Astound Commerce

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the director of strategic alliances at Sift. We use machine learning to detect all types of online fraud. That includes payment fraud, content fraud, and account-related fraud. I build out partnerships that help us attract and be introduced to new merchants. From a partnership perspective, that translates to building new avenues on how we can position and sell our product.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Astound Commerce?

One of our strategic initiatives is to help merchants and retailers online. There are a lot of e-commerce platforms in the market, and we wanted to go with the telecommerce cloud, which is a midmarket enterprise offering. For this to work, we needed to have an integration.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We went out to tender and they built our integration into Salesforce Commerce Cloud.

What is the team composition?

We worked with anywhere between 5–10 individuals. Our main point of contact was their respective partnerships manager. We worked with their project managers, delivery team lead, and a couple of developers and engineers. There were also QA testers and other software developers at different stages of the process.

How did you come to work with Astound Commerce?

They’re a known entity; Astound Commerce is in the global top three of certified partners with Salesforce Commerce Cloud. We wanted to work with some of the best who could bring us into that ecosystem. Our company has worked with them in the past. We brought in multiple quotes from other companies but ultimately selected Astound Commerce.

How much have you invested with them?

We invested between $30,000–$35,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our engagement ran from November 2019–March 2020 when development ended. However, we’re on a maintenance contract that covers any issues that are outside of warranty and new feature development.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The key criteria were for the integration to be certified by consultants and software engineers on the Salesforce side. So really the main criteria are Salesforce’s official criteria. The code had to have good quality, no issues, no errors, and be fully functioning.

The integration has passed all of those criteria and was published in the marketplace. On our side, we wanted to ensure our functionality works with Salesforce Commerce Cloud. We went through a couple of weeks of testing and they passed those tests.

How did Astound Commerce perform from a project management standpoint?

At first, we had a few hiccups because we weren’t aware of some of the processes they were conducting. I don’t know if it was on their end or ours that led to the confusion. However, once it cleared up, everything was as we expected.

They were communicative, and we had ways to escalate and connect with people. From a delivery deadline perspective, everything was also as expected. They kept us in the loop as it relates to the certification process.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’re subject matter experts. It’s clear they know the ins and outs of Salesforce Commerce Cloud really well.

Are there any areas they could improve?

In my experience, the initial project set-up could have been executed a little better. I would’ve expected clear guidelines about communication and cadence from the very beginning but the inactivity triggered my response to ask for all of those things. Once I did ask, they provided everything.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Make sure you give them all the things you need to be happy with project management. Also, having an understanding of the platform is key. If you don’t know what you’re talking about or how you want your software to be implemented, it’ll be much harder.