Ei Square®

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Group Head of Technology of International Schools Partnership

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

International Schools Management Company

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Ei Square® to accomplish?

• Data Discovery Documentation and Journey Mapping
• Data Infrastructure Technical Design and Build
• Data Centralisation, Modelling, Presentation & Reporting

SOLUTION

How did you find Ei Square®?

• Online Search
• Referral

Why did you select Ei Square® over others?

• Close to my geographic location
• Great culture fit
• Company values aligned

How many teammates from Ei Square® were assigned to this project?

6-10 Employees

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

Initial Scope: 

• Understand how data is collected, stored, maintained and reported 
• Document the current status
• Define the data components of each requirement 
• Map the requirement and definition to the correct source
• Document the journey and master source for each data component 

Subsequent Scope: 

• All schools as at 1st September 2022
• All data requirements that were identified as required in the discovery phase of work completed in 2022 
• All ISP core data sources and systems that are relevant in meeting the requirements in the above 
• The ingestion of data from all of the above sources into a central data storage platform (a ‘lake’) 
• The ‘prep, train, model and serve’ of data products relevant to the requirements in 2. above. 
• Design of reporting / dashboards that make use of these data products for leaders at Group, Division, Region, and School levels of the organisation.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

• Achieving most of what is laid out in our scope of works within a given timeframe. 
• Success of addressing our current challenges, reliably and efficiently reporting KPI's.

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

Extremely attentive, always available at any time of the day. They give us detailed information and explain the pros and cons behind certain decisions we need to make. They attend our internal steering group on a monthly basis.

What was your primary form of communication with Ei Square®?

• In-Person Meeting
• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

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

There is a real personal touch to the way Ei2 operate which allows us to effectively operate as one team supporting one goal. They are very experienced and have demonstrated their ability to overcome unique challenges.

Are there any areas for improvement or something Ei Square® could have done differently?

Its a tricky project which involves a number of people both within ISP and EiSquare. Sometimes communications between both parties could be channelled better. However this approach has allowed us to be extremely agile

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the head of operations at Tintra PLC, a banking company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Ei Square®?

I needed IT technical support.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Ei Square provides IT and cloud consulting services.

What is the team composition?

I work with the principal, the head of technical services, and the head of Microsoft 365.

How did you come to work with Ei Square®?

I connected with them through an outside network of which I was a member.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve invested £20,000 (approximately $25,000 USD).

What is the status of this engagement?

The project started in September 2021, and we’re still working together.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

They’ve done the job I’ve asked them to do, and their communication throughout has been excellent.

How did Ei Square® perform from a project management standpoint?

Their project management has been excellent. They have direct communication with me through email, WhatsApp, telephone calls, and in-person meetings.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I’m most impressed by their conscientiousness.

Are there any areas they could improve?

There’s nothing they could improve. They’re excellent.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I recommend Ei Square wholeheartedly. They provide an excellent service — they understand our business very well, and they’re very conscientious.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the former business intelligence director at First Choice Holmes Oldham, a housing association company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Ei Square?

We needed support with our accounting services — to transform the way we were doing finance reporting. Our method was spreadsheet based and a bit manual, and we wanted to get to a point where we could automate a lot of the data, sending it from the general ledger into a data platform and out into dashboards. We needed somebody who we had confidence in to support that.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They provide business intelligence. We had reporting, dashboards, and management accounts and wanted to automate and streamline our reporting. Ei Squ decommissioned some legacy spreadsheets and manual based processes and replaced them with better quality and improved automation, insight, speed, and quality.

We were using DevOps and DataOps to do the management of the project and the development of the BI. In terms of tools for producing the reports, we use Microsoft SQL stack, Azure, and Power BI.

What is the team composition?

I dealt with the project manager to mobilize the project.

How did you come to work with Ei Square?

We researched different companies and felt that Ei had the right people. We gave them our problem, and they were very good at understanding our team, structure, setup, and the skills we had on the team.

They came back to us in 1–2 weeks with a proposal and recommendations for how they would approach the project, what the ripples would be, who would be involved from their side, and what skillsets we’d need. This was very encouraging.

We met following that recommendation and sought approval to go ahead and engage with them, which was agreed to by all of our people.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent around $50,000­–$60,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in July 2021–October 2022.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Until the moment I left, their work was spot on. The approach they were setting out was to use DevOps and DataOps to bring in a very operational, scientific, agile approach to deliver the work. This is quite a new approach in the housing sector, as not many housing associations are using it. What they did was great and moved things along swiftly.

While I was there, we did manage to decommission some reporting and replace them with new reports. On average, it took around 18 days after the close of the month to get the management accounts out and produce reports. This was all about shortening that period. In my view, I have full confidence.

How did Ei Square perform from a project management standpoint?

I had a weekly meeting with the project manager to make sure the progress was being met. They delivered on time and the communication was great. We used Microsoft Teams and video meetings.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their communication around business and ability to understand the business and simplify it stood out.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I found them to be absolutely perfect.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

They’re a team that can come in and understand your data, business intelligence, requirements, and translate them   into something. I have confidence in them.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Founder & CEO of Interrodata Ltd

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Our software enables sales & marketing leaders to double sales growth by turning complex data into straightforward business guidance for all.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Ei Square® to accomplish?

• Provide a design framework for new technical infrastructure for our SaaS product

SOLUTION

How did you find Ei Square®?

• Business Networking Event

Why did you select Ei Square® over others?

• Close to my geographic location
• Good value for cost
• Company values aligned

How many teammates from Ei Square® were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

Providing an architectural resource to work with our existing engineering team to understand the current architecture and its limitations Provide potential options for technical roadmap to enable diverse cloud/on-premise ecosystems.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

Delivery of technical options document

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

They worked efficiently and in line with the pre-agreed timelines

What was your primary form of communication with Ei Square®?

• Virtual Meeting

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

Deep domain expertise; they had a great grasp of the project requirements and the ability to provide broader strategic guidance on specific matters

Are there any areas for improvement or something Ei Square® could have done differently?

None