Southport Technology Group

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Phoenix Loss Control provides outside plant damage recovery services for utilities and telecoms, I am the President of Phoenix.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Southport Technology Group?

Southport technology group did a code review to test the coding abilities of our prospective new head of software development.

SOLUTION

How did you select Southport Technology Group and what were the deciding factors?

Southport was referred through a friend, their expertise and cost was a deciding factor

Describe the project in detail and walk through the stages of the project.

Southport reviewed the code, provided us with an anlaysis of the work of the developer, and provided suggestions for how it can be improved.

How many resources from the Southport Technology Group team worked with you, and what were their positions?

2 people from southport worked with us

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Southport did a great job, the job was thorough and done on time and on budget, they proivded us with what we needed to make a decisions

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

It was very effective, communication was fast and efficcient.

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

They were professional and knowledgeable, and the team effectively delivered the work product.

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

None that i can think of

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CFO of a law firm.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Southport Technology Group?

We deal with a federal courts system called “Pacer”. Pacer is pretty obtuse and it has no data integrations. Anytime something is filed in a federal court, that document is put into pacer and an email notification is generated to notify all parties involved. A link is also sent out to all parties.

 That link is only good for one free view; afterward, you have to pay for the document at 20 cents per page. We need access to those documents, so we had a staff person spending 15-20 hours per week just clicking on the links and downloading the links into Dropbox.

SOLUTION 

What was the scope of their involvement?

Southport Technology Group helped us create integrations between Pacer, Dropbox, and Salesforce. Everything was on AWS. We gave them a high-level flow chart of what needed to happen, and they executed everything. Now, they’re working on another integration that emails documents out to the appropriate attorneys at the firm automatically.

What is the team composition?

We worked with Trevor (Founder).

How did you come to work with Southport Technology Group?

Southport Technology Group has a great reputation. When we needed a serious developer, they were at the top of their list. I know he has integrity, and he’ll do what he says he will. He also charges fairly, and he’s super talented.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent $10,000–$20,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in March 2021, and our work is ongoing with another phase of the project.

SOLUTION

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

To tool they created is 100% effective at getting the documents we need from Pacer into Dropbox and Salesforce. All of the time that was previously spent on manual entry is not needed anymore.

How did Southport Technology Group perform from a project management standpoint?

We received email status updates. We also had constant communication on Slack.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Southport Technology Group and Trevor are committed to making sure the platform runs seamlessly. There’re always things that aren’t perfect, but Trevor is completely on top of making sure the final product is robust.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, nothing comes to mind.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

As with any software developer, you want to go in with an understanding of your business processes. They can go in at a high level and implement things very well. Don’t go in without an understanding of the problem you need to be solved.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the IT manager at Black Bear Energy, a buyer’s agent for solar energy. We mainly work within the real estate industry.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Southport Technology Group?

We needed someone to develop an online bid form.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We first designed the platform and put together a list of requirements. Then, Southport Technology developed the software for us. It was essentially an online bid submission form that allowed us to digitize the bidding process and store certain information in our database.

What is the team composition?

We worked with Trevor (CEO) and a couple of developers. 

How did you come to work with Southport Technology Group?

I worked with Trevor at my previous job and was very impressed by his technical skills, so I reached out to him when we were going through an RFP process. We ended up choosing them because they understood our specifications.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent between $10,000–$25,000. 

What is the status of this engagement?

The project lasted from January–June 2020, but we’re still working with them on our other efforts.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Southport Technology’s work successfully sped up our RFP processes, which was our primary goal. It also allowed us to significantly increase the volume of projects we could take on and complete. Overall, we were pleased with their work.

How did Southport Technology Group perform from a project management standpoint?

They had the best project management skills out of every vendor I ever worked with. Their organization skills were terrific. The team calibrated their communication to match ours, and we appreciated that kind of flexibility.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Not only were their technical skills impressive, but their project management ensured the success of the project. Furthermore, their pricing was very fair — we never felt like the team was dragging the project on to make more money. Southport Technology was responsible and transparent, which we appreciated.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I wish they were a larger company and could take on more work, but overall, I have nothing critical to say about the team.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Come prepared with ideas, but be very open to their feedback as well.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the group technical and IT manager for Run Energy. We’re a company in the solar and wind industry in the US, and we provide customers with maintenance and operations work. We also got work in Australia where we focus on the gas and landfill industry, in terms of monitoring and maintaining pumps and power stations on landfills. My role is to implement and maintain all the systems in the company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Southport Technology Group?

We wanted to integrate our payroll system and take advantage of Xero’s payroll functionality.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Currently, there’s no connection process between Quickbase and Xero, so they’re building a new process where we send our timesheet data from Quickbase to Xero, so we can use the latter’s payroll functionality. It’s not easy because you also have to get the details of the employees into the system, which is why we’re also using Quickbase as an HR system where we keep all the information about our employees.

Basically, we’re synchronizing all the information of our employees, so we don’t have to manually transfer data. No one has to type anything, and all we have to do is review and approve the payroll on Xero. We’re still building the system and doing a lot of testing right now, but we’re going to get them to do more work soon.

What is the team composition?

My main point of contact is Trevor (CEO), but I know he’s got a team of people working on the project.

How did you come to work with Southport Technology Group?

Trevor actually built some software with us in the past, before he formed his company, so I have a history of working with him — we had a great relationship and working dynamic. When we started looking into building this project, it just so happened that they effectively had experience working with Quickbase and Xero.

How much have you invested with them?

We’re probably going to invest about $20,000 just on this project.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in January 2021, and our partnership is still ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Once we finish this project, the amount of effort saved is going to be huge in terms of being able to get data from one system to another — it’s not going to take any effort because the process will be completely automated, so we remove the element of human error. Additionally, the biggest benefit for us is going to be scalability because we won’t need to hire any additional people to run the payroll as we grow — since everything will be automated.

How did Southport Technology Group perform from a project management standpoint?

We basically use Trello to communicate and manage the task, and we have weekly meetings every Monday for progress updates and the plans ahead.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Southport is good at keeping everything up to date. The process and communications are simple, and it’s easy for me to see how things are going. I’m not the type of person to have weekly meetings, I would rather just go somewhere and see how things are.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Right now, I can’t really say anything because there are no issues from my perspective. The biggest success will be the system going live and working, but we’re still in the beta testing stage and so far, it’s been really good. Trevor and I really work well together, and I’m very happy with how they interpret our needs into the development. They’re very good at looking at the details that you need them to do, rather than me having to describe too much about what the scope is.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I believe it’s always good to do some work upfront on your end, so be very specific about what you need and at the same time, don’t define the detail of how that’s going to happen. Spend a bit of time describing what you want them to solve, and Southport will fill that in very well.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Change Impact helps social impact organizations achieve results and advance equity. As the Managing Director of Innovation, I'm responsible for the development of our new online learning platform, Change Up Learning.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Southport Technology Group, and what were your goals?

We hired Southport Technology Group to integrate custom Mailchimp email customer journeys with our WordPress Learning Management System. While it is a smaller task, there were specific and complex requirements to ensure email cadence aligned with the learning methodology.

SOLUTION

How did you select Southport Technology Group and what were the deciding factors?

I worked with Southport Technology Group based on extensive experience I've had working with one of the co-founders, who always delivered work with the highest professionalism, speed, efficiency, and customer support.

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

I sent a scope of the work. We had a planning meeting. Southport Technology Group conducted research and shared video demos of potential options. Next, the integration was implemented. After QA and debugging, we deployed to production. There were some questions post-production with Southport Technology Group, who immediately schedule meetings to address. Technologies included LearnDash, Wordpress, and Mailchimp,

How many people from the Southport Technology Group team worked with you, and what were their positions?

1

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

After deploying we had a fully functioning and replicable email customer journey that connected to all of our online courses. 100% of users receive emails precisely as we intended as part of our methodology.

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

Project management style: service-oriented, lean, swift and supportive; Communication tools was email, videos, and phone; Always prompt and exceptionally professional.

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

Southport Technology Group anticipated my needs and identified lower-costs ways for our company to scale our email content across our entire course library. I was impressed by how candid and quickly they completed the job.

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

None

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

We are a third party administrator for insurance products for the pre-owned automotive industry. We are backed by Old Republic Insurance Company and operate in 15+ states.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Southport Technology Group, and what were your goals?

STG started working with us some years ago to integrate the web with our server database to provide our customers with instant access to billing statements, ACH transfers, and our sales reps to appoint new dealers via the sales portal. It started out as a modest interface and has grown into one of our most valuable assets as we have expanded beyone the West Coast.

SOLUTION

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

We were referred to them by a sister company. Best referral we have ever received

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

We always start with a problem scenario and STG works with us to break it down into quantifiable solutions. They use many different web solutions and languages to provide us with the solution we need: AWS, PHP, DigitalOcean, Jenkins, and other frameworks and languages to get the job done. They have created a space where no matter what we ask, we get what we want.

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

I have worked with all of the members of the team: from programmers through management. All were exceptionally professional and experienced.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

When they built our first contracting system, we had very few customers using our web services. Now, more than 70% of our new business comes through the portals STG built for us. We have increased the number of services from just rating the contracts in the first project to now we provide rating, contract generation to PDF or e-Contracting, dealer statements, and dealer payments, new dealer appointments and reinstatements. 100% of what we transact now happens because of services built by STG.

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

Communications are excellent. They use many tools to keep us informed with each project's status including Trello boards, SiteAlert.io and just plain availability 24/7. Generally, issues are resolved within hours, not days.

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

They treat us with dignity, diligence, professionalism, and expertise. We have had no issue with billings, bug fixes or enhancements.

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

I honestly could not think of anything. We started small and grew beyond all expectations. Not once did we experience any disruption or disruptions due to delays or misunderstandings. Truly remarkable team!