Fountain City, Inc.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I was a Group Account Director at CMD, a marketing and advertising agency in the PNW, and was responsible for our B2B tech portfolio.

For what projects/services did your company hire Fountain City, Inc., and what were your goals?

We contracted Fountain City for their development and project management services. We were scaling a new relationship within one of our Fortune 50 tech accounts within a new incubation group that was bringing new technologies to market quickly and launching new start ups that required a scalable digital marketing and web presence that we did not have the tech resources in house to scale to the opportunity and speed at which the work would come.

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

We interviewed multiple partners and contractors but eventually landed on going with Fountain City because of their flexibility and scalability. They also had a well tuned project management team and methodology that help navigate client requests and changes. I found them to be timely, professional, and got the work done.

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

The scope of the work was I/A, Development and QA in developing new websites for the start ups coming out of this incubator program. This included direct to consumer ecommerce sites which was new for this B2B client

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

Account manager, Project manager and the principal owner.

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

Speed to market was the key in this engagement along with agility to last minute client changes. Fountain City responded quickly and put in late nights to achieve the end clients goals.

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

They were professional, organized, and had great communication throughout.

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

Expertise and hungry to grow and do great work.

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

We threw a lot at them and they always responded quickly.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the co-founder of Hello Again, a cannabis company. We make vaginal suppositories for the relief of different physical symptoms.

What challenge were you trying to address with Fountain City, Inc.?

We had an existing website full of glitches, so we wanted to upgrade it with a tight budget.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Fountain City, Inc. did web design for us; they revamped the site by making several changes to it — we’ve had three different iterations with them so far. They’ve helped us cleanly implement a store finder map and our branding to the platform. We rely on them for creative input, incorporation of widgets, and SKUs and relicensing revisions.

What is the team composition?

We’ve been working with Sebastian (CEO), Carlos (Full-Stack Engineer), and a couple of project managers,

How did you come to work with Fountain City, Inc.?

They were referred to us.

How much money have you invested in this partnership?

We’ve spent about $45,000 with them so far.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in January 2020, and the engagement is ongoing.

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

Overall, they did a great job. Our SEO has increased, and we get great feedback on the website’s informative, dynamic, and inviting look and feel. We also have a significant retention time from our website visitors.

How did Fountain City, Inc. perform from a project management standpoint?

We’ve been using a ticketing system; they always have easy-to-use tools in place for us. Also, they’ve been very responsive throughout the engagement.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their level of care and concern is outstanding; whenever we come up with ideas, they let us know if they’re going to work or if they might cause us trouble as we scale up, which is something I appreciate. Also, Sebastian is great at helping us with our budget to avoid spending too much on something that might be a problem in the future.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I don’t think there’s anything they can improve on.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the IT manager for Mitchell Industrial Tire Company (MITCO). MITCO has been in business since 1953 and serves the industrial tire market both as a manufacturer and as an importer.

For what projects/services did your company hire Fountain City, Inc., and what were your goals?

Our core business functions are serviced by custom software that was originally developed in the late 1980s and continues to be enhanced to this day. Several years ago it was decided that the transition from this legacy system needs to be investigated as there are few developers available to continue supporting the legacy system. Technological advancements are also making it worrisome that procuring hardware to run the legacy system may become problematic.

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

Fountain City came highly recommended from a highly respected vendor that I have done business with for many years.

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

Python / Django / Rest Framework / Swaggar Proof of concepts for accessing multiple distrubted MS SQL server based databases via restful API calls. Endpoints for inventory and track information. Extensive custom user rights managment to control access to API end points with authenication via tokens Fountain City and our linux support vendor created a self hosted GitLab CI/CD DevOps platform that includes local development, deploying to a testing server, and deploying to a production server.

Both companies provided training for staff on using the system. Fountain City collaborated with staff on documenting the use of the DevOps system. Swagger for API documentation and developer support. DataDogHQ integration (still a work in progress) Documentation, training, and code examples provided by Fountain City allowed inhouse staff to implement API endpoints to support a large customer in there needs for pricing, inventory availabilty, orders and credits.

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

Ive worked with the CEO, several different project managers, and several Tech Leads.

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

We currently have one customer using the system as they are very pleased with the results. We hope to expand this as the need arises.

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

Fountain City has been very good at providing the desired results without a lot of hand-holding by MITCO staff. They have achieved impressive results within the budgetary and time constraints place on them.

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

Eveyone I have come into contact from Fountain City has been very professional and measured in their responses to the challenges of this project of which there are many.

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

I can't imagine them doing a better job then they have given the budgetary restaints that they are working under.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the outreach and education legal liaison for SHALVA, a domestic violence counseling agency located in Chicago. I’m in charge of our communications, including our website.

What challenge were you trying to address with Fountain City, Inc.?

I was tasked with working on a grant to build out a new interactive tool. Before coming up with this idea, we were trying to find a new and innovative way of helping people who were worried about a friend or family member who might be in an abusive relationship. Thus, we came up with the idea of creating an interactive set of videos and questions. We wanted this tool to be hosted on our website, but it required us to update it, so we hired Fountain City to help us out.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Fountain City has helped us rebuild our website on WordPress, as well as the interactive tool we required. They were in charge of migrating a lot of our content and information from our former site to the new site, too. Since then, we’ve had an ongoing relationship with them for website maintenance and other related projects.

Fountain City recently helped us update the interactive tool after collecting two years' worth of data. Additionally, they’re currently helping us with some Google Ads and Analytics, and we’re moving towards SEO.

What is the team composition?

I work with Sebastian (CEO), Carlos (Full Stack Engineer), who has been our main developer throughout the entire engagement, and Marcel (Account Strategist). Besides Marcel, we’ve worked with a couple of other account managers.

How did you come to work with Fountain City, Inc.?

We hired a consultant to help us out with the grant we received for the project, and they were the ones who brought Fountain City into the project.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent around $45,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in August 2019, and the new site with the interactive tool was launched in 2020. We’re still working together.

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

Our website has vastly improved thanks to Fountain City’s work, according to people in our community. We’ve definitely seen more traffic coming into our new website, especially when we’ve launched social media campaigns to promote the tool.

How did Fountain City, Inc. perform from a project management standpoint?

Fountain City is very responsive and great to work with. Whenever there is an emergency, they’re easily reachable and solve the problem immediately. They also keep us on track and continuously ensure that we’re setting goals and meeting them.

Throughout the project, Fountain City has provided a lot of great feedback, which helped us during the building process and continues to help us for improving the site. We currently use ClickUp to manage the project. Before, we were using a different ticketing system, but we decided to make the change. Additionally, we communicate via Zoom, Google Meet, and email, as well as via phone calls whenever there is an emergency.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Fountain City offers an excellent personal touch and is very approachable while being very professional still. They’re very mindful and appreciative of our work, and they truly feel like a part of our team. We’ve developed a nice team-effort environment. For example, we had our virtual luncheon recently, and a couple of their team members attended and made donations. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

No. Whenever we’ve had issues, they handle them right away, so we haven’t had any negative experiences. If anything, I can say that we’ve had various account manager changes, but they haven’t been an issue because, whenever it happens, Sebastian quickly jumps into that role.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Working with Fountain City, you’ll be in good hands. Try to find out if the project manager they assign to your project has some time working with them because they seem to have some issues retaining them. However, if they happen to change project managers during your engagement, be sure that it won’t affect their work.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I’m the owner of a health and nutrition coaching company.

For what projects/services did your company hire Fountain City, Inc., and what were your goals?

I hired Fountain City, Inc. to help me build a subscription based meal planning website. My goal was to have a very user-friendly platform to deliver weekly meal plans.

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

This company came highly recommended by a good friend of mine.

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

The development team helped customize the dashboard, customize registration process and created my downloadable for my weekly meal plan delivery.

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

The project manager was my main point of contact throughout the process. There was two developers and I worked with a marketing expert from the team as well.

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

The website was stunning. It was a beautiful design, very user-friendly and high quality.

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

The project manager was always very attentive, very methodical. He always explained in detail over the phone what was happening and often shared ways to make improvements to the project. We used a ticket system as main communication tool.

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

I was absolutely impressed with the level of professionalism and responsiveness of all the team members.

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

No, I was very satisfied with the end result. Great team!

Please describe your company and your position there.

The Wiseman Group is a talent development and research organization headquartered in Silicon Valley, California. For people striving to build a high-contribution culture, The Wiseman Group creates insights that ignite multiplying behavior, because developing and using talent is the ultimate advantage.

For what projects/services did your company hire Fountain City, Inc., and what were your goals?

We hired Sebastian and Fountain City to manage our website development and help with our marketing strategy and execution. Our website goals were to improve our website design and optimization, add ecommerce functionality, and integrate with our marketing stack.

Our marketing goals were to increase website traffic and engage our audience.

How did you select Fountain City, Inc., and what were the deciding factors?

We received a reference for them and made our decision based on their full agency capabilities and results.

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

For our website, we first did an audit of our website design and speed to decide what needed to change. We then optimized our front end code and made hosting decisions that could handle our needs best.

We also did a website refresh to add our latest product offering. The tools we used were Wordpress and the Divi theme builder. For our marketing projects, we decided the best cadence of emails based on the content we were developing and needs of our audience.

We also decided to change the voice and format of our emails to be more personable, which resulted in good email engagement and an increase in our website traffic. We used Mailchimp, Hubspot, Zapier, and Wordpress.

How many resources from the Fountain City, Inc. team worked with you, and what were their positions?

We've worked with project managers, email marketing specialists, website developers, a website designer, and an SEO specialist.

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

I've been impressed by the teams strategic thinking skills and that they're focused on achieving the end goal (not just doing marketing activities for the sake of doing them).

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

There were times at first that the workflow was more difficult because I wanted to work directly with our website developer instead of through our PM. This was primarily because we wanted more DIY development than handing everything over to save cost.

This was quickly resolved and we found a workflow between me and the developer directly that has been very effective. We've even added a PM back into the flow which hasn't interrupted anything and has helped organize our efforts.

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

They're able to help with anything I throw at them and focus on hitting our goals. This isn't always the case since many agencies are willing to have time pass without doing any sanity checks for results and trajectory.

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

There have been hiccups along the way, but no patterns that I can discern and provide feedback on.

Please describe your company and your position there.

We're a startup with multiple brands and websites

For what projects/services did your company hire Fountain City, Inc., and what were your goals?

We worked with Fountain City to develop websites for our company and brands

How did you select Fountain City, Inc., and what were the deciding factors?

We chose them for their size and since their workforce was based in the US

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

They developed websites for us in Wordpress, though some additional coding was used

How many people from the Fountain City, Inc. team worked with you, and what were their positions?

About 3 developers, 2 PMs and manager, which varied by project

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

They stayed on budget, delivered quality work and kept our websites well maintained and updated

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

They used a ticket system to keep track of the projects, in crunch times we had weekly calls for updates and they were timely with deliverables

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

The team's knowledge about options and execution was impressive.

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

For small tasks, it'd be good to have had a more structured completion timeline

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO of Rdg-One — my own independent digital agency that does design and development.

What challenge were you trying to address with Fountain City, Inc.?  

They’ve helped me with everything from improving business processes and scaling of digital services to the assignment of digital services, project management, and CTO consultation.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Their services fall under two categories: technical and consulting.

Regarding technical work, Fountain City has delivered custom software development tasks including custom API integration and WordPress development, front- and backend development, and database work.

Beyond the pure programming, they’ve also helped extensively with documentation. Fountain City’s team has assisted me in scoping our large projects, like web applications, so we build them in an effective manner. They’ve also done the same for smaller components that are later integrated into larger products. Finally, their expertise has helped us in hosting and maintaining our solutions with efficiency.

On the consulting side, Fountain City has helped us grow our services by understanding and developing workflow processes, effectively helping us scale the number and frequency of projects we can handle. For example, they help us go from taking on one project in six months to juggling four projects in three months. We’ve also used them in the capacity of project managing on our behalf as well.

What is the team composition?

We’ve worked with about six team members. Sebastian (CEO) and Anwar (Chief Strategy Officer) are my main points of contact.

How did you come to work with Fountain City, Inc.?  

They were referred to me and then did an excellent job of documenting and scoping out their proposals before initiating work.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent more than $50,000 so far.

What is the status of this engagement?

We’ve been working with them since March 2017.

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

From an advising and consulting standpoint, our lead developers have been very happy with all the suggestions and process improvements Fountain City, Inc. has made. As a result of this engagement, we’ve seen year-over-year growth.

How did Fountain City, Inc. perform from a project management standpoint?

They’re excellent. We have a 25-hour-per-week Fountain City consultant for project management; they’re actively auditing our work now. We communicate over Discord, Slack, Basecamp, Monday.com, email, and Zoom.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Fountain City's honesty and attention to detail stand out. They’re very realistic as well.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I don’t think so. We’re big fans of their work.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

If you ask for documentation and proposals upfront, then you’ll have a very good idea of what your project will be comprised of.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I’m the CEO of two companies that provide online marketing and web development services. One company is geared toward the wine industry and the other helps small businesses.

For what projects/services did your company hire Fountain City, Inc.?

We hired Fountain City to serve as an extended part of our team on several projects. We occasionally don’t have enough resources to deliver the high-quality work we aim for, so we needed their support.

What were your goals for this project?

We hired Fountain City to address our needs across several projects. We wanted to produce work on time and in our budget that surpasses expectations.

How did you select this vendor?

Fountain City came highly recommended to me from a colleague in the web development industry.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

The work they’ve done for us has included IT support, Drupal development, security, and backup services.

What was the team composition?

The team they provide fluctuates depending on our workflow and client demands.

Can you share any information that demonstrates the impact that this project has had on your business?

Working with Fountain City ensures we serve our clients to the best of our ability. They allow us to handle an increased workflow and everything is executed perfectly.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

Fountain City manages the work professionally and efficiently. I was repeatedly impressed with their organizational skills, management tools and the prompt delivery of their work.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

I’m never worried when we work with Fountain City—I can always rely on them. The work they produce is spot-on every time. I’m proud to use them as an extension of my team.

Are there any areas for improvement?

There’s nothing I can think of for them to improve—they're worth every penny.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I'm the founder and CEO of Proficia. We do editing and translation for academic and scientific English writing.

What challenge were you trying to address with Fountain City, Inc.?

We needed a customized internal project management tool. We operate across multiple countries and currencies. We needed it to track documents, track work, and track payments for work. There were no existing tools that really met our needs.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Fountain City, Inc. built a customized project management tool using Redmine, a Ruby-based opensource program. We went extensively through my requirements focusing on functionality and UI. We developed user stories. They helped me to envision the solution by identifying and ranking our needs from which their developers put together a list of features with pricing. I was able to choose from that list what I wanted to build immediately versus adding later.  

What is the team composition?

We worked with about five people on this project.

How did you come to work with Fountain City, Inc.?

I had a previous vendor that was no longer available. They suggested Fountain City, Inc. I considered them as well as some other companies. I felt that they were the right size to work with the size of my company. I also knew they had a good reputation in the community.

We had worked with them on several previous projects when we established this engagement. I went to them for advice about what software was already on the market that I could use to meet our needs. We talked through a few of the options and about the possibility of Fountain City, Inc. building something from scratch.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent about $50,000 in total.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in August 2014, and it’s ongoing.

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

We have the tool that we wanted, and it works as we wanted it to. We’ve had the site running for several years. It's a core part of our operations, and we've never had it go down in such a way that we couldn't continue to function. If anything happens, they fix it right away, and it has never interrupted our operation. We've been able to scale up two additional people, and it can handle it without a problem.

How did Fountain City, Inc. perform from a project management standpoint?

We speak by phone a lot. They have a Redmine-based project management system that forwards messages to my email and has an app that makes it easy to follow what they’re doing and comment myself.

Project management is one of their core talents. I’m always confident they’ll take the lead to ensure that the project runs smoothly and in the manner that I expected. I don’t have to manage the project for them or tell their project manager what to do. They manage their own people. They ensure that they have backups and that people contribute for the time they put in. Regular phone conversations are well organized; they check the time throughout the call and summarize everything at the end. They provide weekly reports and check in with me every step along the way. They guide me through everything and help us anticipate things.

We’ve kept to budget, and there are no surprises. I always know in advance what I’ll spend on different options for maintenance and improvements. They provide different levels of estimates—low, medium, high—and end up with the range they quoted.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They operate at the enterprise level with the quality of their people and the professionalism of their projects. It's not like hiring just one person. You’ll get the full services that a corporation would get from hiring a big firm. At the same time, they’re small enough that you'll get attention. They won’t treat you as unimportant compared to a larger client. They really prioritize you. They’re a great option for funded startups or small- and medium-sized businesses that have a proper budget and timeline and want work done well.

Are there any areas they could improve?

There's nothing that occurs to me.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

If someone just wants a brochure or a WordPress site, that wouldn't be right for Fountain City, Inc. because they look for bigger projects than that. In those cases, the client would be disappointed. But if someone has a substantial project, they’re the best that you'll find.