Vardot

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

 I am the GFP for IM of a construction company 

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Vardot has been assisting us to re-develop and upgrade our website

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

• Restructure the website organization
• Improve the site navigation and user friendliness
• Plan for migration

SOLUTION

How did you find Vardot?

Referral

Why did you select Vardot over others?

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

How many teammates from Vardot were assigned to this project?

6-10 Employees

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

The project is a complex, interconnected set of deliverables aimed at improving the overall usability of our website.  This includes:

• investigating our user requirements, documenting it, and planning for revisions
• Restructuring our data infrastructure and site organization
• User testing and revising the site navigation and administration
• revising the site content types and their attributes

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

• Well developed user requirements
• Wireframes and outlines of different website components
• Facilitated development meetings
• functional prototypes of website functions

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

The team is exceptionally organized and provided very timely products, responded quickly to requests, and gave frank, expert advice and guidance about very complicated askpects of the project.  They are tremendous both as a coherent team but also as individuals.  A fantastic experience for me as a client.

What was your primary form of communication with Vardot?

Virtual Meeting

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

The responsiveness and dedication of the core design and development team are very impressive.  They brought with them a background to our buidness needs from previous projects and were able to predict many of our user requirements (and challenges) which streamlined our working strategy.  They also delivered an attractive and functional product - all due to a tremendous working relationship with our team.

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

I can't think of anything

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Information Management Officer of UNHCR - Global Shelter Cluster

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

• User research for an existing website
• Options for solutions and website roadmap
• Develop requirements list

SOLUTION

How did you find Vardot?

Referral

Why did you select Vardot over others?

• High ratings
• Pricing fit our budget
• Referred to me

How many teammates from Vardot were assigned to this project?

6-10 Employees

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

A full discovery and envision activities specific to the current sheltercluster.org site. Vardot has actively engaged with the necessary teams within UNHCR to gather requirements and present a summary of all findings.

Overall, the projected had two phases

1. Discovery phase: with online workshops, user interviews, user surveys, identifying user personas and conducting a market analysis and benchmarking.
2. Envision phase: with site map development, information architercture and navigation design & testing, task analysis, user flows, content types and taxonomy strategy, and content migration plan.

Throughout the Discovery and Envision phases, there were a series of deliverables and items reviewed. The project was concluded in one summary presentation: Discovery Summary & Strategic Recommendations: Presentation Summary of all discovery and envision activities done so far and outcome of them

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

1. Satisfaction survey for our team
2. Deliverables on time
3. deliverables usability for future developments
4. Post-project committment from Vardot

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

Vardot team has actively engaged with us throughout the project. All project milestones were met. Whenever they anticipated any delay to more work on any of the deliverables we were notified ahead of time with adjusted work plan that we agree on. They were flexible and maintained an open mind in going through all the complex aspects of our website and complex work structure. Post-porject support and engagement were efficient. Overall, Vardot was highly appreciated by the wider team we work in.

What was your primary form of communication with Vardot?

Virtual Meeting

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

• Committment
• Diverse team with multiple and yet compatible expertise.
• Professional deliverables

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

NA

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I'm a protection research and information officer for an international organization. In my role, I'm working on our global law and policy database.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Vardot?

We had to revamp our website, whose database had more than 200,000 documents. Thus, we needed to work together with a company capable of doing the migration from the current CMS to the new CMS while taking into consideration the further development of the database.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Vardot has helped us revamp our department's website, and they've also worked on our other corporate websites. Initially, we had two consulting phases, during which we provided them with a lot of information about what we wanted and how. They also told us about the team that would be involved.

After that, the first step of the actual project was to deliver the designs. We worked with an external consultant on creating the first designs. Based on those, we continued working with Vardot on refining those designs, listing down the functional and non-functional requirements, and establishing the project schedule.

Now that we've launched the website, we're looking into further developing the additional parts we haven't been able to implement yet. We'll also have another collaboration with Vardot until the end of 2024 to ensure that we can implement the additional features we would like to see on our site.

What is the team composition?

Vardot's team has varied throughout the project, as it depends on the work needed to be done at every stage. We've worked with a project manager and a technical team, including UI/UX designers, developers, a QA analyst, and other teammates who have worked on creating additional designs. On average, we've been working with 4–5 colleagues from Vardot.

How did you come to work with Vardot?

One of our other departments was already working with Vardot on another website when this project arose, so we were able to leverage their agreement and started working together. Usually, we do extensive assessments of our service providers, as we have a procurement process in place. The fact that we were already working with Vardot for another project meant that they had been selected based on their qualifications.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working in January 2021 on the initial consultations. Currently, we're finishing our latest statement of work. We just launched our website in February 2024, so we're wrapping up our latest contract with Vardot.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We recently launched our new platform, and we're very satisfied. As mentioned, we're publishing policy and legal documents from our organization and from external publishers. Thus, when we migrted from the previous platform to the new one, we archived around 100,000 documents.

Now that we've launched the new website, we still have more or less a similar number of users coming to it, which is very good to see because, even though we cut around 30% of our content, people have kept the same level of interest in our site. This is a very good achievement because we expected a drop in our traffic because we have much less content.

We've also received great feedback from senior management, who are very pleased with the new website. They've been very pleased to see that our website has become much more accessible and presents much more clearly our policies and legal guidance.

How did Vardot perform from a project management standpoint?

Vardot has performed very well. Mostly, the delays have been on our side because we have a small team, so we've done a lot of follow-ups internally, and it has taken a long time to get feedback from everyone involved. Vardot has respected all the deadlines. Still, ours has been an iterative process, so we've revised the deadlines if necessary based on our internal capacity to complete the task. This approach has worked very well.

Are there any employees from the service provider's team that you would like to give a shout-out to in this review?

I would like to give a shout-out to Israa (Accounts Director). She has acted as the engagement manager and has been engaged in the project from the beginning. She has done a really fantastic job overall, and she's very clear, helpful, considerate, and fantastic to work with.

Israa is always trying to take into account all our requirements, looking for solutions for challenges by breaking them down into small pieces to ensure the solution accommodates our requirements. On top of that, she's very communicative as well.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I've been very impressed with Israa's work. She has managed the project very well, is very clean in her communication, and is very efficient at meeting deadlines and estimating project costs. She's also very flexible with us whenever we've had to refine our requirements. Overall, we've had a great experience working together.

Are there any areas they could improve?

It would be great if we had more information on the steps taken. Vardot is very active, which is very positive. However, it would be useful to discuss some of the requirements before they actually start to work. For us, having a prior discussion works a lot better so that we can have a look at how the project would be played out in the end, allowing us to provide advice in advance. Adding an extra step in the process would be useful to optimize our time available.

Currently, we provide Vardot with the requirements on a very high level, and they work based on those. Then, they deliver the work, we have a look at it, and give them our feedback. Based on that feedback, they refine their work. Although that approach works perfectly fine, that extra step to discuss the final requirements before the actual development work would be helpful.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

As a client, it's very important to properly list your requirements. Still, it's also important to take into account that this is an iterative process. For example, you might have an idea in your mind and some designs, but there might exist some limitations with the designs or the development. You might realize that something should have been done a bit differently to ensure users can get benefit from your project.

Therefore, you need to have a bit of space to ensure that you can implement final changes if needed. This is something I've really liked about Vardot; they've definitely left room for further discussions throughout the process, which has been very useful for us.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Communication, Media & PR Manager of ISG

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

We are a district of five international schools offering the American and British curriculum.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

• Create a new website for ISG
• Consolidate all 6 previous websites in one website
• Develop an online application for teachers and staff applying to ISG

SOLUTION

How did you find Vardot?

Online Search

Why did you select Vardot over others?

• High ratings
• Pricing fit our budget
• Great culture fit
• Good value for cost

How many teammates from Vardot were assigned to this project?

6-10 Employees

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

Vardot developed our new district website that now houses all our five schools in one website. We used to have six websites to manage, and now we only have one. The website also has the functionality to accept work application online. They developed a crisp and clean look for us to match our brand.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Milestones in the project were met on time. The Vardot team was patient in understanding the requirements and was committed to making sure we were 100% happy with the deliverables.

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

They delivered milestones on time. They were committed to making sure we were happy with the deliverables. They were patient when listening to understand the requirements at each step. They were flexible to make changes when needed.

What was your primary form of communication with Vardot?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

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

Their commitment to the success of our project, their support on launch day, they were very polite and respectful. They were knowledgeable and could find good solutions to challenges.

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

Sometimes, we felt their experience with developing a smooth final UX could have been better. The final part of the project was developing the online work applicant application for teachers and staff to apply to our school. We asked that it would be developed exactly like the one we had previously. 

This took a lot of time to cover all the details of the application. It was also left to be the final part of the project when maybe it should have been addressed earlier in the project.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the marketing operations manager at Enlyte, a company that specializes in worker compensation. I manage the health of our websites and manage data analytics for the team.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Vardot?

We do not have in-house developers and Vardot has a great team of Drupal developers who can maintain our websites.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Vardot is our web development partner. We have our design team, but we don't have software engineers or developers in-house, therefore we outsource those functions to Vardot. They maintain all five of our websites.

They also worked with us on three new large development projects in 2023. Those projects lasted anywhere from 2–5 months.

Vardot does about 10% of our SEO work, but we mostly work with a different SEO vendor for that.

What is the team composition?

Israa is our project manager and she is great and manages all our projects well.

She handles the project timelines and provides suggestions to solve our problems. She understands our pain points and our business needs and brings them back to her engineers to craft the best solutions for Enlyte.

How much have you invested with them?

Decline to answer

How did you come to work with Vardot?

We read many good reviews about Vardot, had an initial meeting with Vardot and we decided to partner with them because they have a strong Drupal team.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our partnership began in December 2022. They are great people to work with.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We notice that our website crashes less after partnering with Vardot. They are very attentive to our requests. Despite the challenges of working with our limited budget, Vardot does a good job of providing quality service

How did Vardot perform from a project management standpoint?

Vardot is good at meeting deadlines. Israa uses Gantt charts and holds biweekly check-ins during large projects. If there's no big project, we would still have a monthly check-in. They use Jira for bug reporting and Basecamp for larger projects. We also communicate via email.

Are there any employees from the service provider's team that you would like to give a shout-out to in this review?

Israa is really good.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Vardot is flexible and helps us achieve the results we want within our small budgets.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, they do a great job.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

I'd recommend working with Israa.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the Advocacy and Communications Manager at Education Cannot Wait, the United Nations global fund for education in emergencies and protracted crises.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

Our website was created as a campaign and advocacy tool before Education Cannot Wait started its operations a new global fund. This wordpress site was outdated and no longer fit for purpose. We also needed to migrate to a Drupal site to align to our host organization (UNICEF) new web governance guidelines. We did not have an in-house web developer and needed a vendor to take this project forward.

We needed a new website that would be fit for purpose for a billion-dollar multilateral global fund. Our goals were to develop a site that met the needs of our various audiences and constituents combining advocacy, information, transparency and accountability functions, to increase the speed and performance of our site, and to increase the number of users, number of sessions and sessions' length, and to ensure a better integration of the site with our digital channels.

SOLUTION

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

We searched through web developers that had long-term agreements with UNICEF or other UN agencies. The comprehensive procurement process included reviewing technical and financial proposals of 5 vendors that were shortlisted. After completing the various steps of the selection process, we selected this vendor based on the quality of their proposal, the competitive cost estimate, as well as their track record of similar projects working with other UN agencies and non-profits.

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

We had a kick-off meeting to discuss goals and objectives. From there, the team delivered a detailed plan and timeline for the different phases of the project: the inception/discovery phase which included a thorough needs analysis and competitors’ sites analysis; the design phase including delivering mockups of the home page and key landing pages as well as working with us to develop the new site map; the development of the approved design and the uploading/transfer of contents from the old site; the training of our team on using the new site; the launch of the new site including preparing the on-site SEO and server and security; ongoing support and maintenance to maintain the site updates and process support tickets.

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

A project manager was our main point of contact throughout the process. There were also multiple additional staff, including developers and designers working behind the scenes.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

After launching our new site, we saw a 25% increase in traffic and significant increase in the speed and performance of the site. Our key constituents, including some of our top donors, provided very positive feedback on the updated design and the updated functionalities of the site such as the new interactive data dashboards and advanced search functionalities.

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

We had weekly meetings with the project manager and any other relevant staff needed to address specific issues. They were absolutely fantastic at keeping us all on track, adapting to any new requests from our end and resolving any bottlenecks. If there were any delays, they would let us know ahead of time. We used Bootcamp as a tool to coordinate the project which worked very well for our team. They were also available to address any urgent issues through bilateral calls/ad hoc meetings when needed.

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

Vardot demonstrated a rare agility to adapt to our small and nimble team and fast pace 'start-up' working environment. They had a unique capacity to understand our needs and meet new requests as the project evolved. Their expert knowledge in UI/UX, creative team and experience working with UN agencies was instrumental to ensure the success of this project.

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

When we first launch there were some minor bugs with some of the re-direct pages from our old site and some old posts missing. We let them know and they addressed the situation. They also went above and beyond to go through a full comprehensive check of all re-direct links and all existing contents to ensure nothing was missing.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I work for a non-governmental organization responsible for assisting people who have been displaced from their native homes, primarily refugees. I specifically work on a one-off project this organization administers on behalf of the state of California. Within this program, I’m the IT manager, so I’m responsible for delivering the portal interface for those who apply for the benefits of this program.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Vardot?

The program I work for is an emergency program, so everything related to it has been assembled very quickly. Originally, we had created a portal interface to accept applications and educate users, but that platform was very disjointed.

Therefore, our goal was to create a website that served as a one-stop shop, not only for organizations that help refugees but also for refugees themselves. With this project and Vardot’s help, we were hoping to consolidate all of our functional information and create an analytic reporting capability to see who was interacting with our portal in order to understand and address potential gaps.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Vardot has helped us design and develop the portal we needed. We decided to break the project into two different design and implementation phases so that we could achieve an incremental deployment of the site rather than a singular deployment later down the road. They’ve used Drupal 9 as the site’s CMS and hosted it on Platform.sh. The site also has ancillary services that use AWS, SendGrid, and other standard technologies.

Vardot has great experience in Drupal, so they leveraged the modules and templates they had already developed, as well as the standard Drupal library, to create our site. They’ve also made some custom modifications to meet our needs.

This website has informational sections, such as FAQ, instructions on how to apply, and contact information. Still, the core feature of our website is the application functionality. To apply for our program, a user would create an account and complete an application form. The application form is rather lengthy, so users can return to complete it at a different time, thanks to the login feature. This site also supports information tracking, and internal users and administrators can use it to communicate with each other.

What is the team composition?

I’ve interacted with 5–6 individuals from Vardot, including project managers, architects, DevOps engineers, QAs, and designers.

How did you come to work with Vardot?

I started working on this project after Vardot had been selected as a vendor. Although I wasn’t part of the process, the organization launched an RFP and followed the standard evaluation process.

How much have you invested with them?

I can’t disclose the total amount, but it will be under six figures.

What is the status of this engagement?

We signed the contract in March 2022, but the official design and development process started in May 2022, and our engagement is ongoing. Our contract stipulates a year of hosting through Platform.sh, which will end in March 2023, pending potential extension.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We implemented within the website the capability for applicants to provide optional feedback. More than 75% of users have rated their experience with four and five stars, and over 80% have found our site to be helpful for understanding our program.

How did Vardot perform from a project management standpoint?

Vardot’s performance has been overwhelmingly positive, and they’ve been very responsive. Their team is based in Jordan, so we have a time difference. Still, if I send them a message in my afternoon, I’m almost guaranteed to receive a response or get a change done by the time I get to my office the next morning.

Initially, we had planned to manage this project using the waterfall model, but my stakeholders later encouraged me to move the project much faster. Thus, we pivoted to an agile development cycle, breaking the project into various phases. I really appreciated Vardot’s flexibility in changing their standard development process to meet our needs, which saved us financial and time-based burdens.

Vardot uses Jira to manage their development process internally, and we collaborate via Basecamp. We also communicate via email and share documents via Google Drive and MS Office 365.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Communication and project management is what Vardot does best. They’ve been very flexible in adjusting some of their core operating models to meet our needs, and we’ve been able to achieve much more than the contract stipulated.

Are there any areas they could improve?

To my understanding, there are more holidays in Jordan than in the US, so we’ve had a couple of challenges during those periods. Still, it hasn’t been detrimental to our project by any means; it has only made our communication planning a bit more interesting.

In addition to that, it would be great if Vardot focused more on the security aspects of projects to meet modern standard operating procedures that are now considered industry defaults. Moreover, I would like it if they were more flexible on quotes.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Define your success criteria, feature requirements, user stories, and other details before signing the contract. Vardot will pretty much implement what you ask them for, but it will be helpful to have detailed requirements upfront.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the project manager at Ramworld Tech Solution, an IT services and consultancy company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Vardot?

We needed someone to develop our website.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Vardot has developed our website in Drupal from scratch. The site was launched two weeks ago, so they now provide support and maintenance on an ongoing basis. 

What is the team composition?

I’ve worked directly with an account manager and a project manager. Throughout the development process, we also worked with two designers and 3–4 developers.

How did you come to work with Vardot?

A friend recommended them to us, and we chose them because they’re professionals in enterprise Drupal web development.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent over $200,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in November 2021, and our engagement is ongoing. We also plan to work on more projects with them.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Vardot delivered our website successfully, and our collaboration has been great. They’re proactive and constantly provide more services just to keep us satisfied.

How did Vardot perform from a project management standpoint?

Vardot sticks to the project’s scope, but they’re flexible when needed. Additionally, they’re very collaborative and available, and the project manager responds quickly. Although we faced some delays, those were on our side. Still, they understood those delays and kept working. We use Basecamp, Slack, email, phone calls, and Webex to manage the project and communicate.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Vardot has very professional resources. Their team is very committed and timely, and they always know what they’re doing.

Are there any areas they could improve?

It would be great if Vardot were more flexible in their communication. They’re strict in using their own templates, so I’ve had to convert those templates into the ones our end client uses to keep them satisfied. Still, it hasn’t been an important issue.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I recommend working with Vardot; if they’re not qualified to do something, they’ll let you know.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am a Project Leader at the Boston Consulting Group.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

We undertake large digital transformation projects for prominent organizations and government entities throughout the Middle East and the Gulf region. We were looking for a long-term partner to help us with the digital experience part of the transformation, from beginning to finish, taking care of the whole project lifecycle.

SOLUTION

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

We’ve conducted comprehensive research on the best technologies when it comes to enterprise digital experience, websites, and portals. We’ve selected Drupal. And then we conducted comprehensive research on leading Drupal agencies and this is when we knew about Vardot, as it ranks among the top Drupal solutions providers on the Drupal marketplace.

We’ve started the communication with Vardot and they demonstrated a thorough understanding of our needs and possessed the industry and technology knowledge. Not to mention the recommendations and positive feedback we received from their references.

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

The project was a breeze from start to finish. Vardot delivery team follows a very well-structured, yet agile project delivery process. At the beginning of the project, a Project Manager was assigned to the project, who walked us through the project delivery lifecycle and was the focal point of contact. The project has gone into the phases of Discovery Analysis, Design, Development, Training, Content Entry, and Launch.

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

The team assigned for this project from Vardot consisted of a Project Manager, UI/UX Designer, Technical Lead, Developers, Quality Assurance Engineer, and a DevOps Engineer.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Vardot provided neat and organized deliverables from project plans to documentation. They have presented multiple design options and the client has selected one of them. The design phase was collaborative and the outcome was according to best practices and an optimized user journey. The website was done professionally, is fast, and is search engine optimized.

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

Vardot adopts the Scrum project management framework. The project communication was transparent and the channel was wide open using Vardot’s different online tools like Basecamp and InVision. The Vardot team was punctual and detail-oriented. We felt we were working with a true partner rather than a vendor and that they had a stake in the project’s success as much as we did.

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

Their deep knowledge of the best practices in enterprise-level web solutions to different industries, namely the News and Media and the Government sectors. Also the systematic and organized, yet agile approach to managing projects, and the transparency, attention to detail, and commitment to meeting timeline.

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

Nothing to say. Worked with them twice in 2 different projects; and this is by far the most professional & flexible dev company I worked with