Activemedia

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a key expert for organizing hackathons and developing new digital content for the EU-funded Eastern Partnership Civil Society Facility project. The project lasted from 2017 until the end of March 2021. As part of that, I was in charge of organizing hacker forums, developing some useful things for the civil society activists in the European Neighborhood Policy (ENP) countries including Georgia, Armenia, Belarus, Moldova, and Ukraine.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Activemedia?

We inherited a website that was more of a business page for an organization. Unfortunately, it didn’t meet our needs because our project was supposed to be a resource center for the civil society organization and the six countries I mentioned above. My colleagues and I needed something larger and more informative. We wanted to give more options to our target audience including a nice new section and various apps for different activities. 

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Activemedia developed and redesigned our main website. With our project’s complexity, we needed several web resources especially on the third-level domain, and they had to follow more or less the same kind of design elements of our main website. Moreover, they created apps for the hackathon. It was a catalog of ideas and specific technology solutions for the hackathon. 

The team also developed a landing page and a self-assessment tool for our digital competencies.  Overall, they developed our domain resources and new web resources, and they maintained and updated our site. 

What is the team composition?

We were in direct contact with two people including Vladimir (CEO) who has in charge of the financial discussion. A project lead also participated in the project.

How did you come to work with Activemedia?

We needed to conduct a tendering process because that was the rule for contracts with a high amount of budget. However, I wasn’t part of the technical process of selecting Activemedia. At that time, we thought that if they performed well and if we were happy with their services, we’d assign them to further develop our web resources and maintain our web services. 

How much have you invested with them?

Annually, we spent around €10,000 (approximately $12,000).

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked on the project from March 2017–March 2021. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

In 2017, we didn’t have a web page for the hackathon, but with Activemedia’s help, we completed 28 apps. After some time, we were able to launch our website and successfully complete around 100 apps. We were very happy with Activemedia, and we continue working with them. 

How did Activemedia perform from a project management standpoint?

The team’s project management process was pretty straightforward. It was very convenient for me because I didn’t have to have meetings with them because I was not in the country most of the time.

In most cases, their emails were sufficient for me and it was also where we discussed tasks and set deadlines for the technical requirements. They also forwarded the mockup of our pages through email, and I sent some general questions and clarifications through that channel. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

They knew exactly what we needed in terms of communication. As a communications person, I understand the different purposes of each platform. On that note, I was impressed that Activemedia knew what we needed in terms of the overall structure of our requirements.

They took the time to know our target audience and how they’d be using the platform. As a result, Activemedia didn’t develop unnecessary features, and we didn’t have to redo their work. We also appreciated that their work only ever needed some minor adjustments. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

QA processes with their organization could improve. In our case, we typically hire a third-party company to do QA for us. Activemedia could benefit from a successful QA process, but maybe it was outside of their scope during our engagement.  

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Be very precise and open in terms of the needs you’re describing to ActiveMedia. That way, they can meet your needs.