Visuality

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Relevant builds web-based software for healthcare organizations. Our flagship product is used by community health centers to gain insight into clinical quality, revenue lifecycle, and resource utilization.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Visuality?

We worked with Visuality to supplement our in-house development team for 2 projects. The first one involved general web development work—new features, improvements, and bug fixes—on our care management application. The second one was a deeper dive to build a specific feature on our analytics app, following the Agile methodologies that Visuality typically works with.

What were your goals for this project?

For the first project, we needed to supplement our in-house development team while we scaled up internally. For the second, we had a chunk of functionality that we thought would be well-suited for an outside agency and hoped to get it built efficiently while focusing our in-house resources elsewhere.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

Visuality was recommended by a friend who had a great experience working with them in upgrading a broken web app to a really impressive minimum viable product.

Describe the project in detail.

For the first project, Visuality assigned several developers to our project who all worked as sole contributors. We asked them to integrate into our team, code norms, and workflows, and they were able to do so reasonably well.

For the second project, we followed Visuality's scheme of work and used their own Agile development and project management methodologies to drive the project.

Visuality also helped with a refresh of our public-facing website. We went through a series of design iterations, providing feedback on mockups as we went.

Explain how the solution addressed your business challenge.

We hit a wall where we needed to be shipping code but couldn't scale our internal development team fast enough. Visuality effectively helped us fill the gap.

What was the team composition?

They assigned a project manager, development resources, and occasional design resources while running their internal quality assurance process before shipping code to us.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What outcomes or results can you share that demonstrate progress and/or success?

Visuality generally met deadlines, delivered a steady output, and was communicative when things needed adjustment. No complaints on this front!

How effective was the project management?

We really liked the project manager they assigned and were impressed with the degree to which he made sense of product requirements, kept the development cards flowing in Jira, and generally applied Agile project management ideas in a sensible and effective way.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Their team is made up of mature grownups that are friendly to deal with. Their developers are quite skilled and really know their stuff.

What tips or recommendations do you have?

You should weigh the costs and benefits of working with an outside agency. Ultimately, we realized it would have been smarter for us to spend more time solving our hiring backlog than expecting any outside agency—even if they're perfect—to take on thorny domain concepts in our codebase and expect the code to make sense in the end. To Visuality's great credit, they ultimately recommended that for certain things we needed to do, in-house hires with a long-term commitment to our company and products made the most sense.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We’re an online grocery company located in Kuwait. I’m a co-founder and my role is business director and operations director. I also work with product development, with the designers on the application. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Visuality?

We do things with a payment gateway. We can’t take credit card orders on the application, so people use debit cards. Once the information has been taken, there are issues when adding or adjusting items on the order. I worked on the backend with Visuality to give them a better idea of what needed to be done to be able to implement the features on the frontend. It requires a good backend team to come up with a good algorithm to make that possible.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

The complex logic was due to working with a mobile app. They use Ruby on Rails for the projects as well as some JSON, HTML, and Bootstrap.

Visuality is strictly the backend team. They worked with another frontend team that helped them. My role as product developer was to find out from the user experience how they can find the projects using the databases. They were able to come up with ways that would make it easier for scalability. Once we built the backend from scratch, they were able to help us to make sure the project was able to keep growing and to ensure there was never going to be any kind of barriers.

What is the team dynamic? 

We started off with four resources and downsized to two people. The developers were consistent.

How did you come to work with Visuality?

Clutch was one of my references where I read about Visuality. I flew out to Poland and met with the team in Warsaw. I stayed there for about a week, got to know them, and saw their capabilities. They showed me a lot their backend work for other clients, which gave me more confidence in working with them.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent $200,000 on the project.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started on the project in July 2016, and the project is complete with enhancements, though we are continuing to work on it.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

RubyCritic tells us the performance of the backend including the speed, what hosting service we’re using, and so on. We paid to have a code review done and the auditor, who has 20 years of experience, gave it a good review. The code was well written.

How did Visuality perform from a project management standpoint?

We have standup meetings every week. They work on an Agile methodology which is something that Thoughtbot is doing. They follow Thoughtbot's playbook which means they make sure they’re aligned to the requirements in the scope of work and they stick to them. I appreciated that a lot.

We communicated with the project manager in Slack and used Skype for phone calls. We also communicated via email if there was an addition to the scope to give confirmation. I had direct communication with the CEO [Michal] and CTO [Sakir]. Whenever things were not aligned, I would contact the higher management and we would resolve things in a professional manner.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their speed was impressive. They would estimate that something would take five days to do but then have it done in three days.

They’re a solid team with a lot of potential for growth. When a company has talented people, they attract other talented people. They have a lot of trust in their clients and that impressed me a lot. That made more comfortable working with them.

Do you have any advice for potential clients?

I would say be transparent, be prepared to establish a budget, and expect the unexpected. You have to plan things and know exactly what you want. Focus on the details.

They operate five days a week, however, some Fridays they take off completely and they do a hackathon. They give the developers internal projects to test so they can compete with each other. As a company with expenses, you want to utilize that Friday to make money, but they love to code.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We’re building an online platform that connects food vendors in Berlin with event organizers. We provide simple booking functionalities and act as a solution for people working together online.

Our target market includes any person/company that can be considered a food vendor (e.g. restaurants, food trucks, freelance chefs, etc.) and an event organizer (e.g. street food festivals, corporate event planners, and any person interested in organizing an event). Our services include creating a profile within the platform, creating an event page and inviting vendors to said event (if you're an organizer), applying to existing events (if you're a vendor), and being able to pay easily and securely through the platform. I'm the co-founder and CEO of the company. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenges were you trying to address with Visuality?

The current way of doing business in street food and catering events is disorganized, inefficient, and obsolete. Unreliability and lack of trust are common issues. We wanted to centralize and organize the market in a single platform in a way that directly solves the challenges faced by vendors and organizers in street food and catering events. Initially, our relevant metrics included registered users/month and customer satisfaction/business improvement. 

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Visuality took care of the MVP development and the branding of our website. They helped us create our MVP from scratch, building the first mockups and actual iteration of the platform. Each user can create a profile, submit different licenses, connect to other users, and send or receive payments through our platform. There is a four- or five-step process for the creation of an event, during which users need to fill in different pieces of information.

There were 4–5 people from Visuality’s team involved in our project, with whom we had direct contact. We met them personally in Poland during a workshop.

How did you come to work with Visuality?

We were considering either hiring different freelancers or using a tech company in Berlin before we got in contact with Visuality. We found them through an intermediary company which recommended the team. That had a lot of weight in our decision.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Visuality in August of 2016. The first iteration was completed in February of 2017. Visuality continues to fix issues which we identified from our side related to the planning functionalities. We were missing some small elements like links to our terms and conditions or the ability for people to skip registration steps, but Visuality reacted immediately, making changes within the same week. The registration issue was making people give up in the middle of the process, but Visuality fixed it quickly. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We are testing the first iteration and gauging customers’ reaction. We have been live for one month and don’t have many users, but the feedback from people has been very positive. I can’t say that the site is working perfectly since there’s not that much interaction. We’re continuing to recruit people; once we have them, we can test whether they’re actually engaging with the site, creating events, and finishing transactions. For now, we haven’t had any issues with the registration process, and we’re in love with Visuality’s design.

How did Visuality perform from a project management standpoint?

We’ve worked with other developers, in comparison to which Visuality’s communication was very good. The project was delayed at times, but we were in constant contact with them through Trello and Slack. We were aware of everything going on, and the whole process was faster than we thought.

What did you find most impressive about Visuality?

They can think outside of the box. They did not only what we told them to but also recommended many ways in which we could improve the user experience and other items while also reducing our cost and timeline. Visuality’s people made themselves a part of our company and made us feel that they were thinking on our behalf. They gave us a lot of good advice during the project.

Are there any areas Visuality could improve?

The only thing I would mention is that, at the launch of the platform, it was left up to us to attract customers and get feedback. The process was not as smooth as we wanted it to be. We could ask questions on Slack, but we still didn’t fully know how to use the accounts created for us.

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

The handover once the project was done could have been smoother and better explained.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We are a sales motivation and coaching company. We help clients create budgets, follow-ups, leads, and achieve better insights in a more visual and engaging way, through our platform.

I am the Chief Executive Officer and a co-founder of the company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Visuality?

We needed to quickly build a minimum viable product from scratch. Our previous software could not be integrated into some clients' systems.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Visuality is building the 2.0 version of our web-based system using Ruby on Rails. We have used around 4 resources from Visuality, 3 of them working full time. We interact with the developers directly.

How did you come to work with Visuality?

We had colleagues that had worked with developers in Poland. We had many meetings with candidates and ended up selecting Visuality.

How much have you invested with Visuality?

This is confidential.

What is the status of this engagement?

We have been working with Visuality for 5 months.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Our platform is being tested by a customer at this moment. Visuality has been able to develop a complex system for us. There are many details that have to be done right, but Visuality has a competent team.

Our system involves many third-party CRM integrations with data systems used by sales organizations. The data can include calls, emails, deals, orders, values, and so on. Our system can engage with multiple platforms at once, across different locations, collecting data from all of them into one place.

How did Visuality perform from a project management standpoint?

Reaching deadlines is not simple when building complicated systems from scratch, but I have been satisfied with Visuality. We picked up some bugs during the process and also made additions to the work, so we've had to extend deadlines.

We used Slack and Trello for project management, at Visuality's recommendation. We also used Sentry for bug tracking.

What did you find most impressive about Visuality?

Visuality listens to the customer and has been a transparent partner. Visuality is also startup-focused and has been able to understand us well.

Are there any areas Visuality could improve?

We would like to build things even faster, but this isn't necessarily related to an improvement on Visuality's side. It will be important for Visuality to provide the same standard in terms of development if we were to scale up their involvement.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

Our business helps freelance instructors promote classes and workshops through an online platform. Customers can publish blog and video content, using it to promote their offerings, which are published on our platform. The end customers can thus have a seamless onboarding process.

What is your position?

I am the founder and chief executive officer of the company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with Visuality?

I had worked with teams in India and New York and had a tough time. I was looking for a unicorn, namely a developer that would be reasonably priced and give me good service. My business was on its last limb at the time, and I needed to give it one last shot. 

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement in detail.

Visuality developed my web solution using Ruby on Rails. Much of the technology had already been built. I needed for Visuality to take on the existing project.

The team assigned by Visuality was comprised of a back-end and front-end developer. Their chief technology officer also chimes in from time to time, and I've also worked closely with Visuality's chief executive officer [Michal Piorkowski]. They also assigned me a dedicated project manager.

How did you come to work with Visuality?

I looked at Eastern Europe because that region generally produces good engineers for our technology stack. I used Clutch to find a number of teams, contacted Visuality, and saw that they'd done many projects that were similar to mine. Visuality had a good portfolio that was relevant to what I was trying to do. I also liked talking to them, so I pulled the trigger and hired Visuality.

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

The total cost of Visuality's services has been around $15,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We have an ongoing relationship with Visuality.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

Visuality has done amazing work that has helped me acquire new customers and gain positive feedback from the community that I'm trying to serve. I couldn't be happier with the results. Visuality is a dream team for me.

Communication has been great and Visuality's work process has been the best out of all the ones I've tried. Visuality assigned a dedicated developer to my project so, for the duration of the project, their resources have been focused on my product full time.

How did Visuality perform from a project management standpoint?

We used Slack and Trello as the main communication tools. We haven't used any bug trackers. I have access to all developers directly, so we can talk about any changes without bureaucracy or jumping through loops.

What distinguishes Visuality from other providers?

Their designs have been excellent and Visuality's CEO is also the chief UX [user experience] designer, which is an amazing quality. Even if there are great developers on a team, understanding the main objectives of a business is paramount for being effective in creating designs and providing good development. Visuality's CEO has been able to understand our problems from a user perspective. I've worked with great designers in the past and had a horrible time in trying to get the work done. We had multiple iterations with Visuality and it wasn't my expectation to have perfect work from the start, but our dialogue produced the right results. Now that customers are using the software, we're getting even more refined about how to develop it. Visuality listened carefully, and it's been great to work with them.

Is there anything Visuality could have improved or done differently?

No. I've been happy with Visuality. It would have been better if they worked directly out of my office, but this isn't really a criticism. I like the time difference, in some sense, because I can find completed work in the morning, and I will have time to digest and test it. After I've made my comments, I can find the changes made the next day.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company.

Endorsevent a micro sponsorship platform. We connect event organizers and brands with sponsorship opportunities.

What is your position?

I'm the founder.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with Visuality?

I did not have a Web presence at all, so I was actually looking for a development and design shop to take on the entire first launch of my company site, Endorsevent. I was looking for more than a technical and creative shop, though. I wanted a company that could really partner with me and guide me through best practices and offer strategic advice when they saw it relevant and valuable. 

SOLUTION

Could you describe the scope of their involvement in detail?

They managed the project and worked on the design and development of both the visual and functional sides of the site. I already had the wireframes and template designs; I just needed someone to implement them. There were some tweaks that the Visuality team also made for me, and they had to create some tables that were missing. They gave me one project manager, one front-end designer, and two experienced Ruby developers.

How did you come to work with Visuality?

I wanted a team that was responsive. They had to be qualified in Ruby development because I was pretty set on developing in Ruby. Ruby is popular for startups, and it's also a pretty flexible technology. That's why I knew I wanted to go with Ruby. I also needed to get Ruby developers at a reasonable price, which is hard most of the time, but Visuality gave me a very competitive estimate.

I wanted a team that had a strong project management expertise, too. I was so busy with other tasks and obligations that I needed someone else to be able to support the project.

I also wanted a team that was a flexible. I didn't want to provide a scope of work for them and for them to follow it word for word. I wanted them to have questions and offer us good advice for how to do things differently and optimize solutions that I hadn't thought through properly.

I'm from the D.C. area and I am familiar with Clutch, and I actually found them through Clutch. When I went on the site, I picked three or four different companies that I ultimately reached out to, and it just so happened that Visuality was by far the best of them.

Can you give a sense of the size of the initiative in financial terms?

It is probably around $35,000.

What is the status of this project?

Our project concluded maybe a month ago, but we're still in touch frequently about a couple of upcoming projects that I'm looking to work on. I want to add a little bit of a social media element to the site, which I'll probably use them for.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

From a project management perspective, I've had a really good experience with their team. I can't think of anything that's come up that would be an issue. On one of our first calls, we talked about tools, I'm a huge fan of JIRA, so we've actually been using it with all of our projects.

We get a few hundred visitors a day on our platform now, and we have a little less than 75 signups so far. That's pretty good in one month. We're pretty excited about those results.

Is there anything that you would consider unique about their practice?

Throughout the entire process, Visuality gave me ideas for things that could improve my site. That's one thing that really stood out about Visuality, and that's actually why I chose them. They were their own development and design team, but they also really felt like they were part of my company.

In retrospect, are there areas in which you think they could improve as a service provider?

We're a small company, and I would have liked ongoing support for my solution. It would have been awesome if they offered that. I already have some third-party options lined up to fill that gap, but if they had that, it would have been an extra perk. I understand that it's not part of their services, but it would definitely have made things more convenient for me.

What advice, if any, would you give a future client of theirs?

I can't think of anything that I would mention, other than as a client, you still want to be a little bit involved yourself. I would definitely recommend using a tool like JIRA if they're comfortable with it. Project management tools like that give so much more project transparency, and it also allows you to be active in what's going on.

BACKGROUND

Could you briefly describe your organization?

I work for a travel agency in Europe. We organize winter skiing and snowboarding events. We have around 10 full-time employees, and during events we hire additional support staff.

What is your position?

I’m the project manager.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

Could you describe the business challenge that you were attempting to address when you first approached Visuality?

They are the main technical resource for our reservation system. They created our reservation system at the beginning, and they’re still developing it further. We’ve been working with them for about five years, and they’re really important to our business operations. All of the reservations in our company are made online, through the system they custom built for us. At the very beginning we knew we needed to have a functional reservation system on our website, which could collect the appropriate data and process transactions. We came up with all of the requirements based on our manual process, and they built the platform and interface for us. Now they maintain the system as we grow, so they add features and fix bugs that arise from other customizations.

SOLUTION

Could toy describe the scope of their involvement in greater detail?

The original system five years ago was based on PHP, with very little customization. Then about two years later, we decided that Ruby on Rails would be better technology for us. So the second version of the system was converted to Ruby on Rails. They were responsible for creating the content system, developing our functionalities and deploying our interfaces, the back-end and front-end of the system. They recently completed an update to the system, with new modules and new functionalities.

How did you select Visuality as your partner for this endeavor?

We work in the same industries so we’ve been familiar with their services. When our needs arose they were a natural first choice among the original batch of candidates.

Could you provide a general cost estimate for this particular project?

We’ve spent around $50,000 over the past five years.

When was the most recent project completed?

The most recent project was completed in October 2014.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

In terms of results, could you share any statistics, metrics or user feedback that would demonstrate the quality of their performance?

It’s hard to give you exact numbers. In our area, we have the best reservation system in Poland for snowboarding in the Alps. This system is really our competitive advantage; it lets us know that we are looking professional for our customers in this market. We have more options in our system than our competitors do. It’s hard to give exact numbers, but we are growing 20% every year, and one of the reasons for that is because it’s professional. It’s easy to use and we provide a superior overall experience to our customers. It gives our customers the ability to customize the offer to their needs. Visuality cares about the quality of their end product, and it shows.

When working with Visuality, is there anything that you’d consider special about their strategic approach or development process that distinguish them from other vendors?

If we tell them we need something, they can review our specs and propose the best solution. I really like working with Visuality because they propose a lot of solutions that we don’t see in the process of developing. There were times when they would find simpler solutions to what we wanted, and sometimes they propose to do something more. It makes our system better and helps us reduce costs. They’re not just doing the work that we give them; they go above and beyond.  

In retrospect, are there areas in which you think they could improve as a service provider?

Hard to say; I really like the workflow with them and the communication with their team. Sometimes I think I would advise them to hire more people. Sometimes they said they couldn’t do something on time because they didn’t have the people. I think they shouldn’t be afraid of hiring more people and growing the company. But they are always upfront, and they tell me when a deadline is impossible. While they can’t always make our deadlines, at least they’re honest about their capabilities. Better to admit it upfront than accept the work and then not be able to deliver.

BACKGROUND

Could you briefly describe your organization?

The company I work for is one of the leading real estate developers in Poland. We’re listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange. We run two kinds of businesses. Our first business is residential real estate development. We develop houses or flats, mainly in Warsaw. We sell around 1,000 flats per year. Then, in our second business, we’re a general importer of Jaguar and Land Rover makes of cars. We run three different dealerships for those offerings. We also import Aston Martin vehicles to Poland.

What is your position?

I’m the chief of IT [information technology] and financial controlling.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

Could you describe the business challenges that you were attempting to address when you first approached Visuality?

I was looking for a company to design and develop our new website for our real estate business. We’re going through a restructuring process, and one of the areas we were focusing on was our online marketing. We wanted a very modern kind of website focused on ecommerce and efficiency, plus in line with all of the latest Web trends. We didn’t have the internal capabilities to build it ourselves, so we knew we needed to locate a partner to do it for us.

SOLUTION

Could you describe the scope of their involvement in greater detail?

It was end-to-end development and design. I did have some experience in user-centered design, user experience design, and usability. I was looking for a company that was more technically skilled, but also have this kind of end-to-end approach, where they’re able to run the design process from the very beginning, and then efficiently deliver it. I first came across Visuality as a company that combined those two characteristics. They were skilled with all of the relevant technologies, and the portfolio of the websites they designed really demonstrated that. Second of all, they were skilled at design, and they were familiar with the user-centered design techniques.

We started from the very beginning, so from describing the use cases, describing personas that visited the website, and then making wireframes for the future website, and later delivering prototypes. I don’t remember the tool, but they did prototypes, and later they performed the Ruby on Rails development of the website. They actually convinced us to go with Ruby based on our needs. The technology, for me, was important, but I wasn’t deliberately looking for a Ruby on Rails company. I was just looking for a qualified company that could build a modern, complex website with great usability. They convinced us that Ruby was one of the best ways to deliver a flexible and dynamic site rapidly.

How did you select Visuality as your partner?

They were referred to me by a colleague who’d used their services before for their own website.

Could you provide a general cost estimate for this project?

It would be up being around $30,000.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

In terms of results, could you share any statistics, metrics, or user feedback that would demonstrate the quality of their performance?

The site was launched in September of last year, and the relationship has ended since then. We did have support from them for some time, and it was very good. They were responsive and very fast in making changes. We didn’t experience any glaring issues. They’ve kind of switched to projects where they require the clients to buy chunks of their time, in terms of sprints, and we don’t have that many changes to schedule a whole sprint of development. Instead, we mostly have sporadic ad hoc requests for very simple things, so very basic, quick changes. Instead of relying on their support, they recommended one of their partners, and we’ve been using that new company for our case-by-case pieces of work. I’m very happy with this. If I need to get some information from Visuality, I can always call them, and they’re very keen on providing information and helping out.

We don’t keep track of the statistics on the website but, generally, I can tell you that I know what a good metric was at the beginning. The bounce rate was down at least 50 percent when we launched the website, and it was consistently down for two or three months while we were still monitoring it.

I was very satisfied with their strategic approach, the way they delegated the work, staying on time with assignments, and things of that nature. Like with any project, I had to push, they had to squeeze in a bit more requests from me but, in the end, they’ve always been able to deliver.

When working with Visuality, is there anything you’d consider unique about their strategic approach or development methodology that distinguish them from other vendors?

They have a great combination of technical skills with strong knowledge of the newest trends on the Web. The usability, user-centered design, or user experience, whatever you may call it, or what part of it you take, they do have the knowledge, and they’re very practical. Not all development firms have that front-end, user-design knowledge to go along with their back-end development skills, so that made them really standout.

In retrospect, are there areas in which you think Visuality could improve as a service provider?

Maybe they could expand their support team, to be able to help clients maintain their new platforms and sites. But, you know, I was a very small client for them, in terms of what they do right now, that wanted cheap support. I understand that they have limited bandwidth and other competing priorities, but having access to high-quality maintenance and support would have been a great value add.

BACKGROUND

Could you briefly describe your organization?

I work for an online retailer. We sell shoes, clothes, and accessories, mostly brands like adidas, Nike, Puma, and New Balance. We also have offline shops in Poland.

What is your role and responsibilities?

I am responsible for all e-commerce.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

Could you describe the business challenges that you were attempting to address when you first approached Visuality?

Developing e-commerce site from scratch. I don’t know what platform this was built on. I would draw out the way I wanted the site to look, and give them that information, including what functions we needed. They would then be responsible for building the platform. I wanted a very simple design, to ensure that the overall feel of the site would focus on the product, not on the page. We worked for about a month on the layout, because I regularly gave them instructions to make small changes to the site. I’m very happy with how it looks now. I don’t want a lot changed when we update the site next year.

SOLUTION

Could you describe the scope of work in greater detail?

They provided a full range of services. They helped me with some of the designs, but the final creative came from us. They did all of the technical, backend development. They provide support on a case-by-case basis.

How did you select Visuality as your partner for this project?

We were connected through someone that works here; it was a recommendation. I looked them up and did some background checking through their site. I felt like they’d be a good fit so I reached out to them with our statement of work.

When was this project completed?

The official relationship ended once site was launched, but I contact them at times when I have problems. They help me out and often don’t charge for that. In the spring, we are going to make a lot of changes on the site, and I think we will also be opening new online shops. I will consider Visuality for these future projects because I’m very happy with their work. I recommend them to my friends.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

In terms of results, could you share any statistics, metrics, or user feedback that would demonstrate the quality of their performance?

A lot of the customers are happy with the website because it’s easy to use. It’s of very high quality. It takes about two or three clicks, for example, to show only winter men’s adidas shoes. I think it’s a very user-friendly website. We have had some issues, but they’re not connected to Visuality’s work.

When working with Visuality, is there anything you’d consider unique about their approach or development methodology than distinguish them from other vendors?

It was my first time working with this type of vendor, so I cannot compare it to another firm. I like how they cooperate with their clients. It’s easy to contact them and they seem always prepared to address problems. Their response time, for example, normally is a few hours at the most.

In retrospect, are there areas in which you think they could improve as a service provider?

I think that we can do more but it’s about the money, I don’t have the money to start doing more projects. I don’t think that they can do anything better for the money they charge. 

BACKGROUND

Could you briefly describe your organization?

Our company has multiple products. Our main focus is in building online systems for various customers, various business arenas. These are usually custom-built systems designed, developed, and deployed by us, with the guidance of their executives and other business leaders.

What is your position?

I’m the owner and founder.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

Could you describe the business challenges that you were attempting to address when you first approached Visuality?

When we started this business we had the idea of building our own system, but the two programmers we have on staff weren’t familiar with the coding required for that. We looked for a company to help us build out our own internal system. We build systems for other people as well; however, for this particular project, we needed somebody to do it for us.

SOLUTION

Could you describe the scope of their involvement in greater detail?

We explained to them the idea of what our system was supposed to do, and what the result was going to be. They’ve been responsible for bringing that to fruition. We had given them a very good idea of what we wanted. We’re very much hands on, and we knew exactly what it was that we wanted. In regard to developing, coming up with ideas, building it, training us on how to use it, adapting our feel, our vision, they have outdone themselves. They have trained us on best practices. They’ve done the graphical elements. They adapted very quickly on what it is that we like, and what it is that we’re looking for. The first month we needed to meet a lot and really explain to them what we were looking for. Then, once the light came on, they were incredible. The system wouldn’t be what it is today without them.

How did you select Visuality as your partner?

We interviewed a couple of companies, and we also reached out to some people we know in the industry, and that is how we came across Visuality. In that arena, they were mentioned multiple times by multiple different people. When we interviewed them, they seemed to be the best company for the job. They already had an impressive record and they clearly had a large pool of developers to draw from.

When was this project completed?

We’re still improving on the system. They offer maintenance and support based on need.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

In terms of results, could you share any statistics, metrics, or user feedback that would demonstrate the quality of their performance?

We haven’t tracked any statistics or metrics, but I can tell you that we’ve had no issues with their performance. They built our system from scratch, always delivered their assignment on time and to our exact specifications, and continue to improve the system incrementally. Their development is extremely good. We haven’t had to deal with any malfunctions or defects at all. That’s been the best part. Our end-users don’t run into any problems with the functionality of the site.

When working with Visuality, is there anything you’d consider unique about their strategic approach or development methodology that distinguish them from other vendors?

Their project management is spectacular. The project management is definitely something that is the best I’ve seen, in this industry or any other for that matter. They’re incredible. They have a team that works so in tune, and they have an incredible way of approaching the customer.

It is very hard to combine the customers’ needs with the coders and programmers on the other end. That is definitely what distinguishes them from everybody else we’ve worked with. Usually when you deal with offshore programmers and coders, it can be very hard to communicate, just because they have a very different approach on how to communicate with a customer. They have outdone themselves on having an in-between the customer, the programmers, the coders, and the designers. Their approach on how to handle customer needs is incredible.

We knew we couldn’t code in certain languages, and it wasn’t going to be on a certain platform, we knew that .NET wouldn’t serve us. Our knowledge was limited in regards to what the actual platform would have to be on. They were the ones to guide us through Ruby on Rails and how it would best serve our needs.  

In retrospect, are there areas in which you think they could improve as a service provider?

Quite honestly, no. I’ve been extremely happy with them. Working with them has been spectacular. There has never been any issue, anything that has come up that I would see room for improvement. We have a great working relationship with them.