Drupal Partners

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am an owner and partner of Big Fundraising Ideas, a nationwide online school fundraising company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

We are looking to grow our sales and establish a more targeted approach to marketing our business and improve the quality of our customer base.

SOLUTION

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

Word of mouth. We talked to 2 other development/SEO companies as well.

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

Once the exploratory was completed a plan was laid out to improve on and off page SEO. We also plan to start incorporating an inorganic approach using Google ads.

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

There are 3 people that I meet with on a regular basis

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Our website is starting to achieve unprecedented ranking on Google and our sales have been increasing.

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

They've been very thorough and have been diligent and thoughtful in their approach to the well-being of our business. I appreciate the collaboration that happens with the team on a weekly basis.

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

They seem very passionate about wanting our business to succeed and are open to ideas about how to track and communicate work progress.

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

I would like to see a little more follow up and documentation on projects that were introduced previously. Not sure where we stand lately with our competitors for example.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

The Emory Prevention Research Center is a part of the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University. I am a project manager on a couple of research projects, as well as a deputy director of operations for the center.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Drupal Partners?

We built a web-based application a few years back, probably in 2011 or 2012, for research projects, in order to have a project management and program delivery application accessible online.

Our original builders folded as a company, and decided to move on with something else. We had spent years trying to find a company specializing in Drupal, since we’d had so many issues with expertise, false promises, and deadlines being missed because of developers learning on-the-go. This prompted us to find Drupal Partners; they are experts in Drupal, and know exactly what it is I need, and how to make fixes, changes and updates.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

The original application was our main framework, and it was fully-functional when we turned it over. We were looking to upgrade to the newer software, as the version date of Drupal we were using was expiring, and would no longer receive support. We also wanted to add a couple of features, and went from having multiple Drupal applications for every research partner, to combining the different sites into one multisite portal.

Drupal Partners has handled our monthly maintenance, checking for security updates and troubleshooting issues.

What is the team dynamic?

We worked with one project manager throughout the entire project. He setup weekly meetings with the programming team, which then moved to monthly meetings. The collaboration was remote, so I have no idea how many people were involved in the process.

How did you come to work with Drupal Partners?

I believe I made an online search. Also, as part of Emory University, we have a procurement department which has helped us with finding specific types of expertise, in terms of graphic design and so on.

How much have you invested with them?

Confidential.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Drupal Partners in 2015. The project is ongoing in maintenance mode. If I have any issues, bugs or things which need to be fixed, I can definitely go back to them, and Drupal Partners will work with my timelines, budget and anything else we give them. It’s been a great experience.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

My own feedback, as a user of the application Drupal Partners has been working on, is that we haven’t had site crashes or similar experiences. There is nothing negative to report. The application is fully functional, and any issues or bugs were fixed quickly.

They’re extremely knowledgeable in Drupal, and this has been a refreshing experience for me. I’m not a programmer, nor do I know Drupal, but I’ve had experience with other companies which had no expertise in this area. Drupal Partners is fast, responsive and knowledgeable.

How did Drupal Partners perform from a project management standpoint?

Scheduling calls or communicating issues via email is handled well. There is also a lot of follow-up from them, checking if the issues were resolved to our satisfaction. We were assigned a single project manager, which gave us continuity. That person knew the application, so, when we had issues or bugs, he would understand what we were talking about, and effectively communicate the issues to his programmers. I don’t speak the technical language, so I didn’t know how to translate my requests into their verbiage, in terms of what needed to happen, and how it would need to be programmed. Our project manager was excellent in being able to translate my issues, requests, and concerns into language the programmers could understand, and make it happen.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The most important thing was their phenomenal Drupal expertise. I’ve worked with many companies and programming teams, and Drupal Partners was the first one to which I would like to assign even more projects.

The other thing they’re excellent in is customer service. Drupal Partners is responsive, even in terms of acknowledging that I’ve put in a ticket or have a question. The quick response times are great for me since I’m task- and action-oriented. Those two things are a perfect marriage for me and this team.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Not that I can think of. I’ve been happy with how everything has been going, and there isn’t a single thing I could mention as an improvement point.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

As a non-programmer, it’s been important for me to determine the long-term vision of a project—what it should look like 5-10 years down the road. This way, when the developer is building the framework or upgrading the application, they will know to keep that vision in mind. I’ve learned this from prior experiences—it’s important to have the foresight to say what we want now, and where we ultimately want to take the application. Later on, if we want to add more things, or if we have budget constraints, it’s nice to have thought through the ultimate goal of the product being built.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We're an online primary ticket seller, with web and on-site systems for ticketing and redemption. I am the chief operating officer of the company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Drupal Partners?

We needed to improve our Drupal platform. We also wanted to develop a coupon module that would set us apart from the competition. Also, we had a difficult time with several companies before Drupal Partners.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

One of the more complex projects we've worked on with Drupal Partners is a coupon module which had some advanced functions. Innoppl was able to handle complex Drupal integrations within it. They helped us go live with our new platform.

How did you come to work with Drupal Partners?

I gave Drupal Partners a couple of difficult projects in order to evaluate their capabilities. Once they proved themselves, we increased the agreement.

How much have you invested with Drupal Partners?

The total cost of our project with Drupal Partners was between $50,000 and $100,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We have been working with Drupal Partners for 8 months. We have an ongoing collaboration with no plans to stop.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Our project was definitely successful. I'm very satisfied with our engagement. I've had a good experience with junior resources from Drupal Partners who were extremely proficient in Drupal.

How did Drupal Partners perform from a project management standpoint?

Drupal Partners was in charge of project management and communication. Their project manager recently visited our company in Baltimore and we spent an afternoon together. We discussed ways in which we could improve our project tracking system, thus improving the communication with the team. Drupal Partners' project manager has been a big part of our success.

What tips or recommendations could you share that might increase the likelihood of success with Drupal Partners?

I would suggest having daily communication and bi-weekly review phone calls. This would ensure that requirements are communicated effectively. When working remotely, we can't whiteboard ideas so we have to find alternative ways to make sure that the communication works. That means there's less time to get to the end result and we don't have to go through multiple revisions.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

Richards Industries is the parent company of six industrial valve product lines. We sell to the oil and gas, pharmaceutical, food and beverage, pulp and paper, and water treatment-type industries. We have a sanitary line, and then all the rest are more for oil and gas.

What is your position and responsibilities?

I am the marketing manager, so I'm in charge of all the product lines.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with Drupal Partners?

We have seven websites. One for Richards Industries, and all of the other six product lines. Five of our websites were in Drupal 6, so we hired them to upgrade our websites to Drupal 7. The other two were in Adobe Dreamweaver, so they started from scratch and brought those to Drupal 7, too. We don't have the technical skills here to do it ourselves and we wanted to make sure it was done right, so we hired externally.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement.

In addition to the upgrades and migration, they did quite a bit of customization. We didn't know what we were getting into when we first did Drupal 6, so we made many mistakes. When we moved to Drupal 7, they had to make quite a few changes and customizations. We wanted to have more calls to action and forms. We wanted all of our videos to be on the home page and to play. We have more than 300 reps and distributors worldwide, and they reconfigured that area, so it was easier for customers to find their local rep. A lot of work was done on the back-end. They did search engine optimization, changed page titles and so on.

We wanted to have the same look and feel on all of our websites, so that people that went to one of our product lines would associate with our other product lines. One of them was our hex valve line, which is a product line; we had to redo it to make it look like the other product line websites. The Richards Industries, which was the main one, we wanted that to have more of a corporate feel, so that it would have more to do with careers, and what we do to help our local communities, and that kind of thing. They helped us with that.

How did you come to work with Drupal Partners?

We were required to have at least three bids for projects more than $10,000. I think I got five bids for this project. They weren't the cheapest by any means, but what made us decide on them is that when we said, "This is what we want to do," and they came back with, "Here's some ideas on how to make it better," that we hadn't considered. We wanted a partner that had the knowledge and the experience we didn't have, so that they could walk us through best practices and help us refine our site.

Could you provide a sense of the size of this initiative in financial terms?

It was about $50,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We still work with them. Right now, we're developing an e-commerce site for one of our product line websites. They're handling all the back-end and setting everything up to process transactions.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

I only have a couple of months from our Google Analytics, but two of our best product lines, with the highest sales, have done remarkably well. I don't have the stats on me, but I could look it up. We're still working on SEO [search engine optimization] and whatnot. We just finished the final site a couple months ago. This has been a yearlong project. These sites are a huge improvement over the previous ones.

How did Drupal Partners perform from a project management standpoint?

They have been consistently able to deliver their milestones on time, within budget, and without any major defects. For example, when we decided we were going to have an e-commerce site for our Marwin line, I went to them and said, "This is what we want to do." They came back and said, "This is how many hours we're estimating, and this is the timeline for the project." Usually, if I just have a quick little thing, a tweak, they will just do that right away. If I have a full project, they'll come back with the hours, estimated cost, and the timeline, which is awesome. I like how organized and methodical their approach is.

What distinguishes Drupal Partners from other providers?

Drupal Partners is very quick to respond. If I have an idea, sometimes they'll come back and say, 'Have you thought about doing it this way?' which I always like, because you don't know what you don't know. That's super handy, when they have a better suggestion. They're well suited to working with clients like us, who have an idea of what they want but don't have the functional requirements nailed down.

They really went above and beyond. When we had to move the website to our server, they had to get involved, because our IT [information technology] department didn't really know how to do it. They did go above and beyond by even working with our server.

Is there anything Drupal Partners could have improved or done differently?

I haven't run into anything yet. Everything's going great, and I can be really demanding.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

We are a small manufacturer, importer, and distributor of crushable, packable sun hats with ultraviolet protection. We market and distribute to both wholesale and retail markets, around the United States and internationally.

What is your position?

I am the co-founder.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with Drupal Partners?

We were trying to correct a website development that had gone awry. We had hired a website developer who had transitioned us from one web platform onto a new one, and had just really botched the job in pretty much every way imaginable. The original site was an ASP.NET and Shopify package. They were trying to transition the site to Drupal. We had gotten to the point where we knew we had to cut our losses and find a new partner to help salvage our partially constructed site.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement in more detail.

With the previous developer, there were a lot of things that were left unfinished, maybe 50 to 60 percent. The site was already live when we engaged Drupal Partners, but they created another sandbox in the development side on the back-end, so they could start making all the changes that we needed. We're still cleaning up some of the mess from before, and on working things that we had asked for earlier but hadn't been done.

Drupal Partners was able to implement a lot of features successfully, such as a retailer locator. One of the big things they did was coordinate and integrate the back-end of Drupal with a program T-HUB, which is run through a company called Atandra. It was a hugely challenging project, and they managed to accomplish it. They stayed on task until they got it done, so that was good. That was huge for our company.

They did custom development, bug fixes, and custom integrations with third-party apps. They also did staff training. We were taught how to use the content, web forms, and all the submissions that came through on the back-end effectively. We learned how to upload things onto the website. They're very responsive when you call. They always respond right away, and they answer their phones right away.

How did you come to work with Drupal Partners?

We conducted some Internet research, talked to people, and called different firms to try and find somebody who looked like they would have the technical and programming expertise to do the project. Then, we got information to Drupal Partners so they got some idea about what our needs were. They were impressive. The first thing they did was go onto the site, and within a couple of hours they already had information about what was going wrong with the site. They had a complete understanding that encompassed of the errors and issues that needed to be resolved.

Could you provide a sense of the size of this initiative in financial terms?

It cost at least $30,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our relationship is definitely ongoing. We have a lot of things that we're still trying to incorporate into the site. The original project was just a retail website, and we've since had them create a wholesale site for us, which we're getting close to launching now.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

I think the increase in sales through the Internet is a clear indicator of their quality. One of the things they encouraged us to do was move off of a shared server and onto an Amazon-hosted server, so that we have a server of our own. We probably wouldn't have considered this previously, but that transition alone has allowed us to increase the volume of orders that we can take significantly, and the system processing time is a lot better.

How did Drupal Partners perform from a project management standpoint?

They assigned us a dedicated project manager, and Drupal Partners is on top of their projects. I like the guy who founded the company. He's very involved. They respond very quickly if you have an issue.

What distinguishes Drupal Partners from other providers?

If you call them, they're available on their cell phones. They're just super available, which is fabulous for me. I think they're doing a good job; I've been impressed.

Is there anything Drupal Partners could have improved or done differently?

Sometimes, it can be challenging because they've got a team of developers offshore, so the time difference can be challenging. They've done a good job of having their developers available in the middle of the night if we needed to go through something together on a call.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company.

We’re a nonprofit that helps teachers all around the world. We collaborate and help them get more involved in policy and working to improve their professional field.

What is your position?

I’m in technology and solutions.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address when you first approached Drupal Partners?

We were doing some development work and enhancements to our website. We’ve been on Drupal since Drupal 4. We have experience with the platform, but we wanted to ensure the transition would be smooth.

SOLUTION

Could you describe the scope of their involvement in greater detail?

We had already migrated over from the previous site ourselves. When we brought them on, they were looking at new features and also fixes on the site. There were certain parts of the site that were incomplete, and we had a list of improvement and custom features that we wanted to add.

How did you come to work with Drupal Partners?

I did a lot of research. It took around two months of research, I looked into 13 or 14 different firms; everything from local to offshore, just to see who had the most experience, could be readily available, and also be able to create and develop new features and resources. Anything we could dream up, they would be able to bring it to fruition. We felt that they were the best fit for the job, and we brought them on, and they immediately went to work.

Could you provide a general cost estimate for this engagement?

We’ve gone through several phases with them. The projects ranged from several hundred dollars to up to several thousand dollars.

What is the timeline for this work?

The relationship started almost a year ago and is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

In terms of results, could you share any statistics, metrics, or user feedback that would demonstrate the quality of their work?

User feedback has been great on the new features that we’ve implemented so far, and the fixes that we’ve made on the back-end. We are currently looking to do more enhancements to improve some of the other things users have found through constant use of the site, so we are in the process of that now. A lot of it has to do with the architecture of the site, so we’re making some long-term fixes with these tasks. Users have really enjoyed all the new features now available to them. Previously, users had a more difficult time finding resources or submitting certain information. We’re satisfied in all areas. If they feel they can’t reach a deadline, they’re always reaching out ahead of time with a status report. They inform us of things upfront, so there’s no guesswork with anything. They made tremendous use of their time. We’ve never had an issue with quality control and assurance.

When working with Drupal Partners, is there anything you would consider unique or special about their approach or development methodology that distinguishes them from other vendors?

They are committed to getting the job done the right way. If they feel the project is too large for the team that they have spec’d out, they don’t mind adding resources to get the job done. They're flexible like that. They come to the table with ideas and recommendations concerning process improvements and how to best use the system going forward.

In retrospect, are there areas in which you think they could improve as a service provider?

Sometimes, they estimate something can get done by a certain time, but after they get into it, they need to adjust the deadline. This is really rare and, for the most part after they estimate it, it’s done on-time. It’s hard to get 100 percent of your estimates correct but, as the client, we’re always looking for as close as possible because we have end-users, too, relying on us.

What advice would you give a future client of theirs?

Let them know what you want and always be up front. Transparency and clear communication are keys to any digital project’s success.

BACKGROUND

Could you describe your organization?

The name of our company is the Professional Training Institute, Inc. We provide safety- and medical-related training to businesses and individuals. We have two divisions. One division has classrooms where we provide in-person training with instructors as well as going out to business locations, and we provide live training. The second division we have is online training; several of our courses qualify to be provided online to our clients. We’ve been in business since 2001.

What is your position?

I’m the president.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

Could you describe the business challenges that you were attempting to address when you first approached Drupal Partners?

Our business model is growth like any other business, and a lot of our industry is providing a lot of training based on online marketing as well as an online presence. Having a company that we can work with to help address the robust needs that we have with our websites is very critical. Marketing is a huge component of any business, ours included, but you also have to have programmers and developers that can work on the front end and back-end of your websites. To have any kind of success on the Internet, it’s key to have a company you can rely on to do programming and development.

SOLUTION

Could you describe the scope of their involvement?

They performed design work, back-end development, and then they also did some database integration and maintenance. A lot of their tasks were technical in nature, but they did some basic designs for us, too.

How did you select Drupal Partners as your preferred service provider?

We’ve had a relationship with a company in California that has been doing some of the design and development of one of our primary websites. They also host a couple of our sites. We made the contract through them. They got us in touch with Drupal Partners. It was basically a referral.

Could you provide a general cost estimate for this engagement?

It cost around $15,000.

When was this project completed?

We just completed the project about a week ago [December of 2014].

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

In terms of results, could you share any statistics, metrics or user feedback that would demonstrate the quality of their performance?

We’ve received some very positive feedback thus far. We’ve definitely seen an increase in sales since we’ve launched the new site, but it’s difficult right now to determine if this just an uptick caused by normal market fluctuations, or if it’s directly attributable to the site improvements. We’re also very pleased with their project management. We’ve had a number of relationships with developers and programmers through the years, and Drupal Partners is definitely one of the best that we’ve ever worked with so far.

When working with Drupal Partners, is there anything that you’d consider unique about their strategic approach or development methodology that distinguish them from other vendors?

One thing we felt was an advantageous component of this project was the fact that they used an online support tracking system called Assemble. This system enabled us to monitor their progress. As needs, questions, or changes arose, we had the ability to log in to Assemble, generate support tickets, and correspond back and forth with project developers. It’s been a really nice addition to the overall project, to be able to see the progress and be integral in their progress as well as incorporate our feedback and the developers’ feedback. It was a great tool.

In retrospect, are there areas in which you think they could improve as a service provider?

We’re pretty pleased with them, overall. There have been a few things that might be able to be improved, but that’s kind of the nature of working with developers that work overseas. Sometimes. the timeframes don’t match our work hours, and that was a bit problematic, although I think they addressed it as well as they could. I also think that sometimes the language barrier was a little difficult for us at time. Miscommunication delays progress. These were reasonably minor when considering the grand scheme of things, but they still occurred.