Further Digital Solutions

Please describe your company and your position there.

We are a medium sized company in the Hungarian domestic B2B information-services market.

Our profile is professional publishing and related advisory services, with almost 20 000 clients, including small and medium-sized enterprises, legal, tax, accounting, HR professionals, and institutions of public service as well.

Our annual turnover reached 2,8 million EUR in 2019. I'm responsible for the product and business development at the company.

For what projects/services did your company hire Further Digital Solutions, and what were your goals?

We have faced several problems in the management and development of our content based websites. We have tried to build up a useful CMS by ourselves, but we did not have enough in-house capacity.

So this important project never really started. Our main goal was to discove and coordinate our editorial and online marketing divisions' needs, and define precisely, what kind of solution can reliably reproduce the functionality of our simultaneously operating content management or website administration systems.

How did you select Further Digital Solutions and what were the deciding factors?

We have started two web application development projects with Further before, we had good experiences with their project management, and they offered a very competitive rate for this project as well.

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

The project consisted of planning the system architecture of our enterprise CMS system, which acts as a central administration hub for all our digital products and websites.

The team at Further organised multiple discovery workshops. The aim of these workshops was to map out our baseline business and IT architecture, set goals and perform a gap analysis. During this process they had to coordinate with our management, editorial, marketing and IT teams.

The outputs of this process were busines requirements, stakeholder matrices, value streams, business capability matrices, baseline system/data/technology diagrams and a project roadmap. Following the discovery workshops, Further also organised design workshops.

The outputs were the target system/data/technology diagrams, an API architecture description and high-fidelity UI prototypes.

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

The composition of the Further team on this project was: - 1 business analyst - 1 systems architect - 1 lead developer - 1 UI designer

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

Although we did not have enough resources to start the development process in time - meanwhile we had to change our business plans due the COVID-19 outbreak - we now have a detailed plan for our new, customized, effective CMS, which will be able to manage more than 15 websites.

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

The Further team was quite flexible, according to our "oldschool" in-house communcation: they have sent detailed reports by e-mail, at the important project milestones, and follow-ups, but we used Slack as well, to share some informations.

All the project's documentation has been reviewed precisely after the scheduled workshops, and it was clearly accessible in Google Drive folders and documents.

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

Further is a "boutique agency", where the team can find the right solution as quick as it's possible, but they are always truly open to understand the clients' neeeds.

We can also notice, that they have a wide knowledge of digital product development and digital transformation.

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

In this project, it was almost the perfect fit for us. Looking into the future, I think that they should grow their team (without losing this flexible boutique-style), to be able to manage more projects simultaneously for one client.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I’m the founder & CEO of Centralized.me, a tool that guides music artists to navigate through the music industry on their own terms.

For what projects/services did your company hire Further Digital Solutions, and what were your goals?

My bootstrapped startup needed to build an MVP to prove our concept. We searched for a reliable software services company in Israel, the US, and Europe.

How did you select Further Digital Solutions and what were the deciding factors?

It was a process to find the right fit of quality and price. Looking back I realize how lucky I was to find Peter and Go Further so quickly. Any colleagues have nightmare stories which I’ve been lucky to avoid. Even as we now expand, I will keep Go Further within our team. That says a lot.

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

We started with the development of an MVP web app and then moved on to developing our first live version.

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

I worked mostly with the CEO, Peter Illes and from time to time, especially when he was away, I enjoyed the support of this team of project managers and developers.

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

They developed our MVP quickly and within budget, which lead to the on boarding of our beta testing users. This has led to another round of investment to further flesh out the MVP that responds to the feedback of our early users. We're very pleased to have stayed with Further for this second release. For any startup developing a SaaS MVP, I highly recommend Peter Illes & Further.

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

Peter was very flexible and kept things super simple. As we were a new startup, we stuck to simple tools that I could easily manage and collaborate with... FaceTime, skype, google sheets, etc.

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

Peter & I established a great working relationship. I got to be your typical nightmare client and he got to be the patient and often bored / annoyed developer. We took to our cliched roles with good humor and always have been open to learning from each other.

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

Their value for money is excellent. I was with Peter through the expansion of their company and always there are teething problems and growing pains... but Peter made sure it never effected the delivery of what I needed.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the head of design for a company that sells a beer brewing device and home brewing kits.

For what projects/services did your company hire C4studio?

We wanted to develop a knowledge center.

What were your goals for this project?

It is crucial to share insights about our product and process with our customers. We wanted to inform them about product updates on a regular basis.

How did you select this vendor?

C4studio gave us the best development time and cost quote.

Can you go into detail about the services they provided and the scope of the project?

They customized an admin system called Chronos to suit our needs. It now serves as the core of our knowledge platform.

What was the team composition?

Their CEO also took part in the development phase.

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

The platform is working perfectly, allowing us to store and share a huge amount of information about our machine and beer brewing. It includes a news section that has proven useful.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

My only contact was their CEO. We communicated via Skype.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

We were impressed with their speed and communication.