Software for Good

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I'm the communications director for a nonprofit organization.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Software for Good?

The organization originally reached out to Software for Good for website design and development of a WordPress site. Our old website had a lot of issues, including slow loading times and an excess of pages that were hard to navigate.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Software for Good helped us redesign and develop our website on WordPress and Drupal, incorporating new features as needed.

What is the team composition?

We worked with three people on their team including an account manager, web application engineer, and a junior designer. Ryan (Web Application Engineer, Software for Good) is one of the best partners I've worked with; he was very patient and helpful in explaining everything. 

How did you come to work with Software for Good?

My predecessor hired them, so I'm unsure how we came across them originally. However, they offer discounts to nonprofit organizations so that probably helped with the decision.

How much have you invested with them?

We've invested about $40,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked with them from February to July 2017.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Software for Good has absolutely improved everything about our website from design to functionality. We're also seeing significant improvements in visitors and time spent on the site overall.

How did Software for Good perform from a project management standpoint?

They've been great to work with overall, keeping everything well organized through Asana.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They're committed to nonprofit organizations. Compared to other vendors we'd considered, they not only offered high-quality work, but also treated us as an equally important client.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No. Even though there's been some turnover within their organization, we haven't experienced any issues on our end as a result.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Do your research to make sure the vendor is the right fit for the organization. For us, Software for Good was perfect because they're not too big of an agency; we never felt like we were at the bottom of their list of priorities.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We are a general merchandising company that operates throughout the United States. We have a network of representatives throughout the United States including Alaska and Canada, and we do a variety of different services and work with a variety of retailers throughout the United States.

I oversee our account management team, our IT department, and our compliance.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Software For Good?

We have about 1,200 reps throughout the United States. We have them report through a web-based reporting system. When they do their services, they take pictures and they report that back to our home office. Then, our account management team recaps that information and sends it back to our clients. We wanted to give our field reps a mobile tool to do that. That’s where we engaged Software For Good.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Application development was the primary service, but the user experience was a huge part for us as well. We wanted to make sure the app was going to be built specifically for our audience and our rep demographic. They helped us with the user experience. We built mirrored platforms, one for Android and one for iOS.

How did you come to work with Software For Good?

We did a pretty exhaustive search. We were looking for software solutions. We looked at not only custom developers like Software For Good, but we also looked at previously built software that we could plug into our system. When it came down to it, we felt that Software For Good had the ability to customize a solution for us that served our needs, and were able to complete it in the timeline that we had set forth.

How much have you invested with Software For Good?

Our partnership with them fell in the $200,000 plus bucket.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

I don’t have any hard data. It’s been a successful launch. We rolled to half of our user group on one project. We have and online and offline capability which has been the biggest challenge with the application. We have quite a bit more development that we’re going do with them in 2017. That’s the next phase of this project.

The thing I’m most proud of with this is that this is a big cultural change for our field force. One thing Software For Good was insistent on, and we really liked, is that we wanted to bring the field team in and gain their input on the development from the beginning. We knew what we wanted to accomplish but what it looked like, what it felt like, and the content that was relevant to the end user was going to be something that we worked on from day one. Our field team has been overwhelmingly receptive to the content and the ease of use, as it’s the largest IT initiative and biggest technological transformation that our company has gone through in 30 years.

What did you find most impressive about Software For Good?

Their availability. They are really receptive and were really available whenever we needed them and our demands fluctuated. The scope of the project evolved as it often does, and Software For Good was able to keep up with the demand. Then, when the workload shifted down, they were very open and accommodating to that too. We’ve gone up and down in our programming needs. They’ve been really available to us and really collaborative with our team. We had regular iteration meetings and those were really helpful. This is the first mobile app that I’ve launched with a company. It helped me understand the overall process and the benefits and things to be aware of. It’s something they do all the time and that was really helpful in me being a non-developer. I’m not a developer or a programmer but I was able to be involved in the process and they were able to close some of the gaps that I didn’t necessarily understand.

Are there any areas Software For Good could improve?

The only aspect, which they were very up front with, were the challenges associated with Android. Because of the variety of devices within our team - we have a “bring your own device” policy. So our application works on 9,000 different devices. The complexities that can come up and solving the issues that came up with Android were tough, whereas, with iOS, you only have 7 platforms that you have to worry about. That was something they were upfront about. I personally underestimated the challenges with that.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Neighborhood Energy Connection is a non-profit in Minnesota that does energy conservation in a residential setting. I’m the technical projects manager.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Software For Good?

We had a custom web-based database that had been built by another vendor close to ten years ago. When that vendor went out of business, we needed someone else who could read their code and help us redesign the site.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

The site was based on the Ruby on Rails language, but an expired version of it. The data was housed in Amazon Web Services. Software For Good was able to read the code, improve it, and bring all of the different moving parts up to date.

How did you come to work with Software For Good?

They were recommended by another developer that we talked to. We found them and realized they specialized in working with non-profit organizations and their rates were very budget friendly. We were happy with them right off the bat.

How much have you invested with Software For Good?

It’s been going on for three years, so I think it’s been in the range of $20,000 a year.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

How did Software For Good perform from a project management standpoint?

One of my favorite things that we found with them was that they introduced us to collaboration and communication tools - internet based ones where they organized their work with us around some task management programs that we could also participate in, communicate about, and really divide the work up into very short achievable tasks. They also had a couple of different chat or communication tools that they introduced us to and it made it easy to communicate about problems in real-time as we were working on the site.

What did you find most impressive about Software For Good?

They were very accessible. That was handy to have. The operations manager was the main contact person. He responds quickly by phone or email. I like having someone in town also, so we would go to their office monthly or quarterly to review progress and talk face to face. I liked doing that rather than doing the whole thing over the web.

Are there any areas Software For Good could improve?

After the initial setup and transition phase, we went into maintenance mode. They rotate their staff from project to project, so that made it hard for them to find the person who was programming this one particular process six months ago and find time for them to help us when something broke or when we needed to adjust it. Having that staffing and on-hand knowledge at the site was hard to maintain. It’s hard to keep the staff ready to go when we weren’t paying them hourly to keep anybody familiar with it. I think that’s probably a challenge for us, the customer, rather than for the vendor.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Launch Media operates a software as a service marketing automation platform. We also do consulting on interactive marketing, app development, and user experience. I am the Chief Executive Officer and founder.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Software for Good?

There were two specific challenges. Number one is we needed a partner to handle the maintenance and development of our marketing automation platform and associated mobile SDKs [software development kits]. We wanted our software to have minimal downtime and great hosting. The second thing we needed was a partner to reference for any web or mobile development for our clients.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Software for Good fit the bill to be able to do all of the maintenance of our software, which is some pretty heavy lifting. We handle a tremendous amount of traffic for high-profile clients.

How did you come to work with Software for Good?

Originally, when we created our business and our platform, we had a partner that did all the initial development. He subsequently sold his company to a larger software organization and couldn’t handle managing the two business needs we had. He gave me two or three recommendations of folks that would be able to handle the load of both our platform and the development needs our clients might have. Software for Good was one of those companies. After talking to them, I just loved their business philosophy and willingness to be flexible in a business model, because we were a little bit unique in that we needed two different things. We ultimately selected Software for Good and they’ve been awesome for us.

How much have you invested with Software for Good?

This year, we’ve had a couple of client developments, so we’re talking about $200,000 for both client and platform development this past year. Client development isn’t our core competency, so in the last couple of years it’s been a bit sparse, but this past year was pretty good.

What is the status of this engagement?

We’ve been partnering with Software for Good for about four years.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Our metrics are more qualitative than anything. Oftentimes, once we develop something for a client, we don’t get the quantitative results. We once had an enterprise-level client that needed mobile development across a couple of different platforms. Software for Good was able to respond very quickly to that need and came up with an adequate business plan that included some competencies they didn’t necessarily even have. They were able to onboard some folks that did have the competencies, so that was good.

What did you find most impressive about Software for Good?

They are very open to building great user experiences, and they think about problems before they think about the solutions. Especially on my side of the platform that deals more with the communications and connectivity, Software for Good was really good at distancing us from the technologies for a second to consider instead the user experience. Once we understood the needs for the user experience, we could build whatever technologies made the most sense. Software for Good is also really good at considering what the business needs are right now, so that down the road there will be opportunities to build more things without disrupting the technologies we currently have.

Are there any areas Software for Good could improve?

Nothing, really. The only thing to mention is that sometimes, as with every company, your greatest strengths tend to also be weaknesses. Software for Good was great at onboarding people to keep a project going with a very specific and agile process. But every once in a while, you need to take a step back and consider if this particular project fits within such a specific approach. It’s important for anyone that’s operationally sound to understand when you need to switch it up.