Ally Techno Grit Solutions Corporation

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the Business Development Officer of Citicon. We're one of the leading ready mix concrete contractors in the south of Mega Manila. We have four batching plants each able to operate at 120 to 150 cubic meters per hour, strategically located in three different cities in the region.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Ally Techno Grit Solutions Corporation, and what were your goals?

We had serious data entry problems as only one of our three batching plants is connected to our current software system, which also had several points of improvement to work on. We hired Ally Techno Grit Solutions to develop a custom Cloud-based software that would allow us to centralize and optimize the management of our operations, accounting and payroll across all batching plant locations.

Our goal is to have a system efficient enough to allow us to scale back our work hours and focus more on analyzing and improving our workflows instead of being stuck in the nitty gritty of data encoding and processing.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

We found them through a simple Google search. Upon discussing the system with the ATGS team, reviewing their proposal and speaking to their past and previous clients, we knew ATGS could provide us with the solutions we needed. Because the project is high priority, we thought the dedication of the team would get the system delivered in the most efficient manner possible while being flexible and allowing additional suggestions along the way so the end result would turn out optimal.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and technologies used.

We worked with ATGS to design and develop a Cloud-based ERP. We started with several team meetings to provide an overview of our processes and discuss the pain points of our current system and work flows. ATGS then provided us a proposal based on our discussions before starting production. Our work flows were divided into User Acceptance Tests (UAT) with specific modules per department.

We would then have progress meetings on the development of each UAT and, when the modules were ready, our team would test them out and provide feedback for ATGS' revisions before proceeding with the succeeding modules. The system minimizes the data that needs to be encoded and computed, automating as much of our work flows as possible.

How many people from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

There were 5 people managing and developing our project. This included Ms. Rhea, the CFO and systems analyst who developed the ideation and design of the modules with their team, as well as Sir Allan, their CEO who provided valuable insight and guidance during team meetings. The remaining three are the developers who would take point on their own modules while working with each other to connect the different modules into the system.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

The project is still in the development phase, but the deliverables have been able to meet our exacting demands. Our industry and our company's processes are very specific and complex and ATGS has helped us streamline and optimize them as much as possible.

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timeliness.

Project management is very collaborative and the team is very accommodating of our multiple requests. We maximize all available tools to communicate, using e-mail, Zoom and Google Meet for lengthy discussions and Viber for urgent concerns and short clarifications.

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

We had direct access to the whole team who are very responsive and warm. This allowed us to voice our concerns to the specific team member who was on point for the module and could thus better understand and directly make the revision. Everyone has also been very open to discussing all our ideas and requests, despite the challenges these would often pose. The coding team is relatively young, but it is evident that everyone is very driven.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

Client management is really great. However, while some of the delays came from our end during testing, some of the output would not be polished come testing as well, which would lead to a few back-and-forths between our team and theirs in terms of revisions. As a result, we've had to go over minutiae that we believe should have been taken into account and addressed without our input.