InApp

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Reliant Parking provides parking management software for multifamily communities. I’m the founder.

What challenge were you trying to address with InApp?

I originally hired InApp to do QA and then used them to develop my app.

What was the scope of their involvement?

When I first hired InApp, I hired them as one of two companies. I had another group developing my web application and InApp doing QA. I believe in having a separation of companies and work. In the process of working with the two companies, it was clear to me that InApp was the better of the two in quality and communication, which is why when I went to develop an app, I used InApp.

Before we did anything, they put together a statement of work that fully outlined the scope in stages or sprint cycles. They were absolutely on par every time with their sprint (unless I messed it up because I added more to it). We developed an iOS and Android app for enforcement companies and managers of multifamily complexes to be able to look up vehicle information with details on ordering and validity of permits, license plates, and parking space numbers, as well as creating new entries that would communicate immediately back to the manager with notes and pictures when enforcement found a violator on a property.

I’ve got five people working on the app: a UX designer, UI designer, backend developer, frontend developer, and a project manager. I typically communicate with the project lead, but when we have conference calls, they bring everybody on the call.

How did you come to work with InApp?

I needed a developer, and I was looking for one that I thought was good. I interviewed two other companies and InApp. I really appreciated InApp’s approach, how they dealt with me from the beginning. It was a very open and clear conversation. I liked their team approach and flexibility with me during the negotiation stage. They offered me some people to call for referrals on their work, and they were always willing to take my calls and talk to me. It was very comforting.

Price wasn’t a big differentiator—all interviewed companies were comparable in price. It was their responsiveness. The fact that they take steps to care about their reputation says a ton about who they are as a company. What I looked for was a company that cared about my opinion, and that’s who they seemed to be. They walked me through the process and were transparent as to who they are as a company. They were really great about addressing my concerns upfront without me having to pry.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started in October 2014. We’re still working together. In fact, we just launched the development of a resident app for iOS and Android a week ago, which will come out in June.

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

The apps that I have developed so far are only in the hands of an enforcement team, so we don't have a lot of people who can give feedback. Since the company’s inception two and a half years ago, we are tracking to double every year so far. The level of comfort that I have with the quality of development is what’s allowing me to continue pushing our growth.

How did InApp perform from a project management standpoint?

They’re always available, checking in with me and giving me updates. If there were any issues around deadlines, they communicated why; it was typically because I had added to the scope. They offered me a level of comfort that really has created loyalty to them.

We have conference calls when we need to. As far as software companies go, they are the easiest company that I've ever worked with, and I've worked with several. We used GoToMeeting and email to communicate.

What did you find most impressive about InApp?

We had several areas where something was buggy or something happened after the app was pushed out. I always feel that the quality of a company is determined when there is a problem. We ran into a little problem, and I emailed them, and they treated it as if it were a bigger problem to them than it was to me. They were absolutely all over it, owned it, and fixed it immediately. Because they stand behind their work, I continue to use them.

Are there any areas InApp could improve?

No. I’m totally satisfied.

Could you briefly describe your company?

We develop and service software for maintenance departments.

What business challenges were you attempting to address when initiating the projects with InApp?

I’ve been working with InApp for years now, so there’s been quite a few goals and different projects. We originally commissioned them in 2005 as a mobile developer to create our first mobile application. We also hired them because we were having issues with internal QA, so we decided to outsource it to a separate service provider. 

What types of projects have you been collaborating with them on?

It's been predominantly mobile, and then they took over the development of all of our software applications. They now do all development on our primary application, which is a Web-based application with a .NET backend. They also do development for us on our marketing website.

What platform do you utilize for marketing automation?

We use Marketo, and they've done a great job with it. They’ve built quite a few landing pages, forms, and email templates for us. 

We have a monthly contract with them. It’s an annual contract that affords us a certain number of hours that we apply to the development of the software. Once a month, I meet with the team, and we identify bugs or enhancements that we’re going to be working on as well as any customer projects. 

How satisfied are you with the work they’ve delivered?

We've been extremely satisfied. They produce very good work on a consistent basis. 

When working with InApp, is there anything that you consider unique or special compared to other developers that you’ve worked with?

The most unique and special thing that I found with them in comparison to some of my other colleagues, who work with offshore teams, is that I’ve worked with the same team now for seven years. I’ve got the same people that I’ve started with. These guys may have moved around inside the organization, but they’re still at InApp, and they’re still available to work with. As a result, we've developed a real relationship with them in a similar manner to the colleagues I have here in the U.S.

In retrospect, are there any areas you believe InApp could have improved upon or that you might do differently as the client before approaching these types of projects?

I think the only thing that has been a challenge for us through the years is some of the cultural differences. For example, the understanding of how brainstorming works with the manager in the U.S. versus in India, where when I throw out ideas, I’m looking for someone to tell me that’s either good or bad, and why. That kind of interaction does not take place in India. One never claims their boss has a bad idea. 

I’ve advanced ideas that were bad, and yet they proceeded nonetheless. We eventually overcame that barrier, but the relationship definitely suffered in the beginning due to inefficiencies like that.

Can you provide a general description of what your company does?

We’re an IT services firm.  We have service customers both globally and nationally and we own a number of businesses including our core business which is structured cabling.  We also do IP telephony, access control and surveillance, audio/video, wireless, and data networking, and power and electrical systems.

What was your main goal or objective for undertaking the project with InApp?

Yeah, sure.  So we had a real, you know, business problem with our existing CRM contractor management, project management systems and had an aging, very much archaic infrastructure that we wanted to replace.

How did you originally find InApp to work with?

You know I think we actually found them online.

Do you remember what made them stand out compared to other companies?

I think, you know, their website is really professional and they have the CMMI Certification and so that was important to us to find someone that had some certifications and process and sort of attention to detail and their project profile is on their website.

Could you tell me a little more about the scope of the project and what parts InApp were involved in?

It’s been a really fun project.  And InApp has really supported us, really conceptually from ground up where we said, “Look.  We want to… “ we have sort of… we had a work order management, client management system and we want to turn this into a full turnkey solution for our end-users that included the work order management, project management, client management, contractor management, integration to both accounting software and a tax software.  Integration to several of our customers’ software, integration to some of our other providers.  So portals for our clients, for our contractors.  Mobility for our users, some of them work at office, some of them are on tablets and mobile phones and just a solution that was Cloud-based rather than a traditional client application.

It sounds like a pretty large project...

You know it’s one of those things that was much bigger when you set out to do.  It doesn’t seem like you’re doing much, “Oh, we just want this and that,” and it’s turned into much more than we had ever planned for already in the last couple of years and it’s been nice what they’ve done is they’ve got a lot of different teams that can work on that, those types of scenarios and we don’t have on staff development team or really anyone with any system experience.  I mean, I’ve ran the project really as they’ve taught me a lot about do this versus that and it’s been a good experience, so.

How satisfied are you with the work they’ve done or the project?

We’re really satisfied and certainly the first few months when we launched the system, I wouldn’t say we had issues but it was like any system we had some growing pains but really taking it from really simple to, now, what’s complex is really cool looking back at just the overall process.  It’s been really exciting.  We’ve added a lot of features that we didn’t even think of from the onset.  We’ve got the system now starting to do like notifications and alarms and it’s a real… from a… for a company like ours who’s really in that SME space, I mean, it gives us a real competitive advantage and our new hires, especially the younger ones really like the system because it’s like logging into Facebook or LinkedIn the way we’ve got it setup now.  So it’s pretty nice.

When working with InApp is there anything that you find to be unique or special about them compared to other developers you’ve worked with?

You know I think the most important thing that we found is that when they say that they’re going to do something they live up to it.  And what was really scary when we started this project was finding a partner with our lack of expertise in systems and development of systems, I mean, it’s just not our business and we weren’t looking to hire somebody to manage the process that we really found in the sales process, we’ve looked at other companies and even through the beginnings of the sales process, if they said they’re going to do something they did it.  They told us,  “Certainly there was going to be mistakes when you’re developing a system like this.  We’ll fix them,” and they lived up to it every step of the way and that’s the way we run our business for our clients and so it’s been really nice having a partner that really does have your best interests in mind.

Is there anything you’d do differently a second time around or things they could improve upon?

I mean, I think there’s a lot of things that I would do differently and from my perspective but I don’t know that really I would do any… that I’d ask them to improve on anything.  I mean, they really let us be… really get in and develop it at our pace rather than say, “Hey, we’re going to try to do this in six months,” and we’ve been… done it in a really iterative process and we’ve gone back and said, “Okay, this doesn’t make any sense,” and completely reworked screens and drawn out workflows and everything else.  So.