A2 Design Inc.

Please describe your company and your position there.

Our company owns and maintains job market platform for part-time jobs in Toronto, Canada. I am founder and CEO of the company and I am responsible for overall company strategy and management of people.

For what projects/services did your company hire A2 Design Inc.?

We hired A2 Design to help us developing our original web application which would establish our service platform. Our challenge was compromise between accelerated development and low expense budget related to the product development.

We did not have enough man power to handle the task ourselves in a preferred period of time and therefore we decided to outsource part of our development to A2 Design.

What were your goals for this project?

We broke down the entire development into several blocks and milestones and then it was decided which blocks will be developed internally and which blocks will be developed using the third party resource.

We agreed on the platform and methodology/infrastructure which we will use before the development started so both, work produced by us and work produced by A2 design, could be compatible and put together as puzzle pieces at the end of the development.

How did you select this vendor?

We used online research and personal meetings/interviews to select our vendor. We considered 5 companies. There were two main deciding factors:

1. The vendor will share with us the preferred platform and coding infrastructure which we plan to use to build our web platform
2. The vendor will offer a competitive price that is within our budget I was involved in the process together with two of my associates who are responsible for the technical side of the product development.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

We provided a module by module table and flow documentation of each of our features together with an accompanying UX/UI graphical documentation. Key features:

• in-app messaging
• advance filtering
• custom made availability scheduling
• login and profile development

Vendor has also provided us with Q&A services.

What was the team composition?

Vendor's team:

• Account Manager
• Two main developers (backend and frontend)
• A few additional developers for some of the smaller tasks

Size of the team changed over time and one of the main developers had to be substituted with another developer to finish the work.

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

I do not possess any metrics that could support any specific value or impact that the project had on our businesses.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

Collaboration was quite effective most of the time. Slack was our main platform for communication. There were no issues caused by a language barrier.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

I think A2 Design offers competitive pricing, for which you will receive a very knowledgeable team that is invested on delivering the best result.

Are there any areas for improvement?

Looking back I think price estimation along with the time estimation areas could have been handled differently not in the terms of How much or For how long but in terms of ongoing communication regarding any deviation from the original plan. Is is given that the assumptions will always change so we have to be prepared to manage those changes as promptly and openly as possible.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Our website is a new concept for linking engineering job seekers with resource seekers. It’s like buying or selling a car on eBay. Someone lists the car and puts all the details, and someone else uses the same criteria to filter and search all the cars that match that criteria.

What challenge were you trying to address with A2 Design?

I’m an engineer myself, which was why I wanted to create a recruiting tool for engineers. We needed a website. Prior to finding A2, I had gone through three other companies and was disappointed with all of them.

What was the scope of their involvement?

I gave them a written scope of work based on the design that I wanted, including some milestones. I asked a Canadian designer that I know personally to design some of the screens.

A2 started working after a small deposit, and they produced mockups right away. They ended up creating everything from scratch on a big SQL database. The previous developers that I worked with were trying to do the site on WordPress. From my own investigation, I knew what I needed was a SQL database.

During the development phase, I looked to A2 for guidance. I relied heavily on their input. They gave advice whenever I didn’t know what to do or how to get there. They were very instrumental in determining what the final product would look like. I did not have to dictate every step of the way.

The website has a number of screen menus that allow access to a lot of data. Two groups of people come to the site: job seekers who input the data and resource seekers who retrieve that data. The job seekers enter data using templated screen menus. The resource seekers use the same screens to do filter searches on that data.

What is the team dynamic?

A project manager handles direct communication. I started with one person and then it was turned over to Ev, the frontend person for communications. She isn’t a technical person.

How did you come to work with A2 Design?

I found a number of web designers on Freelancer. One of them wasted three months of my time before he abandoned the project. Luckily, I found A2. At that point, I was pretty disillusioned with the whole thing, but finding them was very helpful.

I sent inquiries out to a dozen companies, but A2 was one of the few that wanted to call me right away and talk in detail. Some of the others wanted to quickly set a price and promise things without having talked to me. In contrast, A2 wanted to understand the scope, which I believe helps in successfully executing a complex project.

They had someone based in Canada who fielded our initial call, and they included someone in Russia as well. The person in Canada spoke excellent English. The staff that I talked to in Russia had decent English, but they were a little harder to understand.

How much have you invested with them?

I asked A2 for an estimate based on what I had already, and it was very reasonable. After going through three other developers, I had a good feel for what was a good cost for a project like this. So far, we’ve spent CA$8,000 [$6,416] on A2’s services. They would send me a bill every two weeks.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in August 2017, and the website was completed in September 2017. I have an ongoing relationship with them because we’re still tweaking the platform. Finishing the site was the first step, and the next involves marketing. I’m just getting into that now.

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

A2 built my website exactly as specified. Even though the site has been published, it hasn’t been launched to the public yet. It’s not even registered with Google because we’re not there yet. I have to build the content for all the marketing, and then we’ll do an inbound marketing blitz starting next month.

I’ve had people that I trust vet the site to give me an idea of what their experience was like. Their response has always been very positive. They say it’s a great tool with screens that look great.

How did A2 Design perform from a project management standpoint?

They deliver on time and within the budget. About a month into the project, they started using JIRA, which is fantastic. Now, I can create an issue, and they would assign it to someone. When they have a solution to the issue, I’d get an email notification. I would look at it and test to see if it worked. If I still had any problems with it, I would add to the ticket. We have a 12-hour time difference between us, so it’s great that we’re using JIRA.

They’ve never overcharged me. With other companies, every time I would find a problem, they would count that as above the original scope and would charge me for it. In contrast, A2 allowed me to ask for corrections for a month without ever charging me. The first phase took a little longer, but it didn’t cost me anything.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I like everything about them. They’re affordable compared to Canadian companies, and they are excellent technically. They know what they’re doing. They are incredibly skilled, professional, and courteous.

Are there any areas they could improve?

If I were stricter about things, I would say that they could’ve worked faster. But at the same time, based on my own experience, I know that there’s no easy or fast way to get these things done. It’s complex to work on bugs in a big database like ours. For example, users should have the ability to filter and search the SQL database from any angle to retrieve data. Plus, our platform is monetized so there’s a payment gateway. There’s a membership feature built into it as well. As a result, we have a lot of back and forth when working out bugs.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Play-by-Play is an online ticketing portal. I’m the director of business development.

What challenge were you trying to address with A2 Design?

We first approached A2 Design two companies ago to work on a company called Be Treated. We’ve worked with them since 2009 until now. They built a completely customized ground-up last minute spa booking website. After that, we started another company called City Lunch Club, where A2 Designs built out that entire website as well. Now they are in the process of redesigning the site of the company that I’m working for now. My business partner was their main contact for the first two companies and then I brought them on when I started working on this company to redesign the website.

What was the scope of their involvement?

They built a completely custom website for us two times from the ground up. The most recent website project, they’re taking a platform that was already in place and updating it, refreshing the frontend for our customers but keeping the backend the same. I know they’re migrating it to a new platform that runs on a new version of Ruby on Rails that’s more stable and up-to-date and has more features. The features they provided in the custom websites from the previous companies was a customer database. For the first site, we built out spa deals, and then our customers could then book specific time slots. For the second one, they built out a restaurant menu and customers could order from that. Anytime we’ve needed anything, they’ve been able to work with someone on our team or at least hire someone on an as-needed basis to work on our projects. It’s never been an issue.

How did you come to work with A2 Design?

My business partner, Josh, found them on a freelancing website right when they first started. I think there were just a couple of guys then and now their team has grown to about 20. We did research and emailed back and forth on the freelancing website. I’m sure Josh looked at other companies, but I’m not sure how he selected A2. Obviously it’s worked out because we continue to work with them.

How much have you invested with A2 Design?

We have spent $250,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in 2009, and the work is ongoing. When the spa company got acquired, they continued to work for that company as well.

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

Our company, Be Treated, was acquired by Spa Finder. When we worked with Spa Finder, the tools that A2 Design built I believe were made available to about 30,000 spas and fitness studios worldwide. This tool also won an InStyle Magazine “Best of Digi” Award.

How did A2 Design perform from a project management standpoint?

I have been assigned one core project manager and one core developer that we’re working with. They pull in other people as needed. Right now I’m working with someone named Irena, and she’s been very on top of everything and responsive. We’re using Basecamp. I feel like every company that we work with, they all have their different project management tool that they like the best.

What did you find most impressive about A2 Design?

They take a stake in the project that they are working on. If they see some coverage on a competitor or see a tool they like on another website, they will proactively send it to us to see if we’re interested. Other people we’ve worked with didn’t always take an interest in the project they’re working on; they just do the work.

Are there any areas A2 Design could improve?

Being that they’re based in Russia, sometimes it would be nice to have someone that I can call on during the day here in the United States. They are able to respond but sometimes if there’s an emergency, it would be nice to have at least a small portion of the team that’s either working overnight there or in our time zone.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We are a group of companies. Our websites generally offer pop-culture products, whether they are subscription boxes which are sent to clients monthly or one-off items. I am the vice president of technology. A2 Design reports directly to me.

What challenge were you trying to address with A2 Design?

We have a development team but didn't have enough manpower to get the job done, on various projects. We use several agencies, A2 Design being one of them.

Building an e-commerce site is a difficult task, and we couldn't pick any company off the street for it. Most companies are used to building WordPress sites, while we have a Magento platform. That really raises the bar and requires that the vendor knows about it.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We have used A2 Design for anything from frontend to backend work. They have worked on our monthly-subscription-box site, which uses the Magento framework and Amazon Web Services as a backend infrastructure. We weren't initially sure about how our collaboration would work, whether it would be a one-off project or continuous work. We didn't know what A2 Design's experience was with those technologies, but the good news was that they did. We've handed A2 Design everything from basic frontend work like fixing spelling mistakes and bugs, all the way to adding new features on the frontend and backend, including a very complex FDA project.

How did you come to work with A2 Design?

We found A2 Design through a referral. We contacted agencies all over Europe, South America, the US, and Canada, but one thing we did like about A2 Design was that they were on the other side of the world. That has its pros and cons, but we liked being able to assign work at the end of the day, and have it completed by the time we woke up the next morning. It also meant that we had to wait for two days to get something fixed, but it was still a great schedule for us, for small things.

Regarding price, many companies in the US are through the roof, beyond being fair. Even though they could have done a good job, we did not want to spend the money in that area. A2 Design had a fair price, the timing worked out, and they all spoke English very well. A2 Design conformed to our issue tracking system, which was great for keeping things smooth on our end. A2 Design was willing to integrate into our way of working.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with A2 Design in 2016 after our initial site had been built. The site is constantly evolving, and there are hundreds of issues on the board, which are being added to daily.

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

 We are working with multiple agencies to build this monstrous machine, so there's not one thing or person who can stand out among them.

We follow a very stringent process involving designers and UX [user experience] designers whose work is sent to an executive committee. After it's discussed, it will make its way to a ticket, and the code will be ultimately written and sent to testers. The work goes through another approval process, and finally, it's launched. It's hard to say how much of this is due to A2 Design's work. The adage is that the developer is the one who saves everyone and becomes the hero, but they're also people who are simply doing what everyone wants already. Everyone plays an important role, so it's hard to give credit to one company or person.

How did A2 Design perform from a project management standpoint?

A2 Design is good. We keep an active track around how much work is in front of them and keep a steady backlog so that A2 Design's team will never run out of work. They've always kept up, and there have been a couple of times when A2 Design came to us asking for more work. That was a nice surprise since we're usually trying to push agencies to get more work done. A2 Design is quick, and the team does a good job at the code they write.

What did you find most impressive about A2 Design?

Generally speaking, when signing on a new agency, they will try to sell us on a project manager, a user acceptance tester, and two developers. There is usually also a senior person whom they want to keep on top of the work. We just want two people but are stuck with five. A2 Design understood our need and accepted our wish to project manage the collaboration through our people. We can speak directly with the developers, keep them on the issue board, and get the job done. The process is as efficient as if A2 Design's resources were my employees.

Are there any areas A2 Design could improve?

I would like to have another person from A2 Design and have asked them to hire one more developer.

Not all teams can know everything, so there have been a couple of occasions when A2 Design didn't know how to do something, and we needed to show them the ropes. That's normal since Magento is a huge beast which not many people in the world know well enough. A2 Design can handle that, which is good since there aren't many agencies out there willing to take on Magento clients. Many wouldn't know how to.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

My company is called Allied Health Media, a privately owned conglomerate of small businesses in everything from online continuing education to online e-commerce for home goods. I’m the CTO and I handle all our web technologies.

What challenge were you trying to address with A2 Design?

We were preparing to launch a brand new company in our portfolio, an e-commerce business dealing with custom home goods manufacturing. We wanted a group that could help us build out that site on scalable technology.

What was the scope of their involvement?

They were engaged very early on in the project, just after the inception of the product idea. They helped us flesh out our initial product requirements and guided us on best practices to move as quickly and cost-effectively as possible. We’re based on a PHP foundation with WordPress and WooCommerce. They built out the live product for our startup and they continue to support that today through any iterations of the product and feature sets.

The number of resources they provided varied based on the need. I’d say there were upwards of five or six working on the platform at any given time. We’ve had a project manager, QA, and frontend and backend developers.

How did you come to work with A2 Design?

I’ve worked with them before in prior companies where I managed the tech. I’d had great experiences with them there so I gave them this opportunity.

What is the status of this engagement?

We began in late June 2016. We’re presently in a support phase; they’re doing minor feature enhancements and tweaks. Later on this summer we’ll be going through some other new product development and building out of some major features that we’ll heavily engage them for.

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

Most feedback I can share is internal with Allied Media, but everybody has been impressed with the professionalism and their ability to come up with creative ways to work within the constraints of the platforms we’re using.

How did A2 Design perform from a project management standpoint?

They’ve been very thorough in their communication, making sure that we were kept well aware through every phase of the project. When any questions arose or anything wasn’t clear, we were brought into the loop to answer those questions. We leveraged JIRA to keep track of everything. We had a project manager, and then if she was unavailable for any reason she provided a point person for us to go through in her absence to ensure that things kept flowing.

What did you find most impressive about A2 Design?

They are a great, cost-effective solution for startup businesses. They had a good ability to grasp what we were trying to accomplish with our products and to map that to the technology solutions out there.

Are there any areas A2 Design could improve?

Nothing is coming to mind.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the founder of Hashtagio. We’re a user-generated content and social media aggregation platform.

What challenge were you trying to address with A2 Design?

We had gone through several bad experiences trying to outsource the development of our app and were looking for a competent firm.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We had the idea and concept of what the app was meant to do. They started working through the concepts in a detailed way, architected what would need to be done, did the user experience and workflow, and built the app. The product was built on LAMP and takes in content from social media channels and allows users to tell stories. We have a JavaScript widget functionality to put the stories everywhere. We are able to scale up and down depending on how many resources we need. I’ve worked with three different developers over the years we’ve worked with them.

How did you come to work with A2 Design?

I think I found them on Elance and I saw their work but chose another team at the time. When that relationship fell apart, I found them again, called them, and got started working. They were very structured, detailed, and gave a lot of input. They had great ratings everywhere I checked.

How much have you invested with A2 Design?

We’ve spent close to $200,000 with A2 Design.

What is the status of this engagement?

We began our relationship in April 2013 and the work is ongoing.

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

The product is being used by major brands that A2 has done customizations and implementation for. Every one of those customers would say that we offer the best service anyone can find. We’ve probably done 30 or 40 implementations since the completion of the product.

How did A2 Design perform from a project management standpoint?

They trained me on how to use JIRA and Basecamp to be able to manage the project from my end. They’re very detailed and organized. We set milestones and had weekly calls to talk about any issues that came up. They always had recommendations on how to solve the issues and gave me options to choose from. I have access to the developers that work on the project, and everyone at A2 Design knows our product. Their response time is amazing and their competency level is very high. I feel that although they bill by the hour, they make sure all of that time counts for me.

What did you find most impressive about A2 Design?

Their team has such depth which makes them able to do almost anything. I never feel like I’m getting ripped off. They have a real sense of pride in their work and their goal is making customers happy. They really care about our business.

Are there any areas A2 Design could improve?

I’m super happy so I don’t have anything negative to say.