very well with business value delivered interatively and communicated excellently. Demos of measurable value-adds were presented every 2 weeks throughout the project and frequently (if not always) included more value than originally committed to.

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

Communciation was seamless throughout multiple mediums. Slack instant messaging, email and phone/web conferencing were the primary methods. Timelines were always met and usually early.

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

Personally, I was most impressed by the seamless experience. I manage 2 other software teams at my company and SEP felt like an internal team -- invested in the company and the success of this project. I've worked with other contractors and contracting groups in the past and have had varied experiences. That said, I don't recall ever having a contract team feel more embedded or invested in my companies success.

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

Fundamentally, I know perfection is unattainable and I believe there is always room for improvement. That said, I can't identify any opportunity for this team to improve on. I wish I could as I dearly appreciate feedback that helps me grow.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

We are a life sciences company that develops research instrumentation for pharma, government, industry, and academia. I am a process leader and a collaboration architect. I managed the contractual relationship with SEP.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

We faced the challenge of building a research instrument that had not yet been built by anyone. This system required new learning in hardware, software, and embedded systems. We hired SEP to help us establish and build out good development methodologies, automated testing tools, and code to drive the learning cycles of the new hardware that was being built.

SOLUTION

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

SEP had a staff in place that had very complementary skills to our own staff at the time. In education and execution, they were able to step right in and mesh with our team to be a good extension of our efforts.

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

The scope of work was to deliver automated testing and some core coding for the software that would drive an instrument in the life sciences space. This included embedded coding.

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

We engaged automated testing developers, ux developers, embedded code developers, and an engagement manager. In total we averaged 4-7 resources over the duration of the project.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Measurable outcomes from the project were in the reduced cycle times for learning loops, reduced bug count via standardized development methodologies (that we all learned together along the way), and the number of automated testing environments that we were able to create.

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

Their engagement manager was very effective in managing the relationship with our company, as was their staff. They were accessible, low stress, and creative in the way that they engaged us as a company and our team as an extension of our effort (both as an SLA service provider and as members of the team - they embedded very well). They communicated timelines well as part of the collective effort (we didn't throw work over the wall to them - they were embedded - that worked well for us).

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

Not only were their skills excellent, but their management structure and cultural dynamic were ones that added value to what we were doing. We did not need to exercise any sideways energy - they were a co-catalyst to propel us forward. Because of their size and proximity to us, they were able to be flexible to meet our needs. Their staff was so consistent over time and meshed very well with our team, so the partnership enjoyed a depth of connection that is not always the case with SLA type arrangements.

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

They executed very well. The area in development was new innovation. The outcome, while planned, was still fuzzy on the edges because the technology was theoretical. Their expertise and flexibility set them apart from their peers. We would have benefited from possibly engaging more of their services - particularly in innovation design, but they didn't withhold any expertise from us when we requested it.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the Director of IT and Corporate Projects at our small healthcare consulting firm. With only about 25 employees total, we're very involved with our vendors and partners, including SEP.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

We hired SEP to help us reimagine and redesign (and ultimately, replace) an existing custom webapp. The app's primary user base is almost entirely our internal team, our consultants and researchers doing work on a daily basis.

Our goals were three-fold: build a better version of the existing app (maintaining most of its core functionality was a requirement, but doing it better was the goal), wrangle a new workstream that existed outside of the app at the time, and then build the foundation for the future, for interesting and valuable new features and functionality

SOLUTION

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

We spent 6+ months in discussion with about 5 companies who responded to our initial RFP. We eventually narrowed that down to 2 frontrunners, and SEP was ultimately chosen. In truth, I still believe our #2 choice would have been fully capable of building very solid software. But SEP brought a number of intangibles.

And while intangibles are hard to quantify and compare, and sometimes hard to make a business case from, they were so important to us.

Chief among those intangibles was the perceived willingness to be a true partner with us -- meaning that they would be willing and capable of giving us recommendations, making suggestions, and even disagreeing with things we might be asking for, if they believe based on their experience that there might be a better way.

In short, I felt very confident that there would be true collaboration between our teams, and that has proven time and time again to be true.

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

We built our app on Heroku, and the team is delivering new code to staging and production on a regular basis.

In the early months of the project we had formal discovery processes and ideation sessions that were very helpful to set the tone -- and the design language -- for the project.

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

For the first 15 months or so, we had 4 main people on our project team -- a product manager, a designer, and 2 software engineers. For the past 15 months, we've been working with 2 software engineers full-time, and they've brought a designer in and out of the project here and there on an ad-hoc basis.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We don't have a lot of hard metrics to share. Our company as a whole is not fundamentally metrics-driven... and most of the benefit of the new app so far has been internal -- time saved, headaches minimized, and data entry errors avoided. We don't have a real standard for measuring any of these elements quantitatively.

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

We heavily use Slack and GitHub, as well as rely on teleconferencing (even pre-covid) so that I can be embedded in their team on a daily basis.

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

Most impressive about SEP, and in my experience most unique among their software development peers, is their willingness to understand their clients' businesses to a depth that is astounding.

This ability to understand our business (which is quite niched and hard to understand to a useful depth) has enabled them to make solid recommendations and even guide some of the product decisions.

It also means that I can be unavailable for a period of time and I have no concerns that they're going to handle a request or fix a bug in a way that is in conflict with our company's needs.

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

In all honesty, not really... Or at least, there's nothing in our project that has surfaced that has concerned me or that I wished had been done differently.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the Chief Technology & Risk Officer for a credit union in Central Indiana. We serve over 160,000 members throughout the state.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire SEP?

We have partnered with SEP for many years for projects related to our online banking application. For the past several years, they have been our primary partner for mobile app development. The current project is a rewrite of the native mobile apps into Xamarin.

What were your goals for this project?

We wanted to lower long-term cost of ownership by getting the mobile apps into a single code base. The new application will also provide a better framework for future feature enhancements.

SOLUTION

How did you select SEP?

We first met SEP over 10 years ago when the application was more web based and needed to be updated to better support mobile app development. They were originally hired to help us scope the entire application. We then hired them to assist with the project.

During the first major project, they did approximately 50% of the work, and we did the rest with internal staff. Since that initial project, they have done several additional projects.

Some years, they have helped with major enhancement initiatives, other years, they have just helped with bug fixes, and required updates due to various frameworks in use.

Since they have been such long-term partners, they know our operation and application very well and it makes them easy to pick when scoping additional work.

Describe the project in detail.

In the current project, we are taking native Android and iOS apps, and rewriting them into a single Xamarin based app. We are updating some their party interfaces, and adding a small amount of functionality along the way.

What was the team composition?

There is a team of six SEP consultants working on the project. There are four people on our side working the project on a near full-time basis. The SEP team is made up of a Project Manager and Team Lead for development purposes.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

The project is approximately halfway done. We see a weekly demo of the work completed so far, and it appears that it will meet our goals.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

The technical part of the project started soon after the COVID pandemic hit, but our long-term relationship with SEP allowed us to quickly transition to online meetings. I speak with the Project Manager at least once a week, and have a good understanding of the status.

Technical communication happens regularly between the dev teams and there is a formal weekly check-in for the full team. There is mutual respect from all parties, and any problems that pop up are resolved quickly and effectively.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

The sense of ownership that they display when working on a large project. They know our goals, they know our products, and they work hard to ensure that we get what we want. There is a true partnership when working with SEP.

Are there any areas for improvement?

Forecasting such a huge project is always a challenge, especially when dealing with relatively new technologies. The current one will push a month or two beyond the initial plan, but given the amount of work, and the unknowns when scoping it, the final timeline is more than acceptable.

We also realize that there is a trade-off between spending time scoping and beginning the work. The transparent communication helps us find a "good enough" scope, delivery timeline, and budget to get started. The regular communication throughout helps avoid surprises.