BlueFletch

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a manager of software development for a retail organization.

What challenge were you trying to address with BlueFletch?

Initially, we wanted to leverage a product of BlueFletch’s.

What was the scope of their involvement?

In our first engagement, BlueFletch provided a launcher that runs on an Android-based system. The launcher enables us to control different applications and features such as logging.

Since our initial engagement, their team built 12 mobile applications for Android from scratch but following the requirements set by my development team. They developed a messaging infrastructure to support the products' functionalities on mobile devices. Their team provided critical support for the Android platforms as well as our buy online, pick up in-store business. They’re working on another project for us now.

What is the team composition?

I worked with 10 different people from BlueFletch including a host of developers, the CEO, and the CIO. The same project manager worked on all of our projects. 

How did you come to work with BlueFletch?

Our leadership found BlueFletch through their contacts. Their team was identified as best in class essentially.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent around $1,200,000 with BlueFletch.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them around April of 2016 and their work’s ongoing.

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

We found their applications to have low ticket rates in our stores. We have 250 locations and our software runs on approximately 3,000 devices. Their products really work. I’ve worked with many partners in the same space but their products are of the highest quality. They're best-in-class.

How did BlueFletch perform from a project management standpoint?

I worked with the same project manager across all of our engagements. I can hand the project over and their project manager will track code reviews, testing, and our tasks. They schedule meetings as well as the travel that will need to occur. Their project management’s great.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their skill sets and overall knowledge distinguish them. They’re a platinum partner with Zebra and Google, so there's nothing their team can't handle in relation to those platforms. When you work with people who can complete projects that well, that’s a significant, distinguishing quality.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I haven’t had any issues with them at all. If there’s anything in need of tightening, it's that their paperwork can be loose. For us, it would be helpful to understand what their SOWs need to look like upfront versus redlines all of the time.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

If you’re going to hire BlueFletch, your organization should do their homework. Have a clear vision of what you want them to do. If you go in without your vision or needs established, it will take a longer time for them to solve your problem. They can and will assist to further hone your ideas, but it will be more efficient if your work is done upfront.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I work for an organization that offers full-service mobile information solutions to enterprise customers. Our team provides solutions that are wrapped around the acquisitions of mobile devices. That includes deployment, support, and an ongoing maintenance contract. We also have a helpdesk and help with mobile device management.

What challenge were you trying to address with BlueFletch?

They helped us tie our service elements together so that we could provide our customers with a robust view of their mobile assets. It’s essentially a web development and reporting project.

What was the scope of their involvement?

They are enhancing our portal so that we can provide customers with real-time information on their mobile devices. Nothing was built from scratch. We started with renderings of how the solutions would look and behave.

The portal we had was dated and needed an update. They’re using grid technology and other tools so that customers can find specific data elements, whereas previously the reporting was done through crystal reports. It’s a more flexible way for customers to access their data sets. Because mobile devices move around a lot, people are interested in where they are.

Thus, we created an identity for that asset that is tracked throughout the product’s lifecycle. They’re helping us build a dynamic portal where a customer can view the product themselves. They can also find the history of a particular asset from when it first enters the environment. Working from a SQL server, they’ve created a sortable, dynamic data grid for the customer to access.

What is the team composition?

We worked with 4-5 different members of their team. We talked to them about what we were looking for. Our team works with a data architect and UI specialist. These were project managers, not the actual programmers.

How did you come to work with BlueFletch?

I’d come across them from past experience, as I’ve worked with them on web applications before.

What is the status of this engagement?

The work began in September 2019 and is still ongoing. They are planning on taking what they’ve done and using it to build a better database.

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

BlueFletch improved our products and streamlined our services. Customers can now access functions without needing to go through as many data entry points. Tickets can be viewed and processed more quickly. The results have been very good. Since we’ve rolled out the new version of the portal, customers are excited about their newfound ability to access data.

How did BlueFletch perform from a project management standpoint?

They’ve been very cooperative and helpful in resolving issues with our team. The project manager is proactive and drives meetings forward. They’ve completed all their deliverables and met timelines. We follow up on a weekly basis to see where we are and what we’ve accomplished. If we need to update code at night or over the weekend, they’ve been available.

What did you find most impressive about them?

For us, we were looking for an organization that has stability and scale because this project is a critical component of our services. When you consider the services we offer our customers, this is the glue that holds everything together. Their stability, scale, and reputation were important because whatever we did would impact asset management. They’re very straightforward with quotes and documentation.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They’re already doing this, but it would be helpful if they outsourced their development to lower their overhead costs. They don’t need to outsource the architecture or innovation, but perhaps the day-to-day work can be done cheaper with a different model.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I would advise anyone that hires them to engage early in the process. If you are developing an application, it’s important to bring them into the process early so they understand the process behind what you’re trying to do. They offer great advice on process improvements.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the former COO of Vunify, a streaming video content discovery platform that aggregated 3 million different tv shows and movies with links to approximately 50 streaming services. Users could find what they wanted to watch, and then we would deep link them into that.

What challenge were you trying to address with BlueFletch?

We hired BlueFletch to developed a mobile app for iOS and Android.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Since we already had an existing, mobile-responsive website, some of the templates and wireframes were used for the mobile app. BlueFletch figured out how to turn that information into a native application, looking into different complexities and usability features. Their team developed, tested, and launched the app.

What is the team composition?

The team had between 5–6 people. There was a project manager, lead developers for each platform, and a few others that helped along the way.

How did you come to work with BlueFletch?

I had a relationship with one of the founders. We had a lot in common because we both started companies around the same time. We kept in touch over the years.

How much have you invested with them?

I believe we spent between $100,000–$120,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked with BlueFletch from April–May 2017.

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

It took four to six weeks to develop and launch the app. We weren’t tracking their work in a specific way. We were looking at wireframes, coding, and general usability.

How did BlueFletch perform from a project management standpoint?

From a project management standpoint, their team is excellent. They’re a buttoned-up team, managing everything. Their team held us accountable for our deadlines and dependences while staying flexible to changing realities. They also added strategic visions and ideas to improve the application.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The rigor at which they operate is somewhat unique for a firm of their size. A lot of companies cobbled together their project management, but BlueFletch remained professional with that. They have the approach of a larger development firm.

Are there any areas they could improve?

As for things they could’ve done differently, there’s nothing that’s jumping out at me. There were the normal gaps that come with back-and-forth collaborations, but they managed all of that effectively. They’re good partners that remained involved with the design agency we were working with and us. I don’t have anything negative to say.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Have a clear vision of what you want to accomplish and share that with them. They appreciate what you’re trying to achieve, looking beyond requirements. Their team strives to understand your business. Be upfront with sharing your goals and objectives. Let them bring ideas and insights to the table as a partner.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the product manager for mobile and IoT at a water heating product manufacturing company.

What challenge were you trying to address with Blue Fletch?

We had built a mobile application with a prior partner that was not achieving our goals or delivering quality results, so we decided to hire someone to take over.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Blue Fletch developed and designed our mobile app. Our previous mobile app and IoT product with a cloud firmware and a complex ecosystem. Their team is also responsible for our firmware development.

We’re still what I would call our growth phase of our platform so there’s a lot of new features and functions that need to be defined, designed, and developed. The Blue Fletch team continues to maintain and enhance our platforms. I publish an annual road map with all of our new capabilities. 

How did you come to work with Blue Fletch?

I evaluated a series of companies based on a defined set of criteria. One of which was that they had to be Atlanta-based so that they could come to work in our lab and engage easily with the team.  Blue Fletch also had the culture and consulting environment I was looking for, along with the technical skillset.

How much have you invested with them?

We have invested about $1 million.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our ongoing engagement with Blue Fletch began in June 2017.

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

As a partner, Blue Fletch is incredibly easy to work with on complex projects. We do business reviews with them twice a year to decide what is going well and what we need to do differently. They’re very responsive and take any corrective actions immediately. 

How did Blue Fletch perform from a project management standpoint?

They have consistent project management capabilities. Blue Fletch is great at communicating and keeping me advised and informed. However, they will not sacrifice quality for a timeline.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The ease of doing business with Blue Fletch sets them apart. They have an excellent attitude and work hard. Blue Fletch is committed to my company’s success. You can find people with technical skills all over the place, but if they’re hard to work with, the technical becomes almost irrelevant. 

No company is perfect, there’s always going to be defects in software or something that could go wrong. That’s the nature of business and doesn’t reflect on whether they’re a good partner or a bad one. What does reflect that is how they respond. Blue Fletch cares about the customer experience and the quality of the work. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

There could be some more consistency in communicating with customers and process pieces with mobile development.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Be clear about what your needs are. They will never know my business as well as I do, but I’m never going to know the mobile and IoT industry as well as they do. That’s what they bring to the table.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I focus on the quality of mobile devices for Australia’s largest food retailer.

What challenge were you trying to address with BlueFletch?

We had many devices located in stores that could no longer be managed by our team. We had no control over the software deployment on those devices. Because of that, they were becoming under-utilized. Our team embarked on projects to get managed devices into the hands of stores, which would take some innovation. Their team helped us select and manage the devices. 

What was the scope of their involvement?

Because we couldn’t manage devices after they were in stores, what was out there couldn’t be updated. BlueFletch helped us be the middleman between traditional management software and the device, so parties on either end would be satisfied with the software and the device. They acted as IT consultants, custom software developers, and Android specialists. Together we developed a mobile device management software that solved our problem with new fleets of devices.

They effectively set up the systems and led a transfer of knowledge to our team, to ensure that they could step away with confidence that the solution was sustainable for our company. 

What is the team composition?

Over the two-year partnership, there were about 8 people involved. 

How did you come to work with BlueFletch?

Our company visited a top-performing retailer in the United States to discuss the problem and potential steps toward solutions. The retailer recommended BlueFletch, so we looked at their portfolio. We were impressed, so we decided to work with them.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent about $2,000,000 AUD (approximately 1,400,000 USD) on their services.

What is the status of this engagement?

The engagement lasted from 2016–2018.

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

I’m from a startup background, so I appreciated the way they handled consultancy in an agile fashion. We were able to continuously evaluate our goals and progress on a weekly basis. For instance, our ultimate goals were to get all the current devices and new fleets under proper management. We’ve been able to track that on a weekly basis.  

How did BlueFletch perform from a project management standpoint?

They’re a highly technical team. Brett (Founding Partner, BlueFletch) is able to serve as a point person for projects, slipping into project management and engineering roles as necessary. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

They weren’t afraid to make mistakes to guide them to the right solutions. Sometimes, if you don’t break things, then it’ll take too long to effectively find an answer. They were willing to touch all parts of our service: Android development, networks, Wi-Fi, external vendors.

If they made a mistake in any of these areas during agile development, they could quickly fix it. This basically sped up the entire process. They got through tasks so quickly that we expanded their responsibilities. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

They did a very good job, overcoming challenges quickly. It did take them a little while to come up to speed on our networks and processes, so a bit more prep time could’ve been beneficial.  

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Using the agile process, you’ll get daily or weekly builds of your software from them. This allows you to shape products that they’re building along the way. To do this most effectively, I’d assign a technical lead on our end to communicate with them about the logistics of the development.

That will help you challenge them throughout the process and become more involved than we were able to be. They were able to deliver amazing work anyway, though. It’s still important for the transfer of knowledge to occur throughout the process.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I work at an IT at a large retailer that deploys mobile devices to over 2,000 locations. These devices help manage point-of-sale services and customer interactions.            

What challenge were you trying to address with BlueFletch?

We hired BlueFletch to augment our team so we could deliver more value and software development through their skills.

What was the scope of their involvement?

They’re doing native Android development on an internal application. Initially, they had started this process by migrating our devices from Windows Mobile to Android. It manages the device and protects users from being able to change settings or download applications. They’ve also been building a cloud-native workspace as well. That includes building websites that interact with the device that also performs device management.

We had them implement a common launch point for applications and single sign-on functionality. They also implemented a way to access device and client information.

Their team are our experts in the enterprise, private, and mobile spaces.

What is the team composition?

They augment our team with developers.

How did you come to work with BlueFletch?

I have had a long relationship with them. I worked with the founders of BlueFletch while they were at a previous company. Through that, we knew their talents and brought them in.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve invested over $1 million.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them from the inception of their company. The engagement began in 2012.

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

I’m very satisfied with their work. I consider them experts for this type of native app development. They’re the only team we use for this type of work. They are very fluent in getting any device to work for enterprise purposes. If they think another approach is better, they’ll give their opinions on how to do it differently. They really invest in your work.

How did BlueFletch perform from a project management standpoint?

We’re using an agile methodology, so there’s not so much direct project management. In the past, they’ve acted as project managers, but we’re currently not using them for that. They’re just part of the team working on the apps for us.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their proficiency in enterprise development is highly impressive. These enterprise devices have security requirements and need a good architecture, which BlueFletch excels at.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They’re in a mobile niche. They could be successful in taking those skills to IoT devices as we move out of Android-specific devices. There’s an opportunity to increase their business in the IoT space, specifically with sensors and integrating those into our systems.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Trust their experience. They usually have great knowledge. They’ve done work with me and other retailers; leverage their experience because they’ve done it several times.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the senior IT project manager for an IT consulting firm. I manage multi-million-dollar software and infrastructure projects for an airline.

What challenge were you trying to address with BlueFletch?

We wanted to create a communication tool that would streamline the departure process for the airline’s frontline employees.

What was the scope of their involvement?

They developed both an iOS/Android mobile and web app from scratch. After creating the wireframes and documentation, they developed the app using Microsoft Azure Cloud backend and built the backend API.

What is the team composition?

There are 8–10 people, which included business analysts, UX designers, a technical architect, developers, and an account manager. Our project manager was also a business analyst/scrum master who was really good.

How did you come to work with BlueFletch?

BlueFletch completed a proof of concept a few years ago. The POC was successful so the initiative was transferred to the sector that I PM projects for (operations) so phase 1 could begin. Since then, we’ve been working together.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in March 2017, and the work is ongoing.

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

The Android version is still in development, but the project has been highly successful. More operational groups use it than we anticipated; we now have 11 operational groups using the app across the globe, with several more groups who want to utilize it. It has been very valuable to the frontline operation. We just finished phase 2A and have begun working on phase 2B.

How did BlueFletch perform from a project management standpoint?

We keep a list of lessons learned and celebrate our successes as they happen. When any issues come up, their team is very open and amenable to addressing any of our concerns. They deliver on time. When we needed them to work 12–14-hour days to hit our date, they did it. They’re just a good partner.

We were really impressed with our first project manager. She was one of the best project managers I’ve ever worked with. The manager we work with now is also good and attends a weekly meeting with team stakeholders.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Although they’re a small company of 30–40 people, they’re a good partner. They’re very amenable and don’t try to nickel and dime us. They’re a very young, smart, and talented team. Whenever they have issues to address, they’re easy to talk to. They’re not combative. They’re open to constructive feedback and criticism.

We appreciate that they do what they need to in order to deliver everything on time. Since their team is local, it’s very easy to collaborate with them. Even though we’ll say they don’t have to come on-site for a meeting, they still come and do a face-to-face. They’re good and easy to work with.

Are there any areas they could improve?

My mobile QA tester is finding defects that I think their QA tester should find. They’re supposed to be performing full functional QA testing, this is being addressed with them. 

I recently had to remind them again to use certain terms in lieu of others because when we get into meetings, people who aren’t part of our core project team will get confused.

Everything else I’ve addressed with them, they’ve taken immediate corrective action. There’s nothing else on our radar that I can think of that we need them to improve upon.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Once you give them the work, they hit the ground running. They’re a great partner. They’ve always been willing to do whatever we need, going beyond what they were contractually obligated to do. My advice to anyone that is thinking about hiring them would be to make sure to clearly communicate your expectations, especially if you don’t want them to make any assumptions, even on the smallest details, especially if you have complex legacy and internal-only applications. In the very beginning, they made too many assumptions; therefore, we faced a few preventable challenges and were headed down the wrong path for the tech solution and design. However, after discussing a few times, we were able to successfully overcome these challenges.

Please describe your company and your position there.

We are a voice-to-data startup focused on the global Food & Agriculture industry. We empower specialists, and the companies they work for, in this sector to capture field data, hands-free, on-the-go, and with no internet connection, using voice - for their required data reporting for food production sustainability.

For what projects/services did your company hire BlueFletch?

We needed an early prototype built to perform in-field testing and get real-world user feedback, very early in our startup stage. We hired Blue Fletch for a 6 month project so we could learn users feedback and suggestions - before strategically building our in-house software dev team.

What were your goals for this project?

We had a short runway of a few months, to get the service in users hands by our early July in-field test days.

How did you select this vendor?

I had met Rick Makerson, CEO and Managing Partner, at a mobility event in Atlanta and was impressed by their ability to rapidly experiment and prototype, and their enterprise-grade customer base.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

Show users a visual view of our App and cloud dashboard, to get feedback on features.

What was the team composition?

A lead project manager, and a mobile and back end developer.

Can you share any information that demonstrates the impact that this project has had on your business?

We hit the aggressive date for in-field testing, based on the collaboration with Blue Fletch.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

We had a project manager who was pretty effective in the dev, pre-testing stage.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

The CEO stepped in and coded part of the platform himself to ensure we achieved the date. He had to solve a key technical challenge that we encountered as the time to ship was nearing.

Are there any areas for improvement?

Additional roles and responsibilities, and timeline development on the testing phase would have helped our project.