Keyrus

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the director of enterprise application and data services for a public transportation service.

What challenge were you trying to address with Keyrus?

We needed someone to implement an enterprise data warehouse containing all disparate data across our organization, so we can mine and utilize them for decision-making processes.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Keyrus provides us with data warehouse and business intelligence project consulting services that started with a discovery phase to identify our business and technical needs. We then moved to the procurement phase where they helped document the scope of the project and necessary details required to publish a RFP seeking the services of an data warehouse and business intelligence implementation partner.

Currently we are in the implementation phase with the new implementation partner. Keyrus is providing us with project management and oversight for the entire process, making sure the solution implemented meets our needs.

What is the team composition?

We mainly work with a site engagement supervisor, project manager, business analyst, and data architect.

How did you come to work with Keyrus?

We evaluated several vendors through a bidding process and chose Keyrus because of their experience and proposal.

How much have you invested with them?

So far, we’ve invested about $500,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our ongoing partnership with Keyrus started in October 2020.

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

They were able to conduct multiple interviews with different businesses across 18 departments successfully, so they can better analyze and utilize the information they’ve gathered to create a custom Data Warehouse strategy based on our needs and environment. They didn't try to shoehorn us into a cookie-cutter solution but leveraged their experience, knowledge and best practices to develop a roadmap for us.

How did Keyrus perform from a project management standpoint?

They’re excellent from a project management perspective as they’ve consistently adhered to our schedule and budget so far. They’re very meticulous and detail-oriented in the development phase, which makes us very happy.

We typically communicate through Microsoft Teams, phone, and email.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We haven’t worked with any other vendor for this type of project but based on our experience, we’re very impressed with Keyrus’ responsiveness, attentiveness, and willingness to go above and beyond the scope of the project.

Moreover, they’re very thorough and they can easily explain complex concepts in a way we can understand, so their technical communication skills are very good. The quality of their work is also impressive, as their proactive approach allows them to ensure every detail of the project is taken care of.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Nothing stands out so far, but we’re always providing feedback which they’ve used to continuously improve.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I would advise potential customers to ensure that you're on the same page with the Keyrus by explaining your needs thoroughly and candidly including strengths, any weak points and challenges within your organization. This is so they can evaluate it fully and bring you the best possible solution customized for your business.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the president of a home and garden products manufacturer.

What challenge were you trying to address with Keyrus?

We needed help with our cloud architecture.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Keyrus helps us navigate, set up, and improve the way our AWS cloud environment is set up. The team provides support for us offsite. Initially, they presented a scope of work for us to approve.

What is the team composition?

I’ve worked with four people from Keyrus, including teammates from sales and the developers.

How did you come to work with Keyrus?

They were referred to us by AWS, our main supplier. We spoke with Keyrus and explained our needs, and they provided a proposal which we agreed to.

How much have you invested with them?

So far, we’ve invested around $25,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in September 2021, and the engagement is ongoing.

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

Keyrus has drastically improved the quality of our infrastructure; it’s now more reliable. Before working with them, we had a lot of inefficient, improvised setups. Now, we have a world-class structure. Keyrus has implemented a very deliberate, high-quality system for us. Overall, we’re very satisfied with their work.

How did Keyrus perform from a project management standpoint?

We typically communicate via email, and we have Microsoft Teams meetings. Although they meet the budget, they haven’t delivered on time.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I’m most impressed by Keyrus’ understanding of the subject matter; they’ve made really good recommendations. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

If anything, they could improve the timeliness of their deliverables. That wouldn’t be completely fair given the circumstances, though, so I don’t have any constructive feedback.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Every case is different, and everybody will have particular needs. If I were starting over, it’s hard to pinpoint what I would do differently. Some things weren’t apparent to us in the discovery phase; we found complexities related to third parties, and there wasn’t anything Keyrus could have done in advance.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the IT Manager for a lighting manufacturer.

For what projects/services did your company hire Keyrus?

Keyrus will be assisting with our migration from our current business intelligence tool into Tableau

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

Tableau recommended Keyrus as our vendor. They were very helpful during the pre-sales calls and meetings and gave a lot of flexibility to get this project approved.

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

Keyrus assisted in making sure we had all the information and access needed to test the SaaS. Once we happy with our testing, they extended our test keys so that we were able to present the software to upper management which allowed us to seal the approval for moving forward with the migration.

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

We had multiple resources including two sales reps, our technical sales rep, an engineer to assist with scoping and our account rep.

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

The actual project has yet to be started but the pre-sales and support we received from the team were magnificent. I am very pleased and look forward to moving into the project.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

There was a lot of open communication and support on both sides. Because of this, we were able to move forward with the migration project.

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

They've been extremely flexible and helpful with anything that we request.

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

None that I could think of so far.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the CFO for a supplier of metal food cans in N. America

For what projects/services did your company hire Keyrus?

Our company was challenged with having current information around our production levels as the month progressed. Frequently, we would be surprised with large overhead variances vs. forecast when we closed our books.

Keyrus was hired to build out a dashboard that provided us a snapshot of where we were trending at any point in time, down to a very granular level. In addition, they were tasked with building a second dashboard that visualized at our historical production trends and outliers across various reporting dimensions.

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

We had good experience with Keyrus on a previous project.

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

Keyrus helped us organize the data in a manner that would produce the desired result. They conducted scoping sessions with me and members of our Pricing team to understand what deliverable we were seeking. The work on calculated field logic and an iterative design process to ultimately arrive at the final product.

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

We had 2 primary resource that worked on the project. Dorna, Director of Delivery, and Nick, Tableau Consultant. Dorna kept the project moving and us informed of project costs and roadblocks. Nick did most of the data optimization and dashboard build. He was fantastic to work with.

Nick was very responsive and consistently provided value add ideas, most of which were incorporated into the final product. Nick was quickly able to obtain an understanding of our business and use that knowledge to efficiently work through the challenges presented.

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

While it's still early, the deliverables are giving us timely insight into our business we haven't had before. Based on the visualizations developed, we can focus efforts on problematic areas early and reverse or mitigate unfavorable outcomes.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

The workflow was effective. Both companies used screenshots frequently to communicate thoughts and observations.

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

They had the ability to quickly learn our business and use that knowledge to bring value-added ideas to the project. In addition, we requested a handful of technically challenging visuals, and Keyrus was able to deliver them. The visualization metric Keyrus came up with for outliers was exactly what we wanted.

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

Only area I would mention is that early on the refresh of the workbooks was quite delayed. This slowed down the iterative process and idea-sharing between the two organizations. Towards the end, the dashboards were updated much more frequently, which I believe benefited the efficiency aspect of the project.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CIO for a global risk management certification. I joined the company about a year ago.

What challenge were you trying to address with Keyrus?

When we first engaged with Keyrus, we were trying to aggregate data from various sources. We didn’t have a data warehouse solution for a good visualization across multiple data. We had reporting within each of the departments and applications, but we wanted to get a holistic view and pull together executive-level reporting through dashboards so we’d be able to provide insights and leverage information with our board directors.

What was the scope of their involvement?

I prefer to work in the office, but we worked remotely due to COVID-19. We had already picked out the technology. We selected Tableau for the frontend, Rivery as the ELT tool, and Snowflake as our database.

Keyrus gathered the functional and technical requirements. Their team built out the design of the database and ELT tool, as well as the dashboard layout. Then, they did the full implementation and execution.

Right now, we’re in the warranty period. My team manages the daily support, and we escalate up to them if something doesn’t work out or we need additional knowledge.

What is the team composition?

There were two full-time people and a couple of part-time people on the project. The full-time person was the project manager and business analyst. Then, we had a full-time developer, a couple of engineers for spot consulting work, and an account manager.

How did you come to work with Keyrus?

They came recommended through a key member within the organization. Also, we compared their service, capabilities, and estimate against other midsize players within our area. We selected Keyrus for their knowledge and experience with the technologies we had selected and the case studies we reviewed.

How much have you invested with them?

It was about $200,000 altogether.

What is the status of this engagement?

We engaged with them in early 2020, but we started the project until September 2020. They helped us with a proof of concept, and then they helped us build the next phase of the project. We started the actual production environment in February, and they completed it in June 2021.

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

Their work improved the velocity of our reporting capabilities. What used to take days or weeks now takes hours to produce, so we’ve saved a lot of business productivity with this project. They also provided training for our team on how to use the application.

In terms of timelines, it was definitely better than if we’d done this in-house. We didn’t have the expertise or capability for the project. In terms of money, it was an investment for us. Keyrus wasn’t the cheapest option, but they weren’t the most expensive.

How did Keyrus perform from a project management standpoint?

They were great. The team was on top of things. They communicated their progress, met deadlines, and followed up with us on what we needed to deliver to them to make sure they met their milestones.

We primarily used Teams, and since everything was remote, all the meetings were over Zoom.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Keyrus stood out for the quality of their developers. They were able to demonstrate their technical knowledge and a deep understanding of our business. It was a big factor to select them.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Since we were 100% remote, we wanted to be more cost-efficient with the implementation. We asked to leverage the Israel team, which had a lower rate card. Keyrus came back and stated that they’d already selected the team. However, I would’ve loved to extend my budget.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Make sure you interview the resources that you’ll hire. Keyrus has many different developers and project managers, so make sure your team has a cultural fit.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We’re an electric and water municipality called Orlando Utilities Commission, and I’m the manager of meter data operations.

What challenge were you trying to address with Keyrus?

We get a lot of operational data from endpoint devices in the field, so we needed to build a repository to stop throwing the data and start building use cases with newfound data.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Keyrus is helping us develop our meter data platform to retain the original data set and transform them into useable use cases. They designed the preliminary proposed build, which was an AWS cloud-based implementation that was going to be operated by our company, OUC. 

They then helped us design a snowflake database and introduced tools like Tableau to move, transform, and serve the data. In addition, they provided their consulting services, methodologies, project management, training, user acceptance, and cultural change — they’ve been our partner and integrator throughout the whole thing.

We’re currently wrapping up our second long engagement with them to serve about 20 unique use cases around the data we acquired.

What is the team composition?

They have an engagement director and throughout the transition, we’ve had a project manager who was also the lead engineer. We’ve also had 2–4 additional resources depending on the key deliverables, someone who implemented the cultural change and artifact training, and another developer who helped us with the AWS infrastructure.

How did you come to work with Keyrus?

We did a pretty aggressive RFP that launched in May 2019 which garnered 13 submissions. We narrowed it down to six and did a full-day technical session with them. Keyrus came out as the best qualified in terms of methodology, approach, and total cost of ownership.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent about $1 million on their resources.

What is the status of this engagement?

The ongoing partnership started in November 2019. This platform we developed went live in June 2020, but we still have a five-year services agreement with them, which we manage through statements of work through specific deliverables.

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

Thanks to Keyrus, we’ve been able to fix our service point connectivity model, we’ve built business practices to improve the accuracy of the data, and we’ve improved our operations by about 20% — we’ve been able to fix errors and identify where they’re broken.

We now have a repeatable process to continually improve because we’ve been able to save upwards of 8–12 hours for each data request from the data extract that we’re not able to produce. To have the data available and be able to pull it has been a pretty significant productivity increase. In addition, we’ve been able to replace a third-party vendor that was providing some queries, and we were able to save about half a million dollars.

How did Keyrus perform from a project management standpoint?

They’ve been excellent from a project management perspective. Their methodology is one of the best I’ve seen in the industry and I’ve been at it for a long time. Their methodology involves a set of cost templates, a status charter, and a planning template. We have daily standup meetings and then keep a Zoom room open throughout the day for people to drop in.

Additionally, they’re very responsive. They’re just like an extension of the team so there’s no delay.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I think their recruiting practices are spot on. They hire good talent and give them great mentorship, and they practice what they preach in terms of reviews and constant communication. One thing they told us during the review process of the RFP was the people who lead the project, have also worked for the project — so there’s a lot of real-world knowledge, and their leaders are clearly working leaders. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

No. They’ve been a great partner, and I can’t say enough good things about them. They’ve been very supportive when we’ve introduced some odd ideas or oversimplified things — they’ve just been great to communicate with.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

If you’re going to enter working with them, I think you shouldn’t be afraid to ask them to give you alternatives before making strong decisions. Keyrus is very good at listening and bringing incremental deliverables back before you invest too much. Additionally, be open to the agile process and what they share with you, because seeing is believing especially in this technology.

Please describe your company and your position there.

Head of finance at KUDO

For what projects/services did your company hire Keyrus?

To develop our first executive dashboard to streamline data discovery and reporting processes

What were your goals for this project?

To build a dashboard leveraging our sales and financial data where Sr management team can easily find answers to their questions during investor meetings. The secondary goal was to attract interest within other department heads to expand our use of business intelligence.

How did you select Keyrus?

Initially introduced by Tableau team for a quick proof of concept to make sure Tableau is the right tool for us. Once decided, we have developed project requirement and scope and was able to achieve our goals in a short time.

Describe the project in detail.

Building a few financial and sales view of our client through 4 different dashboards targeted to head of sales and CEO. Keyrus team was fast to understand the intend of each dashboard/view and implement the right solutions in a short time.

The team has the capability of understanding the need of the target audience and implement the views as such.

What was the team composition?

Initially defined the scope of the project with the project manager and the main developer. In later sessions worked directly with the developer to build and review the views.

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

I think the turn around time on this project was exceptionally fast. The initial scope of the project has been delivered within 60% of the planned time so we ended up expanding the project scope to include more items that were lower on the priority list initially.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Very smooth and seamless workflow. Through emails and a few online sessions, we accomplished all the goals.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Turn around time and expertise about the tool

Are there any areas for improvement?

Nothing comes to my mind at this point

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm an IT manager at an international airport with over 1300 employees responsible for systems architecture and data technologies.

For what projects/services did your company hire Keyrus?

We hired Keyrus to help us first develop a roadmap and then help us implement a variety of data technologies.

What were your goals for this project?

We wanted to implement modern data solutions, a data warehouse, ETL and Business Intelligence platforms and help transform our organization to be more data-driven.

How did you select this vendor?

An RFI process wet out detailing what we were trying to accomplish. Keyrus was chosen out of approximately 20 different vendors.

Describe the project in detail.

For the roadmap Keyrus interviewed our primary business units, inventoried our key systems, dove into the accuracy, accessibility and relevance of the data in them, and developed ideas around BI solutions that would deliver value to the organization. For the technologies Keyrus compared various solutions on the market and ascertained which ones would work best for our needs and budgets and then helped us acquire, install and configure them.

What was the team composition?

There were about a dozen people, a couple of project managers, and various data and IT professionals.

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

Our organization now has the technological foundations to enable us to become more data driven and a roadmap for trying to achieve that goal.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Collaboration was very effective. We were initially worried about that considering they were from a different state than us but it was not problematic at all and their teams travelled in person whenever necessary.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

I was particularly impressed with how they quickly understood our business and how data could help our business units. And of course they were incredibly knowledgeable in all aspects of data technology. Their team members were very personable and experts in their areas. I would highly recommend them for any work of this nature.

Are there any areas for improvement?

No, they really weren't lacking in any areas. Sometimes vendors usually have problems dealing with our stringent cybersecurity levels but these guys understood its importance and kept it front of mind when architecting our solutions.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a manager of analytics and data architecture at a financial institution. 

What challenge were you trying to address with Keyrus?

A legacy data standards system had become a liability because it was difficult to change the code (e.g. it was expensive and time-consuming). So, we wanted to create something more configurable and closer to cost. For the new system, we bought the Alteryx tool. Keyrus served as our development capacity.

For background, we have published data standards for our member banks. Those data contracts prescribe how the banks should send us the data we require to make insurance determinations. Our legacy system checked the data’s quality against that standard. It would validate that the data they sent complied with our published standard. However, the legacy system was hard to change (e.g. it required us to bring in an external partner to make changes associated with adapting our data standard).

What was the scope of their involvement?

The project was essentially loading a bunch of human-readable files full of financial information and generating exception reporting (e.g. if the information wasn’t compliant to our standard). Keyrus ended up doing a large percentage, if not all, of the development. 

Our company ran an RFP and ended up selecting Alteryx as the tool for our data quality checking. Keyrus took our .NET code with its rules and transformed it into the workflow using the Alteryx tool. They built on-spec and worked very closely with our internal business analysts and technical people. 

We did another project on the electronic payment side. It was related to our deposit insurance system that generates payment files. This consisted of simply producing the files that we required. We wanted to re-render payment files as electronically formatted data that would be compatible with direct deposit and bulk transfer. So, it converted our flat files into a recognizable form of e-payment.

What is the team composition?

For the first year, there were two developers working with us. I would qualify both of them as senior developers. Then, it went down to one person for the remaining 5–6 months. 

How did you come to work with Keyrus?

We researched online to find Keyrus. Then, we started with a proof of concept. After about six months, the proof of concept became viable, and we switched to full-blown production mode.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve invested about $500,000 in Canadian dollars.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in April 2018, and the project ended in June of 2019.

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

This was one of our more successful projects at the company. They went above and beyond. 

We ended up with the fully-featured rules-checking engine we wanted. It’s now in production and in-use on a regular basis. The new system is about three times faster than the older system. It deals with complicated scenarios that the older system couldn’t handle. 

It’s been embraced by all the users, and it probably exceeded expectations. The stakeholders that use it aren’t technical people at all, and there have been no complaints. It’s also easier to change whenever we change our data standard. We can change it a lot faster than we’re used to with our legacy system. 

The workflow is top-shelf complexity — I don’t know if anyone else could have done it. For example, on forums, people with similar performance issues haven’t been able to come up with a solution. 

How did Keyrus perform from a project management standpoint?

They were always in direct contact with stakeholders using the system. They were remote, so we tracked the communication through Slack and used Skype when necessary. 

Keyrus’ developers were both very professional people. Our feedback from our primary stakeholder is nothing but positive about their working relationship.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I don’t have a bad thing to say about them. I never had to worry about the team. There were times when I wondered if it was achievable, but they would always figure it out. After a point in time, I knew they would do a good job. Also, they were able to estimate pretty quickly the effort involved for certain tasks. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

I can’t say that there is. There’s nothing significant enough. I had no problem with them.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Alteryx is a niche skillset. Anyone shopping around for it should know it’s hard to find qualified resources in the Alteryx space. Understanding the limitations of the tool will help them gauge the level of talent needed on the project. We didn’t know the full extent of limitations until we started using it, so I’m glad we had Keyrus to help us figure it out.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I'm a compliance manager at an educational product distributor. We're the country's largest retail operation for college campus bookstores.

What challenge were you trying to address with Keyrus?

One of our products is college textbooks. There's an issue of counterfeiting in the industry that we wanted to address. We needed a vendor to help us develop a data analytics tool to monitor the counterfeiting activity.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We have to control how many items enter our inventory at different locations and how many are identified as counterfeit. We also have to monitor our suppliers. Keyrus developed a tool that helps us aggregate all of that data and push it into a usable format. We had a workflow in place, which had been developed by our analysts. Keyrus reviewed that workflow and found a significant amount of issues with the product that our in-house analysts had built. They ended up rebuilding the whole thing, automating the process with Ultra. We can now easily get the data we need just by clicking a button. 

What is the team composition? 

We worked with two members of their team.

How did you come to work with Keyrus?

We found Keyrus through a Google search. They had a fair price and they were willing to start as soon as we were ready, so we chose them.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent $18,000.

What is the status of this engagement? 

We worked with them between March–July 2019.

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

Keyrus automated the process that had been performed by our analysts, enabling us to save a significant amount of time and money. We can now easily get the report that used to take hours to compile.

How did Keyrus perform from a project management standpoint? 

We had daily phone calls and they always kept us up-to-date with the progress. If they ran into an issue, they waited for us to address it and didn't charge us for extra hours. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

They exceeded our expectations. We're very happy with the services they provided. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

I don't have a technical background, so it'd be good to have someone who speaks both tech and non-tech languages to help us communicate a bit better.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Ask them questions and schedule regular meetings to make sure you both understand what direction you need to be heading.