Carimus

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the donor technology manager for a healthcare organization that collects blood plasma and turns it into medication, creates vaccinations, and is a research and diagnostic company.

What challenge were you trying to address with Carimus?

We initially hired Carimus as a creative agency to create a unified website for all the companies we had recently acquired. They’ve remained our partner ever since.

What was the scope of their involvement?

When we started working with them, they used different creative tools from the Adobe Creative Suite, but we only used them for design. For the unified website, our branding guidelines were loosely developed, and we were taking direction from our corporate communications team so there was a very restricted template that we had to use. 

Even with the restrictions, we knew we needed to make the website trendy because we had a different audience than our commercial site. This was 2014, so website trends were different than they are now, but they proposed modern ideas for the time, like parallax scrolling. The ideas didn’t initially go over that well, but we eventually got everyone on board and received approval to move forward with the designs. 

As our relationship grew, they started branching out and doing other things for us, like website hosting, supporting our marketing team with creative designs, and helping us with promotional videos. They also set up a website to receive creative requests and push them through the process; this website also hosts our e-store. We just redesigned our website, and they now help us with creative requests from over 300 plasma centers. 

What is the team composition?

We initially only worked with one point of contact and two developers. We now work primarily with Chelsey (Project Manager), Sarah (Chief of Staff), Justin (Creative Manager), and Kaitlyn (Graphic Designer). 

How did you come to work with Carimus?

We initially found them in the Triangle Business Journal and looked through their website. We were impressed, and we put out an RFP. When we met with them, they already had a design in mind for the website, and we felt like they would be the best fit for our company out of the companies we’d interviewed. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in March 2014 and are still working together.

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

Multiple departments in our company started working with Carimus after they saw the work they’d done for us and requested similar designs to the ones we had on our website. We started seeing a lot of website traffic specifically to our page because of the content and the ease of use; that page has remained the most visited site in our company. 

The redesign they recently provided fell more in line with our company standards, but we are still really happy with how it turned out. 

How did Carimus perform from a project management standpoint?

The original web designs were delivered on time and within budget. If there ever is a time that they know there might be a time issue, they tell us that information upfront and are very transparent. We’ve been particularly impressed with Sarah. She asks the right questions and is forward-thinking to always be on top of whatever comes next. 

We have weekly meetings with Chelsey to review our budget, and Carimus is diligent about ensuring that we’re staying within that. They’re very honest about when we’re about to run out of hours and keep us updated on where we’re at every month.

We have an internal tool that we use for project management. A creative request will go in and after we look through it, we’ll add Carimus in and they can look over everything. We primarily communicate through Google Teams and email, but we can also leave messages in our internal tool. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’re easy to work with and have incredible attention to detail. Carimus is both reliable and transparent. There are very few times when they tell us that something isn’t feasible, and even in those times, they come back to us with a workable solution. They fit into our team seamlessly, and they want to work with us and collaborate.

They’re quick thinking, and they always come back with a solution that is helpful and actionable. They’re small enough to be able to take the time to get to know our team, and we keep going back to them because of the value of the work they bring. Everything they do for us has been exceptional, and they work very hard to make our vision come to life. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

There’s nothing more that they could be doing for us. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Tell them exactly what you want, and they will help you develop that idea. Make sure you give them everything that you need upfront and where you’re actually at. Come prepared and ready to work with them. The relationship is a two-way street, and you have to put work into it.