The Tactile Group

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

The company is an airport. I’m an IT manager for a consulting firm to the airport.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with The Tactile Group?

We needed an application to support an initiative run by the airport. The program run by the airport is in support of its workforce, and while it’s sponsored by the airport, it’s run by a vendor firm that handles all of the retail, food, and professional service organizations that are at the airport. For their workforce, the program provides opportunities for anyone that was let go from their work due to no fault of their own. It gives them first opportunity interviews in new merchants that open. The purpose of the application was to facilitate the tracking and management of that program. We needed it to interface with the marketplace group, as well as individual employees or former employees. 

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

The web application was built in MySQL for the backend and PHP for the frontend off Bootstrap. One of the core features was user tracking. There was a special authentication feature where we had to verify that the person signing up actually did lose their job due to no fault of their own. Additionally, there were other compliance requirements on the merchant side, so we needed some functionality built to support that. There was also an administrative piece for the marketplace to manage the program, add an update, and handle different statuses with the merchants and the employees.

How did you come to work with The Tactile Group?

I'd heard their name from a previous project that they had proposed on but did not win. I looked over their credentials and included them in the request for proposal process for this application.

How much have you invested with The Tactile Group?

We spent around $20,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in September of 2015, and the work was completed in July of 2016.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

They delivered within budget and in the timeframe that we set for them. They met all of the requirements of the system, and we received positive feedback from all of the groups involved. This is a brand-new program that just launched; it didn’t exist before. We identified some of the requirements with the airport up front, and then The Tactile Group helped refine those requirements as we moved through. There really wasn’t a need to track or process this information before this application was developed.

How did The Tactile Group perform from a project management standpoint?

They performed fairly well. They were pretty transparent in their process, providing schedules and costs. I worked closely with them throughout the project. There was really good communication, and they were open to whatever we needed as far as talking through a requirement or interacting with them. We did have a couple of change orders throughout the process that came from changes in requirements on our side. They managed them and incorporated them in a timely manner.

What did you find most impressive about The Tactile Group?

They’re open and easy to work with. I was happy. They did good work, but you can find good work in lots of places. I’ve worked with a number of technology firms. The Tactile Group is a lot more friendly and easier to work with than others, while still performing at a high level.

Are there any areas The Tactile Group could improve?

Nothing stands out that I would really call a constructive criticism. If there was a need I had that wasn’t being met throughout the process, they would address it right away.

What tips or recommendations could you share that might increase the likelihood of success with The Tactile Group?

Be open with your requirements and needs, and they’ll be happy to work with you.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I work for a Federal Government Agency. I’m a Contracting Officer’s Representative (COR).

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with The Tactile Group?

I’ve worked with them on two separate contracts on behalf of my organization. When I came onboard, we had a contract for technical assistance to the federally funded organizations. An additional need for an annual performance report application was identified. The retired application was running on old web technology, ASP.NET 2.0. The specific need was to create a completely new application as well as synthesize the data points to be collected.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

The Tactile Group, through the competitive process, was awarded a contract to develop the annual performance report application. The Tactile Group also provides technical assistance including website technical assistance modules, in-person and virtual training, and conference presentations. The application collects aggregate data from state organizations. The Tactile Group designed the application which collects that data, as well as generates a national report. They’ve also provided subject matter expertise that assisted in determining what data needed to be collected. Due to Tactile’s expertise, data elements were transformed reducing the data collection burden 89%. The Tactile Group assisted in the process of meeting a federal mandate to host with a FedRAMP-approved cloud service provider, moving our infrastructure to the Amazon Web Services public cloud.The application is written in PHP, with a MySQL database and a Tableau server that allows reports to be generated directly from the data source.

How did you come to work with The Tactile Group?

The Tactile Group responded to an open competition with a small business set-aside. After a request for information, a request for proposals was issued.

How much have you invested with The Tactile Group?

Total contract award (Base plus 4 options) was $ 4.46 M.

What is the status of this engagement?

For the current project, we started working with The Tactile Group on September 4th, 2014.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

In terms of their performance, the government completes the Contractor Performance Assessment Reporting System (CPARS). Quality, budget, management, and schedule ratings are provided on a four-point scale, with four being exceptional, and three being outstanding. The Tactile Group has an average of about 3.5 overall.

How did The Tactile Group perform from a project management standpoint?

Utilizing and working from an integrated schedule, The Tactile Group consistently delivers high quality products on-time and within budget.

On a day-to-day basis, The Tactile Group set up a project schedule and we have meetings every two weeks for a status update. In the beginning, we met once a week. We have repeatable meetings that detail our ongoing, past, and planned tasks. We managed them tightly against the scheduling, and The Tactile Group always hit the marks.

What did you find most impressive about The Tactile Group?

The Tactile Group presents itself as a unified team with the government, and not just to the government. The Tactile Group is an extension of the government. Users know that they can reach out to The Tactile Group and get answers.

We have 54 state education agencies, as well as sub-recipients who receive money from those agencies, totaling over 10,000 entities that are required to report data through the application that The Tactile Group designed. At least three-quarters of them know the project manager, and at least 98% of them know that The Tactile Group is developing this application. They’re respected. People know that they can reach out to The Tactile Group and get answers.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

The company is a government agency. I’m responsible for ensuring compliance with our multiple stormwater permits with the state and the federal government.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with The Tactile Group?

We needed to update a programmatic web page as part of a regulatory update in July 2015. We had a previous web developer but it wasn’t really their specialty.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Our previous site had a tool where developers could submit their projects and plans to us online. We liked that type of technology and functionality, so that was a requirement our new site had to have. The Tactile Group was able to take that approach and enhance upon it a little bit. We did some focus groups to help us with the design of the site. We were able to make the application use logic. Depending on what an applicant filled out, we would ask certain questions. We were able to get that functionality with the new site, which was great.

We previously had a PDF design manual that included all the sizing specifications and general guidance for how to meet the regulatory requirements. We needed to update that with the new standards associated with the update. They were able to have the content be a part of the CMS [content management system], ExpressionEngine, for the website as opposed to having the source information be stored in either a Word document or an Adobe InDesign file. What they created was an online version of our manual that could be downloaded to a PDF. I thought it was a pretty unique approach where the actual source of the content is really housed in the CMS itself. When we looked around nationally, nobody had really taken that approach to date.

We were the first to take this approach with our guidance manual as a web resource like this. Almost all stormwater programs across the country have these manuals to articulate the requirements. The status quo to date has really been a static PDF usually done with Adobe InDesign or something of that kind. For that specific piece, I would say to the best of our knowledge, we were the first in the nation to do that.

How did you come to work with The Tactile Group?

The Tactile Group was a sub-consultant on an engineering contract that was helping us with some of the technical specifications of the regulatory change. The regulatory change was related to land development projects having to manage stormwater on their properties. There was a lot of technical engineering that went into some of the sizing requirements and such associated with the regulatory update. As part of that contract, we needed technical engineering services and outreach services to communicate the changes to the Philadelphia development community.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in June 2014 and the site launched July 2015. The launch had to be coordinated with our requirements when in place, so that’s when we rolled out the new requirements as well. They were able to coordinate the launch of the new site at that point. We’ve been working with them ever since to maintain the site and to do general updates to it for content and such.

With the City of Philadelphia, you can only really have a contract for upwards of four years. We’re now at the close of that, so we had to put out a new contract opportunity to continue services of this kind. We’ve shifted from an engineering contract with this being a subtask to putting out a web maintenance contract, which we’re going to continue with Tactile on board.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Before the update, we were averaging about 6,000 hits a month, and since the update, we’re closer to 10,000 hits a month. I think a big reason for that is the guidance manual being actual web content. Previously, our audience would just download a PDF and likely access it locally off their computer. Whereas now, I think we’re seeing the users just visit the site to get the content through there, which is a great change. A downloaded PDF is static information. If we change our requirements or add additional clarity in that document as web content, the people that are accessing it through the site are going to see the most current information, thus minimizing the chance of them using outdated static guidance.

How did The Tactile Group perform from a project management standpoint?

For communication, we would have weekly phone calls at more of a management level. There were a lot of emails. Especially for some design pieces, we would have meetings at their office to articulate some of the comments or the goals we were seeking. We also did a lot of comment tracking for testing and things of that kind through a Google spreadsheet. We were able to have multiple staff in it at once, especially as we geared it up for the release and the launch of the site. There were a lot of moving pieces at once, so we utilized that tool to be able to have multiple people looking at something while still looking at the newest information.

In terms of deadlines and schedules, we had a very critical release date. They were able to meet that pretty cleanly. That wasn’t an issue at all.

What did you find most impressive about The Tactile Group?

I think their ability to understand the objectives of their clients is impressive. We are not web programmers, but we tried to articulate as best as we could what we were looking for. Since we’re not in the field, it’s not the easiest of things for us to communicate, but they were really effective at understanding the objectives we were going for and able to translate that into a product.

Are there any areas The Tactile Group could improve?

There were certainly opportunities for a little bit better project management. However, they were a sub-consultant on the contract, so a lot of the things got funneled through the prime vendor. I’m reluctant to say that that was wholly representative of Tactile. I think the prime vendor played a role there.

There also could have been a little bit more clarity on the costs up front. It’s not that the project went over budget, but it’s sometimes difficult to ensure we’re all on the same page of what the budget for something of that scale would be.

What tips or recommendations could you share that might increase the likelihood of success with The Tactile Group?

I would give a full recommendation for this type of work. They understood some of the characteristics of working with a government entity very quickly. We have certain rules and certain requirements that we have to follow. You can tell that they had worked with government entities before. I would especially recommend them for a public entity.