Effectus Digital

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Owner of multiple child care centres

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Effectus Digital, and what were your goals?

We were looking for software that allowed us to monitor the performance of our businesses and take effective decisions on behaviours and performance in live time.

SOLUTION

How did you select Effectus Digital and what were the deciding factors?

I had known Deepak Oberoi for some time and we chose them because he had a sound understand of implementing solutions to issues I had raised.

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

We needed them to create a platform that brought in information from the various software systems we were using and to create data dashboards that provided accurate and timely information to us.This required time and negotiation with various vendors, our accountants, bookkeepers, directors and managers - so it involved engagement with internal and external stakeholders.

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

Mainly 2 people, Deepak Oberoi (owner) and Ashleigh Morrison ( key person that we engaged with for feedback and testing etc).

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We were able to draw on the information and make key decisions regarding enquiries, debts, occupancy and wage ratios. Deepak and his team were very invested in our business and had a good understanding of what we were trying to achieve.We have realised over time that we went too far too fast, and we have been able to revisit the project in a more realistic manner to achieve the solution we are seeking.

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

Communication has been excellent. While the project remains ongoing, we are always guaranteed support whenever we need it.

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

The team remains positive and committed to the bigger picture of what we are trying to achieve. No matter what challenges we or they have faced, they remain calm and address the bigger picture. I have found Deepak to be a knowledgeable and intelligent individual who has excellent personable skills. Both him and Ashleigh, have been able to support and guide a number of different personalities through various changes in our business.

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

I suppose the only thing that we could have done differently is divided the project down into smaller chunks and as we achieved certain deliverables, we could have added more to it. I think we added too much too quickly and in doing so, made testing much more challenging. I do believe however, that as owners, we pushed for this and perhaps needed more guidance in this regard.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the managing director and founder of a company called Predikt-r, which is an online pre-employment software platform that helps businesses shortlist and select the best-fit candidates for their job and industry.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

The challenge of Predikt-r was to disrupt the traditional recruitment process, which is heavily reliant on subjective measures, whether they are interviews or reference checks. We wanted to use more science and research in that process that’s based on psychometrics, which is descriptive; it describes a person well.

Over the last seven years of research with organizations, we’ve built some even more predictive psychometrics where we can assess people and find out whether they will be a good salesperson, or a good account manager, or a good frontline care worker.

The challenge for us was to put that into a platform and technology that was easy to use and scalable. Our commercial model was a SaaS business, so we offer unlimited subscription licenses and subscriptions, which hasn’t really been done before in our space.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We aren’t IT people or technical people, and we just wanted to go directly to a developer. We got Deepak (Founder) in and he very much helped us as an outsourced CIO, contributing to everything in terms of the strategy, the architecture, the security, and the innovation. He also helped secure the right developers to meet our needs and manage them to build the app, which we’ve done over the last 2-3 years.

We are a startup, so managing costs at the time was really important, and I think he found a nice balance of some of the stuff that he did in-house in terms of strategy and project management. He outsourced some things to the developers, which were a combination of onshore resources (for more important tasks) and offshore resources for more of the backend stuff that could be done more cost-effectively.

What is the team composition?

We worked with Deepak, and there were other members involved as well. He has two other employees in his business and we worked with both of those people in their various roles. He manages the developers on our behalf.

How did you come to work with Effectus Digital?

We were one of his first clients; I have known Deepak for a long time. We worked at the same company 10 years ago before going our separate ways for many years. I set up my own business four years ago, and he was working for another entity at that time. We were working with him back then with his other business partners, and then he got out of that business and set up Effectus Digital.

We were already a client of his prior to that and were very happy with the work that he was doing, so we switched over with him. There were no problems or issues for us, and, in fact, we were very happy when he started up his own venture.

How much have you invested in them?

We have spent on average about $20,000–$25,000 AUD ($14,500–$18,100 USD) a month.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started with them in July 2018, and the work is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

It is really an exciting time because we are going to release the next version of our product next week. He built us the MVP. As any business owner starting a SaaS startup, we have had massive dreams of doing a lot of stuff, and Deepak really wound that back and let us know how much it would cost and that would take years, so we should get an MVP first. He has built that, and he has slowly transitioned that over the last 12 months to the latest and greatest new AWS Microservices architecture and infrastructure. The last component of that is out next week. I don’t know whether we would call that version 2 or version 3, but it is world-class, and we are really happy with it. It is really safe, secure, reliable, and scalable.

The platform is working, and we have had paid commercial clients for two years now. Even when we were still working through all the content and the psychometrics and doing our beta versions, we had paid commercial clients. That provides some indication because we haven’t been waiting to commercialize it for years and years. Even when the MVP was commercialized, we had paying clients, one of which was a large business on the Australian Stock Exchange. I think that speaks volumes about Effectus’ work.

Another clear metric that has to do a lot with Deepak is the psychometric scores of candidates. We have candidates take the test he built, which produces a candidate experience rating. I think there have been over 20,000 people take it so far, and the overall candidate experience rating is 84%. I think that is a nice metric in terms of pointing to the quality of his work.

How did Effectus Digital perform from a project management standpoint?

My business partner is the technical lead on our end, and they talk regularly and have regular, weekly stand-ups. Deepak manages the developers, and he has his own process of talking to them daily, as well as one of his employees, who is the technical lead on Deepak’s end.

Their communication with us is great. He updates James on a weekly basis; and with me, as more of the sponsor and owner, we chat on a fortnightly basis. I know well in advance if there are challenges or if developers aren’t going to hit the deadlines.

What did you find most impressive about them?

As a business owner, I don’t have to worry about my IT and the platform being built. I know there are problems and challenges, but I have real confidence and trust in Deepak. He is a safe pair of hands, and he is a good generalist. He has knowledge across all of the demands of our IT and when he doesn’t know something, I know he will do the research to get the right answer. That trust is important.

He is really innovative as well, and that’s not just from an IT point of view. He is different from a lot of IT people in that he is great with people. He really understands them and talks in plain English. There isn’t too much jargon; he’s very practical with everything he recommends and is very pragmatic as well. He doesn’t try to get everything done. He really narrowed our focus down to the MVP and short, sharp things that took less time, allowing us to get our product out to the market a lot quicker.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Nothing comes to mind. It’s just one of those things. I am managing lots of different areas, content, and people as well as the product and that kind of stuff and I just know that IT is one of the things I don’t worry about which is a good sign.

He negotiates on our behalf for the developers and comes back or lets us know things like if he negotiated a better rate, or that he wasn’t happy with the developer’s work so he had them do the work for free and that sort of stuff. He is good at negotiating things and keeps us informed. The quality is there and some of my frustrations in terms of how long it has taken is more around me in terms of not having the money to help really turbocharge things. I haven’t had the investment to be able to do that. So, there is nothing really that I can point to.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

He is very confident, knowledgeable, and willing to challenge things. If someone is not willing to be challenged and is not confident in what they are doing, then I would say be aware of that, as Deepak, in a very constructive and polite way, will challenge things if he sees fit. He doesn’t challenge just for the sake of it of course, but if someone is a bit sensitive or not very resilient, then that might be something they could be aware of. As I said, one of his strengths is that he is very innovative, practical, and pragmatic so if he sees something that doesn’t make sense, he will very respectfully challenge it.