Think Company

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there. 

I’m the CIO for Bayada, a home health care company. We’re an international organization operating in 26 states and six countries. We provide care in people's homes.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Think Company? 

We've had two engagements with Think Company. We first hired them to do research and analysis around designing a mobile portal for our employees.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Think Company interviewed about 50 frontline employees and office employees. They designed a mobile portal for us called The Front Door, which we implemented last year. The second project is designing our enterprise-wide IT strategy. They've been doing research and analysis for about nine months and will continue for another six months.

They're performing capabilities assessments of each of our business units and our enterprise shared services support areas. Next, they synthesize that information to identify themes and strategic capabilities for the company. Once that’s done, we'll move on to the next phase where they'll design our actual IT vision and strategic objectives to support our five-year IT strategy. 

What is the team composition?

Tom (Vice President of Client Engagement, Think Company) is our main point of contact. We worked with 4–5 people on the first project, and three in the current project.

How did you come to work with Think Company?

I interviewed several companies. Think Company’s attention to detail and their design approach made them stand out. I really appreciated that they had a realistic picture of how our work was performed. Tom and I hit it off because he’s realistic and speaks in plain language. They understand that doing good design work requires listening carefully in order to understand intent. 

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent approximately $250,000.

What is the status of this engagement? 

Work started in the second quarter of 2018 and the engagement is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The Front Door mobile portal was very successful and received extremely well by our company. Employee satisfaction has improved since its launch. As part of the IT analysis, they’ve identified the technology project work that’s necessary in order to achieve our enterprise-wide IT strategy. To date, that project is meeting our expectations. We've seen small improvements along the way that already improve revenue or reduce expenses. 

How did Think Company perform from a project management standpoint?

Their team is very good. Their project management has been excellent. They keep me on my toes and keep the project running smoothly. Think Company is able to quickly evaluate when things are off course. They also know when to speed things up or when to slow things down. I don't need to ask for anything. They stay ahead of me, which is really helpful. I have a big job and I can't do their work, too. 

We have a lot of meetings and do a lot of video conferences. We use email probably the least. I have a standing video conference with them every Monday afternoon and we often speak again toward the end of the week. When we have meetings with the leaders of our company, we'll do those in person or over Zoom video conference. 

What did you find most impressive about them? 

Think Company's ability to consume information, analyze it, and find original themes is so impressive. They make incredible insights about our company, our employees, and our technological capabilities that we’ve not observed ourselves. 

Are there any areas they could improve? 

No, not right now. They're doing exactly what we need them to do. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers? 

Think Company will cut through all of the buzzwords and lingo and perform solid research and analysis. They see through all the flowery stuff by being great listeners. They’ll find the insights that you may not find on your own.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the agile transformation leader for a pharmaceutical company. I’m mainly in charge of customer experience and digital transformation. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Think Company?

We wanted to revamp the customer experience for one of our primary customer sets that’s significant to our business. We needed a partner to work on our design strategy, UX/UI, and content and product strategy.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They work in HTML5, writing the code bases that they then gave to our internal production teams. They had to learn our content management system (CMS), Tridium, and do design work in Illustrator, InVision, and Photoshop. Think Company redefined the relationship that we want to have with our customers in our online channels and changed the focus from marketing and promotions to enhancing customer engagement. They helped us understand the customer journey, including their wants, needs, dreams, and vision. 

From there, they designed our content strategy, UI, and site layout. Essentially, they built the roadmap to our design, and our individual brands created the content that adhered to those guidelines. We developed an integrated system that delivers a cohesive brand.

What is the team composition? 

We worked with about 10–15 people, including an account executive, project manager, UX leader, content management specialist, and graphic designer.

How did you come to work with Think Company?

We sent out an RFP and considered 12 partners. Think Company had extensive work in customer experience and an evidence-based approach to problem-solving, so we hired them.

What is the status of this engagement?

We partnered in April 2017, and the work is ongoing. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

They reduced our cycle time for content creation and deployment by more than 60%. We’ve also reduced the need to engage with other partners, which has decreased both the time and cost of our projects. New customer behaviors are aligning with the expectations of our customer experience strategy. Our Google index went from low to industry-leading categories.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their evidence-based approach to solutions is fantastic, and they work hard to understand our end customers’ journeys. They’re willing to challenge or defend certain ideas, even being willing to walk away from work if they don’t think it’s a good fit for them.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No. We have lots of processes and procedures, and they’ve adjusted well to that.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

You need to be willing and able to accept their recommendations; they may suggest things that you didn’t think needed to be changed.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the VP of tech and product development for a company that provides an interactive mapping application. People use the product to put geographic data on top of an interactive map to get area information such as the census tract, zip code, or county. Users typically analyze neighborhood and geographic trends to inform policy-making decisions.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Think Company?

We initially needed a partner to redesign our website’s interface.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

For their first project, Think Company upgraded the underlying technology of our mapping platform to improve the interface, refresh the layout and, make it mobile friendly. The redesign was recently finished and is currently being implemented.

From there, we had them develop pattern libraries or build kits, which are CSS and HTML libraries that support the interface component that they designed. They also helped us migrate onto a new software workflow tool and identify best practices for how to populate it. They’re currently in more of a consulting role.

What is the team composition?

We’ve worked with a project manager the whole time, but the core team changes depending on the task. In the first phase, we had two designers, but now we have a tech lead and developer. There's been a minimum of three people in each phase.

How did you come to work with Think Company?

A former employee recommended them. They’re actually in the same building as us, so they pitched their idea, and we thought they were a good fit. They were on the higher end of our budget, but we felt the price was justified given the level of professionalism and expertise we received.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent between $200,000–$900,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We’ve been working together since February 2018.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The first phase was a fairly ambitious project, but they finished it within four months and under budget. Their pattern libraries provide tremendous value, saving us time and tedious amounts of work. In their new consulting role, they help us make quick decisions that expedite almost any tech decision we have to make.

How did Think Company perform from a project management standpoint?

We meet weekly with the project manager, and she sends out regular status and budget updates. When we have additional requests outside of the regular work week, she accommodates to needs. We communicate through various tools, including email, Jira, Slack, and Basecamp.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We understand our user base fairly well, so Think Company was willing to skip the research phase and jump right into development and design. They accommodated our unique circumstance and business model, which we appreciated. The entire team is smart and willing to customize their service to best meet our wishes. Also, the designers were extremely talented and produced high-quality work.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, we've been happy.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

Be honest with them and provide detailed information on your goals, weaknesses, and expectations. They won’t judge you, and it’ll result in a stronger partnership. Be as thorough as possible, and they’ll do great work.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the head of product management at Proactis. We provide B2B software as a SaaS for purchasing organizations to buy items for their company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Think Company?

My former organization hired Think Company before being acquired by Proactis. Initially, we engaged with Think Company to get quotes for modernizing our e-commerce application’s look and feel. We wanted to improve customer satisfaction, enhance usability, and acquire new clients more easily.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

The engagement was end-to-end in scope. Our team presented the app’s core areas and our objectives for them; we recorded the demonstration for their reference. Initially, Think Company researched and identified personas of the users, buyers, and app administrators. We gave them customer contacts to set up meetings with current and potential clients. Think Company then evaluated how those stakeholders use the apps and fit into the determined personas.

The team recorded their observations on a daily basis and used the information to design wireframes. Next, Think Company asked the same customers to click through those interactive wireframes and provide UX feedback or possible changes. Concurrently, they had a separate art design team do the skinning, which included new colors, animations, and shapes.

They staggered those deliverables through our internal approval and A/B testing processes. As the final deliverable, Think Company provided a complete build kit of all the screens marked up into the new UI. They also presented sample HTML, code, and stylesheets.

What is the team composition?

I worked with a project manager and the VP of client engagement, who served as the salesperson for my account.

How did you come to work with Think Company?

I knew the VP of client engagement from another company. We were connected on LinkedIn after the first partnership and I asked if he wanted to be involved in an RFP for a new UI. After evaluating several providers, they were selected.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent approximately $250,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked with them from June-November 2016.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We don’t have metrics yet because the new interface product launch is still underway. In addition, our sales are complex and take up to 10 months. Consequently, we won’t know this project’s impact for another year.

How did Think Company perform from a project management standpoint?

They had a main project manager and individual leads for each area, such as design. The leads were in-step with each other, which made the partnership easy for us. The team always asked permission before executing each change. We use Basecamp for document sharing between their development team and our steering team. Although we used messaging and email, we logged those interactions in Basecamp.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their well-defined process kept us informed and deliverables on schedule. In addition, they had a wide range of expertise and resources to leverage—usability experts, project managers, frontend developers, and psychologists. Pooling that talent provided comprehensive organizational support for the product’s various components.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Nothing from a product standpoint, but they needed to document design justification more thoroughly. Given the project’s nature, I had to move certain design aspects forward without a record for how those components fit with other project decisions, user conversations, and best practices. However, I also could have also taken better notes.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We are a transactional printing company that also electronically renders printed documents, mostly for the community banking industry. I am the product manager for the electronic rendering tool specifically, rendering printed statements into electronic statements. I manage product pricing, the whole product lifecycle, our development and scrum teams, and the design elements and feature releases.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Think Company?

We launched a product in 2010 and hadn’t done any major upgrades to it for 5 or 6 years. We wanted to modernize the product to make it more usable and upgrade the platform for better scalability, as we now have a lot more customers than we did in 2010. We also needed a couple of new features to be designed and implemented in a new tool. 

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

The entire lifecycle of a project includes the planning, high-level design, detail of the design, development, implementation, and rollout. Think Company was really involved in the high-level design. They took the legacy application, did their analysis, and came up with personas, which was a deliverable for which we were designing the tool. They completed all the research and created a high-level design of what the new application was going to look like. This included new information architecture, some of the new visual design elements, 10 unique screens, and all the different interactions of those screens. It was a collaborative effort for long stretches of time. We collaborated, they got feedback from us, and then they’d go back to the drawing board.

For deliverables, they sent the personas, the requirements for the personas, the actual interaction design, the visual design, and the story requirements for the interaction design. They were not involved in the implementation of the design at all. This solution is a white-label product, and around 80 customers use it. It is the same core product that visually looks different for each customer.

What is the team dynamic?

We worked with 5 members of their team, including a project manager, relationship manager, lead designer, and junior designer, and visual designer. Throughout the project, it was clear who was working on which aspect and responsible for each deliverable.

How did you come to work with Think Company?

My superior had an indirect relationship with Think Company via his spouse and already had some familiarity with the type of work they do. After personally researching them online, I reached out to them, and the onboarding process was pretty easy from there.

I did research other firms at the time, and I chose Think Company mostly because of their vicinity, as I knew we would be able to get people on-site, and their cost was reasonable compared to their primary competitors.

How much have you invested in them?

We spent around $200,000 with Think Company.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in December 2016, and the final deliverables came at the end of April 2017. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We haven’t gone live with the product at this point, as we are still in the development phase, so it is hard to quantify. However, we did put a PowerPoint together of some of the visual design elements and features they provided based on the research that we did. This pretty much closed the deal with our customer. The deal was a significant amount of money—multiple times what we paid Think Company—and we have already recouped the investment cost. The images they provided and the research they completed ultimately helped us win that sale.

We’ve definitely noticed benefits. Their work helped people realize that we are trying to modernize our platforms and are transforming our business by using outside help.

How did Think Company perform from a project management standpoint?

Think Company did some things really well, and other things they could improve. Overall, they created a sense of transparency through weekly status updates, and they escalated anything that needed to be. But, the deliverables were not properly defined at the onset of the engagement, which created some scoping and budget issues as the project progressed.

From a project management perspective, the deliverables could have been better outlined, as we had to expend extra effort to get requirements from them. That created a gap since they didn’t think they needed to give us the requirements, which was slightly alarming. However, what they gave us was good, but I had no traceability to the research.

There was a lack of visibility in terms of my feedback and how that feedback was integrated into the final deliverables. They shared the wireframes via InVision; however, there was no tracking of the comments I made in InVision. After 5 iterations, I couldn’t tell which comments were cleared, ignored, or integrated into the new design. I wanted to have full tracking.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The main differentiator for Think Company was their build kit. They do a good job as a design firm, but they also have the right IT resources to deliver a great technical solution. Their depth of design expertise and heavy IT component make them stand out. They have a ton of designers on the team who gave excellent feedback on tough design questions.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I would have liked to see the engagement accelerate more quickly. 

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

We are a human capital management cloud software company, which has specialized in payments for more than 60 years.

What is your position?

I am the vice president of product development for our analytics and reporting solution.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with Think Company?

Because of the nature of our activity, we have quite a bit of data. We've built client-facing analytics solutions through Think Company's information. Analytics can be a complicated topic, and our user base is not comprised of data analysts. A big part of our mission was to transform something that is traditionally complicated into a consumable solution for everyday people.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement in detail.

When we started this project four years ago, we needed to make our platform extremely user-friendly. Think Company was with us from the very beginning, focusing on not just how the application should work, but also on making data visualization easy to consume. We wanted to focus on various use cases in order to tell a coherent story.

Their team has played a major role in helping us visualize what we're trying to provide to our clients. We have "think sessions" in which executives and subject matter experts sit down in their offices and work on facilitating our ideation of what is important, what we should show, and how it can be explained. As part of those think sessions, a few weeks later, many our thoughts and ideas start to show up in prototypes and designs. We find this to be amazing. The first sessions can be a bit vague, but by the second one, we start to see some things. This is one of the main reasons we like working with Think Company.

Their scope involves design, helping us ideate, and presenting our vision in a concrete way. They've also been involved in strategic client conversations for feature implementations, which were specifically requested by our partners. Think Company have been invaluable in those conversations. They are the ones who actually ask the questions and make an effort to understand how clients' businesses are run.

Prototyping has been another big part of Think Company's involvement. It's important for us to envision every decision for the future completely. They've not only helped us design the prototypes, but also helped us script and walk through the story of the data, such as what the situation would look like if a client had an issue with their turnover. They've helped us craft the stories around our product. Along with the accompanying visuals, this helped us think about what they should be.

How did you come to work with Think Company?

We have a design team in-house, but not to the extent needed on our work. We needed additional help, and Think Company was referred to us by a partner. We had a number of interviews with different companies in order to get a feel for their understanding of data.

We started with a small, short-term project that they handled well. They brought up the concept of the think session to us, which we didn't understand at first, but we grew to appreciate the different options brought to us because of those talks. We always asked for three design possibilities based on current trends in the market, which they delivered. Everything that Think Company comes up with is backed by research and science into the reasons for which color or menu options are what they are.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our interview process started in July 2011. We've been working with them for five years.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What distinguishes Think Company from other providers?

I have nothing but positive feedback regarding Think Company. I appreciate Think Company even more because we can be a tough client. We run a critical project and have never had a problem in sharing this with them. They've been extremely resilient, responsible, and flexible. I'm sure that many other firms work in the same way, but Think Company has been put on the ropes many times, and they've always come through. They take our feedback very seriously and have always felt more like a partner than a vendor.

Is there anything Think Company could have improved or done differently?

We've had ups and downs, but we've shared them with Think Company, and they've always been able to adjust. We've never had a real problem with them. If there weren't enough people working on something, or we thought they could be moving faster, they addressed it.

However, I would like for Think Company to get deeper developers. Their offer design and development for prototypes but, sometimes, I wish I was able to take their code and drop it directly into a production environment. I can't expect them to hire a more extensive development team, given that our requirements are changing constantly. But, if they could provide a complete solution from start to finish, it would be fantastic for me.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

We’re a mid-sized, privately owned financial company and I am the Vice President of the digital department.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with Think Company?

We needed a top-caliber agency that could work at a very high level of perfection. Our biggest requirement, besides having deep experience, was for an agency that could handle complex projects that could drown anyone else. The agency would need to take a massive amount of information, move it quickly, distill it into patterns, and present it in layman’s terms, very much like a journalist’s or forensic accountant’s process. Also, we needed a firm with a culture that matched ours: no big egos and service-oriented; a small town feel with a big city mind. A combination of all these characteristics is difficult to find. Think Company offered us elite service, but without the usual superior attitude that comes with that. They’re wonderful people.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of your work with Think Company in greater detail.

Think Company helped us build our digital presence from the ground up. We had a three-year strategy for this process. Our company has made a lot of acquisitions over the last several years, including complex banking and financial sites that came with technologies that were ten years old. Their team needed to rebuild this infrastructure without stopping the train, so to speak.

Think Company's main job was fixing all of our existing sites. We receive over one hundred thousand calls each month to our call center because our websites are terrible. People can’t do what they need to do on those sites, so they call us. We needed to stop that bleeding.

Our company has had terrible experiences with digital projects. We spent a lot of money with nothing to show for it, and our morale was very low. We needed experts to swoop in and fix our problems fast, which is exactly what Think Company has done. They were tasked with fixing horrible sites and winning the hearts and minds of our organization.

How did you come to work with Think Company?

We’ve known some of their key members since the mid-2000s. I first tried to work with them within another company, but there was a conflict that prevented this.

Could you provide a sense of the size of this initiative in financial terms?

Our budget is significant, but the exact number is confidential.

What is the status of this engagement?

I’ve known some of their team members since 2006. We started talking about the current project in December of 2015. The work began in January, 2016.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics, metrics or other feedback from this engagement?

Think Company's work has exceeded expectations. They’ve earned our trust, and the work they have delivered is unbelievable. Their designs are beautiful and accurate. People within our company have realized the full possibilities of our online presence as a result. Our team has been energized and empowered through the collaboration. I knew that Think Company could achieve this, which is exactly why I hired them.

We have a company division in another state that called us to borrow the team at Think Company from us. This is a business unit that competes heavily with us and which would never ask us for a drink of water otherwise. 

What distinguishes Think Company from other providers?

They’re a highly professional company.

Is there anything Think Company could have improved or done differently?

They’re far above other agencies. The systems they have in place identify any mistakes early, and those mistakes are never repeated. Think Company is a tight-running machine.

The only negative aspect I can think of is that they don’t always connect with each other. They don’t always debrief meetings, so I can end up talking to two of their team members for an hour about a topic, and a third one will join in, only to ask the questions we already covered. This doesn’t happen often and is more indicative of how open our relationship is.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

We are a scientific division of a pharmaceutical company. We offer information to healthcare professionals about our products, beyond FDA-approved labels.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with Think Company?

For close to seven years, we've been working within the digital realm. This is where Think Company's services have come into play.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement in greater detail.

They've helped us understand our regulations and worked on a design for an exchange platform that helps professionals connect to self-service channels and gain access to specific content.

They don't act simply as graphic designers or developers. Think Company has a set of people that can come in and quickly understand our business mission, and ask questions about our surroundings. For us, this level of understanding within both the commercial and scientific portions of our business is essential. The content that we deliver to our customers is quite extensive, and we've had to figure out how we were going to serve and format it.

How did you come to work with Think Company?

We've had an existing relationship with them. I've known their partner, Brian McIntire, since Think Company was founded. I had knowledge of the type of work they do, their creativity, hard work, and diverse skillset.

Since we knew their company, we didn't go through a bidding process. We knew they were the right team for us.

Could you provide a sense of the size of this initiative in financial terms?

Over the years, as we finished most our design work and launched the product, the annual cost averaged $350,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Think Company just as their company was founded, on a very similar project to this one, around 2007. Overall, their work with us has been continuous. I refer to them as "our agency".

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

The overall experience with Think Company has been awesome. Their team is very open-minded, energetic, and they carry around a sense of urgency. There's nothing that we can bring to them which they won't understand. Think Company is savvy across multiple industries, and they can take what they do within other businesses, and morph and shape that knowledge and apply it to the constraints of ours.

My favorite aspect about their work is that they think outside the box and can shape the ideas that we give them into action. From a graphics and user experience perspective, they're also excellent compared to other work I've seen in the marketplace. We have a lot of people within our company and elsewhere that has told us how modern, savvy, and professional our website is, compared to the competition.

What distinguishes Think Company from other providers?

They are exceptional, and we've always drawn on their talent when we needed to get something moving.

Is there anything Think Company could have improved or done differently?

We need help in order to take the assets we've built beyond their current place. We need to be able to predict where the technology will be heading two years down the road, and how things will look. This is not an easy task for anyone, so I'm not mentioning it as a negative on Think Company's part. Whatever Think Company can do in order to stay ahead, will be helpful to us.