Ahy Consulting

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the director for the company, we are into sales, marketing and HR services. We cater to the travel and hospitality segment

For what projects/services did your company hire Ahy Consulting?

We need help with Branding and Designing activity for our company. The idea was to re-do the way our website and logo looked like.

What were your goals for this project?

Though we are well known in the travel domain. We wanted to give a fresh look for the appeal of our company.

How did you select this vendor?

We searched for multiple vendors on google. We liked the way the reveiws that were mentioned online. We were happy with their reply on emails as they provided tangible solutions to answers hence making it easy to select them

Describe the scope of their work in detail.

The process began with discussion on what vision we had for our company. The way we wanted our website and logo to appear. They listened to us very patiently.

What was the team composition?

I worked with directly with their president and some of o their account manager would be in touch with us for the all changes we needed.

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

Since we worked with them we have recieved many positive feedback from our clients. The logo gave the feeling to our customers that were a brand that they could trust. This is resulted in business gains for us.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

We had joint calls on regular intervals. The team would send us daily updates and what's next on to do list. They were very prompt with their emails

What did you find most impressive about this company?

I was really impressed with their commitment to learn something new and offer something different as a package. They were able to stick to their timeline and deliver fantastic results.

Are there any areas for improvement?

They are a very young company. We are going to use them for our future project's as well

Please describe your company and your position there.

I’m the CEO of an online marketplace for African fashion products.

For what projects/services did your company hire Ahy Consulting?

We needed web development, custom module creation, and error fixes.

What were your goals for this project?

We wanted to enhance usability and provide a better UX overall.

How did you select this vendor?

I checked the company profile and was impressed by the portfolio of their work I requested thereafter.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

They designed a module for user management, threaded messaging, and a full layout. They introduced a new interface and fixed errors and bugs.

What was the team composition?

We worked with a project manager and other team members.

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

Our UX has greatly improved, and their involvement has increased our overall progress.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

Their project management was very impressive. They gave advice and worked according to our interests. They’re a great team of dedicated folks.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

The speed and quality of their delivery stood out.

Are there any areas for improvement?

They swiftly corrected any issues as soon as they were reported.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the owner of Chowdhary Design Company. We provide two-dimensional designs including PowerPoint presentations, animated videos, advertisements, brochures, and fliers.

What challenge were you trying to address with Ahy Consulting?

We partnered with Ahy Consulting to support a functional need. They created my website, which includes technically challenging features. We’ve also hired them to support UI/UX development for my clients’ websites and mobile apps.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Ahy Consulting developed my company’s website in WordPress. Based on the team’s recommendation, it’s hosted on AWS. They built the site based on the designs I created in Photoshop, which I exported to the team along with other assets as raw files. Ahy Consulting developed websites and apps for my clients, too.

Before they began the build, we spent a lot of time discussing expectations, requirements and the project timeline to ensure we were on the same page. Ahy Consulting then made recommendations to ensure we realized the website’s desired functionalities. 

They’ve worked on complex technologies like database management. For my previous company, Ahy Consulting created a website that allowed us to make travel listings, which had to contain a lot of formatted information. The team built a backend engine that tracked user’s holiday choices and recommended the most relevant destinations accordingly.

What is the team composition?

I mainly worked with Harpreet (Founder, Tech Strategist, Ahy Consulting), but there was also a client service manager involved at one point. I’ve also been in contact with a couple of coders.

How did you come to work with Ahy consulting?

I was introduced to Ahy Consulting by one of my bosses at a previous job. We were considering two developers to handle the development of a curated travel website including Ahy Consulting. Both presented proposals covering their understanding of, and approach to the project. After review, we chose Ahy Consulting because their approach to the project was most streamlined, coherent and aligned with how we were looking to proceed. Ahy came across as being a lot more competent to handle the development.

How much have you invested with them?

The cost to build my company’s website was ₹ 120,000 Indian Rupees (approximately $1,800 USD).

What is the status of this engagement?

I started working with Ahy Consulting in August 2017, and our last project ended in 2018. We don’t have any ongoing projects at the moment, but the channel is always open; as soon as one of us has a project for the other, we will get in touch.

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

Ahy Consulting made possible several complicated technical features available on my website. They created the unusual menu on my website, which took many iterations to realize my design, but the team made it happen. Ahy Consulting developed database management features to handle the constant influx of creative content. They created a system to display relevant items based on tags instead of categorization. This was a completely new method for storing and retrieving content. Again, it was a technical challenge that the entire team supported to create.

How did Ahy Consulting perform from a project management standpoint?

We had regular meetings, either in person or on Zoom, during which we would ensure the project was headed in the right direction and the team would inform me of any hitches. Most communication took place over WhatsApp and email. There was constant communication between the teams, which is really good for keeping projects on track.

Ahy Consulting provided realistic deadlines that they stick to. If a project gets stuck because of something I haven’t said, they made sure to follow-up with me to deliver on the deadline. In terms of overall handling of project management, Ahy is on the ball.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Compared to competitors, they pay good attention to detail— nothing is glossed over. Ahy Consulting was always ready to put in the and effort necessary to make sure a feature would function the way it needs to, no matter how small. Many people would’ve told me that a feature couldn’t happen and would’ve left it at that. Ahy Consulting suggested alternatives that could be put in place to make it happen.

They’re technical experts. I have a level of comfort knowing that once I’ve given the team a project, I don’t need to look into the technical aspects of it at all. I can let them roll with it without intervening on anything other than the frontend part, which concerns me as a designer.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, not that I can think of.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

Be clear about deliverables. The team appreciates direction. The more explicit the brief, the better and faster the turnaround will be. Secondly, once timelines are set, it’s the responsibility of both parties to manage it.

Please describe your company and your position there.

The Flag Corp manufactures quality flags and flag accessories. I am a partner in the company, which was founded by my father in 1996.

For what projects/services did your company hire Ahy Consulting?

I hired Ahy for the revamp of my company website.

What were your goals for this project?

I wanted to create a website that was not only mobile-friendly, but also easy and intuitive to use.

How did you select this vendor?

I was referred to Harpreet [CEO, Ahy Consulting] by a friend of mine. I looked at his work experience and knowledge of programming and developing websites.

Describe the project in detail.

The project involved the complete overhaul of our existing website as well as the implementation of a new e-commerce platform since we had to shift from Drupal to Magento. While a friend designed the new website, Ahy was responsible for the actual development and implementation.

What was the team composition?

We worked with 2–3 designers and developers while Harpreet oversaw the project.

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

The new site hasn't gone live yet since we haven’t had time to upload my products. I'm hoping it will go live by this year so that I can reap the benefits.

How effective was the project management?

They were very responsive towards any changes or recommendations that I had. Most issues were resolved within a day or two at most. They made sure everything was completed on time.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

They were always ready to take on a new challenge. No matter the industry, their team will come up with something innovative and worthwhile.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I'm the owner of an agency that focuses on website development.

What challenge were you trying to address with Ahy Consulting?

We needed a partner to build a website for a company that makes 360-degree cameras.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We had to both build the design for the site and also migrate information over from a Django-based system to Gentoo. Ahy provided good architectural decisions for the AWS architecture, and there was also a bit of Magento development. The team even provided some e-commerce consulting during the project, too.

What is the team composition?

Ahy’s principal and I worked closely together to deliver the solution to our client. Ahy generally provided 3–5 developers for each phase of the project.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent about $20,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

That project was from August 2016 to January 2017.

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

We managed to do the migration with zero downtime, and all the products and orders retained the same functionality. Sales grew on the new platform, and our client was able to do things they couldn’t do on the old platform.

How did Ahy Consulting perform from a project management standpoint?

We ran an Agile methodology with sprints that focused on different priorities at different times. Ahy and I communicated by phone, chat, and email. We also used a Jira ticketing system.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They delivered high-value products and made sure that their efforts align with their client’s. They put the client’s goals front and center and tailor their approach to find the best solution.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Not that I can think of.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

They're easy to engage with. Just come knowing what you want, and they’ll find a solution.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I founded and run a company that creates animated products and services—mainly videos for large conglomerates in India and internationally.

What challenge were you trying to address with Ahy Consulting?

We have a platform that curates hotels and home-stays across India, and is searchable by keyword, location, activity, and category. Each property is professionally shot on video so that users can see exactly what it looks like.

We designed the website in-house, but partnered with another firm to do the backend technology. We had issues with the company we hired and brought Ahy in to help us solve those problems and take the site live. It had previously been live, but had numerous bugs.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Ahy took five or six months to sort out the bugs. Then, we gave them the new pages for the site, and they customized the WordPress platform we had been using to fit those pages as well. They then set up an admin panel we could store user information upon login; made the site mobile-responsive; and improved the search functionality.

The video piece came from a Microsoft Azure platform. They migrated everything to YouTube and optimized it on the server side to work faster. They also made everything on our animation site more secure.

We also outsourced our iOS and Android apps’ backend coding to them, which is where the problems started. The project timeline was three months. Ahy promised to deliver every few weeks for over a year. Finally, they said they couldn't complete it, but still demanded payment prior to releasing the code. Even when we did pay them, I followed up repeatedly to get what was promised from them. There’s been minimal communication as to when we can expect what was agreed upon, and we finally received a half-baked handover 8 weeks after we paid them what was agreed upon.

What is the team dynamic? 

The founder was suddenly unavailable and we had to deal with a junior customer service executive who subsequently quit. We later found out that he wasn't even a permanent employee, but had been hired to handle a few projects including ours.

How did you come to work with Ahy Consulting?

The founder of Ahy was recommended to us by the person in charge of our SEO. She had worked with the founder in another organization and recommended him. Since I trusted her, I also trusted her recommendation.

How much have you invested with them?

Between all of the projects we’ve worked with them on, we’ve spent around 1 million Indian rupees (approximately $15,000 USD).

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in 2016 and post the issue with our app (which closed in April 2018), we have not worked with them and don't intend to.

Describe the impact this engagement has had on your business.

They did a good job with our travel listings site, but it was fixing bugs that proved problematic. For the other project, where they actually had to build everything, the work took five to six times longer than they estimated. There was very little attention to detail and not much input from their side about how we could avoid pitfalls going forward or how we could enhance the product. We had to keep suggesting things.

Since they have given us the run around we can’t trust them. Because of that, we’ve hired a new team and needed to assign extra money to our budget for reworking what Ahy was supposed to complete. 

How was project management handled?

They communicated with us via email and phone calls, but the overall project management was very poor. The founder would refuse to take calls with me to address the myriad issues even after we offered to accept literally any time slot that worked for him. He kept demanding payments for milestones that he claimed he had met—but with so many bugs, they clearly were not met—and threatened to stop working if we didn't pay because he had cash-flow problems. He would only come on the phone to demand payment. Never to solve issues - these were handled ineffectively by a junior person on his team.

Is there anything that the vendor did well or that you would consider a strength?

The founder is very knowledgeable technically; he can take a problem and find a good solution. He doesn’t have the bandwidth to oversee everything the team is doing, and I don’t have confidence in his people or in their overall ability to overcome challenges. Whenever the founder handled something personally, it was done well; whenever he wasn’t fully engaged, there were inordinate delays and the work was poorly done. Plus, he refused to communicate till it was convenient to him (which could be weeks or months). 

In what specific areas can they improve?

They need to be more transparent about which people are working on the project, what their level of expertise is, and what exactly they’re handling. Otherwise, there will be unreasonable delays, as happened here. They need to communicate, be honest and refrain from dishonesty or hiding facts.

What advice do you have for clients with similar needs to yours?

Ensure that the contract (a) requires the founder to spend time on the project; and (b) builds in penalties for delays.

Please describe your company and your position there.

HTcourses.com is an online academy for continuing education of heat treatment professionals. We help Heat treatment professionals gain specialized knowledge from industry experts, that too within the comfort of their own office or home.

The specialised industry focused training helps heat treatment professionals to improve their processes, quality of heat treatment, reduce rejections and rework costs, improve customer satisfaction and enhance their career prospects.

For what projects/services did your company hire AccruePartners?

Our major challange was to find a website development company having experience & capable to develop a good web portal as per our requirment.

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

Fantastic work! Having Ahy Consulting on the team made a huge difference. Thank you for being so flexible.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

It’s really admirable how Mr.Harpreet Singh (brain of Ahy Consulting) handled our project through from conception to completion.