Affirma Consulting

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

I am very satisfied with their work. They did what they said they would do on time. At this point, the site was launched August 1 [2015]. We have had mild periods of downtime when we migrate development sites to production sites, but the site has yet to be taken down.

What distinguishes Affirma Consulting from other providers?

Affirma Consulting has a very good sense of communication. They make a point of keeping everything transparent, so that we all know we are on the same page. Our initial developer did not do that. What we did not realize at that time was that we were out of development money.

Affirma keeps you on track and lets you know how much they have spent, how many hours each week they have devoted, what it cost, and how much you have left in your budget. They keep you well aware of where you are from a financial perspective and a work completion perspective.

Is there anything Affirma Consulting could have improved or done differently?

Nothing comes to mind.

What were the results of the project?

For the scorecard and project management data side, I think they’ve got very high regard and very high marks within our organization. On the managed turnkey processes, I got mixed reviews. Some of it is very streamlined, and some of it isn’t as streamlined as we’d like to see, especially if we have to migrate the work. Overall, though, we’re very happy with their body of work.

Is there anything unique about them that really makes them stand out, compared to other companies?

In time, it’s been the knowledge base they have within our business, which they took the time to really learn and adapt to. That's something not all vendors do.

They’ve got some people who really are very good at understanding data, and how data connects, and systems, which is a huge win for us. I think overall they’ve got a good design UX [user experience] team. Our scorecard has a good navigation, it’s clean, easy, and simple. We’ve created a very nice, elegant SharePoint site that we use to promote who our organization is. So, I think they’ve got some good strengths there. Overall, they have great expertise, which means we don’t have to continually retrain and tell people how to connect things.

Looking back on the work so far, is there any area that you think they could improve upon or something that you might do differently?

Don’t try to grow too fast. If you try to sell things that you don’t necessarily have expertise in, you put at risk all of the good things that you do, especially to clients that have got some size.

What advice would you give a future client of theirs?

Depending on the type of work they’re trying to do, they have a sweet spot because they do have the ability to do project management with a technical side, and UI side, and being able to deliver something. They also understand databases, and are able to help make data into a consumable format that you can use, and do data mapping. If that’s the type of thing you want to do, I think Affirma is right down your wheelhouse. I don’t know if they’re a technical design company in totality. They’re a good operations vendor, but I don’t know if they’d be a good marketing vendor per se.

Do you have any statistics or metrics to track the success of the project?

We don't really have metrics but we’ve gotten good feedback from a number of people offline.

Are you satisfied with their performance?

Yes. I would say I’m satisfied. Affirma delivered on time, and their designs were good. Our team likes them, and they put together a good intranet for us.

Is there anything unique or special about Affirma Consulting that really makes them stand out compared to other firms?

They have customer relations people who communicated with us regularly. They were always interested in how we were doing, in what was going right and wrong, in what Affirma could do to improve the project. I really enjoyed and appreciated that communication, which is something that I don’t always see from other vendors.

Looking back on the work so far, is there any area that you think they could improve upon or that you might do differently?

We did have a bit of a problem in the beginning. Because our team did not like the original design, we began to run out of the money budgeted for the project. It took a while for us to figure out what the best design would be for us, and then we were able to go back to Affirma with a better idea of what we needed.