AppShark Software

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Gym Source is a fitness equipment dealer that serves both the consumer market and the vertical commercial market. We're primarily serving the East Coast, but we’re expanding to the West Coast through an acquisition we just finalized. I’m the chief marketing officer.

What challenge were you trying to address with AppShark Software?

We started with Salesforce as a CRM [customer relationship management], and we wanted to expand the functionality to have the Force platform run our entire enterprise.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We started with a small project, and that went well enough that we expanded the scope of work to build the enterprise solution. We needed to clean up the initial implementation so we could get the CRM portion off the ground. The ERP [enterprise resource planning] project is blending some apps that were available. We’ve implemented Accounting Seed into Salesforce, but everything else is going to be a bespoke built application including a point-of-sale system which didn’t exist in the app exchange. The entire purchase process is done through our Force.com platform. We have an additional full-time resource in-house who has been working with the developers and that has been very helpful because of his knowledge of our business.

How did you come to work with AppShark Software?

After a different implementation partner had gone very wrong, I was looking for a new company and was complaining to our Salesforce rep who introduced me to the principal at AppShark.  We had a phone call, and it was a breath of fresh air compared to some of the people we interviewed. That conversation was the first one I’ve had with implementation partners where I felt I was getting the truth.

How much have you invested with AppShark Software?

[Confidential]

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them 18 months ago, and it’s an ongoing relationship.

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

We’re going to be going into beta next month. We’ve been able to get everybody on board so far and have solved a lot of problems that we didn’t expect to.

How did AppShark Software perform from a project management standpoint?

At their recommendation, we moved to Atlassian JIRA as a project management tool to keep everything organized.

What did you find most impressive about AppShark Software?

AppShark’s patience and understanding far surpassed anyone else we’ve ever dealt with. We were new to this type of engagement, and they were very helpful in getting us accustomed to the process. They were so supportive that we decided to continue with the large project on the Force platform.

Are there any areas AppShark Software could improve?

It would be great if they would hire a business process consultant that would be a liaison between the business process and the technical specifications. That would’ve helped our process go more smoothly.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Hair Direct is a consumer goods company.

My role is Director of Digital Strategy.

What challenge were you trying to address with AppShark?

We were looking for a partner to help us implement Salesforce as our CRM [customer relationship management] system. We had a custom CRM solution, and we were looking to move into Salesforce as a new solution.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We had a relationship with another agency, and it pretty much failed. We were almost a year behind in implementing our Salesforce instance. We looked to AppShark to really pick up all of the loose pieces. We didn't have everything well documented. They came in and met our business requirements and many of the design solutions. They also helped to import the data over. There was over a million records to be imported. It was such a large project, and we had a very small window of time for when we were expected to launch it. They sent someone in, and they worked in our office. They were able to help us get launched, and once we were launched, they worked with us through the clean-up of all the bugs and really made it a solid solution.

Then, we decided to partner with them on an ongoing basis, and they are our Salesforce engineers. We have two full-time people from AppShark, and we just brought on a full-time AppShark person in our office. The initial engagement was to be over right after Thanksgiving of 2015. It started in May or June of that same year. After we launched in November, we decided to keep the relationship going.

How much have you invested with AppShark?

We have spent $250,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

They're providing about 100 man hours per week. We've added additional people aside from the Salesforce team. We use one person who helps with solution design and requirements gathering. We have an additional person that we added full-time in our office to do Salesforce administration over and above the one-and-a-half full-time people in their India office. Then, we added one full-time person to help with our .NET website integrations and web development. Everything except for the one-and-a-half people in India are through to the end of the year, and we'll consider continuing with them for all of those, as well as we're considering them to do our website redesign. That would be a six-month engagement with six people from the AppShark team.

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

It's our CRM, and I don't think we do a lot of stats and measurements there as much as we do on our website side. We baked in our order process into the process. The amount of time it takes to place an order has decreased. The ability to track and trace communications for customers and internal employees has increased. We didn’t have the ability to run reports and gather data before, so obviously that's great. As far as quality, we also built a custom tool inside Salesforce called our HSF, which helps to validate orders and the specs for orders. I can't really say at this point, but we've increased our quality based on the HSF tool built into Salesforce.

How did AppShark perform from a project management standpoint?

They've always been open and fair in their communication, making sure that there's clarity so we understand timelines and expectations. They are transparent and have no problem with accountability. We really appreciate that. They work as a team, so any types of communication that we need, specifically to specific people, they do that. They go over and above on finding solutions to a problem with our system. There have been many times where they've had to jump in and help out if there's a problem within our system that's unrelated to them, and have also helped us to really organize our IT and infrastructures and help out with integrations. They've always helped to find solutions and resources to assist us throughout this process.

What did you find most impressive about AppShark?

They've really made a great addition to our team. There are times things need to be completed, and it's not necessarily a full-time job. Because of the trust we've built with them, we don't need to always go out looking for an agency to take care of something. We can turn to AppShark for solutions and resources for a job we need to get done, and don't have to commit to a long-term engagement. They've been extremely flexible there, and that's really helped us tremendously to get strategic projects completed.

Are there any areas AppShark could improve?

No, I think they've done extremely well with everything we've given them. We continue to challenge them, and they continue to meet and exceed our expectations.

Please describe your organization.

Vendorin helps midsize and large companies transition their accounts payable from paper based to electronic. We work with these companies and help them avoid printing accounts payable checks and instead process electronic payments to their suppliers.

What is your position?

I’m the president and founder of Vendorin.

What business challenge were you trying to address with AppShark?

We partnered with AppShark very early on in the life of the company. When we started the company back in 2007 we had the challenge of building our product. We went to AppShark and asked them to build it for us according to our specifications, and then modify it on an ongoing basis and provide production support. They’ve done that since late 2007.

Please describe the scope of their involvement in greater detail.

Clients use the product in two ways. They log in to the web application and use it there, and they also connect to the application via file interface. They send files to the application via FTP [file transfer protocol] and they also sometimes pick up files from the application.

How did you come to work with AppShark?

We had worked with the team members of AppShark previously while they were in other roles at other companies.

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

Our partnership with AppShark has been in the range of $200,000 to $1 million.

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

I think the biggest success story is the fact that our product is being used daily by two of the five largest banks in the US. These banks have decided that the system is good enough that their clients should be using it, so they’re directing their clients to use it. The system is processing billions of dollars of payment transactions every month. 

What distinguishes AppShark from other providers?

I’ve worked with lots of different teams. AppShark is reliable, accessible, responsive, and they produce high-quality work.

Is there anything AppShark could have improved or done differently?

No, I’m satisfied with the service they’ve provided.