Ameex Technologies Corp.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

We are a life insurance, retirement, and reinsurance company dealing mostly with domestic United States products.

What is your position?

I am an IT associate within the company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with Ameex Technologies?

We were looking for a new vendor to support and run projects on our public platforms. We have websites for several different brands. Our model has always been to leverage external talent for these services. We started working with Ameex Technologies after a change in vendors.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement.

Ameex Technologies has done a handful of things for us, from updating some of our sites to the latest version of Drupal or putting them on a new platform, to building altogether new websites. They've provided day-to-day support and maintenance for our sites, taking care of fixes, changes and enhancements, as well as providing 24-hour monitoring for them.

They're currently working on a rebranding initiative for a couple of our sites. The pages will run on the same platform, but will have a new look-and-feel from a marketing standpoint.

Generally, I've interfaced with their project manager and technical lead, plus one of their developers for the projects themselves. Ameex Technologies also provides a project manager and a lead technical person on the support side. I don't know how many people they employ on the backend for us. We deal with five or six team members directly.

How did you come to work with Ameex Technologies?

We ran a request for proposal a year ago and ended up selecting Ameex Technologies. They stood out through the way in which they did their homework for our presentations. A lot of other companies gave us a general list of services, while Ameex Technologies provided in-depth proposals. They weren't always right and we went on different routes in some cases, but they showed that they'd go the extra mile for us, which made a big difference. We also got the impression that they were very strong from a technical standpoint, which was something we'd been lacking in.

Could you provide a sense of the size of this initiative in financial terms?

The total development cost so far has been between $250,000 and $500,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together one year ago. Our relationship is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

Some of the metrics we look at for our long-term success are for project delivery dates. Because our relationship is so new, there have been many changes on both sides, and a few projects were delivered later than we would have liked. I wouldn't say that this is necessarily attributable to Ameex or to us. It was simply a collective decision to move things back.

Our sites have had a good uptime and we've seen a lot fewer alerts than in the past. I don't have long-term metrics for this topic though.

On a technical side, Ameex Technologies has proven to be a very sound team. If we send a task to them, they will deliver high quality results. When I receive something from them, I can count on it being done right.

How did Ameex Technologies perform from a project management standpoint?

Project management has been somewhat of a mixed bag. Some of this has been attributable to communication challenges due to them being an offshore company. It was also to do with individual resources which weren't the right fit for our work. One of the things that I like about Ameex Technologies is that their team has been very approachable whenever we've had issues. They work closely with us in order to resolve issues and are very receptive to feed-back.

On a project side, Ameex Technologies has an internal ticketing tool which we've used for a couple of projects last year. This year, we've taken a more Agile approach, which has made that system less applicable. From a support standpoint, we're generally sending emails in order to raise tickets. I also use a Jira system on my side through which I track their work. So far, our method has proven successful.

What distinguishes Ameex Technologies from other providers?

We're learning more and more about their capabilities as our relationship progresses. Their team has been very flexible whenever we've given them a request for proposal. While other vendors have disregarded our work, Ameex Technologies has always come back to us with research done ahead of time and without billing us. They've shown us they're serious about our business, which has gone over well with our leadership team. We've been comfortable in selecting them for more projects.

Could you share any tips with future clients?

The most important thing for any prospecting customer is making sure that the project management methodology is defined. They should be clear on rules and responsibilities. This is an area in which we've had a gap in our collaboration. They have the necessary resources that can help out in this regard, but the right comfort level needs to be established early on.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

I work the city of Fontana in Southern California. We have a full-time workforce of about 600, including almost 300 police employees. There are more than 1,000 actual employees because of part-time and seasonal employees. 

What is your position?

I am the IT [information technology] director for the city. We support the 12 departments with more than 100 different applications.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with Ameex Technologies?

We were doing a proof of concept project to evaluate Drupal as a platform for a website content management system. Ameex came in to help us with that project.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement in detail.

Ameex helped us to redesign our intranet website on Drupal. They also gave us some desktop training on Drupal, showed us what it could do, what it couldn't do, and how it would work. Our next step, the proof of concept, succeeded. We felt it was a viable platform for websites, and our next project is to take it to redesign the public-facing website. That is the project that's currently underway. Ameex was involved in the design, development, maintenance, and launch of that platform.

How did you come to work with Ameex Technologies?

We went through a competitive procurement process where we laid out what it is we wanted to do. We solicited proposals from a variety of different Drupal firms. Ameex submitted the most competitive proposal. We use the best-value procurement here, and we felt that their proposal represented the best value, so we signed an agreement. 

Could you provide a sense of the size of this initiative in financial terms?

It cost between $10,000 and $50,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

The project is completed.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any results from this engagement?

We are still in the process of trying to deploy the new intranet. We've worked with all of our departments because each department has their own web pages for the intranet project, which has different needs. I have 12 lines of business here that are very different. Between the police department, and the public works department, and the recreation department, there are many different requirements. Our biggest challenge now is simply deploying the intranet site. We have done the proof of concept. We have established the new intranet site, and we're gradually, one by one, moving our departments to the Drupal site from the existing HTML site.

How did Ameex Technologies perform from a project management standpoint?

I've spent 20 years as a management consultant myself, so I've worked with many agencies, many companies, done major development projects, and run the gamut. Working with Ameex Technologies was the best in my 40 years of experience in terms of the interaction between the consultants and my team, their ability to listen, their responsiveness, their communication, and their results.

They worked with us using our project management tool, so that they could communicate, set up tasks, and complete tasks. That was very helpful because we had a very good open dialogue with them ongoing for every task that needed to be done. If there were issues that came up, everybody on the team was immediately aware. There was a good dialogue, and it was a very successful project.

What distinguishes Ameex Technologies from other providers?

I think the adaptation to our project management style and the agile development methodology that they use was very effective in terms of making sure that everybody was engaged constantly. In many of projects, we find that we talk to the consultant, they go away for two or three weeks, and they come back and deliver something, and it's not what we thought. In this case, there was that constant dialogue and constant feedback. That kind of agile approach really made it go very smoothly so that they didn't spend a lot of time spinning their wheels doing something that wasn't appropriate. They validated their assumptions constantly against us to make sure that they were on the right track.

Is there anything Ameex Technologies could have improved or done differently?

The only problem we had was a bit of a language barrier. Other than that, I don't have a lot of negative to say about the project.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

We provide online training in the form of videos and PDFs.

What is your position?

I am the president of the company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with Ameex Technologies?

They helped us develop the management system that we needed in order to deliver our e-learning content. We didn't have the capabilities internally to handle the actual coding, but we had the rough concept. 

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement.

Ameex Technologies developed our system using Drupal and typical web development languages like HTML and PHP. They offered quality assurance services, too. The platform was hosted on Amazon Web Services (AWS) using Acquia. Drupal was chosen by us based on what our needs were and the platform's flexibility.

The team provided by Ameex Technologies featured between two and 10 developers. I don't know the exact numbers because we mostly interfaced with two or three managers. They were involved in the design of the platform, working with me in order to bring my vision to life and contributing with their own ideas.

How did you come to work with Ameex Technologies?

I did a web search for local development firms in Chicago. Ameex Technologies has a local office here, so I interviewed them along with several other firms. I chose them based on their technical expertise as well as their experience with projects that were similar to mine.

Could you provide a sense of the size of this initiative in financial terms?

The total development cost was around $150,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

The project took between 18 and 24 months to complete. Our relationship is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

Our platform is currently live. After launching a new phase or updating a feature, there might have been small issues that slipped through the cracks, but Ameex Technologies was prompt in fixing them. We've never had significant complaints about the website and the feedback we get is almost always positive. 

How did Ameex Technologies perform from a project management standpoint?

They met every milestone we set for the project. If there was any possibility of slippage in our progress timeframe, I was made well aware in advance.

Much of their team is offshore, and we didn't find this to be an issue at all. They worked around my schedule. One of my original criteria was to find a local company, and Ameex Technologies couldn't have been further away. Even though they maintain a local presence, the people I dealt with on a day-to-day basis were based in India. It was good working with them, and even things that might have seemed like negatives were, in fact, positives.

We used Asana for project tracking. The tool was chosen by me, but I believe that they use it internally as well. Communication was done exclusively on a remote basis, either through web meetings, phone conversations, or Asana. We had a weekly phone status report during development.

What distinguishes Ameex Technologies from other providers?

All their managers have technical credentials. They're familiar with the coding languages of the teams they lead. The project managers in my case had Drupal experience. This goes a long way in helping them understand the problems and needs of the technical engineers as well as those of the client. Ameex Technologies invests many person hours in coming up with good solutions. They don't simply do what I say, but rather come up with suggestions on how something can be made better. This has much to do with their software expertise.

Many of our previous consultants and remote developers have done what we told them to do and nothing more. Ameex Technologies follow our instructions, but they also suggest better ways in which to do something.