Vivus

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the communications manager at the Morgridge Family Foundation, which is a private family foundation. We provide grants to a range of nonprofit partners to help them achieve their work in their cities.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Vivus?

We sponsor the Student Support Foundation that helps make philanthropy more accessible to the next generation of givers. We publish an annual report that’s typically physical. Given the new world that we live in, we wanted to create a digital report.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Vivus helped build a part on our website for our annual report. Their team provided a couple of wireframes for us to review. They helped us envision a way to make the report interactive and fun for students to view and share with their networks. For example, pictures expand when users hover over them. They created the wireframes, and then we had a few rounds of edits. Their team used our brand guidelines to make sure the page fit within our overall website.

Their team then coded everything into our WordPress site. Once it was built out on our site, we had a few rounds of edits. They helped us troubleshoot any issues that arose as well as rearrange some things. We had such a good experience with them that we signed another contract with them to help with another webpage.

What is the team composition?

We directly spoke with Andrew (CEO & Founder) and George (Product Designer).

How did you come to work with Vivus?

We knew Vivus through our network, so they came recommended. We previously worked with a different company that provided us with a quote for this project that was out of our price range. We then talked to Vivus that gave us a quote that was closer to our range. They were knowledgeable and talked about the project in a way that we could understand. Their team also had great ideas and listened to ours.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent about $12,000 on their services.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started our first project in June, and it finished in August 2020. However, it’s an ongoing partnership.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We built a great relationship. They explain concepts in ways that make them easy to understand for non-technical people. Their work is also beautiful and functional.

The quality of their work’s fantastic. Our website was barebones when we started working with Vivus. They elevated the experience of our website, making it interactive, modern, and innovative. Their team made our website more reflective of our organization's values.

How did Vivus perform from a project management standpoint?

They’re fantastic on the project management side too. To look at the wireframes, we used InVision. It was easy to navigate, and they always offered help to our team if necessary. It’s easy to book time with them because their team uses Calendly. Otherwise, we communicate via email. Any time we have glitches, their response time’s lightning fast. We feel like we’re their only client.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We feel like we’re their only client even though I know that’s not the case. They give personalized attention. The product made us feel like we had their full attention all of the time. That’s hard to find in an agency.

Are there any areas they could improve?

We never had a problem with quality.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Take advantage of their communication. We over-communicate with them and that seems to work well for both teams.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the founder of Llama Lead Gen, a digital marketing agency that is focused on social media advertising and B2B lead generation specifically. We help clients generate high quality leads through paid advertising.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Vivus?

We worked with Vivus to develop a cross-platform mobile questionnaire app for iOS and Android that was aimed to help us to understand our current clients.

What were your goals for this project?

We wanted to give our current clients an easy way to evaluate their current marketing and lead generation to identify if hiring us would be the right choice comparing to in house teams.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

I found Vivus through an online search.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

Vivus developed a lightweight cross-platform mobile app using a React Native framework. The purpose of the app was to carry out a survey to help our current clients to decide whether outsourcing worked for them.

What was the team composition?

We've worked with a project manager, a React Native developer, UX/UI designer, and a QA engineer.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any information that demonstrates the impact that this project has had on your business?

The mobile app helped us to increase our team’s productivity by asking a set of questions to our current clients. A great benefit of this solution is that our team can modify the question form without having any technical knowledge.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

We operated in an agile manner, with two-week sprints for development activities. Each sprint was followed by a demonstration of the progress and results achieved. We mostly use Slack and Zoom to communicate, and they use other platforms for larger projects.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Vivus met all our requirements and built the mobile app we wanted. We were happy to work with an agile team that could work without a detailed requirements document and help us work out our needs and technological capabilities. They always brought new ideas to the conversation and followed up in a timely manner.

Are there any areas for improvement?

None. This has been a great experience for us.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am an Account and Media Director at a full-service agency. For this project I was in charge of client communication and aggregating systems for omnichannel reporting.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Vivus?

Custom and mobile web development. They built FRContent a custom web and mobile dashboard for internal use.

What were your goals for this project?

The goals for this project was to get an internal CRM and analytics dashboard up and running for our marketing team.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

Online Search

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

They built an entire dashboard for our internal team. This dashboard connected all our social media accounts, advertising accounts and our own custom CRM. Vivus worked 100% remotely, but there was a week when they spent time on-site for initial architecture discussions with our team. They moved across all of our different systems including helping us to design our database and implement the React architecture. Their team designed the code to be reusable following best practices. They also assisted with the implementation of our various AWS tools.

What was the team composition?

We worked with one back-end engineer, one front-end engineer, one Product/UX designer and one product manager but also had access to their CEO.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any information that demonstrates the impact that this project has had on your business?

We’re very impressed with the quality of work they’ve provided. Vivus has a great talent for finding highly skilled developers to join their team and onboard them quickly. In terms of the software itself, we’ve received a great deal of positive feedback from many of our internal team who are pleased with the efficiency the platform. They also offer advice and feedback on features they think aren’t necessary or right for our platform, which we’ve appreciated.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

They handled all of the project management. Their team was open to feedback. They're very responsive and always get back to us within 24 hours or sooner. There hasn’t been a problem that they haven’t solved. We mostly use Slack and Zoom to communicate, and they use other platforms for larger projects.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

They’re extremely thorough in identifying the best way to implement something in code. Their team finds the most efficient way to implement a function. That always impressed me.

Are there any areas for improvement?

There were times in our project when we needed to complete a task, which required us to take a suboptimal path. Their team could be more receptive to that. My advice is to take a step back and understand what the client’s trying to accomplish at the moment.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO of Basecraft. We’re a hybrid of a creative agency that works with clients as well as creates products for ourselves.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Vivus?

At that time, the product aspect of our business was new. We didn’t have the in-house skillsets to build products such as iOS apps. We needed to extend our team.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Vivus manages backend development across platforms including websites. Their team also creates native apps for Android and iOS. They've worked on a couple of external products that aren’t for clients. Their team has created products that we sell to other people.

What is the team composition?

We’ve worked with just one resource.

How did you come to work with Vivus?

I heard about them through a website where you can find developers. I reached out to a handful of people through that site. I felt that Vivus was the most responsive and understood our needs the most, so I felt most comfortable working with them considering that they were going to be remote. Communication was important to us.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent about $250,000 on their services.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in March 2016 and our work’s ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We’ve been pleased with the quality of their work, which has been excellent. We’ve had no issues with their work outside of normal back and forth QA for software development.

Vivus has extended the skills of our team and allowed us to take on projects that we couldn’t have done in-house. We haven’t hired anyone in-house with their skills because we’re happy. 

How did Vivus perform from a project management standpoint?

We track all of our work with them through Basecamp. It’s worked well. We’ve handled all of the project management because we only work with a single resource from their company. That person has been part of our team.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The quality that stands out the most is their excellent speed. The turnaround time and the amount of time that it takes them to create each feature is better than expected. Their speed is better than that of any other developer we’ve worked with.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, we haven’t had any issues.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

We’ve only worked with one person before they even had a team, so our experience is different. We’ve had the most success when we’ve been the clearest with our requirements. Basecamp’s a great tool for us. The more detail we've provided to them, the better the end result has been.  

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the VP of Content, leading strategy and execution on all things blog, copy, video, design, and education/thought leadership. Also helping oversee dev, ads, social media, email and more.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Vivus?

Our dev agency is cycling off, so we hired Vivus to do hourly based web projects. The first project is simplifying guest checkout, but other site additions, bug fixes, and landing pages are within scope.

What were your goals for this project?

Make guest checkout flow easily without having to leave the site and repopulate all user info. We want this all contained within one simple window.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

I worked with Jeff and Andrew at Vivus at my last company, Tala. Jeff and I worked together years ago on the marketing team at Udacity. I had good experience with them, and they are fast and nimble.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

Our platform big commerce/rebilia does not allow a simple guest checkout process, so we scope this out with Vivus to estimate a project to simplify this checkout process. The project required creating a one-step guest checkout process/band-aid solution to call the subscription API and do everything in one seemingly seamless step.

What was the team composition?

Jeff on the dev side/Vivus site, and internally at UR Labs, we had me and Jason helping lead the scope and progress. Jeff also had to work with our external dev agency on coordinating releases, etc.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any information that demonstrates the impact that this project has had on your business?

We haven't launched this yes, and our product is available the first week of may, so no impact yet.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

A lot was phone calls and email at first, then migrated to Asana and slack for PM.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Jeff and Andrew are always nimble and flexible, and easy to work with.

Are there any areas for improvement?

I think perhaps some areas to improve are honing in more on the logistics and scope, and being upfront about issues that may arise. I think it's easy to say everything is doable, but there are always issues with these complicated tech stacks.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Tala is a financial technology company on a mission to enable and accelerate financial health for all. Our first product is an Android app that offers instant credit and personalized financial education in Kenya, the Philippines, Mexico, and India. Most of our customers have little or no access to banks or other traditional institutions. We use mobile technology and data science to make financial services simple, inclusive, and accessible. As part of accelerating financial health, my role is to design, develop and implement spaces, experiences and tools for our customers to expand their financial education, literacy and agency.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Vivus?

We hired Vivus to build our community site — a safe space for customers to be able to connect with one another around financial and business matters, access free financial education courses and have a deeper way to engage with our brand. We had to build something that was easy to use for our global teams, but while still being accessible through our application.

What were your goals for this project?

The goals for this project were to get something up and running fast, that was mobile responsive and easy for customers and administrators to create content.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

We had worked with him on previous projects.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

We built the entire product on Wordpress that had to include the following: - Whitelisted login - Easy to use course CMS - Discussion threads - Video embeds - Way to whitelist directly through web point in app - 3 different sites for 3 different countries Ongoing support on bugs and new needs.

What was the team composition?

I worked directly with Andrew on most things. At a few different points, we looped in our design lead or product manager at different phases. He also at times worked with our IT lead to ensure that domains and security were set up correctly.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any information that demonstrates the impact that this project has had on your business?

Not yet! We had many stop and starts on the business end so have not had enough time to see the results bake.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

Andrew was able to quickly embed himself into our processes and tools (Slack, Asana), which was extremely helpful!

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Andrew is super responsive and able to move very quickly to adjust and change any of our needs. He is resourceful and adapts quickly to new challenges.

Are there any areas for improvement?

In the spirit of speed, there were times when a few things broke when we introduced new changes. Although these were able to be fixed quickly, a little bit more due diligence would be helpful!