Five Jars

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Communications Director & Associate Curator of ISSUE Project Room

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

ISSUE Project Room is a pioneering Brooklyn-based performance nonprofit founded in 2003, presenting projects by interdisciplinary artists that expand the boundaries of artistic practice and stimulate critical dialogue in the broader community.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Five Jars to accomplish?

• Update ISSUE's CMS from Drupal 7 to Drupal 9
• Migrate all content and maintain front end design
• Troubleshoot and test new website

SOLUTION

How did you find Five Jars?

Online Search

Why did you select Five Jars over others?

• High ratings
• Close to my geographic location
• Pricing first our budget
• Great culture fit
• Company values aligned

What was the size of Five Jars’s team?

30-40

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

Web studio Five Jars accomplished a necessary update of ISSUE's Content Management System Drupal. They performed an update from ISSUE's depreciated use of Drupal 7 to Drupal 9, refactoring our entire website. The studio performed a data migration of all web assets into Drupal 9.

• Five jars analyzed content types and taxonomy vocabulary structures, checked what fields were used.
• Prepared migration mapping and determined if there are blockers for migration.
• Analyzed the structure of user accounts, roles, and permissions. Made sure all of them could be migrated.
• Analyzed views to make sure there were no blockers for migration.
• Analyzed used contrib modules. Made sure all of them supported Drupal 9. Found alternatives or prepared patches if some of them still didn't support Drupal 9.
• Analyzed the codebase of the custom modules used on the project. Prepared a migration plan for the custom code and logic.
• Analyzed the codebase of the custom theme. Prepared a migration plan for the custom code, libraries, and templates.
• Created all needed content types
• Migrated user accounts and roles
• Migrated media
• Migrated content types and content
• Migrated views
• Migrated blocks
• Migrated custom code
• Migrated custom theme with required libraries and templates

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

• Update Drupal 7 to Drupal 9
• Rebuild entire website for Drupal 9
• Test new website and publish results

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

Alex, Iryna, Michael, and Vasyl were all incredibly professional and great communicators. Alex performed personal one-on-one progress meetings throughout the process and Iryna used Basecamp to communicate highly specific testing and project updates throughout the process. Occasionally, I was able to communicate directly with Developers (Vasyl) when time-sensitive testing or updates needed to take place. All deliverables were completed on time in a highly professional and efficient manor.

What was your primary form of communication with Five Jars?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

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

They were very transparent, personable, and communicative throughout the entire process. I was able to give feedback and they were responsive to very specific requests and needs in a timely way. Ultimately, I found their accommodating and communicative style a huge asset especially when working in a non-profit and events sector.

Are there any areas for improvement or something Five Jars could have done differently?

I found the Five Jars team's project management and results all to be commendable.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m an executive at a human services nonprofit organization. We focus on many categories, including health and wellness, childcare, and overall community socialization.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Five Jars?

We needed help with website hosting, maintenance, and updates implementation, so we hired Five Jars. Throughout the partnership, our engagement grew to a complete redevelopment and relaunch of our website with two main objectives.

Firstly, we wanted to find a more modern way to display our information and bring five independent websites under one management umbrella. Secondly, we wanted to find ways to ease the transaction of our members. Our website is our number-one transactional portal, so we wanted to meet our members’ needs and provide them with a stronger and more robust UX.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Five Jars has helped us revamp our website in Drupal. They’re the preferred service provider for our different organization chapters across the country. Thus, they took part of the code from other website iterations to rebuild our site. Still, they customized various sections to meet our needs.

During the revamping process, most of Five Jars’ work focused on web development. However, we also tasked them to create a clean design, so they helped us with the design process as well. We were very interested in our membership portal and our schedules, so we spent time finding ways to create an easy joining process and figuring out the best way to show our schedules.

Now, we continuously go to Five Jars for website maintenance and hosting. Moreover, they help us with our ongoing development needs as we find new things to enhance or change on our website.

What is the team composition?

We work with Alex (CEO) on a regular basis when needed. Still, he has a very capable team that has worked with us. Their team has included two different project managers and a technology lead.

How did you come to work with Five Jars?

As mentioned above, Five Jars is the preferred vendor for our organization, so one of our chapters recommended them.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them for maintenance services in 2019.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Although the project hasn’t been seamless — mainly because no technology project is seamless — Five Jars has taken us to the place we needed to be. Our click-through rate has increased every month, and we’ve managed to decrease the steps needed by users to get to a transaction. Therefore, we’ve also seen an increase in traffic and the number of transactions, as well as a decrease in our bounce rate.

How did Five Jars perform from a project management standpoint?

We have very good communication with Five Jars, so we’ve been able to stay connected on the project; their team has spent a lot of time listening to our needs. Additionally, they’re great from a budgetary perspective, and they set clear expectations. For example, they tell us if something is within or outside the scope before we start any project.

From a time management perspective, we’ve had delays on both ends. Still, our communication is so clear that whenever we’ve strayed from the projected timeline, we’ve always understood why, and we always have a clear path forward.

For the most part, we use Basecamp for communication and project management because we document everything there. We work in very different time zones so Basecamp has become a very important tool for us. Additionally, we communicate via Zoom calls whenever we reach a major decision point.

What did you find most impressive about them?

One of the benefits of working with Five Jars is their responsiveness. Whenever we’re in a crisis, we can reach out to them immediately, and they address issues very quickly.

Are there any areas they could improve?

There’s nothing I would have Five Jars improve on.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Have clear and direct communication with them and keep everything in Basecamp. Moreover, be very intentional about your process. Five Jars is very good at following processes, so if you stick to the process and have open communication with them, they’ll work well for you.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the senior director of digital experience for the YMCA of Greater Seattle, which is a nonprofit organization. We operate 14 facilities and offer a range of services. We offer health and fitness-related services, such as gyms, swimming pools, and nutrition advice. Additionally, we provide child care, mental health, suicide prevention, and social services.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Five Jars?

We engaged Five Jars to provide a range of services that don’t fall within our expertise or capacity, such as UI/UX design and web development.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Five Jars helps us with various tasks, including website development, UI/UX design, and website maintenance. We have a pretty extensive backlog, so we typically work on 2–3 projects simultaneously. So far, they’ve helped us with Drupal development, PHP, MySQL, JavaScript, and other frontend mock-up languages. They also work with partner associations throughout the YMCA to give us insight into what they’re doing so we can incorporate it into our efforts. 

For new feature developments, we typically provide a proposal with a description of the problem we’re trying to solve, and they walk us through potential solutions. Then, the team provides us with a statement of work (SoW) that includes an overview of the various solutions, their approach, and rates. 

From there, we go into a regular sprint cadence where we prioritize the work and map out a delivery timeline. They see the project through from inception to completion, taking care of the UI/UX, development, and maintenance components. For one project, they revamped the UI for our member registration page. 

For another project, we wanted to make it easier for our end users to find our offerings on the company website. We worked with Five Jars on improving our website’s filters and searchability features, and they helped us restructure our website data to adhere to the filters. Additionally, they created mock-ups for new UI functionality to direct users to the new features and filters. They also took advantage of existing Drupal features to better organize our activities in the backend.

What is the team composition?

We work with three teammates on an ongoing basis: a project manager, a lead developer, and a developer. For more involved projects, we work with additional team members. 

How did you come to work with Five Jars? 

We found Five Jars through a recommendation from one of our partner organizations. 

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve invested $100,000–$150,000 in the partnership with Five Jars.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Five Jars in September 2018, and the partnership is ongoing. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Since we’re a global organization, we use standard website templates, which creates limitations for optimization. We have to rely on creative solutions to set ourselves apart, and Five Jars has helped us do that.  

For example, when we went through A/B testing for our new member registration UI, we noticed a 290% increase in conversion rates when compared to the standard UI template. Additionally, their work on our searchability features and filters resulted in increased engagement and better conversion rates. 

How did Five Jars perform from a project management standpoint?

From an administrative and project management perspective, they’ve been great. Five Jars is very accommodating and responsive despite the time difference. Whenever we come across something that needs immediate attention, we reach out via Slack, and they address our needs promptly. The CEO of Five Jars has even jumped on calls with us to talk through our more complex questions. They use Basecamp and Jira as their primary project management tools.  

What did you find most impressive about them?

Five Jars excels when it comes to customer service. They’re always willing to work with us and accommodate our budget, which is important. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

My only suggestion would be to adopt a more modern project management solution because I’m not a fan of Basecamp. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I recommend defining your goals and communicating your acceptance criteria. It’s also useful to craft user stories and explain them to the team. 

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the former Senior Digital Experience Director for the YMCA of Pierce and Kitsap Counties, an association of YUSA. I was responsible for the website, social media channels, and app. I also managed everything related to the digital experience of our community centers and members.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Five Jars?

We initially hired Five Jars as our partner to migrate our website from a proprietary CMS to the Drupal 8 OpenY CMS plus a complete website redesign. Our project began in June 2020 and we have continued our partnership to include ongoing design, UX and UI improvements, and support.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

We continue our partnership with Five Jars because of their expertise, creativity, outstanding communication and service, and affordability.

Describe the project in detail and walk through the stages of the project.

• The first phase of our project included a website content audit, new site map, migration from our proprietary CMS to the Drupal 8 OpenY CMS plus a website redesign, and a new blog.
• Our second phase was integration with our CRM, Salesforce. This included developing single sign-on features and program registration capabilities. We also added a user-generated content feature to our blog called Y Stories where anyone can share their YMCA story with us.
• The third phase of our project included improving the UX for finding programs and activities plus additional integrations to our CRM.
• Phase four included design improvements, new navigation, and additional UI programs and activities integrations.
• We continue to partner with Five Jars for website design, UX and UI improvements, and support.

How many resources from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

Our primary core team with Five Jars consists of a Developer and SEO Expert, Project Manager, Digital Strategist, and Technical Team Lead.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

Five Jars is truly the best website development and support partner I have worked with.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Our workflow is entirely managed through Basecamp plus our training materials, documents, files, and burn report. It has been incredibly easy to navigate and communicate between our team and theirs.

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

Five Jars provides impressive communication, project management, and 24/7 support.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

Having partnered with Five Jars for over two years, I can honestly say there are no areas of improvement I would recommend. Five Jars is truly the best website development and support partner I have had the honor of working with.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

YMCA of the North is a leading association within the greater YMCA movement. I am the VP of Digital and Strategy for YOTN.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Five Jars, and what were your goals?

Our goal was two-fold:

1. create a better CX by delivering a more consistent UI for our customers
2. improve the AX (admin experience) so that our site is easier to manage

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

We've worked with Five Jars for many years as a standout Drupal partner for three simple reasons: they employ smart people, they write good code, and they consistently provide reliable support. Better still, they have helped us overcome countless challenges while opening doors to new opportunities.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and technologies used.

This project involved bringing three elements together and to make them work in harmony ...

1. Design System - We developed an Atomic Design system for the YMCA which has been codified in Storybook
2. Layout Builder - We integrated Storybook into Layout Builder (and VueJS) to ensure brand consistency before customizing the LB UI to streamline and simplify it for less technical admins
3. Custom Theme - We created a highly-customizable theme that allows us to easily update the overall look and feel of a site, and to create unique subsite experiences within it.

How many people from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

There are approximately five vendor team members assigned to this project at any given time: 1x Project Manager 3x Developers 1x QA

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

We are in the process of slowly rolling this out to customers; however, MVP tests were quite favorable and indicate these enhancements will be very well received. The internal reaction has been overwhelmingly positive. Business unit stakeholders and content administrators are incredibly excited, while other YMCA associations have started taking notice.

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timeliness.

We manage projects in an Agile manner, with weekly stand-ups and two-week sprints. Tasks and schedules are managed in Jira, while Slack, Teams, Zoom, email, and more are used to facilitate communication.

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

Five Jars has more than proven its ability to maintain service and composure through good times and bad. And they have proven to be loyal partners and steadfast friends through it all.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

No. Five Jars has shown an uncanny ability to be flexible and supportive in a dynamic work environment. And when mistakes do happen, they help us get back on track without pointing fingers or playing games. They are a standout organization and part of the YMCA family.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the VP of Marketing and Communications at the YMCA of Greater Brandywine, an association of eight YMCA locations serving the western Philadelphia suburbs.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Five Jars, and what were your goals?

Our YMCA association offers a wide variety of services including membership, childcare, youth sports, swimming lessons and much more. We have worked with Five Jars on a number of projects as we seek to provide a positive web experience for customers across these many areas. Most recently they helped us build a staff directory that populates contact information and staff photos/bios across multiple pages and sections within our site. This solution helped to save staff time, ensure accurate contact information and improve the customer experience. In addition the directory, Five Jars has helped us to build an infrastructure to serve ads across numerous digital products and experiences and is an excellent partner in ensuring we're meeting best practices for security, stability and experience.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

There are many reasons that went into the decision to select Five Jars as our preferred website vendor including cost, quality and responsiveness. The thing that is truly unique about Five Jars is the partnerships they build with their clients. They build thoughtful relationships with their clients and care about your success as an individual and as an organization. They are open and receptive to feedback and responsive to requests - even during 'off' hours.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and technologies used.

We have an ongoing service agreement with Five Jars for the maintenance and fixes for our website. For our recent staff directory project, the Five Jars team was tasked with building a Drupal directory of current employees from our HRIS system. This directory would then wed a photograph and biography to the name, title and contact information pulled from the HRIS. The project allows the marketing team to automatically populate new employees while also quickly updating and removing terminated employees. The first phase of the project delivered the directory with related contact fields as well as the automation between the directory and our HRIS.

How many people from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

We worked directly with a project manager and a lead developer.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

Our site continues to see positive growth in the number of users and transactions as well as positive NPS scores from visitors. Outside of that, our staff team can now add more contact information to the website and do so more efficiently.

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timeliness.

We had weekly and bi-weekly status meetings (based on our preferences) as well as regular communication through Basecamp.

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

The Five Jars team is thoughtful, resourceful, and open to feedback and input. They work to ensure they understand the use cases and deliver a product that meets their clients' needs. What I value most is their insightful feedback and suggestions. I often am able to outline a project or challenge, but rely heavily on their expertise to identify the best paths forward. So often I think I know or understand what I want, but they're able to share other paths forward that result in a better end product.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

We could have had more conversations about our hours burndown and how different decisions could positively or negatively impact the rate for the project. I sometimes am unclear on the scope or what is included - but it's never been a real issue for our team.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the VP of media & communications at George Washington’s Mount Vernon, a historic attraction in the Washington, DC area. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Five Jars?

During the COVID-19 pandemic, we decided to do more live video streams — a lot of our events were moved online. We were able to stream on our social media channels, but there wasn’t a place for our members and supporters to find the programs after the events happened. We hired Five Jars to solve this challenge.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Five Jars has designed and developed a video portal for our website. This portal allows us to automatically update our website when we organize videos directly on YouTube. The site is built on BigTree CMS and uses MySQL. Five Jars has taken our existing framework and integrated the YouTube data API. The site can read changes from our YouTube channel and reflect them on our website in real-time. 

Moreover, the portal determines which videos are for our members and the public. We have specific videos behind a paywall, and users need membership access to see the videos for an exclusive audience. 

What is the team composition?

We work directly with three people from Five Jars, namely Michael (Product Manager), Dmitry (COO & Technology Strategist), and a designer who helps us with mock-ups and designs. 

How did you come to work with Five Jars?

Our team found Five Jars by working with one of their developers on a separate project. Since we enjoyed working with them on that project, we developed a long-standing relationship with the agency. 

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve invested around $270,000 throughout our relationship. 

What is the status of this engagement?

Our partnership started in January 2018, and the engagement is ongoing. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The video views on our website have increased twofold. We’ve received comments from our members, who say it’s easier for them to find video content. On top of that, the portal has reduced our staff time by 400% — they can manage everything on YouTube and don’t need to post videos on multiple platforms.

How did Five Jars perform from a project management standpoint?

Five Jars’ project management is good. They manage the project through sprints and conduct biweekly calls to update us about the project. From there, we can discover any unexpected delays, if there are any. We then adjust our work accordingly. For the most part, they’ve finished tasks on time. We’ve only had to change a few things on our end, so the project has taken a little longer than the original timeframe. 

Moreover, we’ve used a combination of tools. Basecamp is our primary project planning tool, and the team uses Slack for instant communication. They also use Jira for their internal milestone tracking. We use Zoom for our meetings. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

Five Jars offers a special nonprofit rate, which helps us keep our costs affordable. We’re able to do a lot with them because of this. Beyond that, their team is highly technical. The project manager has a good sense of what’s going on and any technical hurdles we face. He communicates closely with us and tells us whenever the developers need something from us. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

The timelines are longer with Five Jars than with a larger agency. However, we know that they’re always going through some expansion. We’re always pleased with their work, and the team is always upfront about their timelines. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Give Five Jars a try, especially if you’re doing a highly technical project that requires many integrations. The team is excellent at that. I highly recommend them to any client in the nonprofit space looking to explore new things in terms of their web presence. 

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the VP of digital product and innovation for a large organization in Minnesota. We provide services for youth, community outreach, and family development.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Five Jars?

We were trying to rebuild and re-platform a website for our organization, as well as our parent organization. The solution was an open-source website system that any organization under our parent group could use around the world.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We’ve worked with them a few times before, but this is our largest project. To start, we shared the scope of work — the problem we were trying to solve — and then collaboratively came up with a solution. The opensource platform had to deliver enhanced credibility, SEO and e-commerce performance, and a lower cost of ownership.

The project has progressed for nearly four years in an iterative and agile fashion, spidering-off into many sub-projects. For example, when the pandemic hit, Five Jars pivoted into developing a video player that would support both live stream and on-demand content. Once this was finished, we realized we could transform our live content into more on-demand content, but that would require editing and truncating live streams to be consumable pieces for viewers. It would have taken someone 40 hours to do this to 40 hours of video, so Five Jars developed an application that automates the entire process. We click a button, and the software will select the video, edit and truncate it to the appropriate timestamps, and upload the metadata. It’s saved us around $100,000 in resources.

They’re our go-to for bespoke, innovative, from-the-ground-up solutions.

What is the team composition?

We’ve worked with somewhere between 8-12 people depending on the project: a manager, a QA resource, a lead technical architect, and several developers. Alex (CEO) sometimes is involved, and we occasionally have two project managers.

How did you come to work with Five Jars?

Before Five Jars existed, the people who founded it used to work at several other organizations. We met them in those positions and realized they were talented, resourceful, proactive in their communication and capable of problem-solving creatively. When those individuals formed Five Jars, we knew we could come to them for innovative, low-cost, high-quality solutions.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent around $500,000–$1 million with them.

What is the status of this engagement?

We’ve been working with them since March 2018.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We measure success with standard project criteria: are we getting things in the scope we expected, at the expected budget, and in the expected timeframe? They exceed expectations in all three categories.  

The next metric is whether we’re seeing better customer experiences, and we’ve observed increases in almost all our primary KPIs: SEO performance, customer satisfaction scores, and e-commerce performance.

They’ve completely improved and overhauled our e-commerce flow, leading to better experiences when people search and find programs and activities relative to them. This translates into purchases.

By all those metrics, it’s been a hugely successful relationship. Nothing has gone wildly budget or been super delayed or significantly reduced in scope because of overestimation. They’ve blown us out of water on everything. If they don’t “wow” us now, we’d be surprised.

How did Five Jars perform from a project management standpoint?

We work with a whole Atlassian suite, as well as Basecamp, email, Slack, Zoom, and Google hangouts.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We’ve been most impressed by their innovation.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, none that come to mind. We’re super happy with them. If someone told me that Five Jars didn’t exist anymore, I would start crying immediately.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

The most helpful thing you can do is have a well-articulated set of goals or a clearly defined problem you’re seeking to solve. Being more clear on needs will set Five Jars up to be as successful as possible.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the senior vice president and chief strategy officer of the YMCA of Greater Brandywine, a midsized YMCA outside of the Philadelphia and Pennsylvania area. We serve about 80,000 members. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Five Jars?

We were looking to improve our digital footprint. We had an archaic registration system, and our website was outdated, difficult to maintain, and provided a terrible user experience. We wanted to enhance our interaction with our members in the digital space and make our website easier to maintain. 

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Five Jars built our website from scratch. We’re a part of a consortium of YMCAs that share an open-source website. Five Jars used our old platform as a starting point in terms of model, but they rebuilt everything to meet our CRM and organizational needs using Drupal.

Five Jars partnered with our internal marketing team on some design pieces. The new site has schedules integrated with our CRM, and members can use it to view and register for classes. It also has a search function that drastically improves the ease of buying products on our website.

After the website, Five Jars continued providing additional projects for us, including creating digital products. They’ve built our digital signage and scheduling screens featured as touch screen kiosks in our lobbies. We have a continuous development agreement with them, and they handle bug fixes and day-to-day website changes. 

What is the team composition?

We’ve primarily worked with their co-founder and two project managers. We also work with their developers on an as-needed basis.

How did you come to work with Five Jars?

They were recommended by another YMCA that they’ve previously worked with.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent over $500,000–$1 million.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in January 2016, and it’s ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Five Jars has done an excellent job with the site’s design. After launching the site, we’ve seen a 200% increase in e-commerce traffic.

How did Five Jars perform from a project management standpoint?

They’re excellent at project management. We use Slack for on-the-fly communication, and we have regular meetings when we’re working on projects.

We like that we can sync up with them early in the morning when they’re finishing their work. From a timing perspective, it has been great. We can meet in the morning, and the following day the work is ready for us to QA and check. Despite our time zone differences, the process has been seamless. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

Five Jars can easily be our internal employees with how they treat our website and projects. The quality they produce is top-notch; it feels like they’re an extension of our team. That sets them apart as I’ve never experienced that from another vendor. 

If our website has an issue, they place more urgency on fixing the problem than us. They’re on top of everything, and they’ve strengthened our team because we’ve got a good partner to work with. 

We’re initially hesitant to work with them because they’re overseas, and we’ve typically only worked with onshore providers. However, it has been a great experience working with Five Jars. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

They continue to grow their business, but they don’t have a big team to focus on various initiatives. They’re nimble, and they can do whatever we need them to do. However, it sometimes takes time for them to get the right resource allocated and have everything up to speed, especially if it’s a specialized project. They continue to build their talent base and skill set. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Do your due diligence. We love and can’t recommend Five Jars enough, but that doesn’t mean they’re the right vendor for everybody. That said, seriously consider Five Jars. We’ve been very happy with them; they’re one of my best decisions as a chief strategy officer. 

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I work for YMCA of the North, the second largest among the YMCA associations across the US. We provide services around healthy living, fitness, and well-being, as well as summer programs for kids, childcare, camps, and more. Additionally, we do a lot of equity training and programs for organizations.

I lead the strategy and innovation side of the company, which includes managing our digital marketing, tax systems, POS, and CRM. I also help in our strategic planning efforts.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Five Jars?

We don’t have onsite developers within our staff; we only have project managers and product managers who plan and create opportunities within our organization. Thus, we rely on partners like Five Jars to execute some of our digital and technological initiatives.

With Five Jars specifically, we wanted to ensure that our programs and services were being presented in a clear and compelling way to our community and make sure that they were accessible through digital tools like websites and apps. Overall, we wanted our audience to interact easily with YMCA, whether they were registering for a program or participating in some of our events.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We’ve been working with Five Jars for almost four years now, and they’ve done such a phenomenal job for us that we’ve brought more opportunities and more work to them. Most of their work has been around digital development and design, so we see them as a strategic partner and an extension of our internal team.

One of the projects that they worked on was when we created a system to make it easier for our customers to buy personal training sessions online and book those sessions. We couldn’t do that in the past, but Five Jars collaborated with our internal teams and integrated multiple systems into our site to make that happen.

As we’re a nonprofit organization, about 20% of our members receive financial assistance for our services, so Five Jars also helped us create an online financial assistance submission system. We created an interface where people could complete a form to request this assistance.

Additionally, they helped us create a video automation tool to leverage our online classes further. We have a wide virtual platform where we stream live classes online for our members. However, if our members missed the live session, they couldn’t watch it anymore. Thus, Five Jars created a system to save the videos, so every class now has its on-demand video on our platform for our members to watch it anytime they like.

Among other projects, they’ve also worked on an online booking tool for our camps and an equity innovation center where we offer digital experiences. They’ve also digitalized various programs and content, and they’ve helped us with a lot of things across the board.

Five Jars’ approach varies depending on the complexity of the project on hand, but it is usually a mix between us providing the requirements and proper research on their end. They normally do more technical research, and we provide them with the business requirements at a high level to make sure that we’re keeping our cost of ownership low while providing a compelling experience at the same time.

What is the team composition?

We work with an ample gamut of team members from Five Jars, from the CEO to developers, project managers, account managers, designers, and testers. I don’t know how many people from their team we’ve worked with, but I’m sure that most of their team members have supported our projects because they’re a small organization.

How did you come to work with Five Jars?

We learned about Five Jars through a collaboration that we were doing with other YMCA associations nationwide. Basically, they had done some work for another YMCA association, and we saw that work.

After that, we started assigning them some smaller projects, but we kept assigning them more and more projects over time. Their scope almost doubles year after year due to their work quality, value, and very competitive rates.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent around $400,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in December 2017, and our engagement is ongoing. The projects I’ve mentioned are just some examples, but there are half a dozen other projects that they’re working on for us right now.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Since Five Jars created our personal training booking system, we’ve processed over 250,000 personal training orders and 130,000 training bookings. This was a process that we had never done online before. Usually, our front desk person or our customer service center needed to call all those users individually to book the sessions, so we estimate that we’ve saved over 20,000 hours of working time by making this a self-service experience for our clients.

Since having our financial assistance submission system in place, we’ve processed over 7,000 requests, which has allowed us to save over 30,000 hours of manual processing time. In addition to giving our members access to more content, the video automation tool has helped us save around 70 hours per week, which translates into $125,000 on savings per year.

I’ve worked in the digital and marketing spaces for over 20 years, and Five Jars is one of the best digital partners that I’ve ever worked with. They have a great ability to collaborate, communicate, and execute. They’re a very authentic, accountable, and results-oriented team.

The ROI that Five Jars offers is so significant that we keep bringing more work to them. Some of the agencies that we’ve worked with in the past had significantly higher rates, and their quality of work wasn’t nearly as good as Five Jars’.

As we’re constantly building new things, we’re always learning. However, the stability and performance of the systems that they’ve created are amazing, and when we do have issues, their response time is very quick. Additionally, they’re really thoughtful about using tracking tools, so we get notifications and alerts when something changes or needs our attention. Overall, our partnership has been great.

How did Five Jars perform from a project management standpoint?

Five Jars’ project management is great; they’re one of the best project managers we’ve ever worked with. Their communication and documentation are great, and they always come back to us quickly with questions to clarify our objectives or timelines. They’re also very responsive and very good at understanding our work, team, and expectations. I would rate them a perfect score for project management.

We communicate in multiple ways, depending on the project. Sometimes we have daily stand-ups because we do a lot of Agile development. We also communicate through Slack and use Basecamp, Jira, and Confluence to manage the projects.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Five Jars is a small and nimble company, but they’re experts in their space. Whether they provide us with a designer, a tester, a project manager, or a developer, the experience and efficiency that they offer are impressive. They work very quickly and deliver high-quality work, and there hasn’t been a technical challenge that they haven’t been able to solve.

Are there any areas they could improve?

The only thing that Five Jars could improve on is having more resources so that they can handle more projects. We have a lot of work to do, but we don’t have the resources to do it.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

First and foremost, you need to be very clear about your goals and challenges. The better the onboarding process for Five Jars or any other digital agency, the most likely you will succeed.

Additionally, know the type of work they do beforehand. They’re a strategic development partner, and they’re experts in Drupal, so you need to ensure that your needs fit their expertise.