Dalmet Technologies LLC

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I'm the co-founder of a company called Spray Booker LLC, a software-as-a-service (SaaS) online booking and company management platform that Dalmet Technologies created from the ground up for us.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Dalmet?

Just like the users of our software, we also own an airbrush tanning company. We do a significant amount of volume: 6,500 tans per year approximately. In 2014, we reached a peak in the logistics of booking appointments over email or phone. We decided that we needed an online booking system that met our needs.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Unlike other appointment-based services like a barber or nail salon, there are specific steps that you have to do before and after tanning. One important requirement that we had was the ability to send out customized instructions and have the person making the appointment confirm that they received those instructions so that they properly prepared for the appointment.

There are a number of large services online that do generic bookings, but none of them met our needs. They didn’t have credit card integration to hold or conduct the transactions, or couldn’t do the notifications to both text and email like we wanted. We decided to build our own internal management software platform around these core requirements.

We had some initial requirement gathering sessions. They specified an initial cost. We were financed in part by the Small Business Administration. Dalmet built it and delivered the initial version in March of 2015, but it was clear that it was a fixed price contract, and that we had a bit of scope creep and fell behind schedule. We needed more features to make it functional for our use. We engaged with Dalmet to get the work put in so that we could go live on the platform on mid-2015.

The platform integrates with Authorize.Net to validate and securely store credit card information. It can then pass on the charges to any merchant processor, as long as the merchant processor has a configuration variable that integrates with Authorize.Net. The use case is the customer logs in and wants to make an appointment. We ask them to put a credit card in to hold the appointment.

The credit card gets input into our system, passed to Authorize.Net, validated and stored there, and then a pointer to the Authorize.Net is stored on our side. When the person comes in, they get their service done, and then we can charge the card on file via paperless transaction. They could also enter a new card, and we could input directly at the point of check out.

What is the team dynamic?

I only communicated with Staney [Dalmet] and Ronnie [Dalmet], the two principals of Dalmet. Dalmet has a deep understanding so I can explain in a few sentences what I want, and they can code it.

How did you come to work with Dalmet?

We initially contracted with a company called Concord Software to do the initial phase of it, but Concord subcontracted it out to Dalmet. After the first phase, they parted ways and Concord gave up the contract, and we engaged directly with Dalmet for the rest of the implementation and the subsequent work. We found Concord through a referral from another company that I own. We wanted to build this in Java and JavaScript, but they were primarily .NET specialists, so they didn't have those skills in-house. That's why they subcontracted the whole project to Dalmet.

How much have you invested with them?

We've invested about $120,000 in development, including subsequent feature additions and bug fixes. That was all primarily spent in 2014–2016. We've spent a few hundred dollars in nominal bug fixes and support in 2017. The product is very stable at this point.

What is the status of this engagement?

We've been working with them since September 2014.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We sell it as a SaaS. It's not just internal corporate software. We've had more than 200 airbrush tanning companies that have evaluated it, and, we have between 15–20 that are using it in production and paying for it. There are close to 20,000 customers that have logged into it through the various companies.

How did Dalmet perform from a project management standpoint?

I alluded to the fact that we were late in the initial delivery, but I don't attribute that to Dalmet. The scope creep and a lack of project management were on Concord's side. Dalmet wasn't engaged full-time on this, so they were at Concord's mercy of being told what to do when.

Once we started dealing with Dalmet directly and they were doing their own project management, we stood up a Bugzilla platform to hold both bugs and features, and we put in bugs and asked them to price out bugs, features, or augmentations to the code. We'd tell them which ones to do, and they had already quoted us a firm, fixed price, and number of hours. We have a standing hourly rate with them.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They are excellent at turning functional requirements into deliverables with very little need to discuss them, which is valuable from a business perspective.

Are there any areas they could improve?

There are some minor typos in some of the data definition language, but they’re behind the scenes so they don't affect the way the app works. They may have stemmed from some of the offshore resources that they used because some of the words that were misspelled were esoteric English words that not every non-English speaker would know how to spell properly.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

We like them because their rates are affordable and they complete the work quickly. The biggest concern with working with them is their bandwidth. They work for us on a part-time basis, so I don't know what projects they are engaged in full-time. If I was trying to hire them, I would want to know how they're going to staff the project, the engagements they're committed to, and the percentage of time they're going to be committing to my project.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the executive director of a 501c3 nonprofit that distributes need-based, new prescription eyeglasses for children and adults via social services agencies in the U.S.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Dalmet Technologies?

We needed to digitize our paper-based voucher applications and build an online system to review and either accept or redirect candidates. Dalmet’s online platform encompasses the entire U.S. voucher program.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Each stage of the program has a different module. Caseworkers from our partner agencies can register as users under their program’s umbrella. The platform gathers and disseminates key client data. For instance, demographic information is crucial to the grant application process, and these details help identify major areas of demand.

We’d previously distributed hard copy to social service agencies. Via the new email system, applicants can download their approved voucher electronically, or conversely, receive a detailed explanation about rejections. Eligible recipients now have the option to redeem glasses from an online store, in addition to local brick-and-mortar shops. After redemption at optical dispensers, we receive a confirmation of voucher use. These functionalities maintain an automatic record of critical data that matches recipient name, voucher number, selected vendor, and eyeglass cost. Lastly, the system generates and runs the checks we distribute to our partner vendors.

How did you come to work with Dalmet Technologies?

We distributed a request for proposals to tech firms found via idealist.org and professional references in October 2014, with a February 2015 deadline. As a nonprofit with a board of directors, the decision process was extensive and time-consuming. While not the most affordable applicant, Dalmet’s extensive references were compelling, and their thorough application best represented our project goals.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent between $62,000 to $65,000 in total.

What is the status of this engagement?

We awarded Dalmet this project in May of 2015, and they’ve continued working to improve and maintain the program to date.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Since launching the new application in November of 2015, we’ve supplied over 20,000 new pairs of glasses. Well over 6,000 users have registered caseworker accounts, and over 2,500 agencies have applied to the program. We’ve experienced nothing but net gains.

It’s slashed our postage and paper budget, and lightened the workload of our voucher coordinators. Without constantly having to manually input data, our employees can now pursue other initiatives within the organization.  After using an antiquated system for the majority of our company’s 85-year tenure, this initiative has been an incredible game-changer.  

How did Dalmet Technologies perform from a project management standpoint?

Dalmet was forthcoming about their capabilities and limitations from the start. Lacking a technical background, we were unaware of the difficulty and expense of certain project components. Several months into use, we realized the program needed a direct back button, which is apparently one of the hardest functions to build. Our constrained resources prevented us from resolving some unanticipated problems that were not included in the original RFP.

When something they did wasn’t functional, they were openly communicative, and worked for weeks on end to solve difficult problems. During development, we used a debugging web app to track and share any glitches we saw on the site.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Phenomenal response times and an open-mindedness were key strengths. Even if they are busy working with another client, they will immediately indicate when they’ll be able to follow up.They’re always available in the event of emergencies. They immediately resolved a hosting-related crash we experienced, and then gave us a prompt explanation and informed analysis.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I would prefer Dalmet to be more of an involved, forward-thinking partner. They only performed the work we explicitly assigned, and wouldn’t take the initiative to complete intuitive next steps. I also wish they’d contribute overarching insight and suggestions to improve our project as a whole. Since they ultimately aren’t our employees, however, that’s not within the scope of their job. They have extensive work responsibilities with other clients. This complaint would apply to any contractor, though, and we’re very happy with them overall.

Advice for potential customers?

This project was a learning process that revealed the limitations of both our project goals, and our ability to explain how our organization functions. Many executive directors and CEOs of other small companies had similar complaints when outsourcing software and tech work. These contractors limit their work exclusively to what’s requested, and rarely seek to fully understand a customer’s core mission. In future endeavors with tech firms, I now know to clearly articulate all of my company’s needs.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We were founded about five years ago. We build a number of different products, including consumer music products as well as enterprise level professional products for the music industry. We brought in Dalmet Technologies. They had a different name at the time, but we brought in Staney [Dalmet, Founder] and [his collegue] as our development team to build the first version of our core consumer product. I'm the co-founder of the music technology start-up.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Dalmet Technologies?

Our company has evolved and our products are changing. The first version of the product was essentially a new rich media experience for music releases. It was largely promotional in nature and was mobile centric, which allowed music artists and their managers to bundle singles and eventually longer playing collections, anything from an EP, to a mix tape, to a full-length album.

Essentially, you could bundle promotional singles with artwork, lyrics, photo galleries, video, and any other rich media at the time. There's also a social product. It gave the artist the ability to release music in a bigger and more visual way, and was tailored specifically to mobile usage.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They built the primary consumer product both for iOS and Android. They did the entire architecture frontend work, databases, and everything soup to nuts. They also built an internal web-based admin tool that served as our interface to publish anything, to edit releases, to onboard artists, track users, and everything else that we needed to do.

They also built a secondary web-based interface that was a publishing tool for artists and managers. That was browser-based, and a music artist or their manager would have their own log-in. They would be able to essentially put a complete release together themselves, and add pictures, add lyrics, and edit it over time. That was another thing the product did. You could actually go back and add more to your release.

Any users or consumers who had that release in their library would get notifications that there was new content available for that artist and for that particular record. That was another web-based interface that they built that was specific for artists and managers to both publish and manage their content.

I know the platform is Java-based. It was used to build a series of web services to connect to the backend, and ultimately, to serve up content to the frontend experience on mobile.

How did you come to work with Dalmet Technologies?

I didn't find them. My business partner did. I'm not sure how he was connected to them. I think there maybe was a shared relationship. He interviewed them and I interviewed them. We spent some time talking about the product and what our goals were.

At the time when we first met and began talking about this, the product was still very ambiguous. To Staney and Ronnie's huge credit, they were able to take a lot of early ambiguous ideas that didn't have a lot of solid wire-framing, nor UI/UX [user interface/user experience] design around it yet. They were able to extrapolate from that the fundamentals of what needed to be built first. They were able to get started on it very early.

That's how we got to know each other. We were riffing about the product early on, and they were able to come back with more suggestions around security and more efficient ways to build the product for scalability.

How much have you invested with Dalmet Technologies?

I would say for development capital spent, I may be wrong, but my guess is probably around $150,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We began working in 2012. It ended late 2014.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

I would say two things that are very successful. The first thing is being able to connect some very particular business needs to a technology solution. One of the big things for us, and it became a way for us to grow our relationships in the music business and gain trust amongst that community, is security. Security is a huge issue; security of music content, promotional content, and everything around it. It tends to be a very sensitive issue in that community. We took that to heart. We made sure we were building a product where artists' music couldn't be ripped out of it easily.

If somebody really cares enough, somebody will eventually find a way. Not as easily though as with YouTube, SoundCloud, and things like that. That was a very pressing need that we communicated to the Dalmet guys. They have a heavy background in technology based security. They were able to take that to heart. They built a product that was very difficult to rip music out of, with very secure encrypted files. Basically, in order to get music out of the phone, you would have to put it next to a speaker or plug it into something that could just simply record an audio signal. There really was no way to rip a file out of our product. That was a big win.

It was very apparent to the music artists we were working with. We were working with music artists who are Gold Record, Platinum level artists. There are some who are lesser known, but we are working with some artists who are very famous and very conscious of this kind of issue. They could see that it was extremely difficult to rip music out of the product. That was a key thing that led them to want to work with us. That's a big success story.

I think the other big success story is the fact that they were able to build a product like this that serves up a very particular kind of rich media. We're not talking about something that just simply streams music and has one file to deal with. We're talking about a product that in one click of a button, serves to a user music bundled with images, video, text, articles, and all kinds of things wrapped up in one package.

One of the challenges that comes with that is scalability. How do you have a product that can continue to not only serve up rich media quickly and put the content very quickly into the hands of the user also do that when all of a sudden a popular artist starts promoting their content on our platform in a short span of time, and 200,000 people download the product and start using it, and start downloading those same complex files? There was a big challenge around scalability.

We really had a very serious test when we worked with a major artist in May of 2015. Even though the main product engagement was done, we were still very much working with them in terms of maintenance and monitoring traffic. There was a huge traffic spike. I don't think there was a single problem in terms of being able to serve up the content to the users. That was another major success story for the scalability of rich media.

How did Dalmet Technologies perform from a project management standpoint?

I think there was shared management. At the time when I first started working with them, I didn't have a lot of experience in managing a team of developers. I still don't. It's not really my focus. Although, I have plenty of experience in working with development leads.

As far as structuring scrum-based timetables and things like that, that's not my strong suit. I worked very closely with Staney on a weekly basis as to what happened that week, and what was coming next. Everything was always very consistent. That's the most I can tell you about them. It was a very simple and easy process to go through the project together.

What did you find most impressive about Dalmet Technologies?

There’s something that always sticks in my mind whenever I talk about them and this is an issue I press with anybody that I talk to. It's not something that most people understand. Staney has explained this to me in a couple of different times. There are many other development companies that either don't have as intimate of an understanding of this, or they do and they don't really know how to deal with it in the best way and they cut corners. What I'm really getting at here is that there are three ways that a software product has to be able to scale. It has to be able to scale for volume, for the amount of people using it. It has to be able to scale for performance, and how well something performs once all those people are using it. If you're streaming content, you're serving up data, and say you've got a million people using it and it's running well. Is the data available for all of those people, and is it running well?

Those tend to be three distinct factors that an architect engineer has to take into account in order for the product to perform well, in order to scale well. It's something that Staney is super conscious of and really thinks through in detail when assessing how he's going to approach a project.

Are there any areas Dalmet Technologies could improve?

No, not at all. As I said before, when we work together, for any kind of shift in timing or changes to cost, they are a result of us changing a business goal or a revision to a design of a product, things like that. They are some of the most reliable people I know. Also, some of the most honest, good, honorable people I know. I've told Staney sometimes, "You undercharge. You can get a little bit more of a margin." They are just very honest, good people to work with.