Coreblue

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Senior Account Manager of Hook Tangaza

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Provides information, signposting and an applications portal for prospective students applying to leading UK institutions for postgraduate courses leading to professional qualification in law.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

• Updating and stabilising our existing platform
• Rolling out a development roadmap
• Be an IT partner that would take the time to understand our business and those we work with, to ensure we make informed technology decisions aligned with our strategic objectives

SOLUTION

How did you find Coreblue?

Clutch Site

Why did you select Coreblue over others?

• Pricing fit our budget
• Great culture fit
• Company values aligned
• Demonstrated a good understanding of our business

How many teammates from Coreblue were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

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

The initial scope of work included an audit of the current application. This required a thorough understanding of the code base and Coreblue reviewed the entire code of the application. The application consists of an admin portal, a front end user portal, and a portal used by the institutions. These portals were built using a combination of ReactJS for frontend elements and a Node based content management system for backend management. 

Coreblue produced a backlog of work to ensure the application was stable, up-to-date and maintainable. Once complete, we moved into a maintenance arrangement with Coreblue who are retained for a fixed amount of time each month to provide regular updates, maintenance and small feature enhancements. There have been many smaller projects that accompanied maintenance which have allowed the roll out of major feature enhancements as well as a new application process.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The platform is stable, well, maintained and we have introduced multiple feature enhancements. Once such development was the introduction of a restful API which allows institutions to automate the application process. Coreblue continue to be excellent technology partners.

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

Coreblue’s Project management style allows us to stay up to date with the development work on the platform by providing input and feedback. We have regular meetings to discuss upcoming feature development and regular releases are made enabling us to feedback on the work that has been done.

What was your primary form of communication with Coreblue?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

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

Having worked with other software development vendors, it's clear that Coreblue takes a business-first approach. We regularly talk about opportunities for the platform and Coreblue often consult with us on technical challenges outside of the scope of this project. Coreblue has been very helpful in sharing their advice and expertise in these areas at no additional cost

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

Not at this time

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am a Director at Firehub

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Firehub is a fire risk assessment app that allows assessors to complete risk assessments quickly and efficiently.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

• Take over the running of the app from a previous provider.
• Secure the system

SOLUTION

How did you find Coreblue?

Online Search

Why did you select Coreblue over others?

• Great culture fit
• Company values aligned

How many teammates from Coreblue were assigned to this project?

6-10 Employees

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

Our first engagement with CoreBlue was to audit and assess our current platform. We knew we had a cross-platform mobile application written in Flutter, as well as several Web systems written in Laravel and VueJS. Our platform was hosted within our own AWS account that the previous suppliers had managed for us. 

CoreBlue supported us in handing over all technical assets to them, putting them in a position to fully assess the Firehub platform and understand where everything sat and how it needed to be managed. The initial audit aimed to ensure their development team were fully onboarded to the platform and could continue development, as well as perform a risk analysis for us to help identify any areas that needed immediate attention. 

In doing so, CoreBlue identified several issues around out-of-date frameworks and technologies that needed updating before it was safe to continue active development. CoreBlue estimated this work and proceeded with a major upgrade work package that added several tools to support the monitoring and debugging of the application in the live environment. 

With these upgrades, CoreBlue’s current responsibility is to support the live application through a retained maintenance arrangement that allows continuous development and support of the Firehub platform.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Now the platform is under CoreBlue’s management, Firehub has been completely upgraded to use modern versions of the underlying frameworks and technologies. Our live platform has active monitoring for any errors and debugging tools that support the ongoing maintenance of the platform. CoreBlue is now retained to support the ongoing maintenance of Firehub and any major feature developments are scoped out independently.

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

For project management, CoreBlue onboarded us to JIRA - their tool for documenting development tickets and issues. On JIRA, we were able to provide feedback for anything they had completed and deployed to a staging environment before it was approved for going live. We were able to follow JIRA updates to monitor progress on the work CoreBlue was doing and they had organised regular meetings with us to discuss updates and decide the next steps. 

We were kept very informed throughout the entire project. CoreBlue invited us to a shared Slack channel that allowed us to speak directly with their development team throughout the project, making it easy for us to reach out or answer questions their team had.

What was your primary form of communication with Coreblue?

Virtual Meeting

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

Having been used to quite an unnerving experience around development and the risks it presented to our platform when uncontrolled changes had been released, CoreBlue is a breath of fresh air. The control they had around their processes and the tools they introduced us to gave us so much more confidence over our platform. Their technical ability and the high assurance nature of their work have allowed us to focus on our business.

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

The upgrades CoreBlue had recommended were split into High, Medium and Lower priority items and all upgrades were completed before CoreBlue moved on deploying the application under their architecture. For the sake of speed to move our live platform away from the old architecture, it would have been preferable to deploy after key milestones rather than all at once at the end.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the CTO of Sirius Asset Solutions Limited

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

We offer asset tracking solutions that provide powerful insights for our clients into their asset usage and location, allowing them to save money, significantly reduce losses and optimise their investment.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

• Deliver a launch ready solution within accelerated timelines
• Multi-platform integration with large, regular volumes of data processing
• User centred experience for a suite of reports

SOLUTION

How did you find CoreBlue?

Referral

Why did you select CoreBlue over others?

• High ratings
• Great culture fit
• Good value for cost
• Referred to me
• Company values aligned

How many teammates from CoreBlue were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

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

A solution was required to support Sirius customers in managing their fleet of assets across both their own sites and sites within their supplier network to reduce losses and optimise their asset distribution and usage. The solution would provide insights into the location and usage of the assets through a portfolio of visual reports delivering large volumes of complex telemetry data and forecasting in a user centred and consumable way.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The work that CoreBlue completed allowed us to perform this incredibly labour intensive migration on top and deliver the tool to our clients seamlessly and well within timelines. The addition of a migration tool sped up our delivery and the activity to reduce our operational costs has meant that we now operate with zero cost for 3rd party API usage and a minimal cost for cloud resources each month. 

The successful delivery of this project has placed us in a position to scale the business immensely, multiplying the number of assets currently managed under the platform and delivering huge savings and efficiencies for our clients.

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

Having come from a technical background, I was very familiar with the methods CoreBlue used to communicate and manage the project. We conducted regular and productive meetings throughout delivery to showcase work completed and allow time for internal testing and review. 

I was well-informed throughout all phases of delivery and kept in close communication during the development of the reports - each driven by complex calculations and high volumes of regular data crunching. Confidence in the accuracy of the forecasting and analysis was critical given the business decisions that will be taken from their use. This approach allowed me to remain in control, whilst giving me confidence that CoreBlue were delivering well.

What was your primary form of communication with CoreBlue?

• In-Person Meeting
• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

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

I was most impressed with CoreBlue's commitment to delivering for us - from everyone involved. This was a particularly challenging project with a tight and inflexible timeline and a very controlled budget for the first phase. CoreBlue worked with us to solve complex technical problems and went above and beyond to ensure we finished the project on time and within budget with no compromise on quality or what was delivered. 

At every point, the team was always available to me. Being able to call and discuss challenges or next steps gave me the confidence that this wasn’t an “in and out” project for them and that they were really working with me to achieve our goals.

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

Not at all. The project was a minimum viable product with a tight timeline and a very specific set of deliverables to meet initial client commitments. Since this initial work package, we have worked with CoreBlue to develop powerful enhancements to offer more value and insights to our customers and significantly reduce our operational costs as we look to scale.

BACKGROUND

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.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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.

SOLUTION

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.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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.

BACKGROUND

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.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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.

SOLUTION

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.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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.

BACKGROUND

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.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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.

SOLUTION

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.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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.

BACKGROUND

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.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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.

SOLUTION

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.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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.

BACKGROUND

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.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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.

SOLUTION

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.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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.

BACKGROUND

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.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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.

SOLUTION

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.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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.