Lava X Technologies Sdn Bhd

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the Assistant Digital Marketing Manager for The Beer Factory Malaysia. We have served over 3 million litres of beer to customers and has been an award-winning bar for over half a decade including the Hospitality Asia Platinum Awards (HAPA), Heineken Global Championship and Stella Artois World Draft Master Regional Final. This group consist of more than 200 employees. I oversee the Digital Marketing for this company, including Social Media and our Website.

For what projects/services did your company hire Lava X Technologies Sdn Bhd?

During the Covid-19 pandemic, we have to replan our business strategy since we have to adhere to the stay-at-home policy. Hence, we've setup our website to a E-commerce based site to run our Beer Delivery service. We hired Lava X to consult us in scripting the codes for the Google Sheet integration.

What were your goals for this project?

We have 5 outlets running the Delivery Service. Hence, we wanted to have an automated backend system where outlets can handle their own orders without requiring us to do the order export and sending to them manually.

How did you select Lava X Technologies Sdn Bhd?

They were recommended by a close friend of mine who engaged with them for a Mobile App Development project.

Describe the project in detail.

The Beer Factory has 5 outlets which are doing the Beer Delivery Service but Woocommerce has only one backend access with all orders combined. We have to integrate Woocommerce with Zapier and Google Sheets to automate the orders to be segregated to the specific outlets depending on the distance from the customer's address.

Hence, every outlet will be processing their own orders based on the specific outlet without requiring us from the HQ to export orders from time to time and also decreasing the possibility of human error. Once a new order comes in from Woocommerce, Zapier will extract the data and pushes it into Google Sheet. In order for Google sheets to select the correct outlet for the order processing, we have to write a google script to calculate the distance from the outlet to the customer's address to determine the shortest distance for the delivery.

When the correct outlet is selected by the script, the outlet staff will process the order and arrange for delivery. Lava X consulted us in the Scriptwriting process and the google setup settings so that the whole ordering process will be automated.

What was the team composition?

Our Marketing team consists of 5 team members - 2 Designers, 1 Marketing Executive, 1 Digital Marketing Assistant Manager, and a Brand Marketing Manager. My Brand Manager and I are the only ones handling this project. Hence, we have very limited scripting/coding skills to run this automation. Therefore, we hired Lava X to consult us on the scripting process.

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

Initially, we tried writing our own scripts using online tutorials but somehow it doesn't seem to work on our end. After a few discussions and consulting with Lava X, we are able to run our automation based on their consultation on the correct scripts and codes to use for our Google Sheet backend.

Our order handling process usually takes 15 minutes to reach the outlet due to the manual order export method but after the automation, it takes less than 5 minutes and it has lessened human errors such as repeat/left out orders. The whole process became faster and more accurate.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

The project manager, Xun, assigned to us was very responsive and we have daily discussions every evening to check and troubleshoot on the order handling process. Our discussion was quite frequent because every day we are trying to seek improvement and trying to give our customers better user experience.

Most of the time we used Skype to communicate due to the stay-at-home rule. It was quite effective because we can share screens to work on the script/codes/

What did you find most impressive about this company?

I was impressed by the knowledge and dedication of our project manager, Xun, on user experience, coding, and optimization. We learned quite a handful of new knowledge about Google Script and we do appreciate his patience and responsiveness because sometimes we have to have urgent online meetings with him in late hours. We will certainly engage with Lava X again for any digital consultation in the future.

Are there any areas for improvement?

We are quite satisfied with the engagement and collaboration with Lava X.

Please describe your company and your position there.

OpenLearning is an education technology company with a platform for online learning that goes beyond content delivery to focus on community, connectedness, and learner engagement. The questions here have been answered by a range of people across our engineering, design, and strategy teams.

For what projects/services did your company hire Lava X Technologies Sdn Bhd?

We hired LavaX initially to build a mobile app to provide access to our social learning platform. The intention was to provide an improved experience on mobile devices compared to the existing web app, and to gradually expand the feature set to achieve feature parity with the web app.

What were your goals for this project?

The initial release had a timeframe of 6 months, and only a selection of platform features were in scope. This included discovering courses, enrolling in them, and some aspects of the course experience. This included viewing other students posts, liking/commenting on them, and receiving platform notifications.

After the initial release, the goals were created in a collaborative process between our in house product and API development teams as well as LavaX, who did the app development.

How did you select this vendor?

We initially tried to hire an engineer in Malaysia and after looking for over a year and not finding anyone suitable, we connected with Xun on LinkedIn, and after meeting him, we were impressed with the depth of his knowledge and the range of projects his team was delivering so we decided to engage them instead of establishing our own engineering team in Malaysia.

Describe the project in detail.

Based on discussions and the advice of LavaX, we decided to implement the solution using react-native, with releases for both Android and iOS.

Our development team requested that some code from our existing web app (related to API clients and state management) should be reused for the new native app, and that it be developed in a shared repository with our existing web app.

Our product team created designs for the first pass and these (along with technical plans) were refined early on to solidify the plans and align expectations.

Following this first release, we moved to a model of continuous improvement, whereby smaller improvements were proposed, designed, and implemented in consultation with our internal team and LavaX.

This involved delivering a richer experience on the app including improved access to course content and more opportunity for active participation in learning activities.

What was the team composition?

The initial team consisted of the LavaX CEO Xun, along with 4 other developers. Xun took the lead in discussing with us the broader details of the project and how we would collaborate, and the other developers worked with our product team and API team to realise the various requirements.

After about 6 months, one of these developers (YongChing) took on the role of project manager/liason. He was also wonderful to deal with and led the broader discussions where necessary.

At various times we had to change the size of the team due to budget constraints, and Xun made excellent judgements about how to adjust the team to fit these requirements while maintaining the knowledge and relationships that had been built.

More recently we have had just one developer from LavaX on the project (Cheah) who has done a fantastic job of leading the project and integrating into our internal team.

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

The first pass (6 months MVP), was delivered on time and with all the features we expected. Subsequent releases were done on an agile basis, but there has been a steady stream of improvements which has delighted our users and delivered a huge improvement in their experience compared to the web app.

Currently the app has over 10,000 installs on Android, 29,000 downloads on iOS, and many positive reviews.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

This project was an ambitious one from the outset and has taken many forms between the original 6 month MVP and the present. Over that time our shared workflow has evolved to suit the situation and the teams on both sides.

Early on LavaX took the lead in terms of the technical design and implementation but at the same time they were very cooperative with our internal development team, discussing technical choices in detail and accommodating many of our preferences.

LavaX worked with us to optimise our process for prioritising improvements to the apps, including working around our own internal timeline for API development which was sometimes not ideal.

More recently we have sought to centralise agile processes between the teams, and Cheah has integrated his workflow seamlessly into ours.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Over the last 2+ years everyone from Lava X has impressed us with their enthusiasm and dedication to their work. Xun truly leads by example, and is always ready to confront and address any problems that arise. He does a fantastic job at building and maintaining a team with a good balance of skills for the project.

The various developers we have worked with have approached their work with an excellent attitude. They have always taken the time to surface issues, discuss important choices in detail with our team, and have always gone the extra mile to make sure that our needs were met.

Are there any areas for improvement?

This probably depends on how your organisation wishes to work with this team. We have been constantly improving our processes and communication with the LavaX team and they have been very open to changes and have also made great suggestions in return.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am Account Director of a digital creative agency, our company have around 20 employees and to serve corporate client across Malaysia & Singapore market.

For what projects/services did your company hire Lava X Technologies Sdn Bhd?

Website Development / Consultation + CRM + Integration

What were your goals for this project?

We want to smoothen the entire user journey through our newly built website, and to increase website traffic

How did you select Lava X Technologies Sdn Bhd?

Referred by a friend who previously engaged with Lava X

Describe the project in detail.

Website development and Marketing Tool integration.

What was the team composition?

Entire project was handled and managed by entire Lava X team

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

With the website enhancement & marketing tool integration, entire user journey was great and we received positive feedbacks from users

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

We were impressed that Lava X managed to complete the projects within the timeline provided.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Was impressed with every Lava X team, everyone of them was well knowledge and experienced.

Are there any areas for improvement?

Everything was good so far.