BVG Software Group

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I’m the director of design and development for an American family-run business with a long heritage of authentic Moroccan tile making. Our ancestors, based in Fez, Morocco, have been designing and creating tiles since 1912.

The company was established by master craftsman Solomon Farhi. Maallems, or Zellij artisans, have been trained in the complexities of design and craftsmanship of Moroccan tiles for thousands of years. In 1948, Farhi’s son—Miloud Farhi—began the journey of learning the Maallem craft from his father. He joined the Cooperative of Maallems Zelligeurs de Fez, in 1982 after his father passed away.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire BVG Software Group?

Our website didn’t look modern. We needed the site to better display our approach to interior design, bring in work faster, and be more user-friendly. We had the new design ready, so we hired BVG Software Group team to rewrite the site’s backend and then decided to redesign it as well.

The main feature of our website is a color matching tool that helps our clients make their custom Zellij colors combinations. It was quite difficult to use, so we focused on making it simpler and mobile device compatible.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

We’ve talked to several developers but no one provided a good solution for our coloring system. Some of them said that such development would cost a lot of time and money. Then, the BVG team came up with a good plan and made the price absolutely reasonable. We were very surprised with their approach.

Describe the project in detail.

After several calls with them, we had the full idea of how everything would work and provided our designs so they could start with the layout stage. We had a lot of ideas about improving the site’s design and BVG helped us implement the best ones.

When the layout was ready, we started with the backend while their designer began preparing the work for the color matching tool in parallel to that so we could save some time. We continued working with them for additional improvements after the project was completed.

What was the team composition?

They assigned a project manager to answer our questions and discuss any problems. The team also consisted of a full-stack developer to work on both the back and frontend parts of the site, a designer, and a quality assurance specialist.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What outcomes or results can you share that demonstrate progress and/or success?

BVG successfully rewrote the backend, redesigned the website, and did a great job with the color matching tool. The pages on our site now load in less than a second and the tiles in look great in the catalog.

I feel like the new website really shows our quality and represents our brand well—it looks and feels awesome! As I mentioned before, it’s a family owned business and I’m greatly inspired because the conversion rates have gone up and we’re all happy.

How effective was the project management?

I’d like to point out that there’s a huge eight-hour time difference between us. In spite of that, we really had no communication issues. The project manager provided very fast responses and regularly informed us of the status of the project.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

We were amazed by their technical expertise and we found their team to be more professional compared to the other developers we spoke to. They always communicated clearly and were collaborative during the entire duration of the project. We faced a few small issues after the development was completed and their response to these problems was instant. They’re a very supportive and experienced team.

What tips or recommendations do you have?

There’s no limit for improvement. We could’ve completed the project faster but they never missed the discussed terms, so I’m satisfied with their work.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

RoundPier is a platform for teachers and students from various educational organizations. I’m one of the co-founders and the CEO of the company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with BVG Software?

They’ve provided a full development package for us, building our web platform from scratch.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They developed our platform based on our ideas and continued to modify and maintain it. They developed the website, including its backend functionalities and database, and created a mobile-responsive version. We don’t have an app yet, but we are working on it. The technologies used are Laravel, SQL, JavaScript, and HTML.

It’s a social network similar to LinkedIn, but with a focus on education. It connects various member groups—teachers, tutors, and parents as well as various educational organizations like universities, schools, and summer programs—allowing them to exchange ideas. It provides various opportunities for students, parents, and teachers, and connects various member groups well.

What is the team composition? 

I believe there were 2 developers assigned to the project.

How did you come to work with BVG Software?

They were referred to me by someone I knew, who’d dealt with them. They have a number of U.S. clients but also work in Europe extensively. I’ve also worked with them on another project, before RoundPier. Their previous work and the fact that they have experience supporting a large U.S. business gave me assurance that they knew what they were doing.

How much have you invested with them?

The total cost has been above $25,000. We are continuing to invest in the project.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them a year ago, around February 2017.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

They did a great job putting together the whole platform from scratch and brought a lot of value to our initial ideas.

By running a beta version of the platform, we’ve attracted close to 1,000 users already, without any marketing. People are actually using the platform and they appreciate what we’ve done. The platform is easy to navigate and they did a good job highlighting its main features.

We’re collecting feedback from the existing user base as we go and we’re continuing to add features to the product. The initial feedback has been very good, but it’s only a matter of time until we will improve it.

How did BVG Software perform from a project management standpoint?

There were no big issues. We started the project with only an idea and didn’t provide them with exact technical text. I appreciate the time they put into actually writing one. Their project manager did a great job of taking our ideas and suggestions and turning them into an actual requirements list.

As we’ve spent more time on the development, they came back to us with their own ideas about how to improve the platform. This was helpful to us since neither I nor my co-founder is technical. We understand some things, but not everything, so having a commercially-minded project manager who understood what we were trying to achieve was helpful.

We had clear tasks for them to finish and there was a general plan in place. We had weekly calls to review where we were, and the project manager listed what they were working on and what issues they had. I was consulted on what solutions we should employ to fix those problems. We mostly communicated through emails and Skype calls.

We changed some of the features towards the end, which took a few extra weeks. If we hadn’t, they would have delivered right on schedule.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We quite like that end-product, even though it could still be improved. It was impressive that they managed to collect some of our thoughts and build something pretty much on their own.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Any team can improve and I’ve seen the end-results of other developers. I think they’ve improved a lot during the process—the first month was spent with us trying to get our thoughts and ideas together, but after 2 or 3 months, they started generating their own ideas on how things should look and function on the platform. 

They could definitely improve the design side of things since the team is more technical than presentation-focused. They did a great job on the backend, but could still improve in terms of design. However, we’re not an entertainment-focused app, so the design is not our biggest issue.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

If the customer has a technical task, their team can perform excellently. If someone comes with only a few ideas about the build, they can still do a good job internally thinking through various issues and developing an action plan.