Emproto Technologies

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m one of the directors in an e-commerce business. We’re a specialty retail chain providing fresh meat and seafood produce.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Emproto Technologies?

We just had retail stores and weren’t an online business when we first started. We decided to go omnichannel, with a website and an app, and Emproto helped us build our custom solution. Prior to that, we were using an Indian equivalent to Shopify.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Emproto developed our platform. We built a mobile-responsive site as well as native Android and iOS apps. We’re using AWS for hosting.

The challenge in building an e-commerce site for an Indian specialty grocery store is that we don’t sell by units but by weight. Most e-commerce platforms sell by unit, so the backend had to be custom-built for us.

Unlike big-box retailers that offer prepacked produce, we offer our foods cut to specification. That means that there can be multiple SKUs coming out of one product. As an example, we can have 400–500 grams of breast coming out of one chicken, 150 grams of wings, and another 200–300 grams of drumsticks, along with some wastage. We had to custom-build our site for this, with a backend that fed off of a central inventory.

What is the team composition?

We had a dedicated project manager on their side, who coordinated between the web and app development teams. There was one designer involved, and we had four team leads, for web, mobile web, Android, and iOS respectively. Our interactions were mainly with the program/project manager and with the leads. I don’t know how many developers were used.

How did you come to work with Emproto Technologies?

We were looking out for developers that could build a custom website quickly. I found them through a reference from a former classmate who had used Emproto in an earlier venture.

How much have you invested with them?

The total project cost is 700,000 Indian rupees, which translates to around $10,000. We’ve paid them a $2,500 advance so far.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Emproto in January 2020, but the project was put on hold because of Coronavirus. We finished the first phase in September. We have a basic website structure and e-commerce functionalities in place, and we’re getting into the nitty-gritty of building the marketing engine we want.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

It’s too early to talk about metrics, but we have a better structure in place for SEO. Secondly, it’s much easier to configure and work with the inventory side of things, because this site was custom-built for us. The site is very intuitive, so it’s easier to train staff. I’d rate our previous system a 4–5/10 in terms of ease, and the current one is an 8/10.

The reliability of the site and app is top-notch. The site hasn’t broken down or become unavailable.

How did Emproto Technologies perform from a project management standpoint?

We haven’t had much of a delay apart from the two months of lockdown. Even when there was miscommunication or a requirement miss, they were able to accommodate changes within the timeline. The platform was delivered completely within budget and 90–95% within the timeframe. We mainly used Trello for project tracking.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I appreciated the clarity they had in the beginning, during the workshop. They asked relevant questions and set up a very good process for going into development. They tried to understand where we were coming from and didn’t try to push some vanilla product onto us. They looked at what drove our business and what was important to us and helped us get a thought process going.

The second thing I liked was the cost. Usually, building a custom product will have an enormous cost, but we got good value for the money.

Are there any areas they could improve?

After we finalized the thought process, it took them a bit of time to deliver the mockups. I believe the same developer was working on the website and mobile apps at the same time.

Secondly, testing was a bit here and there. We pushed out some bugs into the system to be resolved, and there was parallel testing going on within Emproto’s team. There was a bit of a mismatch in that cycle.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

Clients should make good use of the planning phase that Emproto offers, and be very specific about every design element. That will help avoid costly mistakes down the line.