Bilberrry

What was the scope of their involvement?

Bilberrry developed our web-based platform from scratch, which is divided into several sections. Users can define a target audience and value proposition, as well as a three-year strategic plan. There's an implementation dashboard tool for work that's being done in the current year and sections for uploading files, having discussions, and adding collaborators to the plan. There's also a feature that allows users to set deadlines, so collaborators are reminded as a deadline is approaching. We haven't yet linked the platform to others, such as Google Docs or Slack, but may work with Bilberrry to make those integrations as well in the future.

What is the team composition?

We work with Adam (Co-founder and Project Manager, Bilberrry) and about three to five developers at a time.

How did you come to work with Bilberrry?

I knew of Bilberrry through a friend of a friend. My partner, Steve, also had some experience working with them in the past and was impressed by the breadth and quality of their work.

How much have you invested with them?

We've invested about $60,000 in their services thus far.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them sometime in 2012 or 2013 to create the first version of the software, but we engaged them again to update it in 2017. We continue to work with their team on upgrades and updates as needed.

What was the scope of their involvement?

The main project was to do an entire rebuild of the platform that would make it easier to add new clients, and allow us to manage it in a way that we can make changes here and there without reaching out to developers all the time. 

We partnered with Bilberrry on our proprietary dashboard, which serves as the reporting platform for the quality control checks. It’s essentially a training tool for operations to make sure they’re holding up to their standards. We send in third-party auditors to restaurants and retail locations on a monthly rotation. We assign those visits from our website, and the field auditors accept and then carry out the visit. They then log back onto our website, where they fill out a detailed report; those reports are sent to the client on the backend of our dashboard. They can view a reporting tab, trend report, summary report, etc., to see how they stack up against their own restaurants or retail locations. In addition to the build-out, they provide ongoing maintenance through Trackolade.

The platform can be mobile, but we designed it to be more user-friendly on a web base. We use the Amazon Web Services framework, AWS.

For this project, Bilberrry has helped us build out integrations with Sendgrid and MailChimp. We use Sendgrid to send out assignments to our field auditors, and to send reports to the client operations people. We use MailChimp for recruiting. If we need people in new locations, we send out mass marketing campaigns through MailChimp, and then encourage people to go to our site and apply.

They also built a separate payroll function within our site so we can export to an Excel CSV and upload it to our ACH Treasury software. That’s not a full integration.

What is the team dynamic?

Adam [Brazg, Co-founder, Bilberrry] was the project manager throughout most of the interaction. Typically there would be one lead developer who oversaw the project, and at least one or two other developers working under the lead. I would typically communicate our needs or changes to one developer on Trackolade, and if it was a pretty big task, the lead would see it through. If there were a lot of tedious steps or small tasks, they would pass it along to one or two other developers. The lead developer would review it before it was done on the production site so the other developers could make changes and get approval.

How did you come to work with Bilberrry?

A mutual friend introduced me to Adam, who talked to me about their process at Bilberrry.  I mentioned some of our needs and struggles, and how we were looking to update our website and dashboard, and they were able to easily help with that.

How much have you invested with them?

It was a pretty big project, so we’ve probably spent over $150,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We’ve worked together from May 2014, and it’s ongoing.