Devōt

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the president and majority owner of Equestrian Show Manager. We provide software to run and support hunter-jumper horse shows.

What challenge were you trying to address with MI DIGITAL?

I wanted to introduce more automation into horse show competition and the technology that helps run them. I started a company and engaged MI DIGITAL as our software development team.

What was the scope of their involvement?

The software serves every part of running a hunter-jumper show, from planning to administration to tracking events. It tracks ongoing events and prizes, allows participants to enter the show, and organizes services such as stalls and campsites. It also provides marketing opportunities to both show owners and participants.

MI DIGITAL developed the software as a cloud-based solution in Ruby on Rails. They built the frontend using JavaScript and Bootstrap. At their team’s suggestion, we used behavior-driven development to create the software. We first made a series of tests that the software had to pass to meet our requirements. MI DIGITAL then designed the software to meet those specific tests. This process reorders a traditional development process where a team programs a product and then creates tests to check its functionality. We found behavior-driven development an innovative and effective process.

MI DIGITAL now provides ongoing support, fixing bugs and implementing new functionalities as needed.

What is the team composition?

I interface with Martin (Founder and CEO, MI DIGITAL) and two programmers on a regular basis.

How did you come to work with MI DIGITAL?

The Ruby on Rails development community is tight-knit. My CTO met MI DIGITAL at a Ruby on Rails conference and found their team to be knowledgeable and highly recommended.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent about $100,000–$200,000 so far.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together three years ago, and the project is ongoing.

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

We’ve worked with several third-party developers in the past, but MI DIGITAL is the first to consistently meet our standards. The team regularly rises to the occasion for us. They can fulfill a variety of requests in a flexible capacity with only general guidance. As a result, we continue to work together.

Our software undergoes rapid application development, and we continually make changes based on customer feedback. We translate each request into a functional architecture and then create a list of requirements and some screen designs. Using those resources, MI DIGITAL then builds the technical architecture of the new functionality. Since the software first launched, we’ve added features such as campsite reservation systems and improved database structures. Their team also designs UIs as needed and provides live software for events. If any issue comes up during a show, they’ll jump on it right away.

How did MI DIGITAL perform from a project management standpoint?

Their responsiveness is excellent. Their live support is offered around the clock. We also value their frank and clear communication. MI DIGITAL has never surprised us with an unexpected delay or charge. They regularly meet deadlines and warn us of delays well in advance. The team communicates fluently in English. We interface almost every day through Slack.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We value their proactive approach to every stage of development. MI DIGITAL introduced us to behavior-driven development as well as other best practices for software development without asking. The team works independently and takes initiative on a regular basis, which we appreciated as a small company. If they find any bugs that our testers miss, they fix them right away. If they see a way to improve a process, they’ll go ahead and implement it (unless it comes at a significant cost to our side). This approach distinguishes them from other third-party vendors I’ve worked with.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, I can’t think of anything. We couldn’t be happier with MI DIGITAL’s work.

Any advice for potential customers?

Be as open about your business, needs, and challenges as possible. MI DIGITAL is highly trustworthy, and more information helps them deliver higher-quality results.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I'm the CEO of ELS Agency, a digital communications specialist based in Italy and the UK. We provide copywriting in different languages. Our work is related to translation, but more focused on digital marketing aspects including SEO. Our clients range from small companies to major enterprises in the high-end sector.

What challenge were you trying to address with MI Digital?

Our service is a bit unique, as we straddle the line between standard web agency and translation provider. Tools for these two business models have entirely different sets of services. As a consequence, we struggled to find an appropriate IT system. We tried using Excel and Microsoft Access, but third-party service providers’ tools felt like sticking a round peg into a square hole.

What was the scope of their involvement?

MI Digital helped us develop a system that tracked our work, specially tailored for our high-profile customers like Gucci, Prada, and Michael Kors. They built a management tool that seamlessly aggregates the different types of jobs we perform. Our traditional agency tasks include branding, copywriting, and brand voice development. For the translation element, we needed to keep the metrics for each of our working languages separate.

Automation made our standard work processes smoother and simpler. Dropbox integration allows us to add new job profiles, insert files, and send generated emails to our providers and the project managers involved. This level of function isn't possible with standard web agency job management tools.

What is the team composition?

As the CEO, I typically interact with their founder, Martin Morava. We have a very good relationship. He's very helpful; he really understood our challenge and considered several different ways to fix it. Ivana Oreski manages digital marketing, and we were occasionally in touch with other developers.

How did you come to work with MI Digital?

After attempting the project in-house, we realized it was beyond our capabilities. We’d previously tried several vendors, and always experienced problems with unreliability or inefficiency. Vendors would either disappear mid-project or take a month to complete work we needed by the next day. MI Digital was the first vendor who was there for us when we needed them. We were happy with the plan and budget they proposed, so we started an initial trial project and have worked together ever since.

How much have you invested with them?

Last year, we spent between $40,000 and $50,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started our partnership mid-2015. We've engaged them to work for us on a long-term basis with an annual retainer. Whenever we have new projects, we already have room in the budget and an available vendor. There are always new ways to develop our system, like integrating AI. Technology evolves so quickly that it’s easy to become obsolete. Adding features and functionalities makes it run better, smoother, and faster.

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

The levels of speed and cohesion with which they’ve aggregated these features were fantastic. Ultimately, they helped us provide a better service while saving money. I appreciated their open-minded approach. Rather than using one specific programming language at all times, they’ll find varied methods that work more effectively. They're happy to break down the process step-by-step, even if you're not a tech expert. Finding novel ways to approach old problems mirrors our own methodology, so it's been a very successful relationship.

We got excellent use out of the basic invoice reminder system they installed. It sends out a regular e-mail and follows up with a series of reminders as needed. Previously, we’d had to personally call customers who didn't pay their bills. The new system mitigates the risk of human error, as well as the awkwardness involved. Customers often got defensive with our account team and took the calls as a personal insult. Some got so upset that they threatened to cancel their contracts. Implementing the new system was a simple change that made a really big difference, and improved the bottom line. Not only did we see a 15% rise in the number of bills paid on time, but we also haven't had a single bad reaction from certain non-paying customers.

How did MI Digital perform from a project management standpoint?

We have similar roles in terms of project management, and I'd honestly say they do a better job than we do. Everything's rolled out as and when it should be. If issues arise, I can easily get in touch. Whenever my team pointed out software bugs, the developers resolved them within 24-48 hours. For more strategic work, they'll take a few days to develop a plan of action. We conduct briefings and updates via Skype or phone. Daily communication is usually via Slack, and they send monthly or trimester-ly email updates.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We have a great business relationship, and I’m very satisfied. We found them at the perfect time, and they're really an ideal vendor for our company. We're not a huge business, so we've only experienced six or seven different development teams. I really value MI Digital’s availability and commitment to getting work done. The sense of security they provide is worth the entire budget we pay them.

If our system breaks, I can't send any bills or track who should be paying us. It could be a real disaster, and other companies have let us down or delayed our project. With MI Digital, it's been the complete opposite experience. If a problem is urgent, they’ll quickly develop a solution, and always respond appropriately. Their attentive customer service is invaluable.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Take a top-down approach. Instead of just asking them to build a feature, consider how you want it to ideally work in the future. MI Digital will help you understand the logical flow of information and processes. If you take a higher-level look with Martin and the other programmers initially, you'll get a much better end result.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I used to be the Growth Hacker at Trainline, heading up innovation, growth, and international marketing.

What challenge were you trying to address with MI DIGITAL?

We needed a vendor to make the first versions of an app to get our marketing technology up and running. We needed to create and build an API for iOS to integrate into our AdWords account, while also making our site lighter and faster.

What was the scope of their involvement?

MI DIGITAL came in to increase spend and performance. You can’t increase spend if you don't know where the performance is coming from, or make it dynamic and scalable.

Their team helped create an API conversion upload to help work around some challenges. AdWords doesn't support native iOS installs as a conversion signal, but as we were using DoubleClick and a few other tools, we were able to find when a click happened and its click ID. We could take that and feed it back into our system to notify our algorithms.

What is the team composition?

I mostly worked with Martin, the head of the company.

How did you come to work with MI DIGITAL?

We found them through Upwork, where we engaged with a handful of vendors. MI DIGITAL replied to the job posting and it made it clear that they really understood what we needed. Due to their success with our first project, we continued to work with them a second time.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent around $10,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

They worked on the API project for 1–2 months and another couple of months on the site speed issue. Overall, we worked with them for 6–8 months, and they may still support the API.

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

The site speed went from close to 10 seconds to load the page to less than two seconds.

How did MI DIGITAL perform from a project management standpoint?

They always were very quick to respond and responsible when it came to getting tasks done within set timeframes. We mostly communicated through Slack and Skype.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I found MI DIGITAL to be a lot more engaging compared to other vendors. You can call them right up for anything, which I find very important. If something they owned needed to be updated, they'd come in and take care of it right away.

MI DIGITAL had a basic understanding of the fundamentals of what was needed to get started. It was incredibly useful having a vendor understand how it all gets plugged in together in the background.

Everything they delivered was on time and any bugs were worked out quickly.

Are there any areas they could improve?

It went very well overall. They could be more proactive in providing feedback, but we gave them such specific tasks that it's not surprising they didn't provide suggestions about what else we could be doing.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Make sure you have a clear idea of what you want to do. Talk about what has to happen to accomplish that and be clear about your timelines.