ChallengeSoft

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the CEO of a sales consulting company.

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

I help people close sales, create flexible architectures, and take their company to the next level with a network of trusted partners and providers globally.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire ChallengeSoft to accomplish?

• Move 250 person company off spreadsheets
• Simplify AR and AP with traceability to timekeeping
• Document and speed up the process as company scales

SOLUTION

How did you find ChallengeSoft?

Referral

Why did you select ChallengeSoft over others?

• Great culture fit
• Good value for cost

How many teammates from ChallengeSoft were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

Challenge soft were dedicated, hard working, flexible and ultimately successful. The project required moving a company from managing AR and AP with spreadshets to an automated system that integrated with time keeping and helped accountant create and validate invoices, as well as operations to approve payments to staff. There were many challenges during this project, not least was getting the customer to express the requirements that were in her head. Great team at Challenge Soft. I have worked with them on other projects and would work with them again. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

Over 250 employees hours were synced, organized, and reported automatically twice a month for Opearations and Accounting teams - with the click of one button.

Company had evidence for each and every bill they sent out and the ability to save, share, and invoice against that report.

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

There were some delays to be sure, mainly because all requirements were not understood from the start and there were many exceptions to the processes. The main software was delivered about a month after promised and the team worked to onboard the customer and support the adoption and improvements for the next six months.

What was your primary form of communication with ChallengeSoft?

Virtual Meeting

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

They were flexible and did not develop project tracking and accounting software from scratch but took popular open source software off the shelf and made it work for the customer. They built integrations to time keeping software, specific reports this customer neded, as well as dozens of calculations and adjustments to make the tool easy to work with. In the end this was worth it because the tool was well supported and inexpensive to operate. This convinced me they were not out to burn hours, but intentionally to do the right thing for the customer.

Are there any areas for improvement or something ChallengeSoft could have done differently?

One thing I'd recommend is to show more the work and ask questions. There was a lot of pressure to move fast and that the team did, but there was some missed requirements up front that took a bit longer to resolve. The architecture and the implementation did not need to change, so that was good.