Endertech

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

We’re in beta testing right now, so when they handed the site over to me, I took a couple of days and just ran it through its paces because I am essentially the avatar of the customer that’s going to use the site.

I’ve been in the business for 40 years, so I pretty much know exactly how the customers are going to need to use the site and was able to look through everything from that vantage point and make sure it was all good to go.

Everything looked good to me, so I had my broker friends upload information and use it as well, and they’ve so far reported 100% positive feedback about the design and usability, saying that it's very user-friendly. We did some preliminary testing and were receiving about 300 visitors per day and around 25 percent conversion rate from visitors, which are pretty outstanding numbers for this industry.

How did Endertech perform from a project management standpoint?

I don’t have experience with other developers, but I’ve done a lot of work with construction contractors for different brick and mortar businesses and Endertech is really more on top of their own work than I’ve seen in a third-party provider before. They demonstrated a deep knowledge of all the technologies we were working with and were on top of everything that needed to be changed at the end of our sprints and would always get started on things right away.

There was very little back and forth between us on what needed to be done, because any time I had concerns about specific functionalities or anything, they would take what I said it into account and have it ready to demo for me in the next meeting. Outside of those, we communicated probably two or three times a week in one form or another, either via email or telephone.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Since I don’t have a lot to compare them to, all I can say is that from the first meeting I had with them to today I have not spoken to anyone who has communicated better or understood my project and my vision more deeply than their team has.

I met with a lot of developers who seemed competent, but when I met Endertech I immediately realized that this was another level. They were just sharper and smarter than their competition.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I really don’t have any real criticisms. They were absolutely great in every respect, including communicating around any delays that we experienced.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Take some time and write down, as meticulously as you can, what your vision of the site is. Once you get into meetings, off-the-top-of-your-head conversations aren’t going to be nearly as productive as going over the details of what you want for the site so that they can ask you much more pointed questions about them. It will allow them to understand better and allow you to get started much more quickly.

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

The website helped our company tremendously. I wanted the information to be easily extractable and the learning curve to be shallow. They achieved both of these goals. The website is user friendly and easy to operate.

The food safety regulations require us to have all the grower related documents available at all times. Thanks to the website, we're able to move more into compliance sourcing safety and have all the information organized in one place.

How did they perform from a project management standpoint?

They've been on time or beat my expectations on all levels. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

The system is extremely user friendly and easy to manage. They've been very accommodating and always willing to add extra features that had not been included in the initial build we gave them. Or, if we found a bug in the system, they addressed that issue immediately. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

I've used them several times and they could not be nicer. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

They're a great partner for data management and solutions. I highly recommend them.

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

Where we get feedback is from two places. One is, we do low launching of the tool in each of the three states. Most recently, we did some online surveys of 10 schools and technology directors who use the tool, and got back to us. We look at usability, access to content, and all the features that are normally included. They’re generally pretty positive within the context that these people are being asked to enter or upload data. It takes them hours to do it, so a lot of them aren’t very happy about it. The state is requiring them to do it.

We’ve had really positive feedback regarding the tool. It’s a tool that’s designed by us, and Endertech develops it. What we typically do is send over technical specifications about what we want, and we also send over visual aids. We’ll then have a meeting with them and do joint development. It’s really quite a good relationship with them. They’ve become partners with us, and not just our developers.

We also monitor our state rollouts. The most recent one we did was last fall, which was a 10-day state rollout for New Jersey. There were 600 to 700 school district tech directors, plus multiple other reps from the schools, completing the forms. Generally, they were very happy with the tool. In fact, the state directors are always very reticent about building this tool and rolling it out, because they know they’ll get negative feedback.

In essence, this tool has been a pretty positive experience. People have always come back and said, “I didn’t want to do it but once I did I got great reports out of it and now I have an inventory that I really like.” So, overall, it’s been a positive experience, and that’s been two of the states and were anticipating Illinois to be the same way.

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

One of the things that have been really important to us is that they do have some excellent coders in the company. Their talent pool is extremely deep. They have consistently used the same developers with us, too. For example, there’s one person who is a team leader that has been working with us. We developed a relationship in two years, so we trust him, we know what his work hours are. It’s been a great relationship, and I think that’s a unique thing from a Web development perspective. We actually speak directly with the coders without having anyone in-between, which we’ve had trouble with in the past. It isn’t an issue with Endertech. One of the other things that they’ve done is open up the tool, so we can actually look at the code. We can then derive how they put the formulas together to make sure that it’s correct. It’s been a real back and forth in terms of quality assurance. We’re very pleased.

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

Yes. Quality assurance. That’s always a challenge with development, and especially with the tools we’re building. There are so many different configurations for school districts and the data they input. It can get very complex. If they could improve in any way, it would be in the quality assurance process. It has evolved in time. They’ve instituted a new system about six months ago that helps tremendously. We share in the quality assurance endeavor, but we want them to test everything before they actually give us the staging server for us to do the quality assurance. Sometimes they do, sometimes time constraints make that impossible, and they can’t do as much as they’d like.