Inventive Works

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

We design and manufacture firearms and accessories. I am the founder and owner of the business.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Inventive Works, LLC?

We wanted to redesign our existing e-commerce website on a new platform.

What were your goals for this project?

We wanted to increase our conversion ratio and average order size by implementing a website that was better looking and easier to use, for under $10,000 and within a 2-month turnaround.

SOLUTION

How did you select Inventive Works, LLC?

Inventive came highly recommended from a family member of one of our senior employees--he had worked directly with Greg for years, and vouched for his professionalism.

I trust the employee, so we made the initial contact and consult. I knew after a couple of meetings, that these are the sort of people I would want to work with. They were polite, transparent, and thorough.

Describe the project in detail.

We had two initial meetings to discuss the scope of the project. I presented Inventive with some mockups from my graphic design guy, and they came back to me with a proposal. First we worked on selecting an appropriate platform; they recommended BigCommerce and explained why.

Then we selected an appropriate theme to build upon. That was followed by the basic layout, product import, rebuilding of the old pages, and tweaking. The final steps were to select the BigCommerce membership level, and sign up for Authorize.net.

Inventive pushed most of these processes and was clear about when they needed me to act. There were weekly meetings and progress reports.

What was the team composition?

The team composition was a project manager, overseeing a lead developer and a specialist developer.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Overall, the project is a success: our conversion rate increased from 3.5% to roughly 5.5%. In the world of e-commerce, that's enormous. Frankly, I was hoping for a single percent, so to double that is truly excellent.

The average order has stayed static, but that's moreso because we have been out of stock on our core products than any deficit in the website construction.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Overall, very effective. Each week, on Monday, I had a meeting with the project manager and lead developer. We would review the progress, check-in, get any questions answered, and make decisions about moving forward.

I had occasional direct calls and emails with the lead developer to address any more urgent issues. These were smooth and effective.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Everyone was overwhelmingly easy to communicate with. Everything was explained up front, they were completely transparent in their processes, and they delivered. The final project was within 10% of the estimated hours, and was absolutely built to my satisfaction.

Are there any areas for improvement?

This is a bit of a nitpick. Inventive made such an overwhelming effort to be polite and to manage my expectations, that I found myself occasionally becoming impatient. That's moreso a style preference -- I tend to prefer blunt communication.

That being said, having spent thousands of hours dealing with customers, I understand erring on the side of being diplomatic!

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the reinsurance marketing manager at Assurant. We deal with different types of insurance products. The group I work in is property-casualty insurance. It’s an automotive warranty company. We provide financial, onboarding, and consulting services for automotive companies. My team provides reports on client investments with their warranties.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Inventive Works, LLC?

We needed to update the process of how we communicate performance results to clients. Before, the process included printing reports, manually entering data into analysis reports, and submitting to the client for an assessment.

Inventive Works, LLC helped us extract data from the original information, reconfigure the data, and present it through a secure web portal. This eliminated the old access database and manual process we used before.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They worked through the design and the underlying concepts to create this portal. They sorted through our business requirements and how we tracked this information and were putting it in the database. They configured a UI to capture and store the information and integrated it with the SQL tools we use to bring the information into the portal.

What is the team composition?

We worked with 10–12 people on their team, including a project manager. While one team member was on vacation, they brought in an additional developer to ensure the project stayed on track.

How did you come to work with Inventive Works, LLC?

We heard of them through one of our executives who worked with them in the past. He was impressed with their ability to come in on budget and on time.

How much have you invested with them?

It cost about $200,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in April and wrapped up in July 2020.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

I’ve shown it to 30–40 people internally and externally. Our clients think it looks great. We’re very happy with the final result; we should have done this project sooner. Providing a digital option like this is meaningful step in the right direction.

How did Inventive Works, LLC perform from a project management standpoint?

They managed the project well. I wasn’t a huge fan of the tools we used to manage the project, but the project manager ensured that everything was done on time.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They understood what we needed and applied their professional knowledge in order to deliver an effective solution.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I think everything they did was optimal.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I wish we were more prepared. We didn’t necessarily know what we needed to give them, but Inventive Works, LLC helped us work through that process.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the VP of operations at TapNPay, an alternative payment method for tolls.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Inventive Works?

I recently joined the organization, and the development and IT maintenance were being taken care of by an offshore team. I needed an independent assessment of the system, so I engaged Inventive Works to do that for me.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Inventive Works took a look at each aspect of our system, including the code, hosting, cloud setup, as well as the database itself. The team also looked for any non-standard elements or anything that could cause performance issues. They did a well-rounded review.

What is the team composition?

I worked with 4–7 teammates in total, but I had a single point of contact for the project itself.

How did you come to work with Inventive Works?

A previous colleague recommended them. I reached out to Inventive Works, and we had an initial conversation about what I was looking for and hoping to get. They were extremely professional and they understood exactly what I was asking for right off the bat, so it seemed like they were a really good fit.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent around $5,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

I started working with them in September 2020, and they completed the audit in October 2020.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

I needed this assessment for my meeting with the board members, and all of them were impressed with the level of detail, ease of explanation, and recommendations of what we needed to do next. 

I received several comments from board members stating that it was a top-notch audit and assessment. That in itself is a good indicator that the work that Inventive Works accomplished was well done. 

Although they only delivered an audit, what was great about them was that they also pointed out issues and suggested solutions. Now I can formulate my plan, and once I get there, I’m sure I’ll reach out to Inventive Works for any support I may need.

How did Inventive Works perform from a project management standpoint?

They did a really good job. My project manager was on top of things, had meetings scheduled, and provided solid next steps. There was never a time where I had to reach out to them because I already knew what was coming next. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

Inventive Works is very organized, professional, and timely, which makes them stand out compared to other service providers.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, not that I can think of off the top of my head. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Clearly outline your objectives and requirements so that Inventive Works is able to target your specific business needs and deliver the quality services they are capable of providing.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a software development manager at a company that moves cargo using marine inland waterways.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Inventive Works, LLC?

We had a software product using an early version of NServiceBus. We engaged Inventive to look at the source code and help us with the issues that we faced.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Inventive consulted and guided my software development team on how to use the new version of NServiceBus and NHibernate. Their team consulted on how to upgrade our software to a newer version on NServiceBus Bus. They also looked at the overall architecture and provided guidance to my team on best practices. Their team identified what didn’t work, what wasn’t implemented correctly, and what needed to be done from those angles.

They made product changes for demonstration purposes. Their team took a slice of code and changed it based on their recommendations. From there, my developers implemented and learned from the code to do more in our main code branch.

What is the team composition?

In total, we worked with six people from Inventive. I was in more frequent contact with three people from their team.  

How did you come to work with Inventive Works, LLC?

I found them through the NServiceBus website that listed platform champions. Through that website, I found Inventive. Their team’s based in Austin, which was the main reason I chose to engage them.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent between $10,000–$50,000 on their services.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started the project in July and finished it in August 2020.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The project met our objectives. We didn’t have metrics because it was a short-duration project. Their team was effective from my standpoint. They validated ideas, which allows us to make them concrete. My team found them helpful too.

How did Inventive Works, LLC perform from a project management standpoint?

We communicated by email and Zoom. Their team was timely, visible, and effective. I didn’t have to keep checking the status of their tasks. It was a collaborative process, and I was informed throughout it.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They have experienced resources. I worked with two consultants and their CEO who were all accomplished. Their team had an effective approach, knowledge of technologies, and mindset.

Are there any areas they could improve?

At this time, I don’t have constructive feedback.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

You need to have clear objectives. We had clear goals and it was easy to work with Inventive.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the Creative Manager for Texas A&M School of Innovation (I-School) and Innovation Partners.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Inventive Works, LLC, and what were your goals?

We hired Inventive to redesign the current I-School website as well as create a separate, new website for Innovation Partners.

SOLUTION

How did you select Inventive Works, LLC and what were the deciding factors?

We work for a state institution that has a list of preferred/pre-approved vendors or a pretty strict process for approving vendors we are allowed to use for various services. We selected Inventive Works because they were already in the Texas A&M system of approved vendors.

Additionally, they received a great recommendation from a colleague who had worked with them previously and we thought they did an excellent job on a recent website project that received extremely positive reviews in the A&M community.

During the vetting process, they exhibited advanced knowledge of the various software options available, presented the pros and cons of each, recommended what would work best for us/be the best fit for our project scope/budget, made recommendations based on our needs & not what was easiest for them.

They were easy to communicate with, creative, and a good fit with our team. Completion of the projects by our deadline was one of the biggest deciding factors. We had a pretty tight deadline and they were confident that they could deliver on time. To achieve that goal, they also did both projects simultaneously.

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

We had a kickoff meeting to introduce the two teams (one for I-School and one for Innovation Partners), who was on each team, and what they did. We set up a process for communicating going forward and regular, weekly meetings. After the kick-off meeting, we dedicated some time to design and design concepts, moved into site map and wireframes, then selected templates for each page so they could be built out by the Inventive Dev & Design teams.

To get an understanding of the scope of this project, we had about 30 pages on the I-School site and about 65 pages on the Innovation Partners site. Once the pages were in production we started compiling and delivering content for them to add to the pages themselves.

Once the content was loaded to the page, we reviewed, provided feedback, reviewed the revision, and so on till the page was finally approved. After the sites launched we had a training session on how to make changes in Word Press.

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

We had a team of about 15 staff members from Inventive Works working on both sites. We had one project manager for both projects and a variety of web designers, web developers, engineers, etc.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We have not run any analytics on the new sites yet and it might be too soon to see any significant changes or increase in traffic (the new sites have only been live for less than 2 weeks) but we will be running analytic reports and sharing the results with the Inventive Works team.

However, the feedback we have been getting both internally from our team who were not involved in the project/hadn't seen anything during the process and those outside our organization have been extremely positive. Absolutely everyone is thrilled with the new sites, exceeds expectations, and love not only how they look but the functionality as well.

One of the challenges with this project was to make the 2 sites look like they were siblings - you can tell they are related but they each have their own personality. I have heard from multiple people that we definitely achieved that goal. The Inventive team did a great job of helping us decide what that looks like and pull it off from ideas to reality.

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

We had weekly meetings for overall updates, review any mockups, answer any questions, and make any decisions that needed to be made immediately in order to keep us on track. If an urgent issue came up before the weekly meeting we would schedule separate meetings to address those as needed. We also emailed each other daily using standard language in the subject line to draw our attention to messages needing immediate attention ([ACTION NEEDED] or [INFO ONLY]).

In addition to email, we also used Slack to communicate and share docs, as well as Google Drive, Sheets, and Docs. Our project manager also sent dashboard reports summarizing meetings, the next steps, status updates, etc.

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

I was impressed with their responsiveness, dedication, and commitment to the project. The Inventive Works team was always available to us to answer any questions, have an impromptu meeting whether by phone or Zoom.

Since we were working on a very tight deadline, there were times where we needed an answer within the hour. I could and did pick up the phone a number of times and our project manager were always available. They were dedicated to the project and committed to getting it done on time even if that meant A LOT of 12 hour days, sleepless nights, and working weekends to make it happen. They also had the ability to develop creative solutions (especially on the data/data feed side) to issues as they arose.

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

Clearer communication is something that is a take away for both us as the client and the vendor. They were great at being available to us for a meeting, calls, etc. and scheduling consistent update meetings but early on there was some miscommunication on a design that caused us to spend more time on design and delays to the schedule.

We also weren't aware of the overall process and that when we were making decisions they were final/changing our minds later might cause delays.

Giving an overview of the process in "non-web developer" language (LOL!) during the kickoff meeting (including phases, what decisions need to be made by when in order to stay on track, when decisions are final and the impact of changing a decision later, etc.) would help the client know when they need to make a decision, when it's final, etc. Asking clarifying questions on both sides would also help with the process.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Our platform is Tenavox.com and we make leasing commercial real estate easy. In addition to connecting prospective businesses to the best properties for their space needs, we provide an online and offline source of lead generation for brokerage and ownership entities in commercial real estate.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Inventive Works, LLC?

We hired Inventive to build out platform from the ground up.

What were your goals for this project?

We need a fast, reliable and quality UX web platform for our users and customers.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

We were connected through a mutual referral partner.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

Their team started with what we had build (not much) and drove through the development of our entire platform. We ended up with a significantly faster, better and more reliable site than we had before engaging Inventive. Their team, in particular the software developers and project managers were excellent to work with.

What was the team composition?

We had 4-6 developers along with a project manager depending on the needs/sprints for that month.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We have delivered over 20,000 leads with our platform, Inventive is a big part of making that happen.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

Project management, particularly Brandon, were really communicative, organized and effective. Honest feedback and "pulling" back the reins when we got too wide-eyed was very helpful too.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Their attitude and culture were most impressive...they're all very high-functioning geniuses :) They are not only great developers but kind, honest and good people to work with.

Are there any areas for improvement?

Not much, perhaps more consistency from the accounting staff but that's a minor concern.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We’re the Association of Former Students of Texas A&M University. We’re an independent, nonprofit alumni association. I’m the assistant VP for communications, which includes traditional communications and our web operations.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Inventive Works, LLC?

We have a yearly series of events called Aggie Muster on or around April 21st at hundreds of locations around the world. It’s a memorial service type of event in which people who attended Texas A&M come together and honor fellow former students who have died in the past year. There’s a large ceremony that also takes place on Texas A&M’s campus.

Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, it was impossible for alumni to come together and have our traditional muster ceremony, which has happened for over a ceremony. This was a big deal, and though local volunteers put on these events the association provides a lot of support. When it became apparent that these ceremonies wouldn’t be safe, we tried to create a virtual version. Ultimately, they built a shared platform where all these events could be streamed. Anybody, anywhere in the world could find a ceremony on our site.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We started working with them three weeks before the ceremonies. Our web operations team is only three full-time professionals and one part-time student, which didn’t give us the necessary bandwidth. Inventive Works, LLC built an interactive website from scratch. Several of the ceremonies were streamed live like Zoom or Facebook or YouTube events and then were recorded and stored on our website.

Hosting those video streams was the primary goal, but another important piece of the ceremony is the reading of the names of the dead. As the name of someone you know is called people call out “here,” symbolizing that the person still exists within the watchers’ hearts. To accommodate this, Inventive Works built a function where, if you were on the site, you could click on the name being read and it would post a “here,” for whichever name was being read. This created a rolling stream of people saying “here.” You couldn’t even read them all at times because so many people were engaging.

The third primary function they delivered was the reflections displays, which was central to the main ceremony at Texas A&M’s campus. It’s a physical display with pictures of the person and a number of their artifacts (watch, t-shirt, trophy, etc.) contributed by the families. Inventive built a virtual display in which you could click on someone’s name and see photos and add a personal recollection of that person. Everyone could see all of the recollections.

Had we done this locally and ourselves, we would have had trouble with servers but they brought them online as we needed them during the day. We peaked at 25,000 simultaneously on the site, as well as 50,000 unique visitors overall.

What is the team composition?

Our main point of contact was Maisy (Project Manager), but I’m not sure how many people in total were assigned. I think I interacted with about eight of them over our three-week project.

How did you come to work with Inventive Works, LLC?

They came to us via a recommendation from the University. We’re independent of the University but we do work closely with them on a lot of things, particularly their marketing and communications department this time. They helped us conceptualize the whole project and had a pre-existing relationship with Inventive. We didn’t run a bidding process or anything like that.

How much have you invested with them?

The contract was for around $60,000. We actually received a generous grant from the University so there were very minimal expenses from our own budget.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from March until May 2020. After the ceremony, we had to transfer everything from them to us.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The largest ceremony is always the one on the University’s campus seeing as the student body is there and they have the most accommodations. They can hold about 13,000­-14,000 at that event, but when the campus ceremony started this year 25,000 watched it. That moment, at that event, was the largest attendance at an Aggie Muster ever recorded. We made the ceremony available to more people than would have been able to experience it at the live event. We basically doubled it.

For us, just being able to put on the ceremonies was a success. Everyone felt really strongly that we shouldn’t postpone until next year because it’s so fundamental to the experience of being a Texas A&M Aggie, as well as because if we ever didn’t do it we would run the risk of the tradition dying. We couldn’t let the moment pass.

We were also happy with the number of countries people were streaming from. Additionally, there was pleasing anecdotal feedback. A number of people wrote, emailed, and called us to say how much it meant to them to have their loved ones honored that year. The experience was smooth, too. So smooth, in fact, that we’ve decided to do the same thing every year going forward. Muster will continue to be streamed live going forward, even if we are able to gather in person.

How did Inventive Works, LLC perform from a project management standpoint?

I’m not sure what they used on their end but our interactions were primarily over Zoom and Slack, as well as GitHub at the end. Mostly they were showing us designs using a screen-sharing functionality in Zoom.

What did you find most impressive about them?

There’s a lot of colleges and universities in this country and Texas A&M is fundamentally different, exemplified by our muster ceremonies. To work effectively with the association, and by extension the University, you have to make an effort to understand the ways in which we’re different. Inventive did that really well. There weren’t any alumni on their team but they pushed to understand the psychology of our alumni. They wouldn’t have been able to execute it the way they did without doing that work.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I don’t think it would be fair to even be critical because of the intense circumstances and timeline in which we presented the project. It wasn’t perfect every step of the way but I can’t beef about anything because they did what we asked them to do and hit a deadline without one minute of flexibility.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

JetRock is a data/analytics consulting company focused on the energy industry. I am a founder, managing partner, and data engineer for JetRock.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Inventive Works, LLC?

We initially hired Inventive for some custom ETL work because our existing process for pulling data from the source wasn't very scalable. We were also looking for guidance on our cloud architecture and looking for a better approach to using cloud resources.

What were your goals for this project?

Our goals were to build some ETLs and to better use the Azure cloud for our backend data warehouse.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

We heard of Inventive through word of mouth and knew it was a good fit the first time we met with them. I have used several dev shops in the past and it was great to have a group that understood the overall business implications as well as having the technical knowhow.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

The ETL piece was pretty straightforward because we had already been analyzing the data so we know what the data structure needed to be and the source had API documentation. For the cloud architecture, we depended heavily on Inventive's expertise and provided broad ideas of the business requirements.

What was the team composition?

The team consisted of a project manager and a developer, both of which were extremely responsive.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

This project not only help with an immediate need of the custom ETLs but also set the foundation for how are business builds, manages, and extends our backend cloud architecture.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

We had a project manager but we are a pretty technical team so we normally dealt straight with the developer which was very helpful and helped move the project along quickly.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

They were very easy to work with and had great technical knowledge. They kept on top of the project and were very responsive.

Are there any areas for improvement?

I can't think of any areas of improvement.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the IT manager of a fabricator company for oil and gas products.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Inventive Works?

We had various legacy applications that needed to be updated. I reached out to Inventive Works, LLC to help update a few applications but one in particular. Also, my technical team had experiences from all over IT. They started to do a lot of Powershell scripting that I had to get under control.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Inventive Works, LLC built a web-based translation layer using Azure. After one requirements gathering session, their team understood about 90% of the requirements. From there, our meetings revolved around tweaks. Following good devops practices, they committed to the test and then updated the test environments. Then, their team committed to master environments and the master environment’s updated. If I make changes to the code, it will deploy and update.

Their team reworked our system. They took an output from ADP, massaged, checked, and validated all of the information to upload into our accounting system. Their team also built the system to include contractors whose hours are tagged differently from company employees’. They also implemented changes that I didn’t consider. For example, their team attributed job numbers to the right jobs based on the history of our assignments and recently uploaded sessions.

They also trained my team on GIT. Their team gave us a whole class on how to use the system and best practices.

What is the team composition?

I worked with a total of four different people including a project manager.

How did you come to work with Inventive Works, LLC?

A contact referred us to Inventive Works, LLC.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent between $50,000–$100,000 on this project.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together on this project from July 2019–October 2019. I needed to stall the project because I was too busy.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

While we had to iron kinks, the product that Inventive Works, LLC built worked. Their team was more than willing to get information and resolve the errors. The training session was wildly successful.

How did Inventive Works perform from a project management standpoint?

We communicated by email and a shared Trello board. All of the project’s information was available. They managed all of the version control and Azure devops. The cadence of communication was almost too fast because I wear a lot of hats.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their team was happy to train us. They were knowledgeable and had a lot of experience. Their propensity to train showed when I was able to talk with them. I wanted to learn and whenever I asked for an explanation, their team went into detail about their decisions and how they executed them. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

The project was beginning to go over budget. That was because I didn't set requirements. Inventive Works, LLC wasn’t alone there.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Have the time to talk with them. Block off time to work on any project. It wasn’t their failure in communication that slowed our project. Their team poked and prodded for information but had to wait for my replies. Inventive Works, LLC can’t read minds.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We’re a global provider of insurance around consumer protection products. I’m a senior VP of global transformation.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Inventive Works, LLC?

We view automotive telematics as a place that we should be innovating in. We’re developing a solution around an application that, at its inception, is going to be supporting the core business and will ingest information from these vehicles as telematics becomes more mainstream. We hired Inventive Works, LLC to help us develop the application for that.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We had a basic set of requirements that were informed by an earlier effort around this solution with another provider. Some of the ideas we had in the original application will be resonant in the new one, but the application that Inventive Works, LLC is building is being done from scratch. 

They’ve been heavily involved in the design as well. The application will have around 100 different screens. Some of the functionalities that were important to us in the beginning would ensure that we had a good customer experience. We wanted a customer or dealer to engage with us in a way that made it easy to do business. 

Inventive Works, LLC made sure the app served up the propositions we offer in the marketplace and the set of activities around those propositions so that it was more user-friendly. Now, customers can get information immediately and on-demand in a way that they couldn’t until this point. They’re no longer making a phone call or having to wait for days to get information. Those are some of the key characteristics of the app itself.
 
What is the team composition?

We’ve engaged with probably 8–10 people over the entire project, 2–3 of which were really driving it on their side. They have a project manager on their team as well.
 
How did you come to work with Inventive Works, LLC?

I’d worked with Inventive Works, LLC in a previous role. I was running a company in Austin, Texas, and they developed a web-based application for us and did it very well. They actually came in and repaired one that was done by another company, and they made it fit the purpose. So, when we needed a company to help us with the development of this solution, they were a good choice for us.

We went through an RFP and evaluation process, and two companies made the final evaluation process. One was based in Atlanta, which was actually closer to our office. They would’ve had the inside track, but Inventive Works, LLC did a much better job with developing the proof of concept.
 
How much have you invested with them?

So far, we’ve spent around $110,000.
 
What is the status of this engagement?

The project started in December 2019 and is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Both have been successful so far, but it’s early innings, and we’ve got a long way to go. We’re happy with the indicative output, though.
 
How did Inventive Works, LLC perform from a project management standpoint?

We don’t have a formal project management protocol on our side. They do the heavy lifting, and we drive the activities based on the feedback they give us. There’s incremental work being done to stand up various pieces of the application, and there’s some internal work being done on our side because the app has APIs to our primary systems. 

We communicate on a day-to-day basis using agile methodology. We have a standup meeting every day and multiple calls per day. They may have a much deeper project management set of tools that they’re using, but I’ve not seen them.
 
What did you find most impressive about them?

They interrogate. They question, validate, and provide honest and meaningful feedback. They’re really good at thinking through ideas and why things could work and why they may not work.
 
Are there any areas they could improve?

I don’t have a critique. Personally, I’d like to have engagement with their senior people a bit more frequently. They’ve been working with a couple of people from my side, on the innovation team, and my relationship is with Andrew (CEO, Inventive Works, LLC). He’s running the project and I get updates from my team, but I’d like to get updates from him and his COO at least every 30 days. I think that would be a good cadence for getting the pulse of what the project’s doing.
 
Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

I’d just tell customers to make sure they set up a cadence for communication at the appropriate level within the organization. If someone’s responsible for the overall project, they should make sure they have aligned engagement at the senior level, just to ensure that the project requirements are being delivered.