MeanPug Digital

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the CEO & Co-founder of Cherry Pick. Our company builds AI that helps enable beauty manufacturers optimize product development processes.

For what projects/services did your company hire MeanPug Digital?

We hired Mean Pug to help build out reporting infrastructure that automates a large amount of the client reporting our company produces. Mean Pug additionally was involved in a large amount of system level development from improving our CI/CD, web scraping, and AWS infrastructure.

What were your goals for this project?

Our goals for this project were to help automate a large number of time-intensive tasks involved in Cherry Pick's client reporting to free up more time for team.

How did you select this vendor?

We found MeanPug on Linkedin based on their core competencies.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

AS mentioned above, Mean Pug was brought on to help optimize our client reporting processes. This project broke out into 3 major components: (a) optimize our database, (b) stabilize and improve our scraping infrastructure, (c) build out simple UI and data pipeline to enable members of our team request reports in a fully automated manner. In terms of optimizing the database, MeanPug help us evaluate both long and short term solutions, from migrating from Postgres to Redshift, and simpler solutions like adding more advance database indexing. We used query benchmarking to help us make the business decision between the two. In terms of part (b), Mean Pug helped stabilize our scraping system by improving Celery / RabbitMQ processes and automation. Additionally they helped solve key bugs and issues associated with the system. In terms of (c), Mean Pug built out a data pipeline with Airflow, that handled database queries, data processing and validation, and generates simple excel report output that used a slack integration to delivered completed report to team.

What was the team composition?

We only interacted with the core development lead from Mean Pug throughout the project.

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

- simple reporting solution that enables non technical team member s to pull data saving large amounts of time (process went from 20 hrs to 2 hrs) - large reduction of common bugs in the system - improved CI/CD workflow

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

Mean Pug is incredibly technically proficient, so project management was fairly light comparably. We built out a technical spec out the outset of the project, updated priorities as need be throughout the project.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

They have an incredibly deep technical sophistication. From best practices to available software solutions to solve problems - speed, very very fast building out fixes - helped us improve our own technical workflows - really understands the business context, and could help advise us on making better business decisions (even beyond the immediate technical difficulties)

Are there any areas for improvement?

There were a few cases where we under allocated time for tasks and had to push deadlines based on trying to pack too much into short timelines.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I started an ed-tech platform that provides online resources to CPA candidates. Professionals aiming to be accountants need to pass this exam to obtain their license. 

What challenge were you trying to address with MeanPug Digital?

Their team was responsible for the front- and backend development of the site along with its SEO after launch.

What was the scope of their involvement?

They developed the platform from scratch, building on a pretty comprehensive course that we integrated into this new technology. We integrated our existing Python code with the Django, React, Redux, and Jekyll that he built. They constructed the source code from start to finish along with an e-commerce checkout function. That way, a student can buy the course from their phone or laptop. 

The solution also includes video lectures, multiple-choice questions, progress reports, and test-based simulation. For people who don’t understand the exam, there’s also an advanced search feature, drop-down sorting options, and those of case studies that allow users to absorb the information they need.

On the marketing side, they’ve been helping formulate strategies for both on- and off-site SEO. That includes outreach to outside websites and optimizing our site’s pages for SEO. They’ve also been focusing on Google Ads, Facebook marketing, and other paid search ads. That’s helped us understand our target audience better, so we can adjust our strategy to fit their needs. The audience information has been invaluable to us.   

How did you come to work with MeanPug Digital?

 I’ve worked with many companies in the past and found that I needed someone that could do more than basic WordPress developments for me. We needed something more innovative, which would require a more experienced team.

I reached out to them to see if they would be up for the job, and they showed transparency while developing a strong relationship with us. That got us more and more comfortable with their team. 

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent about $150,000 on the site build. The marketing spend is changing as we grow our relationship with them further. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in January 2018, and our teams are still working together. With anything tech-related, they’re now my go-to guys. This specific project is ongoing, but they’re growing into other projects as well. 

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

Our lead generation and sales numbers are ten times better than they were before. In terms of revenue, we’ve also exploded a bit in recent periods of time. Because we’ve climbed to the first page for various keywords on Google, our search traffic has also greatly increased. 

How did MeanPug Digital perform from a project management standpoint?

We opened a Slack channel so that all communication is streamlined. It was super helpful to have all then available to me at all hours of the day. I always know where to go with questions because they’re transparent with me, responding in an appropriate timeframe.

My biggest praise for them is about their project management—it’s exceptional. We didn’t have much experience with the technologies they were working with, but they made us feel comfortable by taking the time to map out the project step-by-step. From that point on, they never missed deadlines and always made sure to communicate clearly, using layman’s terms so we understood. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their niche is more specific than just building basic websites. While they can build something more general, they’re capable of so much more than that. They’re not cheap, but their expertise is worth it. They educated us on the process, so we could do a lot on our own by the end of it.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I can’t think of anything. We’re still working closely together because of the positive experience we’ve has together overall.