Bull & Beard

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the Creative Director at National Center for Families Learning. We work to eradicate poverty by providing education solutions to families.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Bull & Beard?

We needed help developing educational websites and digital products geared towards “at-risk” and marginalized demographics.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Early on, they primarily helped us with our existing WordPress sites, but since then we’ve done everything from HTML emails, one-off holiday celebration pages, and full-scale web development to strategy creation, design, development, and new-property coding. There are many other sites of an educational nature with varying degrees of database management and thinking that they’ve worked on for us.

One of our projects was a complete rebuild of Wonderopolis.org, one of our top properties that serves more than 16 million people annually. We had an existing product and concept that we’d executed before, but they really dug in deep and came up with a new model and method through which to display our content. We continue to use this model every year, even though we do update it annually when we put out a new addition. Our most recent addition included the original web app, as well as new mobile apps that we worked on with them.

When we first brought them on, our largest platform was built on WordPress – primarily for the backend usability it afforded us. Unfortunately, we had too many customized features and modules for WordPress to handle, so they recommended a much better solution and walked us through the process, helping us to build a completely customized platform from the ground up. We also did a similar rebuild with a that involved a multi-level database. We’d struggled with it since its inception – just managing the various ins and outs of it – so we ended up rebuilding that with them in phases.

What is the team composition?

I work with two co-founders, one of which is the CEO and the other is the Managing Partner.

How did you come to work with Bull & Beard?

As part of a 2013 rebrand we did a new website. We worked with a creative subcontractor of ours, but then we had another project follow very shortly after and we decided to contract with Bull & Beard independently.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent between $200,000-$999,999 so far.

What is the status of this engagement?

We’ve been working together since July 2014.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

They provide high-level performance for a great value, and we can certainly relate the success of our individual properties to them. The Wonderopolis project was a homerun for us, and reliability improved drastically with both of the big website redevelopments they’ve done for us. They’ve used their tech and agency experience to help us realize what we need. They’ve also helped us expand our reporting management liability as well as our end-to-end features on both the client- and developer-side.

How did Bull & Beard perform from a project management standpoint?

We have weekly phone calls but we use email to communicate for the most part. Regarding workflow, we use Basecamp to manage things and we run our platform development through Laravel. They’re really responsive when it comes to providing details and answers and have been very willing to negotiate around timelines and budgets. Sometimes we have the money accomplish big things, but other times we have very little money, so having a strong working relationship, allows us to navigate these changes.

I really enjoy their level of transparency. Their reporting is great and their billing is more than fair. They’re great to work with, easy, reliable, and identify issues whenever they come up. When a rare mistake occurs, they admit it and do their best offset and anticipate them the next time around. They primarily partner with one other agency for their development work and I consider that company to be a part of their team as well.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They excel at analyzing a situation, our objectives, and coming up with a good technological solution, so their strategy and professional recommendations are amazing. They excel at explaining things to people at a variety of levels, ranging from technical experts to executives who make decision using different types information. They’re able to talk to whomever they need to in effective ways.

The fact that they’re lean but carry such a great level of experience and knowledge is quite helpful to me, especially being a non-profit spot where money is always tight. They’ve been a great partner because they know what needs to be done and have the networks to reach out to, activate, and partner with. I’ve never felt as if we were being shoehorned into something because it would be easier for them.

Are there any areas they could improve?

There were some issues with project management early on with missed appointments and rescheduling, but that was just in the first year. To their credit, they never shied away from it but always owned up to it. It wasn’t a big deal at all in retrospect.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Make the most of their transparency and be as open as possible with what you want. Don’t hold back because they’re good with any level of direction. Sometimes we know exactly what we, so we just give it to them and they make it happen. But, other times, we have an idea and don’t know how to do it, so they’re great at helping us find a solution. They’re really good at cutting through the weeds and honing in on the key details and questions.