Viagio Technologies

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Creative Services Manager of Vanguard Packaging

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

We produce corrugated displays for CPG companies to display their retail items for sale in various store chains.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Viagio Technologies to accomplish?

• Create a display audit app called the "Retail Assessment Tool" which allows us to send out teams of people to audit the condition of the displays and products in the stores.

SOLUTION

How did you find Viagio Technologies?

Referral

Why did you select Viagio Technologies over others?

Close to my geographic location, Great culture fit, Referred to me

What was the size of Viagio Technologies’s team?

6-10 Employees

What was your primary form of communication with Viagio Technologies?

In-Person Meeting, Virtual Meeting, Email or Messaging App

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

We are in our 10th year of working with this amazing team of folks at Viagio Technology Group regarding our display survey app called the Retail Assessment Tool. They are attentive to our needs, responsive to our questions, and very supportive whenever we are gearing up to use our app for auditing the Black Friday sales in November each year.

The app allows for custom questions to be developed about display condition, product condition, store locations via GPS, display lists, and taking photos of the displays being audited. Photo tags are used to help categorize the thousands of photos that are taken during the audit timeframe, which allows us to filter all of the images by categories and quickly find specific pictures of what we are looking for.

And the overall survey data is searchable and filterable in the Admin Portal... and can also be exported to Excel for further data analysis.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

• After the survey period is over, Viagio is always eager to set up follow up meetings to discuss how things went and look for opportunities for improvement.
• Each year that we perform our annual display audits during the Black Friday season, Viagio is always there to help us be successful. They ensure that it's operational during the timeframe that we need it to work.
• It there are glitches or issues, they are very quick and responsive to react and help with resolutions.

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

Throughout the entire process... the Viagio team is very helpful with setting everything up and testing the app against all new iOs updates to ensure flawless execution. Then after the survey period is over, Viagio is always eager to set up follow up meetings to discuss how things went and look for opportunities for improvement.

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

They are responsive to our needs and always looking for ways to improve in the future. And their speed and response time is very impressive.

Are there any areas for improvement or something {provider_name} could have done differently?

None that I can think of at this time.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the senior VP of sales and marketing of a property and casualty insurance company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Viagio Technologies?

We needed to build an application that integrated with our payment processing system and agent portal so our insurers could file claims, make payments, and download their ID cards.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Viagio Technologies has developed our mobile application from scratch for Android and iOS. We started by brainstorming what we wanted and needed. Viagio Technologies took the lead and worked with our claims, accounting, and underwriting departments to ensure their needs were met. Then, they connected with our policy processing partner and got them on board to facilitate the API connections.

We have an in-house marketing team, so we’ve provided Viagio Technologies with some verbiage and graphics for the app. One of the app’s most important features is the ability to download the insurer’s vehicle ID cards at any time. Users can also file claims and take photos of the claim to get the process started as quickly as possible.

Currently, Viagio Technologies provides maintenance services. The next step will be adding a feature that allows users to download their insurance card into their Apple Wallet.

What is the team composition?

One of the owners is heavily involved in the project. Additionally, we’ve worked with a project manager, a senior director of client experience, and at least three developers.

How did you come to work with Viagio Technologies?

They were recommended by our policy processing partner. Also, Viagio Technologies already had an insight into the system we were trying to use.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent around $250,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We began our partnership in January 2020, and it’s still ongoing. The system requires consistent upgrades to the portal, so they make sure we’re up to date.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The app is clean, quick, user-friendly, and comprehensive. We had over 200 downloads in one week after we started the campaign and launched the upgrade. Moreover, we’ve received a positive response; our agents and insurers have found the app beneficial.

We’ve had no bugs or crashes so far. We’ve done significant upgrades to the portal, and Viagio Technologies has been very attentive. They’re forward-thinking, and the team works well with our policy processing partner to ensure the process is seamless for us.

How did Viagio Technologies perform from a project management standpoint?

They’re down-to-earth and easy to work with. Viagio Technologies works with our crazy schedules and understands we have other things happening in our world, so they’re very accommodating. They also keep the ball rolling for us, which is essential.

We usually communicate through Zoom meetings and emails. Additionally, we use Jira and RingCentral internally.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Viagio Technologies puts themselves in the end user’s point of view to make the app run smoothly.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, they’re efficient and timely. Other app development companies don’t respond, but that isn’t the case with Viagio Technologies. We’re very satisfied with them.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

If you’re going to build an app, you should take the time to outline exactly what you want. Once you engage with someone, it might change into something different, so you must have a clear vision. However, you should also be willing to adapt because you never know what you’re getting yourself into when you start the development process.

All in all, you can trust Viagio Technologies; they’ll tell you what’s best for you.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the CTO of an IoT SaaS platform for consumer electronics. We provide Firmware, Cloud Services and Applications for clients bringing IoT based services to their customer base.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Viagio Technologies?

At the beginning of 2022, a large consumer electronics distributor chose our platform to support their device inventory. This new business caused us to quickly accelerate our roadmap with a multi-million dollar investment. We engaged with Viagio early in the project to assist with cloud and mobile app development.

SOLUTION

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

Both being Kansas City area companies, we were familiar with Viagio. After multiple conversations and an overview of their portfolio of work, we were comfortable bringing them into our project in support of several very critical delivery stages.

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

The Viagio team has primarily been responsible for onboarding new user authentication and subscription/billing systems to our platform. As the project advances they will begin tackle other platform functions as well. At the beginning of the project they partnered with us to on-board a Product Analyst, Delivery Manager and Architect to begin requirements definition and story creation. We then on-boarded full teams to work a product backlog against planned Sprints. The project is on-going with another ~6 months of work to complete.

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

We have two full scrum teams that include front end/mobile developers, cloud engineers, quality assurance, business analysts and delivery manager and architect. Roughly 15 total resources.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The project is on-going however the Viagio team has delivered against several key project and Sprint objectives in the areas of new user management and billing system support, helping us meet several internal milestones.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

With the addition of full Scrum teams we went through the normal Forming/Storming process across teams and after a couple of Sprints have hit a solid cadence. The teams works collaboratively with internal teams and leads or participates in all typical ceremonies - daily stand-ups, weekly scrum of scrums, roadmap planning, story review, etc. In addition we hold a weekly executive project call. Throughout the day teams leverage Slack and Zoom for various 1x1 or team calls. Overall, the communication and working relationship has been excellent.

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

They have a portfolio that includes working with both start-ups and large companies, which was helpful to a company at our stage of growth. Additionally, Viagio had prior IoT software experience which gave them advanced insight into the products we offer and challenges in the space.

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

Nothing that immediately comes to mind.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CTO of Opendorse, a sports technology company. We have SaaS products for our partners, which are typically collegiate institutions or professional players associations. We are also a SaaS-enabled marketplace that helps athletes monetize their name, image, and likeness, and we do that all through technology.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Viagio Technologies?

We were working on speed to market and getting products to market. There was a major inflection point last July that caused us to race towards that date, so we decided to hire a company that could help us build our product.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Viaggio has helped us build the first version of a compliance product that we could offer universities to help them ensure that their athletes were staying in compliance. It was a platform where athletes could disclose their deals directly with their compliance department, so the compliance department could verify that they weren't breaking any rules to maintain their eligibility.

We did the kick-off on site, where they brought in software engineers, architects, product managers, and designers. We discussed our goals and objectives to ensure that we understood the scope of the project and what we were trying to solve. A lot of it started with some architectural decisions, and their team sat with us to help us make the right decisions around how to build the product in the right way so that if we needed to break it off from the rest of our platform in the future, we could do that easily. They handled everything from data modeling to figuring out the APIs.

We had our team work with Viagio Technologies to ensure that we had similar technology to what we were currently using so that we could eventually take over the product. We stuck with a lot of the very similar technologies to what we use today at Opendorse, which helped us carry it onboard.

What is the team composition?

We’ve worked with a dedicated product designer, QAs, software engineers, and architects from Viagio Technologies.

How did you come to work with Viagio Technologies?

Viagio Technologies came as a referral from one of our board members. The reason why we decided to go with Viagio Technologies was that we felt that they most understood our business and the quality that we were trying to achieve in market with speed.
 
How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent around $1,000,000–$2,000,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in April 2021, and the engagement is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

There are two main success factors that we looked at. The first is the number of SaaS customers we’ve sold the product to. We deem this as a success mainly because we sold our compliance product quite a bit early on. Our churn rate on those customers has also been very low, which means that they're overall very satisfied with the product. 

We also measure the number of disclosures that are submitted by each university or submitted to each university. Seeing how often they are actually using the product is the determiner of success. We continue to see the number of disclosures go up month over month. 

Overall, we went from not having any code for our compliance product to having a fully capable compliance product in the market over the course of just four months. We deem that as a success from a technology choice's standpoint.

How did Viagio Technologies perform from a project management standpoint?

Viagio Technologies has performed well in terms of project management. We wanted Viagio Technologies to follow as many Opendorse processes as possible, so we utilized one of our scrum masters to do a lot of the ceremonies in Agile format. We relied on the Viagio Technologies team a bit to help with that, but we pulled a lot of that in-house. That said, they provide supplemental project management support, and the overall management of their team was really good.

Any time we ever needed anything, whether it be more people on the team, discussions about performance issues, or a unique technology decision, they've always been very receptive and helpful.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Our business has changed very rapidly, thanks to Viagio Technologies’ support. It's caused us to have to scale up, scale down, scale up again, and move people around. They've been very open to all the adjustments that we've needed to make and also very accommodating as far as getting us the right people at the right time, which I know can be a challenge with a lot of firms like this because they have people committed to projects. 

Viagio seems to have enough people ready and available to help us react when we need them, so we've never really run into an issue where we asked for something, and they couldn't provide us anything in return. They’re always there and capable of helping. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

They had some QA folks come in and help us out with some automation, but it ended up going down some path that we didn't want to go down long-term. We ended up just replacing those with some different types of technology. Probably some wasted effort around quality assurance that we could have saved on or adjusted differently.

It would have been better if their quality leadership team worked with our quality leadership team to make sure that we set the right expectations early on.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Make sure you are clear on the overall goals that you want to achieve and ensure that that's properly communicated to everybody in Viagio Technologies. Definitely take your time in the discovery phase to make sure that things are ultra-clear and that the decisions are definitely validated as you're going forward.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the Chief Administrative Officer for one of the largest mechanical contractors and hvac systems manufacturers in the U.S. Our work brings large, complex facilities to life, including data centers, hospitals, laboratories, airports, stadiums, and more.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

The AEC (Architecture, Engineering, Construction) industry is plagued with the legacy of gaps left in the retail offerings of major software platforms. We partnered with Viagio in order to fill those gaps, working alongside our talented team of developers.

SOLUTION

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

Mike Z. was a reference from Rich M., retired from Burns & McDonnell, who advised that Mike could help us establish app dev governance, process, platform standards, API design as well as our internal team structure.

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

We partnered with Mike in order to fill those gaps in retail technologies, working alongside our talented team of developers. Most notably, we built our manufacturing-product tracking system to manage all of the BIM data coming from the Virtual Construction process, present it to team members building product, and track productivity in order to maximize the value delivered to our customers.

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

We have worked with:

• numerous developers
• client delivery
• engineering leads
• Mike Z. on an ongoing basis

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We continue to grow with Viagio. They are helping us mature as a client-side app dev team, all the way from the developers through our project management and leadership culture.

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

One key to Viagio's successful communication is that they establish personal relationships and aren't afraid to call and talk. In addition, they present very well formatted notes and project documentation.

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

Viagio Technologies has made it a priority to create the best possible match of people to the project requests. And if resources aren't working out, Viagio reacts until a better fit is found.

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

Viagio continues to adapt to our requests and needs. There are no requests for improvement at this time.