Envative

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Our organization is called Ardent Learning and we are an education consulting business primarily focused on the automotive industry. We produce quite a bit of custom content and training materials, and we train clients ourselves. I’m a senior technology solutions manager and my role is to manage ongoing projects related to technology such as custom applications, learning and facilitator management systems, or product information websites.

What challenge were you trying to address with Envative?

We have about 15 facilitators who go out to conduct trainings and dealerships, so we needed a system to manage their schedules and materials. We had a homegrown application at the time, but it needed a complete revamp, so we hired Envative to help us out.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We don’t have in-house developers so Envative provides us full stack development services, covering frontend and UI design. They’ve developed a web-based application to facilitate our dealership schedules and content, with a custom single sign-on (SSO) to allow access to one of our clients as the sale providers and an API that allows us to send and receive data from our side to the client’s application. 

We’re constantly improving and developing the features on the application, putting together life cycles for both this project and future roadmaps. They’ve also expanded the scope of work and have done a number of additional projects for us, such as supporting our Apple TV application and improving on what the previous company delivered. 

What is the team composition?

Envative assigned a dedicated project manager who oversees their internal teams. We also have contact with their technical lead. 

How did you come to work with Envative?

We and Envative are both located in the Rochester area. My organization was the one who found them prior to my time at Ardent Learning. Our director of technology had some previous experience working with Envative and thought that they were a really good development shop, so we decided to give them a go. 

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve invested around $250,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started our ongoing partnership around January 2019.

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

We are really happy with what Envative has put together. Through the main application, we’ve drastically improved our relationship with our clients. The number of errors that we’d been experiencing with our previous homegrown app has really cut down, so they’ve really helped on that front. 

From an internal standpoint, we’ve become more efficient in managing our facilitation team and have greatly reduced the number of man-hours. Overall, we’ve saved around 25% of the cost for a project coordinator, since we now have the web-based management system. 

How did Envative perform from a project management standpoint?

We typically communicate via email, Microsoft Teams, and Cisco Webex calls. Anytime we’re doing active development work, we will do sprint calls either weekly or bi-weekly, depending on the project. Their project management team has been really great at putting together the meeting action items after each call, listing down what is owed to them and what they are going to be working on over the next time period. They make sure that there’s going to be a smooth development plan each time.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The Envative team is really good at being collaborative, advising us on what we should and shouldn’t be doing. Their technical lead is amazing and one of the smartest and best-communicating developers that I’ve ever worked with.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I don’t have any constructive criticism to give. Envative has really been our go-to resource and preferred partners any time we needed development work done, even if it is a small-scale project. We’ve literally had no negative interactions with them. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Be prepared to collaborate with the Envative team. What we value most in our partnership with them is the collaboration and advice that they provide, so if you’re starting off, it would be to your benefit to really listen to what they have to say instead of just telling them what to do. They’re good at being able to think through the whole lifecycle of an issue and will most likely think of 3–5 solutions that have not even crossed your mind. 

Please describe your company.

I work for Bagport US. We offer baggage services in airports. We operate in many airports around the world. We have a physical presence near airport gates, and we have an online presence.

What is your role?

I am the CEO, so I run the company.

What was your goal for the work with Envative?

I needed them to work on various projects for me. They had to do a lot of complicated work integrating software with hardware. They built the initial phase of an operating system that incorporated software and hardware. This was not an easy project.

A lot of their work is also confidential because it is ongoing. They are doing a lot of innovative stuff that I can't discuss with the general public.

They also helped me develop my customer-facing system. We need this to be fully operational at all times of day. They are also our software development partner, so we use them often in this capacity.

What was the scope of Envative's work?

They work on all of our systems and make sure that they work all of the time. There was a hardware issue earlier where it wasn't communicating properly with the software. Envative fixed that issue quickly and was very responsive.

They are also dedicated to supporting our customer-facing system. They actually travel to airports in the U.S. and abroad to check on customer service kiosks. They really want to understand our business and provide expert technical work.

What was your process for selecting Envative to work with?

I started by talking with the large and famous firms that most people know. They couldn't handle the technically challenging aspects of my work. They were good developers, but they couldn't handle the difficult back-end coding. I decided that I needed a smaller, moreagile team.

I like how I can ramp up their work quickly. There is no slow on-boarding process, or paperwork needed to start new work. They just get to it and give me the help and response I need right away. This is invaluable to me and why I stick with them.

Can you provide a sense of the size of the initiative in dollar terms or personnel work hours?

These projects have taken many years and involved a lot of work. It will be around $600,000 to $700,000 when everything is finished.

When will the work be completed?

The work is ongoing, they are my partner, so I don't have a definitive stop date.

What are the results of the projects so far?

The projects have been really successful. Sometimes, there are issues in the beginning. I had to get used to the lingo used by software programmers when we started. There was a large bug in the system years ago, but they fixed it immediately. They are extremely responsive and dedicated. They will travel when they need to and don't delay important fixes.

Now, the systems work very well, and we have little or no downtime. They have accomplished a sparkling performance record even though it is complicated. 

How has Envative performed so far?

These guys are great. I never give references to other firms but I will for Envative. They aren't perfect, but nobody is. They almost hit the target every time, I cannot say that about other firms. Their team is strong and competent. The main two leaders really complement each other well.

I am very satisfied with their performance, I couldn't ask for anything more. I am demanding so I would say if the work isn't great. They are doing really innovative things for me, and they actually get my vision and turn it into a tangible system.

Is there anything that you think Envative could improve upon, or something that you might do differently?

They are improving project management, but they have told me that it is a weakness. It isn't bad, but they are right to focus on this issue. I am sure this will continue to get better.

Please describe your company.

We are an early technology company that has developed a blast dosimeter that is to be used in the military. It measures the pressure forces from a blast explosion, and provides information to detect potential traumatic brain injuries and other internal injuries to soldiers.

What is your role and responsibilities?

I am a lead technical engineer.

What was your goal for the work with Envative?

One of the main goals was to improve the product that we're developing, which I can't discuss in detail.

What was your process for selecting them to work with?

We had a project that we sent to local companies to perform the tasks that we needed. We had three or four companies bid for the work, and we were pleased with what they offered as far as a solution and a price point.

Can you assess their performance?

They did a great job in delivering the product. Some of the issues were not trivial, and they were great with the technical issues. They were able to process the information and come to a solution. It is yet to be seen if they can solve all the problems, but to date, they’ve done a good job. They’ve pushed back when things are either too difficult or just not possible. They’ve been good about keeping us honest with respect to that issue.

For project management, they’ve done well. I think that’s one area that they would admit they’re not strong on. I think that when it comes to getting the work done, they do it, but it tends to be a bit more ad hoc. From what I’ve seen, that’s an area that they’re actively trying to improve with some internal software and different programs.

Is there anything else that is unique or special about Envative, compared to other IT firms?

They have a great working environment and some very intelligent people on the team. They have a lot of strong engineers and technical people. They’re a lot of fun to work with. Craig and Dave are a great combination of leadership and, sometimes, we'll go there to work and spend some extra time with them.

Please describe your company.

We are an IT [information technology] equipment lessor. We have about 130 colleagues in the First American Equipment Finance organization, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of City National Bank out of Los Angeles. It’s approximately the 23rd largest bank in the country.

What is your role and responsibilities?

I am the chief information officer for First American.

What was your goal for working with Envative?

Envative has helped us with a few different projects. We initially used them to reconstruct our external-facing Web presence, including a new CMS [content management system] to manage that entire portion of our websites, personal bio pages, and so on, that we have. From there, we moved into some projects for our customer portal. Going back maybe three years ago, they rewrote our external customer-facing portal. Along with that, they wrote a mobile application. Just recently, within the last couple of months, they finished a rewrite of that customer portal with new enhancements, as well as a new mobile app version of that. The mobile app was written for iOS, so we have a version for iPad and iPhone, and an Android version.

Please describe the scope of their work.

It was a collaborate process. We will often have ideas of what we want to do, and then we’ll look to them to bring other thoughts back to us. We’ll bring them in, and some of their designers will work on what they think it could or should look like. Then, we go back and forth to refine what we think that result will look like, and they build to that.

What was your process for selecting Envative?

I had done some work with the Envative when I was at a previous company. It was a very limited scope of work, but they were local to us, so it was very easy for us to engage them initially for some of the simple work that we were looking to do. The very first projects were to help us come in and look at our existing websites. The websites were a bit of a mess when I got here, and they helped us clean up and make the needed changes. That evolved into a complete rewrite, with a new CMS to manage. It started with a small engagement, based on the limited interaction I had with them personally. The relationship grew from there.

Can you provide a ballpark dollar figure for the size of the work that they’ve done for you?

There were several different initiatives, which makes it a bit tricky. The number of engagements change from year to year. For a ballpark number of the dollars spent, the most recent rewrite of our customer-facing portal, mobile application, the ongoing maintenance, and ongoing site work and changes, I’d say we’re spending about $100,000 a year on various engagements.

When was the latest milestone completed for that work?

We stay close to them because we make a lot of changes in our environment. We’re very progressive on implementing new technology and enhancing current system and platforms. That work never ends, but we treat them as an extension of our team for the lack of development resources that we have internal to the organization. As the maintenance and day-to-day changes come up, that work continues.

Our most recent large engagement for the customer rewrite picked up in late October. We are just going live with that. The solution is in final UAT [user acceptance testing] now, and we plan to go live in early February.

Do you have any statistics or metrics to track improvement from the project?

Without any hard data, I’d say that they’ve consistently held true to the project, and the estimates from a cost perspective. We haven’t had any real surprises from cost overruns or issues on the scope of work. Timeframes have been generally met. We tend to throw a lot of curveballs because we’re constantly in an iterative process. They’ve been very good to work with in that sense.

One of the reasons that we work very closely with them is because its relationship based. We know that when we have those challenges, issues, or changes come up midstream, which is inevitable in any larger engagement, it comes down to how well you work with your partner through those changes. They’ve been a great partner to us. That makes the difference in why we partner with them.

Is there anything unique about them that really makes them stand out, compared to other companies?

We’ve done some very large projects with very large firms, and the advantages that we see with Envative from a technical perspective is that they bring creativity and thoughts to what we’re trying to build. It’s been very easy to ramp up with them with our projects. Some of our other engagements seem to take forever to get to the point where we’re moving forward and progressing because of the amount of pre-engagement time that it takes. We’re able to ramp them up very quickly, and engage them on new initiatives quickly.

Another point is the relationship piece. When questions arise, they are very responsive. If there are any questions, we’re able to confer quickly and change direction is needed.

Looking back on the work so far, is there any area that you think they could improve upon or that you might do differently?

They do a very good job. I can’t identify anything specific. In every project, communication is key. They generally do a good job of keeping everybody up to speed on where the project is. In some cases, depending on the nature of the project, it would be more helpful to have a formalized status and review meeting, depending on what you’re working on. We tend to let it go a bit, and periodically, we’ll hear feedback from them. Periodically, we’ll reach and ask them where we are on an issue. Depending on the nature of the project, maybe a formalized status review would help.

I haven’t seen that impact any of our projects. It’s been fine. Whenever we’re curious about where we stand, it’s as simple as sending them an email, and we get a response right back. I think if you were going to engage them in a significant project, you may want to put a little more formality around the cadence of status updates and reviews.