CoreBlue

Please describe your company and your position there.

I, Oliver Jackson, act as CTO for Supra (UK) Ltd, the UK’s leading access management experts. The Key Safe Company, our distribution arm, has been offering access management solutions and expertise since 1996, bringing industry-leading brands like Supra™ and KeySafe™ to market. In 2022, we launched ark Life – our design and manufacturing brand – to develop our own industry-leading access and security products.

Born from close consultation with our customers, ark products are a hallmark of British design, bringing innovative features and high levels of security that users have come to expect from Supra UK products.

For what projects/services did your company hire CoreBlue, and what were your goals?

We had a clear idea for an MVP that would allow us to prove the concept and give us the ability to introduce the solution to potential customers. We appointed CoreBlue to help us mature our idea through a technical discovery process and then on into development of the full solution. Our goals for this phase were to have a full functional solution that we could use to onboard prospective customers during demonstrations to collect feedback.

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

KiCall was prepared under an RFQ submitted to a number of software companies. After speaking with CoreBlue, it was clear that not only were they able to grasp a full understanding of the business case and the problems KiCall solved, but they also had a strong ethos of technical excellence. For KiCall to succeed, we required a solution that had very low relative running costs.

CoreBlue were able to breakdown our idea and produce a technical plan that would utilise serverless cloud technologies that kept our operational costs low and provided us with the opportunity to scale. CoreBlue’s discovery process gave us the opportunity to fully understand the technical approach necessary for KiCall and filled us with confidence in their team.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and technologies used.

The solution required a user interface split into two key areas. An administration portal that would allow us to control the data within the platform, onboard customers and assets and monitor usage metrics. The second interface was essentially an asset management system that would allow our customers to define information linked to physical assets distributed as QR codes. Consumers would have the ability to scan QR codes at key access points and view information relevant to them.

Asset owners would have the ability to lockdown private messages for limited contacts ensuring information is shared at the right place and only to the right people. This required the development of a secure 2FA process and the ability to link information to these QR codes in a secure manner that would not allow messages to be crawled or tampered with.

CoreBlue used serverless cloud technology to build and deploy the main API and multiple static ReactJS applications for the various user interfaces.

How many people from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

During discovery, we worked very closely with CoreBlue’s CTO and CIO, helping us define the solution and build a technical roadmap. In the development phase, we worked closely with 1 primary engineer and had regular meetings with their CTO through various milestones in the project.

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

KiCall had the logistical challenge of syncing thousands of physical QR codes to the system, making them available as assets to be provided with information. With CoreBlue’s support, the platform was successfully developed, deployed and integrated with an initial batch of 1000 assets ready to be used in demos with prospective clients.

The early release of the product has allowed us to start collecting feedback and has already guided further development packages to incorporate new features and functionality.The confidence CoreBlue has been able to give us with the quality and stability of KiCall has enabled this feedback process and given us what we needed to continue on the development roadmap.

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timeliness.

CoreBlue introduced us to the SCRUM agile methodology, organising the development backlog into 2-week sprints of work and meeting with us regularly to showcase deliverables and plan upcoming work. We had close communication with the development team throughout the project and felt that we were able to guide the development process well, keeping us in control.

When the team had a number of options to implement a solution, we had the opportunity to provide our own input and understand their recommendations.

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

From our very first meeting we had a great feeling about the team at CoreBlue. Following a glowing recommendation, they were invited to tender, and it became clear very quickly that they were exactly the development partner we needed. Nothing phases them. Every component of their delivery surpasses our expectations. From their technical expertise to their boundless enthusiasm – CoreBlue is a breath of fresh air, and we are excited about what we can achieve together.

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

Our initial plan for the KiCall product was to create a minimum viable product (MVP). For our purposes, an MVP required a number of polish points that would give the product the finish necessary to successfully deliver demos and onboard early adopters. CoreBlue worked well with us to help figure out which areas could be delegated to future phases and where our investment would be best spent to achieve value in our initial phase.

Some items would have been preferred to be considered in earlier versions of the product, but this did not impact the overall quality of the product and our growing relationship with CoreBlue has allowed us to better align in ongoing work.

Please describe your company and your position there.

PreConvey is an organisation committed to streamlining the home selling process for sellers and solicitors with exchange ready home selling packs. Our online platform digitises the conveyancing process and offers simple user journeys that guide individuals through the entire flow. I, Chris Scantlebury, am the Managing Director of PreConvey. I have worked with CoreBlue to plan and have overseen the development of the platform from the beginning.

For what projects/services did your company hire CoreBlue, and what were your goals?

PreConvey’s initial development plans have been funded by Innovate UK. We needed a software development company that would assure us that the development requirements we had set out could be achieved. CoreBlue were to be the primary development partner to help us produce the phase 1 of our system and allow us to start generating revenue.

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

During our procurement process, we had met with over 20 software development firms. CoreBlue stood out to us as they took a full business approach to our plans, wanting to understand how the business worked and what our long term plan was. They had made it clear their technical understanding was sound and gave us confidence in their ability. What differentiated them from other firms was how they were able to support us beyond development as a technical partner.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and technologies used.

The phase 1 of PreConvey was to serve a few key stakeholders. As administrators of the system, we required a high level overview of the platform, allowing us to control features and content displayed to other users. A separate platform for conveyancing firms was to be completely self-serving, allowing firms to onboard themselves, configure the tool to their requirements and begin processing customers.

The customer facing area to the site would process users through the flow configured by conveyancing firms and utilising secure ID scanning tools to identify and validate customers as they proceed through the process. The platform integrated with ID scanning services that adhered to Land Registry’s Safe Harbour standards. Document signature services were used to allow information provided by customers and conveyancers to be signed digitally, completing the signing packs needed for the conveyancing process.

Future plans for the platform required additional portals and applications. CoreBlue’s solution to this was to follow a hub and spoke model that allowed functionality and data to be made available through an API that can be utilised by various web and mobile portals for each use case.

How many people from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

During discovery, we worked closely with CoreBlue’s CTO, CIO and Head of Engineering. This uncovered all technical requirements and performed the necessary investigation to plan the full development. During development, we were introduced to a number of additional software engineers as well as their project manager. We still regularly work with the CTO as we progress other areas of the business where CoreBlue offers advice in hiring our own software engineers and navigating IP laws to support further investment.

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

Our initial plan was for development to completed within 4 months. Since starting with CoreBlue, progress has been accelerated and we are in a position to finish within 3 months, including the addition of scope for a native mobile application used to identify customers. Through technical discovery, CoreBlue helped us identify other services to partner with for key dependencies in the platform such as ID and document signing.

In doing so, we uncovered additional scope for the native mobile application. With CoreBlue’s help we were able to document this and attach it to the existing project with little impact to the budget and timeline. CoreBlue has kept us well informed at all stages of development, allowing us to review deliverables as they finish sprints and provide feedback each step of the way. We are incredibly confident in their ability and have seen excellent results.

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timeliness.

CoreBlue introduced us to the Scrum methodology, breaking up the product backlog into 2-week sprints of work, allowing us to focus on key areas of the platform. We are local to CoreBlue so whilst most of our communication is over email, Slack or Google Meets - they frequently host us for meetings that require more collaborative discussion. To track work, they have onboarded us to JIRA/Polaris which allows us to monitor progress against the backlog and record our feedback against tickets that require UAT.

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

Beyond their technical ability, I was most impressed by CoreBlue’s commitment to supporting our business outside of development. CoreBlue took a position of partnership and has helped us make decisions for our business and worked closely with us to support our investment plans and even begin hiring our own technical staff members. CoreBlue has kept us involved throughout the entire process, making it very clear that this is not a black box case for them and that their knowledge is shared with us at all times.

Where we have had questions, CoreBlue has been able to guide us and support us in translating technical elements into terms we can share with our investors. Given the domain of our business, security and quality were huge factors for us. Knowing that CoreBlue is ISO9001 and ISO27001 accredited has allowed us to continue with confidence and has filled a tickbox for our investors.

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

No.

Please describe your company and your position there.

Engaged Communities is a C.I.C with a vision to build world class community technology that delivers social impact; supporting communities, organisations and charities. As CEO, I am responsible for overseeing the planning and delivery of digital products and services that help us achieve our vision, starting with the production of our volunteering software marketplace.

For what projects/services did your company hire CoreBlue, and what were your goals?

Engaged Communities was born from a product that was created during the COVID 19 Pandemic. Our proof of concept application allowed us to market volunteering opportunities and place volunteers with organisations needing support throughout lockdown. We came to CoreBlue because we recognised an opportunity to grow this proof of concept application into a mature product offering that large public and private sector organisations had recognised a need for.

Our vision was clear, but our technical strategy & implementation needed support. We needed CoreBlue to help us plan the delivery of this product, defining requirements and then build a marketable application that could help us generate revenue with scale.

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

In choosing a suitable partner to help us build this platform, we wanted to make sure that who we worked with would help us realise our ideas, working with us to figure out the detail to achieve the most value with our MVP. In scoping out our project with CoreBlue, they were able to question our decisions - understanding the problems we wanted to solve and making suggestions when we didn’t have the detail or if there were better opportunities for us.

As we worked through our idea, CoreBlue’s technical ability was made clear by introducing us to solutions and services that would add tremendous value to our product and saving time through development. Where we questioned our goals for scaling this platform, CoreBlue were able to provide excellent technical solutions that would allow the product to grow as we acquired new customers, reaching the scale of use we needed.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and technologies used.

CoreBlue were initially hired to help us form a technical spec to define our ideas and produce a full delivery plan. Their first objective was to work with us, extracting our understanding of our existing platform and it’s limitations, combined with the objectives we had for our new idea. In doing so, CoreBlue created a full development roadmap that allowed us to fully detail our ideas on paper as tangible assets we could share.

This added so much value to us, giving us the tools we needed to share our ideas with early adopters and shareholders. With the roadmap in place, CoreBlue were then responsible for the design and build of the platform. Prototypes were created in Figma, allowing us to work closely with their engineers to feedback on the look and feel of the platform before development had begun. This allowed us to rapidly iterate of the product with very little investment.

Moving forward into development, CoreBlue built 3 core elements: A cloud first serverless API, a public facing marketplace of volunteering opportunities and a volunteer manager portal. Both frontend portals were developed as single page applications (SPAs) in React and distributed using scalable cloud services.

How many people from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

Our discovery process was conducted with two members from CoreBlue, their CTO and their Head of Design, Scott. Once in development, we worked with a team of 5 compromising of engineers, Scott and their project manager.

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

The project was an incredible success, CoreBlue were able to exceed expectations by delivering on an expanding roadmap in time and in fact under budget. We have recently launched the initial release of the platform and CoreBlue were with us for the initial unveiling to a number of high profile stakeholders.

As well as delivering on the initially planned development backlog, CoreBlue uncovered a number of additional requirements to incorporate our commercial model in a self-service subscription feature and necessary GDPR compliance functionality. The API they’ve developed will be used as a central hub for future portals planned on the roadmap.

The scalability they’ve achieved through it’s architecture and it’s development has been vital to the success of GoVolunteering. The portals and interfaces developed have had such great feedback from everyone we’ve showcased the early versions to and we’re excited to start onboarding clients.

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timeliness.

CoreBlue used an agile methodology, SCRUM, something we’d incorporated into Engaged Communities internally to make syncing up between various departments through standups. We had the opportunity to meet with the CoreBlue team at least every 2 weeks to review progress made and showcase deliverables as well as plan upcoming sprint work.

We had the opportunity to control the direction of the project, allowing us to make business decisions to prioritise various aspects of the platform based on our evolving business direction. Key decisions to change the priorities of work allowed us to showcase key aspects to stakeholders. In between sprint reviews, I had regular email communication with their senior members to clarify assumptions and ensure we were providing regular feedback on work.

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

Right from day one, the team at CoreBlue were invested in our vision. They took the time to understand the long-term plan for this platform and worked closely with us to bring our ideas to life. Their level of communication is outstanding, to the point it felt like they were part of our internal team, positively questioning our plans and steering us in the right direction.

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

We are very happy with the way we’ve worked with CoreBlue and what they have produced. We are already in discussions with them for future work packages and we’re working together to plan out the longer term roadmap of GoVolunteering.

Please describe your company and your position there.

Executive Nexus supports world class senior executives and leading private equity firms to build relationships of high mutual value. Our private equity clients work with us on a subscription basis to create connections with world class executives who they are interested to work with on deals or in their portfolio.

As Head of Product & Operations, I (Tom James) am responsible for overseeing the delivery of Nexus and communicating the challenges Executive Nexus wishes to solve and the ways in which we want to progress. I was and am still very involved in the ongoing development with CoreBlue often as the primary client stakeholder in delivery meetings.

For what projects/services did your company hire CoreBlue, and what were your goals?

We came to CoreBlue with an initial release of the Nexus platform already deployed. We had the requirement for a mature, capable development team. The need for ongoing development to address our business needs was apparent, but there was a particular demand for technical advice.

As technology delivery consultants, we wanted CoreBlue to understand our challenges and work with us to come up with technical solutions. The challenge posed to CoreBlue was how we could adopt our ethos of automation and capitalise on the value of our data.

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

In our initial meetings with CoreBlue we wanted to be confident that they were capable of maintaining our existing product that was already functional and revenue generating. As Nexus was built in Laravel, CoreBlue was able to provide many case study projects demonstrating their relevant technical expertise. In speaking with their leadership and senior team, it was clear that CoreBlue has the required skill set to take on the project, along with similar values.

As we already had active, high-value users we wanted to choose a company that could provide a high-level of assurance and remain accountable for the security and robustness of this business-critical platform. CoreBlue’s maturity and accreditations in security and quality give us the confidence to pick them as our partner.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and technologies used.

Our initial engagement with CoreBlue started with the migration of our existing platform onto a new environment under the control of ourselves and CoreBlue. We had suspected this would be a great deal of work, however CoreBlue were able to complete the migration and conduct an initial audit of the entire system to form new documentation and gain a deeper understanding of the mechanics underlying the system.

We were able to conduct this initial package of work under initial estimates. Beyond migration, our roadmap was to take this proof of concept portal and transform it into a high-performance, scalable and reliable tool for our clients & users.

There were a number of functional changes we wished to make, bugs we were aware of, performance issues and general gripes that we’d asked for advice on. With this list, CoreBlue worked with us to estimate the work in manageable packages and prioritise the deliverables in the form of most value add first. We were brought into their project management tool to keep us in control of delivery and maintain a high level of communication throughout. During the early stages of development, this was very important for us due to the high-assurance nature of the work and its unavoidably challenging architecture.

Despite these challenges, CoreBlue was able to introduce mechanisms of de-risking updates with testing environments, backups & disaster recovery policies and automated deployment & rollback procedures which gave us confidence in the system which we had a number of concerns with previously.

Since our relationship with CoreBlue has grown, CoreBlue are being made more and more responsible for our technical strategy and are taking ownership over a lot of the work I have been responsible for previously for instance feature planning and general testing.

CoreBlue have proposed new strategies that de-risk changes to the platform and reduce my workload by completely rearchitecting a number of our more risky elements that depend on 3rd party services and replacing with them safer and sometimes bespoke alternatives that better cater to our needs.

Alongside the development work we also agreed a service level agreement (SLA) which allows us to request urgent updates and investigation out of hours as required, this was important to us as there have been issues with the initial code base which we have asked CoreBlue to support, often with complex issues stemming from third-party platforms and integrations which require immediate attention given the high-value nature of our client base.

How many people from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

In total we have worked with around 4 or 5 engineers and developers in total however we most closely deal with 1 or 2 of the development team. CoreBlue’s CTO, and Senior Developers and Senior Frontend Engineers have been heavily involved in the strategic direction of the project.

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

The development has primarily been to conduct general improvements, feature changes etc. However there have been some more significant improvements. When Executive Nexus completed a branding refresh, there was a major deliverable to update the design of the platform to match our new brand.

Our prototype wasn’t prepared for major design changes so this posed a potentially significant investment. CoreBlue was able to assign their Head of Design to update the design of the Nexus platform efficiently without having to rebuild the entire frontend.

Another high-risk, high-value deliverable was the onboarding flow for a new client. A new client in the Nexus platform entails a new connection to a 3rd party service. Previously, Nexus was built such that major development would be necessary for any new client and the onboarding process required weeks of debugging to fine-tune configuration on the client’s end that was a predominantly manual process.

CoreBlue was able to build an automated validation and connection process that allows us to onboard new clients much faster and automatically validate their config to inform the client of the necessary configuration changes required. Making this process seamless for the client is a major priority for us as it’s often the first piece of work they commission from us and can form the foundations of our relationship. CoreBlue’s advice and expertise on this process has been invaluable.

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timeliness.

Core Blue invited us into their Slack workspace, giving us quick and easy communication with the development team. The features necessary in Nexus often require extensive knowledge in how we work as a business and in the private equity industry in general. CoreBlue being able to ask us questions easily throughout development or jump on adhoc calls was integral to the success of the Nexus platform and speed of development.

We wanted to work within a strict budget with CoreBlue and they were able to facilitate that with monthly reports on time spent and breakdowns of where in the project required most effort. When this came into question, CoreBlue were able to work with us to figure out where time would be best spent and how we could make the most out of the time available for the project each month. We were often invited into daily standups to discuss the progress of development and to discuss any difficulties being faced during development.

In the early stages of development, this was necessary but as the product has become more stable, CoreBlue is working with us to reduce this need and is instead moving towards bi-weekly sprint demos where they can showcase major deliverables.

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

We came to CoreBlue with the simple need for developers that could help us build our platform. With our engagement, CoreBlue has grown into a more consultative role, allowing us to focus on our own business and rely on CoreBlue to help us determine the best route to achieve our goals through technology. CoreBlue have met with our board in London and have been able to work with us to produce a roadmap for the company with strategies to make the most out of our investment in the platform.

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

The project has evolved over the time we have worked with CoreBlue and through continuous development, there have been areas on the project that have required rework. In a perfect world, I would have liked for these things to be considered in the beginning, but I understand that CoreBlue's efforts in presenting solutions and working closely with our team has meant that working features have been prioritised based on current company requirements.

As our company evolves and is able to feedback on features CoreBlue have completed, CoreBlue works well with us to iterate and improve the software for the benefit of the company and our clients

Please describe your company and your position there.

We have mastered the art of making luxury holiday rentals beautifully personal. From exclusive properties to world class services, we tailor memorable holidays for our guests. Launched in 2014, our company has established itself at the forefront of the luxury villa rental industry. I founded the company at the age of 25, after having identified an opportunity in the market.

For what projects/services did your company hire CoreBlue, and what were your goals?

Prior to CoreBlue, our company was operating and managing bookings via a custom Wordpress website. This worked well for us however, as the company grew we came across limitations in our current systems and knew we had to invest in a more sophisticated platform. CoreBlue was recommended to us by our original software suppliers, highlighting them as the consultative digital partner that we needed.

Following a change in operating model and expansion throughout Europe, it was important to develop our own technology with a fully custom solution in order to avoid the limitations of off-the shelf options currently out there. We had a fixed budget to be used for the initial phase of development, with multiple stage of development to follow in the future.

It was important to us that our supplier would work with us and advise us; whilst we were clear on what we wanted to achieve, we knew we needed technical advice on the best way to achieve it with our investment. We needed a digital consultancy that would work with us to understand our constraints and identify technical opportunities.

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

The introduction from our previous development made us feel comfortable in choosing CoreBlue and, following the initial review of the project proposal we knew we were in good hands. Before work began, CoreBlue recommended a brief investigation into the project to document their assumptions to validate their understanding of the project. In this investigation, CoreBlue worked through designs we had already prepared to pick out core functionality and document any uncertainties they had whilst making their way through the designed flows as if they were a real user.

The detail CoreBlue went into for this investigation pointed out a number of uncertainties that weren’t necessarily clear from the designs as well as slight suggestions on small changes to be made to make the user work flow even more efficient. Their understanding of the project and technological needs was very helpful in bringing to life things that could not necessarily be technically described.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and technologies used.

The platform had been split up into three main areas:

• the customer facing frontend that showcases villas and allows customers to inquire and initiate bookings
• the backend customer portal that let our customers manage their bookings and communicate with our staff
• the administration portal that would be used by our team to manage bookings

With these three main interfaces operating quite similarly and given our future aspirations to develop a mobile app, CoreBlue developed the core system as a web API. This allowed functionality to be built in one core place and other attaching systems like the frontend, admin portal and in future, the mobile app to all utilise functionality that had been previously built in the API. This had two main benefits of reducing the overall development time and reducing complexity in the 3 areas by maintaining them as simple interfaces to the platform.

Our platform needed to handle the full experience for our customers, from searching and finding properties through to payment, contracts and on-going communication with our concierges assigned to the booking. This meant we had to handle payment processing, chat systems, advanced search tools, administration, reporting and more.

Rather than developing the 3 systems independently, CoreBlue took a full-feature approach, ensuring that as features were prioritised, they were developed end-to-end for all involved stakeholders. That meant as CoreBlue were completing features, I was able to test them as both user types and give in-depth feedback.

There was a key focus on the SEO of the platform, primarily for the customer facing interface to ensure that the properties we were showcasing were listed in search engines. CoreBlue developed this interface as a server-side rendered single page app (SPA) in ReactJS & NextJS. This choice of technologies facilitate the complex nature of the platform, managing vast amounts of data whilst still maintaining the speed and accessibility we needed.

How many people from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

Given the size of the platform, CoreBlue had 2-3 specialist developers assigned to the project at any given time. I have worked closely with their CTO throughout the project to ensure key deliverables are met and CoreBlue is able to adjust their approach accordingly. Given the high priority we had on design accuracy and excellence, I have also worked closely with their Head of Design. He has acted as an advisor to the team and has worked as a key developer at times for particularly complex design elements.

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

The platform is still going through development but CoreBlue has been regularly deploying updates for me to review and we have regular 2-week meetings to discuss deliverables and identify new priorities. Even still in development, the platform is now live and regularly used by our team. This has given me a great deal of confidence in the platform and the team has given great feedback that CoreBlue has been able to react to swiftly.

The quality of what has been delivered has been excellent - whilst I have remained heavily involved in the development of the platform, the work that has been showcased to me has given me the opportunity to put my designs to the test and iterate on them with minor feedback when necessary. CoreBlue is receptive to feedback and worked with me to ensure we hold the platform to the highest standard.

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timeliness.

I had made it clear that I wanted to remain heavily involved in the development process - so CoreBlue has on boarded me to their project management tool, Jira, and invited me to their instant messaging tool, Slack. I have had a great deal of communication with their developers, giving them an opportunity to clarify assumptions with me and for me to give them feedback that can be acted on immediately.

CoreBlue works in an agile fashion, following the SCRUM methodology. I have been invited to regular sprint reviews that they have used to showcase their work from the past 2-weeks and giving me an opportunity to give feedback and work with them to determine the next sprint’s priority. Being on their project management tool, I have been able to leave feedback or answer questions on specific requirements rather than in detached emails or messages. I have found this particularly useful, keeping me in control of what is signed off.

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

CoreBlue’s ability to engulf themselves in how our business works has given them a clear advantage in developing the features and processes we have defined. The complexity of how the luxury travel industry works and the quality that must be upheld was something I was initially concerned with when engaging with CoreBlue. However, the effort they have put into understanding the industry and my business has been incredibly evident and they have gave me the confidence that this platform will be successful once deployed into production.

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

During development, CoreBlue had originally planned to develop the platform using one technology stack but after completing some of the initial feature sets - it was clear the technology choice wasn’t suitable. CoreBlue identified this early and presented the case to me for change. Whilst it would have been preferred that the technology stack was correct the first time around, I appreciate CoreBlue’s transparency and swift action to reduce the impact of this change.

Please describe your company and your position there.

Medidact is a company committed to solving one of the biggest concerns within clinical research, the security of patient confidential information through email chains and attached documents. Our software is built for pharmaceutical companies looking to protect patient information during trials. I am director and founder of Medidact and have worked with CoreBlue to design and architect the Medidact software.

For what projects/services did your company hire CoreBlue, and what were your goals?

Medidact was looking for a solutions partner to architect and ideate on a state of the art clinical redaction system that aims to eliminate clinical data breaches. The system would need to be secure and simple to implement for its customers.

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

Coreblue’s approach to the project was very refreshing, their team made it clear they were invested in the idea and wanted to understand the business behind the software we were developing before diving into the technicals. Our CTO was able to discuss their technical requirements with Dan, CoreBlue’s CTO directly to understand their technical ability and background on project’s like ours. CoreBlue were able to demonstrate clear experience and confidence in our project, making them a clear choice to proceed with.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and technologies used.

Medidact is designed to stop clinical data breaches. The project consisted of designing a software and infrastructure architecture that would be precise and cost effective to end users. The project was split into 2 parts, discovery and technical design. During discovery CoreBlue got to grips with the concept of the application and also around the commercial motivations for the project. It was interesting to discuss the non-technical aspects of the project and we certainly provided more contact to the project than you may expect working with a technology firm, which is reassuring.

How many people from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

During the project, we worked with 2 software engineers including CoreBlue’s Head of Engineering as well as CoreBlue’s CTO operating as project coordinator to consult major technical decisions and roadmapping. We also dealt with 2 members of the commercial team.

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

Output was delivered as described and on time. The eventual end point for this discovery was vastly different from the initial concept as we developed and matured the idea together so we are in a place where the specified product is superior to the initial concept as we’ve had further technical and commercial input.

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timeliness.

We communicated with CoreBlue mostly over Slack and in Google Meets and email. This project involved predominantly planning and research so CoreBlue conducted a number of technical “spikes” into areas of technical uncertainty and produced a comprehensive development plan along with estimates and general themes/phases of work which are comprehensive and form a longer-term development roadmap. In terms of style it’s pretty direct in that although there is a PM involved we also have direct access to developers over Slack so we can interact directly with those completing the work which helps to break down some communication barriers that can occur.

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

CoreBlue was consultative, working closely with us to understand what the business needed to achieve and deciding together how to best achieve our requirements through this technical solution. They were cautious not to dive into solutions too quickly, rather exploring their viability, but still making sure to deliver with speed. Our organisation has very particular technical and security requirements that CoreBlue were able to cater to and it’s helpful having a supply partner which is UKAS-accredited to ISO9001 and ISO27001 as it contributes to commercial confidence in the end product.

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

There were no areas of improvement.

Please describe your company and your position there.

The Cruising Association is a membership association dedicated to those who cruise on small boats. Over the years, we have been collating member-gathered information on anchorages, marinas, ports, harbours, quays and boatyards across more than 70 countries for the benefit of supporting other members. As the CA's Project Manager, I (Ivan Andrews) was responsible for ensuring the CA’s requirements were carried through into development, acting as full product owner. I remained particularly close to the development team throughout the entire development process.

For what projects/services did your company hire CoreBlue, and what were your goals?

We came to Core Blue with the challenge of improving the engagement with our association members with an opportunity to “upgrade” our existing mobile app. Our previous mobile app had allowed us to collect thousands of member submitted notes on anchorages, marinas, ports, harbours, quays and boatyards across more than 70 countries. The challenge posed to Core Blue was how we could utilise these notes and turn them into structured, useful data for our members whilst at the same time improving the user's experience.

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

Core Blue had senior technical staff involved in our project from the beginning, including their CTO, Dan Hardman. As the CA had an existing digital infrastructure and a full time CTO, it was important that our constraints were considered and our necessity to understand and potentially maintain any created solution was acceptable. Core Blue gave us confidence in their proposed technical solutions and were able to have transparent conversations with us about how they planned to work through certain challenges with us as a team.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and technologies used.

CAptain’s Mate was created as a back-office portal for volunteer editors and two applications, web and mobile, for the members of the association to make use of and contribute to the location information. As the CA already held a vast amount of unstructured data, the first key deliverable was a prototype or V1 of the editor portal. Having this simplified version gave us the opportunity to onboard leadership editors to make a start on the data transformation as well as transferring knowledge of use into sensible training material to onboard more editors.

One the prototype editor portal had been built, V2, or the final product editor portal began development alongside the development of the new mobile application. This allowed us to apply feedback from editors to our development roadmap and ensure the mobile app would benefit from these updates. The mobile app was built as an offline capable, cross platform (iOS and Android) app built in Flutter 2.0. It connected to the CA’s proprietary API and integrated mapping software to plot locations across the world on the member’s mobile device. User designed search & filtering tools were built to support members in finding locations that had facilities they needed across 70 countries.

As the mobile app was our primary objective as a product we could ship to our members, we prioritised the web app till last. This meant that all feedback and iteration was completed on the mobile app, allowing the web app to be built as a replica, having already learned from beta user feedback. This was a great advantage during development that saved a great deal of time and money. If any deliverable was to drop-off due to cost, it would have been the web app. However, through this method and Core Blue’s development strategy, we were able to complete all deliverables on time and on budget.

How many people from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

Throughout the project, we worked closely with Core Blue’s CTO, Dan Hardman, and their Head of Development. Development was lead primarily by one developer and occasionally a second when delivery needed to ramp up in order to meet various milestones throughout the project.

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

The core development was completed on time and on budget, with us being able to add a few changes to our original scope with the budget that was remaining after our core features were developed. We were able to have multiple release iterations that were distributed internally and used to showcase at the Southampton Boatshow 2021, resulting in great traction for the official launch and acting as great PR for the association. Since the release of the final app, we have moved onto a maintenance contract to ensure ongoing success of the app and allow us to introduce small changes as we collect user feedback. We also occasionally put together new work packages that introduce more functionality that will be released as a new version of the app.

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timeliness.

Our entire product team was invited into Core Blue’s Slack workspace, allowing us to communicate on a daily basis with the development team. As we were also building our own API at the time, it was important for our developers to communicate closely as new features were developed and the API was being used in practice. Our technical team were onboarded to Core Blue’s project management software so we could track progress and contribute by creating new tickets or adding detail to the existing backlog. This gave us full visibility and control over the delivery of the products being built and kept us feeling confident.

Regular sprint reviews gave Core Blue the chance to showcase work to us and gave us the opportunity to raise concerns or give feedback that was then actioned immediately, ready for the next release. Overall this is what kept the timelines so tight as it kept Core Blue’s understanding inline with our expectations for all features and requirements.

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

The Cruising Association was very sceptical over the cost and potential risk for this project. I have experienced previous IT project failures at considerable cost and it was my responsibility to make sure this wouldn’t happen for this project with Core Blue. Core Blue listened to me and understood this risk, giving me the impression that this was taken as a personal challenge for themselves to make sure they delivered well for us.

Throughout the project there were multiple inflection points that required a great deal of effort from everyone and Core Blue were consistently onboard and made sure they did everything they could to ensure our success.

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

We didn't experience any weaknesses.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the Business Support Program Director at our company. We support UK and Overseas entrepreneurs build their businesses across a wide range of industries and services.

For what projects/services did your company hire Core Blue, and what were your goals?

I was tasked to find a software development partner to support our clients. Our clients are looking to start a business in the UK. The majority of these require some form of custom software development.

We wanted to work with a flexible, dynamic organisation that not only were able to deliver high quality development but also really understand the commercial needs of our clients and their businesses.

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

I spoke to a number of different development companies but I really liked the approach to development CoreBlue took. They try to understand the commercials of a project and the development decisions are backed by their commercial understanding.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and technologies used.

CoreBlue has now worked with a number of our clients. The majority of them really benefit from the initial discovery sprint. This gives the project clarity and a really solid direction. The projects tend to be a mix of mobile apps or web apps.

Quite often CoreBlue will scope out an MVP that allows our clients to launch, gain feedback and test the idea before moving on to the later stages of the project. CoreBlue have built a number of Apps in Flutter and have also used Laravel for some web apps.

How many people from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

We’ve worked with almost all of the team over the last year. The majority of our time is spent with the CTO, lead developer and lead front end developer. CoreBlue will create a bespoke team that is best suited for the individual project.

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

Each project is always delivered on time and within the original budget suggestion. CoreBlue makes it easy to work with them as they have very open communication throug-out the project. Obviously it’s important for us to be recommending good suppliers to our clients and CoreBlue is a safe pair of hands.

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timeliness.

CoreBlue runs their projects in two week sprints. They tend to use Slack for day to day communication as well as email and virtual meetings via Hangouts. The client is able to be involved as much or as little as they choose.

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

CoreBlue work with our clients to really understand their project and work with them to bring their idea or vision to life. They are always friendly and try their best to deliver the best product they can.

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

Not currently applicable, we look forward to working further with CoreBlue.

Please describe your company and your position there.

Maxiz Solar is a startup, looking to make the solar panel market more accessible to both the consumer and trade. Made with Maturity were hired to guide the UX/UI and required a development team to help scope out the project from a technical point of view.

For what projects/services did your company hire Core Blue, and what were your goals?

We were looking for a software partner to help scope out the technical side of the project. We needed to have an understanding of any technical complexities, cost and timelines before we were about to start the UX/UI for the project.

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

Core Blue comes well regarded. I’ve been aware of them for a number of years and have worked with them on a few projects. I know that The Blueprint Process that they run is perfect for a company that are looking to understand what complexities may lie in a project and have an accurate cost and timeline.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and technologies used.

We engaged CoreBlue to run a stand-alone piece of work that they call a Blueprint process. This is a 2 week fixed cost discovery phase that helps iron out any uncertainty from a software development point of view. They were asked to provide a backlog of features, a budget estimate and timeline which they did.

How many people from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

The senior developer lead the Blueprint process and worked alongside an account manager.

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

The project was completed on time. They produced a fully scoped backlog, with budget estimates and a timeline. They also produced a business risk document.

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timeliness.

Core Blue work in an agile manner. We communicated via video meetings and email and had a meeting every week. I was very happy with their communication style. I felt completely confident the whole time.

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

Core Blue did what they said they would. The level of detail and thoroughness in their work was very impressive.

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

We cant think of anything that we would want them to do differently.

Please describe your company and your position there.

Inaxis is a SaaS company that exists to streamline the client management and communication processes for chartered accountants. As founder of Inaxis, it is and has been my responsibility to lead the feature planning and development roadmap of Inaxis.

For what projects/services did your company hire Core Blue, and what were your goals?

We were looking for a strategic software partner to help in the product planning and development to bring the product from the ideation phase right through to being deployed on arobust & scalable production platform. Core Blue was hired to document and define the full technical specification of the Inaxis and then to develop the software and fundamental architecture to put the system live.

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

Core Blue’s ability to technically define the project and fully understand the business needs for the software offered me confidence in their ability to deliver what I needed. Beyond offering their technical ability, I was able to discuss business plans with Core Blue and they were able to offer me their professional opinion and help guide my development roadmap to achieve the most value to launch our product. Instinctively, I felt I could place a lot of trust in their guidance straight away.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and technologies used.

Inaxis aims to act as a client management and communications tool for accountants. Accountants and their clients needed to be able to communicate effectively, transfer documents, collect signatures and agree fees between themselves on a secure system. The product was broken up into two main components to improve performance and scalability. The backend was built as a scalable RESTful JSON API that communicated with 3rd party services to handle payment processing (Stripe) and real time communication (Pusher).

The frontend was built as a statically hosted React SPA written in Javascript. This configuration provides a tremendous level of scalability as I grow my customer base with very little architectural overhead. Separating the two systems also supports our long term goal of introducing a mobile app that can re-use the API.

How many people from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

Throughout the project, we worked with 2 software developers, a scrum master and liaised with the technical director to consult on the general roadmap of the project and business.

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

The project was completed on time and on budget, with new work being planned to increase the feature set offered by the product. Throughout development, regular releases were demonstrated in private environments to showcase work that allowed me to offer my feedback and monitor the progress of the project. I was very pleased with their ongoing and regular updates to keep me informed.

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timeliness.

Core Blue kept me very involved, bringing me in on their Slack workspace to collaborate with the developers working on the project. I was able to ask questions to the team and they were able to reach out to me easily to ask for additional information or opinions when working through individual features. I was kept aware of challenges throughout the project and involved in decision making when multiple solutions were available. Overall, I felt very in control whilst still being able to rely on their technical expertise to guide my decisions.

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

Core Blue took the time to really understand my business. They based their decisions around what was best for my business and therefore a priority to be developed first. They found alternative solutions that saved budget and was really pleased with their transparency. I felt involved throughout but also secure that they were a safe pair of hands.

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

Overall, I'm very pleased with Core Blue's software development process.