Cylogy Inc.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the COO of Simpler Media Group, a native publisher and media company. We have a couple of publication titles for experts in the field of technology across a number of verticals. Additionally, we do events, educational webinars, research, and advertising on sponsorships, publications, and custom research.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Cylogy Inc.?

We were launching a new publication site called Reworked, so we hired Cylogy to help us build the site. We required a solid integration of the new site with our existing infrastructure, including content for various site properties.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Cylogy has helped us build and implement our publication site from the ground up based on our existing Sitecore CMS infrastructure. Per our request, they built it using high-quality and flexible code to support content sharing across our various site properties. Since implementing the site, they’ve provided us with solid ongoing support.

For this project, they used headless development concepts against the existing backend of Sitecore. Additionally, they implemented an API framework to provide a gateway between the website and the backend system.

In addition to that project, Cylogy has helped us with an implementation on our corporate site. They redesigned and redeveloped our WordPress site using enterprise-class WordPress methodology and integrated various plugins to enable a stable and flexible site so that we could easily update it.

What is the team composition?

I’ve worked with a lot of people from Cylogy, including various project managers.

How did you come to work with Cylogy Inc.?

My company had an existing relationship with them before I joined.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent over $1 million.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together around June 2015, and our engagement is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Cylogy has delivered a very flexible site, ensuring high performance on the frontend. Thanks to their development work, our team members can now update our site without having detailed knowledge of the CMS, allowing us to have much faster updates. Moreover, we can now run multiple site properties from a single CMS, increasing our efficiency.

In addition to that, we’ve reduced a significant amount of our ongoing external consulting costs because we can now have our own team do a lot of the modifications needed. Additionally, we can now monetize our sites better and provide an improved UX, which ultimately has increased our retention rate.

How did Cylogy Inc. perform from a project management standpoint?

We work by sprint cycles and have standing meetings via Google Meet and Zoom. We also use Slack, share documents, and use other modern tools to stay connected with Cylogy during projects.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Cylogy has high-level expertise in the specific skills we’re looking for, and they do a great job at staffing. They’re also very flexible to work with and willing to resize according to projects, allowing us to integrate them and make them collaborate with our team to get the support we need. Additionally, they’re highly responsive and quick to address any issues, which makes them feel like part of our team.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the product marketing lead at Pelion, an IoT connectivity provider.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Cylogy Inc.?

We were launching as an independent company and didn’t have a website at the time, so we needed help with web development.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Cylogy Inc. has built an entirely new WordPress website for our company. Also, they’ve helped us with website design, further development with new features, content development, and SEO performance improvement. They’ve done the technical SEO on the site around page load speeds, performance, and links.

What is the team composition?

We work directly with the project manager.

How much have you invested with them?

We pay them a monthly retainer. So far, we’ve spent $200,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in November 2020, and our relationship is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We launched the website in November 2021, and it was highly successful. The site has exceeded our expectations in terms of performance. Since launching, we’ve had around 200,000 unique users, and the website has converted millions of dollars worth of pipeline for our business. Moreover, it has received excellent feedback from all our key internal and external stakeholders throughout the last two years.

How did Cylogy Inc. perform from a project management standpoint?

Project management has been fantastic. They always meet deadlines and are incredibly responsive, communicative, and helpful at all times. We have a recurring call every two weeks via Zoom. We also communicate via email and Jira.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The experience has been seamless.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, there’s nothing that I’d have them improve.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I manage the enterprise marketing content team.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Cylogy Inc., and what were your goals?

We launched our corporate blog a couple of years ago. The site was built to support our thought leadership activities, but over time it became dated and wasn't aligning well with the evolution of the markets which we currently address. We wanted to refresh the site so it was more accessible, better aligned to our brand and the markets we serve.

SOLUTION

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

Cylogy has delivered excellent support for other groups within the organization and had proven able to collaborate with the various stakeholders.

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

Project brief, scoping, timeline, creation and development, review, testing and publication of new site. Cylogy paired some company-based code to complement the development of other company sites.

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

Project manager managed the day to day interface and a few developers built the site for us.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Feedback from key stakeholders was extremely positive. The data has shown that people are spending more time on our site, with an significant increase in the multi page views.

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

We used Slack to communicate timely and weekly syncs through the project development stage.

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

Cylogy was extremely responsive to our needs and was able to provide flexibility with their approach when needed to align to the other digital properties managed by our marketing teams.

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

I can't think of anything

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a director at Arm, a technology company that makes IP for semiconductor chips, which we sell to partners.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Cylogy Inc.?

We’d redesigned our website and needed help to support our development team to build the redesign that we’d come to.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Cylogy came in to supplement our existing development resources. They supported us in replatforming, writing front- and backend code, and integrating with Sitecore, our content management solution.

They helped us create a brand new home page, a product filter, a partner filter, and some new solution pages. We defined what was needed, and Cylogy did the heavy lifting in terms of the code.

What is the team composition?

We worked with two developers, a QA tester, and Lindsay (VP of Services), our account manager.

How did you come to work with Cylogy Inc.?

I found them through a referral. We’d done re-wireframing for the site, mock-ups, and functional and designs specs, and we’d worked out that our resources and capacity wouldn’t be sufficient for development. We went out to tender to find someone that could support us, and Cylogy came up and won the RFP. Plus, their resource profile met our demands.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent in the region of $100,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

This project lasted from May–September 2018. 

Subsequently, Cylogy has worked for us on other projects.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The quality of Cylogy’s code was excellent. The project’s goal was to improve the user journey, reduce the bounce rate, and improve the click-through rate. Cylogy’s work contributed to improving both the bounce rate and the click-through rate for the pages we were looking at. 

We appreciated the quality of their team and their overall input. Our partnership wasn’t point-and-shoot, where we just told them what to do — it was more than that. Cylogy offered us advice about ways to approach the code. Overall, we were just very impressed with the work they did.

How did Cylogy Inc. perform from a project management standpoint?

Although many of their resources were in Europe, Lindsay was in San Francisco, and we were in the UK, we made the project work. The distance between us was never a limitation, mainly because the function specs were built, and we had a technical lead on our side supporting Cylogy. Plus, we had daily standup meetings, and the work was getting done, so the distance didn’t make a difference.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Cylogy delivered! They were also prepared to give that additional bit of input. The team wasn’t afraid to push back on technological approaches when required, offering solutions. 

When we took them on, we didn’t know them other than through a recommendation, and they became part of our team. We developed a partnership within that project, and we’ve maintained it since.

Are there any areas they could improve?

There wasn’t anything they needed to improve; the project was spot-on.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

My advice would be to explore the brief and its details. Often, clients will say what they want, and the statement of work will stem from that. However, there can be much more beyond the brief Cylogy can offer, and the client doesn’t always piece out. A good example of that could be the maintenance agreement post-launch.

In many projects, you develop the code, it has gone live, and it turns out you needed a month’s worth of grace after the launch to fix bugs and make enhancements that you hadn’t thought of. A project like this isn’t just about your development needs, but thinking about the quarter after launch — will you need to spare some capacity, cost, or time? I would encourage conversations around that.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the assistant manager of the online services division at Bay Area Quality Management. We are a regional government agency in California that manages the air quality in nine different counties. 

My team manages all of the public-facing websites, except our complaints section. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Cylogy Inc.?

We were initially looking for a local company to help us with our management system, Sitecore. 

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Cylogy Inc. provides my organization with custom development services. They helped us get our Spare the Air website off the ground, migrating our old static site to a new, dynamic website using our Sitecore CMS. Development always starts from scratch after we provide the specific requirements for each project. 

In terms of design, Cylogy Inc. coordinates with another company and our internal designer. We use Sitecore exclusively for our websites because it is a .NET framework — we used Azure for hosting and data support. Cylogy Inc. uses HTML, JavaScript, and CSS to develop websites.

Cylogy Inc. added a web streaming system into our Spare the Air website and integrated our APIs; there is an automated process for meetings, automating the movement of the video from scheduled to the final archived version. 

One of the most prominent features that Cylogy Inc. developed for us is an air quality monitoring system. Their software collects hourly data using the API from our data management system and exports it to Azure. After that, we collect the data through Cylogy Inc.'s software. The integration of the air quality data is seen on the frontend, but an entire alert and monitoring system is built behind it so my team can check and monitor missing data. 

Cylogy Inc. customized an air quality alert that runs when pollution reaches dangerous highs. It is an extensive system that is used across our government website and throughout city airports. The alert is built around and integrated with Twilio and Salesforce to send automated emails and SMS messages. 

Cylogy Inc. does a lot of backend work for us and extensively customizes every aspect of our CMS, including our workflows and web components. Currently, Cylogy Inc. is working on maintaining and enhancing our system: they're integrating an agenda management system into the website. 

What is the team composition?

We work with seven teammates, and our main point of contact is the project manager. 

How did you come to work with Cylogy Inc.?

Since we are a governmental organization, we issue RFPs for our projects, and Cylogy Inc.'s proposals continue to win the contracts. 

How much have you invested with them?

We invest about $800,000–900,000 a year; in total, it's between $4–5 million.  

What is the status of this engagement?

We began working with Cylogy Inc. in August 2008 and our engagement is ongoing. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Cylogy Inc. has exceeded our expectations and had a huge impact on our organization. Their automation of our web streaming has ensured that we don't have to manually change the status of individual meetings. 

How did Cylogy Inc. perform from a project management standpoint?

Cylogy Inc.'s project management is excellent, and they stick to schedules and our budget. We generally work in an agile methodology; it is a very iterative development process. 

We communicate with Cylogy Inc. in various ways, including Zoom, Microsoft Team, and email. We have ongoing processes and tickets in Jira and Microsoft DevOps that Cylogy Inc. manages — their whole team has an excellent project process. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

The core of what Cylogy Inc. does, their technical aptitude and structure, is phenomenal. Because their developers have a lot of CSS and back- and frontend experience, they can get all aspects of our websites clearly integrated. 

We've worked with 2–3 other web development companies during our tenure with Cylogy Inc., but Cylogy Inc. has blown all of those companies out of the water. When we work with other companies, it is a night and day difference — Cylogy Inc. often comes in and picks up the pieces of what the other companies have left behind. 

I have a fantastic working relationship with them — they go above and beyond for me. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

Honestly, nothing comes to mind. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Potential customers need to bring Cylogy Inc. into the project as early as possible. I know some companies reach out to development teams after they've made commitments down specific development paths, but the sooner customers bring in Cylogy Inc., the better the work. 

Cylogy Inc. helps customers by providing feedback from a technical perspective during the beginning of the project — development planning also works out a lot better. 

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am VP Product Marketing at Kigen, spin off from Arm in 2020.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Cylogy Inc.?

We launched our new website in Nov 2020 with the help of Cylogy for website design / development project, extracting info from Arm website, and designing a new site.

SOLUTION

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

With Arm digital team we shortlisted a few company and selected cylogy based on SoW and support plan.

Describe the project in detail and walk through the stages of the project.

After multiple discovery meeting and SoW preparation, here are the stages.

• Information architecture
• Page design
• HTML/CSS production
• Site architecture
• Integration and plugins
• Content migration and Entry
• QA testing
• Launch

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

7 people:

• Senior project manager
•  Technical Manager
• 2 developers
• 1 QA
• 1 designer
• 1 design strategist

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

website launched on expected date with good initial quality

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Good workflow with frequent alignment, JIRA follow up

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

They had excellent customer service and follow up

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

Cylogy is a US company, and kigen based in UK/France for marketing team. Timezone was a bit of a challenge, as Cylogy dev team was in Europe but driven by US team. But it worked well overall, giving us timezones overlap as well and parallel work.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the head of content for a media organization that encompasses two media properties and two events. I’ve been with the organization for five years.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Cylogy Inc.?

We’ve had a long relationship with Cylogy, and they’ve handled most of our Sitecore implementations and updates. We use Sitecore for our media content management

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They are working on the implementation of our current redesign and have gone above and beyond to ensure we’re making our milestones on time and under budget. 

What is the team dynamic? 

I primarily work with Lindsay (VP of Services) and two other people from their team.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Describe the impact this engagement has had on your business.

They were quite impactful in our recent redesign, We are moving to a headless architecture, they helped us identify and fix problems we weren’t aware of that would have derailed our efforts later.

They dedicated a dev person to fix it who worked over time as we were in a critical stage and this allowed us to complete our implementation milestone on time and under budget. Woohoo!

How was project management handled?

Lindsay the team leader is always available and is on top of timelines and our needs as we move into the next phase. They’ve integrated with our Sack so we have instant contact for urgent needs.

UPDATED REVIEW

This review was published on January 23, 2022.

Head of Content, Media Organization

Media

11-50 Employees

Daytona Beach, Florida

$50,000 to $199,999

Jan 2018 - Ongoing

Client quote:

“They do most of the heavy lifting for us, and I don’t have any complaints about them.”

Project summary:

Cylogy Inc. provides technology implementation services for a media organization. They also serve as the company’s outsourced IT team that handles their updates, upgrades, and issue troubleshooting needs. 

Feedback summary:

The company is happy with Cylogy Inc.’s services, praising their ability to deliver on time. The team communicates closely with the organization and stakeholders, ensuring that they’re on top of everything. They’ve also proven to be highly knowledgeable in the main technology that the group uses.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the head of content for a media organization that encompasses two media properties and two events. I’ve been with the organization for five years.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Cylogy Inc.?

We’ve had a long relationship with Cylogy, and they’ve handled most of our Sitecore implementations and updates. We use Sitecore for our media content management.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

The Cylogy team has done a number of things for us. For instance, they’ve updated our software to the most recent version; we were a couple of versions behind at one point, but they’ve taken care of that. Our team also works with them for the redesign and implementation of the graphics, features, and code that we’re adding to the software. 

To be clear, Cylogy doesn’t do design or content development for us. Rather, they help us with technology implementation. Since they’re a software support organization, they serve as our IT team. Our company doesn’t have our own IT team, and most of the things we have are set up. If something goes wrong or if we need to upgrade things, then Cylogy helps us.

What is the team composition?

I primarily work with Lindsay (VP of Services) and two other people from their team.

How did you come to work with Cylogy Inc.?

They’d been a long-time partner of my organization when I joined the company. 

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve invested between $100,000–$200,000. 

What is the status of this engagement?

I started working with Cylogy in January 2018, and the engagement is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

I’m a harsh taskmaster, but Cylogy always delivers on time. We meet weekly, so we have a lot of communication, too. Overall, they do most of the heavy lifting for us, and I don’t have any complaints about them. 

How did Cylogy Inc. perform from a project management standpoint?

I can communicate instantly with Lindsay through Slack. We also use Jira, BaseCamp, and Asana. Lindsay can go through any of those depending on which internal team needs her. For instance, my team uses Basecamp, and she’s a part of it. Meanwhile, our events team uses Asana, and she’s also included there. If there are serious issues that need to be resolved, we use Jira. 

Meanwhile, we have two weekly meetings for redesign standups and sprint planning. We typically do our calls through video calls. Lindsay is always there, and she walks us through the project. She explains things clearly and gives clear action items. Our team sometimes doesn’t know what we need, so Cylogy comes in and tells what we need to put where and why. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

We don’t have the same level of communication with other providers as we have with Cylogy. If there’s a problem, we can instantly communicate with Lindsay and know whether or not we need to file a ticket. That level of communication makes our partnership easier, and that’s their biggest differentiating factor from other providers. 

For specific tasks, the update that we’ve done on Sitecore has been impressive. It’s been a difficult transition, but it didn’t take us as long as I thought it would. Some bugs appeared, but we’ve squashed them immediately. That’s been the biggest project we’ve done with Cylogy except for the ongoing redesign we’re doing. Overall, we’ve had a positive experience with them.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, there aren’t any. Development processes always take more time than we want, and that’s not Cylogy’s fault — it’s simply an inherent issue with development. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Be upfront and honest; explain to Cylogy exactly what you need so that both sides can set expectations. The team needs clarity on what you need to do. While they know the technology, they don’t know your business and processes. Simply put, it’s always a balancing act.

Star Ratings

Overall rating: 4

Quality: 4

I don’t have complaints with their work.

Cost: 4

Schedule: 3.5

We simply have no control over some things in the timeline.

Willing to refer: 5

If you’re using Sitecore, the Cylogy team truly understands it.