Eldarion

BACKGROUND

Could you briefly describe your organization?

I work for a branding and communications research agency. We have offices in London, Singapore, and four offices in the States. We work primarily with blue-chip clients, offering them qualitative and quantitative market research and analysis.

What is your position?

I’m the product innovation director.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

Could you describe the business challenge you were attempting to address when you first approached Eldarion?

Sure. We were looking for a technology partner to inherit responsibility for our custom reporting solution. We’d built this custom reporting solution to replace PowerPoint as our primary vehicle for delivering our clients updated reports. Our previous vendor, the one that built the functional platform for us, wasn’t cut out to maintain our solution and perform ad hoc enhancements. Because of that, we knew we needed a new technology partner that would be positioned to not only maintain the solution for us, but also perform necessary ad hoc customizations and enhancements.

SOLUTION

How did you select Eldarion as your solution partner for this endeavor?

The vendor we worked with previously recommended us to Eldarion. They’d worked together in the past, and they felt that Eldarion would be a good fit for our technology needs. We reached out to them with our statement of work, and that’s how the whole relationship began.

Could you describe the scope of work they’ve delivered to you over the course of this project?

A lot of the work they’ve done already has been relegated to troubleshooting, bug fixes, code reviews, UI/UX [user interface/user experience] design audits, usability testing, and ad hoc modifications. It’s been a lot of custom backend development and more technically oriented work. They’ve helped us with some interface design, too, but we handle most of the aesthetic pieces in-house.

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

We’ve spent between $70,000 and $80,000 this year alone.

This remains an ongoing project, correct?

Yes, that’s correct.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

In terms of results, could you share any statistics, metrics, or user feedback you’ve received that might demonstrate the effectiveness of their work?

No. I have to admit that the one area I’ve yet to really catch up on is the analytics side. This whole thing is B2B [business to business], rather than B2C [business to consumer], so we’ve a different kind of mentality in terms of tracking performance. It’s not really about looking at analytics and seeing whether this particular feature has clicked on or the user spent a specific amount of time on a single page. While we’re trying to acquire clients and trying to increase our sales, the product is really there to support the existing business. It’s a reporting tool. Our existing clients have been very happy with the tool, and they’ve been consistently excited and enthusiastic about the new features and fixes we’ve been rolling out to them.

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

I don’t know enough about it to offer much insight. I used to be a researcher myself. I moved into product management about three or four years ago. I’ve worked with some SharePoint, waterfall-style developers before, and it was a horrible experience. I’d never wish that experience on anyone. These guys at Eldarion are the exact opposite. I suppose that’s a massive plus. They work very well with their clients because they really spend the time it takes to align themselves with their clients’ business objectives.

BACKGROUND

Could you briefly describe your organization?

At the time of my engagement with Eldarion, I was working with a company [that] allows people to rent their cars to others while they’re away on travel, instead of paying for parking at the airport while they’re away. Eldarion helped us build the technical infrastructure that [the company] now uses to run all of its technology and operations.

You were the founder of this company, correct?

Yes, that’s correct.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

Can you describe the business challenges you were attempting to address when you began the relationship with Eldarion?

We wanted to build a platform that could scale along with our expected growth. We were looking to build a fairly complex system and we needed to ensure it would be built correctly. First of all, there is the whole consumer facing part of the website, where people are booking rentals and registering their cars on our platform. Beyond that, there were numerous additional complexities, ranging from the setting of our prices, administration and maintenance, and tracking leads and conversions. The platform would be supporting the transactional aspect of our business as well as the strategic and operational.

SOLUTION

How did you select Eldarion as your solution partner for this endeavor?

We began by conducting some Internet research for some Django developers, which was the platform that our site would be built upon. We came up with an initial list of developers and sent out some inquiries. Eldarion was one of those potential vendors. The proposal we received from them was very well crafted, and their pricing was more than reasonable. I called them up and discussed our project details, and had them describe some of their previous work that might be relevant. I was again impressed by their level of technical knowledge and with the ease with which they were able to communicate with me. I felt confident in their capabilities, so I awarded them our work.

Could you describe the scope of work they’ve delivered during the course of the relationship?

Originally, we had a website and platform beforehand, but we decided to begin again from scratch and rebuild it. We needed a bespoke solution. They offered that to us through custom backend development, some basic visual design, and information architecture work. They functioned as our technical arm. We’d provide the guidance and supervision and they’d deal with the technical coding.

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

The scope of the project was a couple of months. It probably cost us somewhere between $100,000 and $200,000 for the finished product.

Is this still an ongoing relationship or when was this project completed?

It was finished last July [2013], but it was followed by another two or three month stint for ad hoc work and support.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

I think the biggest kudos to them was that we had released this product, we had actually finally pushed a working version of everything two hours before our debut on 20/20. During that debut, we had more than 1,000 concurrent visitors and the website was running fine. I think that’s the biggest thing we could ask for in this situation. That was huge. In terms of feedback from users, I think most people are delighted with our site. It works quite reliably. In terms of the engineers have hit it off, too, and myself and others. We had a great experience in terms of having a maintainable code base to work with and building on top of it and having some good standards put in place to be passed on over to us as we continued the development.

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

I think there are a couple of things that made them truly invaluable. One was that they were really personable and approachable, which certainly isn’t always the case when dealing with technology firms. They were outstanding at communicating and making sure that we were satisfied as customers. Another key differentiator was that they had a very effective approach to project management. They’re also extremely well connected. If we approached them for services or for expertise that was outside of their wheelhouse, they’d be able to refer us directly to a few viable firms within 24 hours, and even offer intros. Those things combined really serve to separate Eldarion from the majority of other IT [information technology] vendors out there.

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

At the start, our biggest challenge with them was that they were very busy. We didn’t get as much attention as we wanted, as many engineers on the project as we wanted, at the start. However, they were able to scale up and meet our demands later on in order to get things done by our specified deadline. In the end, we didn’t really feel like this resulted in a poorer quality solution. It was more a process critique. We’d have liked to begin on a better footing. Other than that, we’ve been 100 percent satisfied with their services.