Myplanet

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We are a leader in 5G and we work with large carriers around the globe to plan and launch their networks. We also work with enterprise infrastructures to evolve their network to enable applications that are in the cloud.

I’m the head of organic content and my team bridges the gap between what private marketing is building into the market and communicating what our products and services are about.

What challenge were you trying to address with Myplanet?

We needed a team that could handle all the logistical elements of updating a website and making it functional, as well as add in a lot of business logic that could help our B2B audiences.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We wanted to pull all the content out of those disparate platforms and transition them into an updated Drupal website. They also offered product strategy support, applying best practices to the architecture and buyer’s journey across the site.

Our main website at the time was built on Drupal, the blog was from WordPress, and a Joomla website was also in the mix. This created a lot of issues for reporting and the plan was to resolve the logistics with the CMS. We were also planning a rebrand in addition to all of this.

What is the team composition?

They have a project manager who’s our direct point of contact and always works hand-in-hand with us. There are also a number of developers that frequently work directly on the project. The team also brings in experts on an ad hoc basis whenever we need a better view of any given area.

How did you come to work with MyPpanet?

Our CMO actually worked with them in the past and found them to be a good agency to work with— they came highly recommended.

What is the status of this engagement?

We began working with them around April 2018 and the project is ongoing.

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

I’ve been completely blown away by how much value they add to the project.

How did Myplanet perform from a project management standpoint?

I think they’re very good with project management as they bring a lot of structure that we typically don’t see in these kinds of projects. They make it very clear what the expectations are and it helps get things done.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They understand the experience that all these different vehicles create. The team takes into account the broader digital experience that a customer will see and help us gain a higher level of focus to deliver something that’s good across the board.

Myplanet understands the customer journey, or at least how digital can impact it. I’ve already recommended them to a number of people.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Not necessarily, they’re pretty great and build a lot of value on the projects we work with them on, and we rely on them quite heavily.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Don’t box yourselves into one deliverable even though you’re working on a specific project because Myplanet can extend beyond just one siloed platform or application.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the director of digital experience & product at Harry Rosen, a Canadian luxury men’s retailer. We’ve been in business for 66 years. I own the website and the app within the company. I oversee the development and maintenance of two of our tools and ensure that the executives’ strategic priorities are mapped into our digital experience.

What challenge were you trying to address with Myplanet?

We needed help with development. The app isn’t really customer-facing; it was built for our sales force. The way we do business at Harry Rosen is highly relationship-driven. A lot of the deepest relationships we have with customers are done via a particular advisor. That relationship between advisor and client is very important. This app that we built really consolidates a whole bunch of different tooling that the advisors used to use; every tool was independent from the others. The app is almost like a client selling a digital selling tool that they have.

What was the scope of their involvement?

They were brought on to build the advisor app within our company. The app went through a lot of heuristic analysis and a lot of interviews across the country. Their design team was engaged with user experience and how advisors were using the tools that they had, how they wanted to use them, and how the selling experience actually happened in the store. They ended up building their own platform for us, and the platform was really the beginning of redoing our website.

We used to have an SAP Hybris implementation. It was a legacy implementation that connected with several different internal Harry Rosen systems like our CRM, our POS, our ERP system, and our email service provider. This platform they built also led us to develop a consumer app. It was meant to be the counterpoint for the advisor app. When COVID-19 hit, we pivoted away from the consumer app. Unfortunately, that was just going into pilot and we basically squashed the whole thing and tried to move towards a headless website implementation as fast as possible.

What is the team composition?

There are 20-25 people. Katherine (Director, Platform Strategy) is my main counterpoint there. The two other counterpoints are the frontend development manager and the backend development manager.

How did you come to work with Myplanet?

We engaged with our network and vetted them by other clients of theirs. It wasn’t a formal RFP we put into the market. We just talked to people and engaged them directly. Once we had a good feeling about them, we spoke to other clients of theirs as referrals.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent between $1,000,000–$5,000,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in January 2019, and the work is ongoing.

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

Everything was excellent. Everyone I work with, not just the three people I mentioned, are smart and care. They all work well together. They all are very pleasant to deal with. Everyone there has a really good attitude.

It involved every function and system within the company, forcing us to go through a lot of change management; not just technical change, like scrapping all kinds of technical debt and rearchitecting the technical side of things, but also the processes within the business. It really touched everything that we do.

How did Myplanet perform from a project management standpoint?

We use Slack and have regular calls and emails, so we’re in constant communication. These tools are supported by Microsoft Teams and texting. We’re very plugged in with them, as we tend to work with external vendors quite closely. Jira helps with formally managing and logging things, as well as sprint planning.

They are pretty good at meeting deadlines. It’s natural with software development that not all deadlines are met, and they match my expectations, if not slightly exceeding them. Sometimes, they’ll estimate something and tell me that one particular task took less than they estimated and so they’re bringing something up from their backlog to get it done next week. They’re very motivated and on top of things. They do a good job managing timelines and expectations. Some of the things we task them with are very complex. It’s natural that sometimes expectations have to be reset. It’s nothing against them. I revise my answer to say they match expectations.

What did you find most impressive about them?

There’s a lot of tech intelligence in our company. The people we employ aren’t just focused on the product itself. We’re grateful that they’re happy with that kind of relationship too. I really like the people I work with. It makes the work itself easier. They really get our business. It’s not that they learned about the intricacies of menswear. They really understood all the moving parts of the business. They know who within the business owns what and what they tend to be possessive about or who is very good with digital transformation. They know all these little nuances about us.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I can’t think of anything substantive. I really only have positive things to say about them.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

They really bring a fresh perspective. You should be willing to rethink business processes or your technical ecosystem. They’re probably going to come with very fresh ideas about how you could be doing things better or differently. They’re not a company that just does the work we give them. We see them as being a partner in every respect. We can bat around ideas and validate things. Sometimes, they come back with a better understanding or sometimes we have to explain it to them and then they agree to do it. You’re going to get competency, as well as a lot more.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the executive director for marketing at a medical center, working in the content and creative services. We develop all the content that is available for consumers and patients, along with photography, graphic design, and all the other aspects that go along with an in-house agency. 

What challenge were you trying to address with Myplanet?

We were trying to expand into voice services and make our content more accessible for the general community. We wanted to understand where voice services were going and how we could best apply it to our content. 

What was the scope of their involvement?

We had numerous ideation sessions to figure out where our sweet spot was for utilizing voice, in particular creating a Google Assistant action. They helped us figure out how to create something that adds value for our consumers and the community. We launched the voice product, so on a monthly basis we update the action and improve its responses. They’re also working on some other marketing projects. 

What is the team composition?

Around 5–6 people were initially supporting us. They tapped into different resources as needed throughout the project, so up to 11 people worked with us depending on the stage of the work. 

How did you come to work with Myplanet?

They came recommended to us by Google after we looked up the best companies. We interviewed them, along with other organizations, and they seemed to have the right cultural fit for us. 

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent at least $200,000. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in January 2019 and our engagement is ongoing.

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

Choosing them for our project was a great decision. Based on the analytics we’re tracking, we’re happy and it helps drive all of the work we do in the marketing department. 

How did Myplanet perform from a project management standpoint?

We track our engagement and analytics with our Google Assistant action, which we review on a biweekly basis. They’ve met every deadline and keep the project moving forward. Everything they’ve said they’d deliver, they have. Everything has been very good. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

The culture of their team and the way they work makes them stand out from others. They listen well and are responsive. They bring interesting ideas and a lot of useful perspectives for looking at problems. At the same, they made sure we were all working in the same direction and understood our needs. 

At times, we were wondering what direction we were going in but everything came together, so it was helpful that they challenged us to think differently. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

We’ve had a great experience and I really can’t think of anything for them to do better.  

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

As with any organization, make sure your cultures are a fit and spend some time with them. If you talk with them and get a feel for their organization, you’ll see their innovative perspective that works toward problem-solving. 

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CMO of a high-tech software company. We’re a hybrid cloud software data and analytics firm.

What challenge were you trying to address with Myplanet?

I hired Myplanet for rebranding projects for two separate companies. For the first, we needed our brand to represent our current strategy. We had 35 disparate digital platforms and no consistency between them, so we needed Myplanet to reposition our digital brand.

For the second project, we hired them to help evolve our platform and user experience.

What was the scope of their involvement?

To tackle our brand’s lack of consistency, Myplanet worked with our branding agency to develop a cohesive image for the business. Part of their approach included consolidating 35 platforms into a singular one that was more representative. They performed user testing and ensured the system was optimized for search engines. Myplanet also created a common user experience with a flexible design and added modular elements on Drupal to improve overall functionality.

For the second project with Myplanet, they evolved our platform to make it more searchable for users, enhanced features for an improved customer experience and simplified processes within the system. We provided them with our content and they structured the platform around it.

What is the team composition?

My main point of contact was Jason (Founder & CEO, Myplanet) and Erik (Chief Design Officer, Myplanet). They supplied a team of 15–20 people for the projects, depending on the resources needed for each stage.

How did you come to work with Myplanet?

Someone from my company had a connection with the Myplanet team so we trusted them with the work.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent a few million dollars on the two engagements.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together on the two projects from May 2014–May 2018.

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

There were immediate results from both projects. Our site traffic tripled in 3–6 months while our bounce rate decreased from 90% to 30%. Instead of receiving only 10% of our leads digitally, we now earn more than 50% through our improved platforms. Additionally, the overall time spent on the site increased.  Myplanet produced consistent results for both companies.

How did Myplanet perform from a project management standpoint?

They were a team of strong communicators and agile developers—we had a very open relationship. We had regular check-ins with their team and they always kept us updated on the progress. Within our contract, we agreed to be honest with each other and they practiced what they preached.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The diverse, seasoned set of experts they provided led me to use them for multiple projects. Although their user experience skills are impressive, their skilled team was the reason we continued to use them.

Are there any areas they could improve?

It’s very rare for me to work with a company twice, so that shows there’s nothing they could have done better.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

If you approach the project with clear, strong objectives for timelines and expectations, Myplanet can help you accomplish it. As long as communication is strong, the project should be straightforward.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the chief marketing officer at InfoVista, a global software company that sells in the 5G and SD-WAN space.

What challenge were you trying to address with Myplanet?

Our company acquires a variety of companies. We hired Myplanet to revamp our corporate website to portray our company as a unified brand. The previous site was outdated with an unattractive UX and looked like a bunch of websites cobbled together.

What was the scope of their involvement?

The engagement with Myplanet was collaborative. Their team researched our previous site, comparing it to our competitors and their site outlines. They ran various customer experience surveys to garner an idea of how users were finding our site and what they were clicking on. After that, we sat down together and outlined the feedback.

Myplanet recreated our website on Drupal. We had a solution driver webpage that they shortened down to a few key topics that fit best within the industry. Their team redesigned our resource library, making sure it was more user-friendly. Along with revamping every section of the platform, they held a content workshop where we went to their office and learned how to shift content away from technical speak to more information around pain points and benefits. We reviewed every step of the project before approval, using their interactive system.

What is the team composition?

Initially, we worked with a business development associate who worked out our contract. We mainly interacted with Ben (Director of Client Services, Myplanet), Shaunna (Product Strategy Lead, Myplanet), and Sudar (Interaction Designer, Myplanet). Shaunna assigned designers and content writers to the project.

How did you come to work with Myplanet?

My former boss lived in Canada and heard of Myplanet. When I joined, their team was part of the lineup. He chose between four or five companies.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked with Myplanet between March 2018–July 2018.

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

We’ve gotten a ton of positive feedback from industry influencers. It will take a few months to see a normalized view of the numbers, but early indications are excellent. We have about 15% of new visitors coming on and clicking through the site.

How did Myplanet perform from a project management standpoint?

Working with Myplanet was easily the best interaction I’ve had with a vendor. Shaunna managed the project fantastically. Sudar guided us throughout, figuring out what should be aligned a certain way. Their team explained processes clearly.

We worked with a small, but responsive and agile team. They challenged us, providing new ideas. Myplanet hit it out of the park. We communicated through their interactive platform where we saw designs and wireframes. They worked in sprints and held meetings after. They were readily accessible for phone calls.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Working with Myplanet is easy. Their team stands out from other vendors. They take on challenges and anything we have trouble with and piece it together. They were a partner. Since I was new to the role and company, it was nice to have a true extension of my team to work on this project.

Are there any areas they could improve?

There are none. We launched a new site where they redesigned about 90% of the content. I couldn’t be happier with Myplanet.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I would advise clients not to question the process. Trust their team, and they’ll take you through every stage. It’s important to meet each sprint. Make sure your side is appropriately staffed if you want quick work done.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the e-commerce manager of Trek America, which operates small group adventure road trips for people aged 18–38 across North and South America. We operate the trips ourselves, and we sell them directly via our website and via travel agents. We’ve been in business since 1972.

What challenge were you trying to address with Myplanet?

We were looking to completely redesign and rebuild our two existing websites. We had a traditional travel e-commerce website that included travel products and tour listings and allowed passengers to book their trips online. And then, about six years ago, we built a separate community website that integrated with social media and allowed users to meet other people who would be going on their trip. We hired Myplanet to combine the two websites and bring them onto one platform.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We asked Myplanet to do a full redesign and fully rebuild our two existing websites. Both of the websites were hosted on old platforms, and they weren’t mobile responsive nor had they been updated in about five years. Our target audience is people aged 18–26, so we needed a complete makeover. Our parent company had developed its own customized Drupal-based platform, so when Myplanet took on our project, they communicated with us about the brand and with our in-house developers to ensure that the website was built to our technical specs.

How did you come to work with Myplanet?

Our parent company had used Myplanet before on an ad hoc development basis to outsource some of the larger jobs they had on company websites. We had been pitching to various agencies, and then we contacted other companies in our business group for agency recommendations, and they recommended Myplanet, which had never done an entire rebuild for us. So we brought them in to do the pitch for the discovery, design, and build.

How much have you invested with Myplanet?

This information is confidential.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started to look for agencies in February 2016, and we signed with Myplanet in April 2016. We kicked off the project in late April. The new website went live at the end of October. We had a pretty aggressive and tight timeline. We’re currently working on a monthly retainer for upgrades.

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

If we look at the stats, we basically have had no issues with Myplanet since the project’s launch, and they definitely have exceeded the expectations of the management here. The website looks amazing, and it’s geared perfectly toward its target audience. It also looks great from a brand perspective. We’ve done UX testing across the website, and overall, all the users have had a positive experience. Because our old websites were outdated and not mobile responsive, we were suffering from increasing bounce rates. Also, the average time spent on the site was dropping as well. Since we’ve launched the new site, the bounce rate has dropped by 10%, and the average session duration has increased by 11%. Our main channel for traffic and business is organic search, and we’ve had superb results, with the bounce rate from organic search dropping by 17% and the average session duration increasing by 28%.

How did Myplanet perform from a project management standpoint?

The project management with Myplanet was really good. I’ve worked with a few agencies in the UK before, and Myplanet was by far the best of those agencies. We had weekly catch-up calls, and every two weeks we would assess the work that had been completed, and then plan out what had to be done for the next two weeks. I’ve found in the past that sometimes you have to manage the agency managing the project, but we didn’t find that to be the case with Myplanet. In that respect, I can't really fault them.

What did you find most impressive about Myplanet?

I think Myplanet understood our product, and they understood the goals and the challenges that we had from our first point of contact with them during the pitch. They seemed to understand us, the product, and the customers.

Are there any areas Myplanet could improve?

This is a tough one because they basically ticked all the boxes. There should always be something to improve on, but in this case, there isn’t anything that stands out that we can say, “Actually, it would have been an easier build or project if you had done X.”

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We are TUI Marine focusing on international travel. I am the e-commerce manager of the company.

What challenge were you trying to address with Myplanet?

We needed to develop a website.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Myplanet provided development for our in-house designs. It is a transactional website and it is being maintained by our internal SEO, design, and quality assurance teams. Myplanet provided great feedback around our UX designs, and let us know if the work could be completed based on our requirements, providing alternatives when needed.

How did you come to work with Myplanet?

Myplanet had a relationship with our sister company. It was decided by them that Myplanet should be kept as the sole company for software development so that the same best practices could be maintained.

How much have you invested with Myplanet?

The cost of Myplanet's software development work was around $200,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started our latest project with Myplanet in July 2016. The site was launched at the end of November. We had worked on 3 shorter projects with Myplanet prior to this, related to website functionality enhancements, as well as developing another informational website and a blog. We have an ongoing relationship with Myplanet.

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

We have seen an increase in the conversion rate and revenue for our e-commerce website, compared to the previous year. It has been a great success in this sense, and customers have been happy with our new design and site flow.

In the case of our previous enhancement project with Myplanet, we saw a conversions and traffic increase immediately.

How did Myplanet perform from a project management standpoint?

Different people in our company were initially in charge of the communication with Myplanet, so there were some discrepancies. Our company has multiple offices and project managers, which became a challenge during the development of the website.

We had daily standup meetings with Myplanet in order to communicate requirements and make sure that we were on the same page. Myplanet has been the best development company I've worked with. They're always on time, communicative, and good at providing options and alternatives, describing the positives and negatives of each one.

What did you find most impressive about Myplanet?

I felt that Myplanet's team was honest in telling us what they could accomplish. They were upfront in telling us that, although they could follow our requirements exactly, it would cost us more, but we could choose alternatives that would be more cost-effective, or could provide better results.

I overestimated our work, but Myplanet let us know, thus allowing us to accomplish more in the same period. This is pretty unusual for a development company, given that most other ones over-estimate, overcharge and under-deliver.

Are there any areas Myplanet could improve?

We've had some communication challenges related partly to our side. We communicated our goals, plans, and vision from different angles and departments. Myplanet was good at listening, but we still had some confusion and delays in our communication at times. Myplanet could suggest to us how we could maintain communication through a single channel or person, which could prove easier for clarifying our vision.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We are a leading provider of telephony solutions, as well as a platform for developers. We have a range of telecommunications services and unified communications solutions. We have been in business for over 20 years. I am the head of our demand generation organization and report to the Chief Marketing Officer.

What challenge were you trying to address with Myplanet?

Around 4 years ago, we acquired a company which became our initial cloud telephony operation. Because of the way in which the acquisition went, we needed to keep everything separate, with 2 distinct websites, 2 Salesforce instances, 2 marketing automation platforms, and so on. 2 years ago, we kicked off an initiative for consolidating those 2 enterprises into one. We went back to the beginning, merged our marketing automation platform, our Salesforce instances, and the websites. We had a very complicated challenge of not only putting 2 completely different CMSs [content management system] together, but we were looking at 2 different audiences for which there were different ways of speaking about the products, different buyers' journeys, and customer profiles. Having one website meant that we needed to meet all these demands, as well as create many functionalities which were non-existent at the time.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Myplanet put together a program which wasn't just design or development, but rather a holistic approach of looking at everything we needed to consider when creating a new website for a very established company.

Our web manager and developer both resigned right before our project with Myplanet kicked off, so we had no help at that time. Myplanet picked up a lot of the development which was supposed to be done in-house. 

We picked Drupal as a platform because of our need to have multiple countries, especially English-speaking ones, sharing one source of content. We use Pantheon as a cloud front.

How did you come to work with Myplanet?

We had a prior working relationship with Myplanet, so they were one of the companies we considered in the bidding process. Myplanet understood what we were trying to accomplish and came back with a comprehensive plan to help us. Not only did we need development support, but also a guide on how to get to a new unified vision. If it were an easy accomplishment, we would have done it 5 years previously, when we acquired the company.

How much have you invested with Myplanet?

The scope of our project kept increasing, and I'm not sure what the final price tag was.

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

We unveiled the work at our global partner conference in April 2016. Immediately after the site went up, we received some very positive feedback from industry analysts, partners, and employees. The site looked fresh, polished and clean, compared to the old version. That one was boring and made us look like an old, stuffy company, even though we weren't. Our cloud offering made us look like a young, scrappy startup. It had a lot of animation and cartoon-style graphics, and that's not who we were either. Having an in-between vision was a breath of fresh air for many people.

It took us a while to get our feet back under it, given that it was such a massive shift. We were using Clickability and WordPress with the old sites. The Clickability page had the most traffic, while the other one had the most equity regarding organic results for the things we cared most about. After the migration, when everything needed to redirect to the new domain, it was painful. We had to recover a lot of organic traffic, but we had a very solid platform. From the outside, it was great, looked good, and showed us good conversion metrics, but it's also a solid site at its core. We've gotten good feedback from some of our consultants, including our SEO [search engine optimization] and paid search agencies.

How did Myplanet perform from a project management standpoint?

I want to have t-shirts made saying "I love Myplanet." They were great, and helped us with every step of the way, even though it wasn't easy. Myplanet was good at putting things in context, allowing us to make decisions. It can be hard to know what impact something will have, especially for a non-technical person. I've had to make decisions based on what I thought at the time, and those decisions will often be financially-motivated. I would have to choose between an option which was cool and easy-to-use but cost $1,000, or one which was completely manual and a pain, but free.

We're a funny-sized company: we're an enterprise with a need for a solid infrastructure, but we also don't have a huge size. A 40,000-employee organization would require a completely different level of CMS, for example. Trying to build something which would be big and strong enough to allow us room for growth, and remain stable during this process, from traffic and content perspectives, as well as offer us a reporting infrastructure, is a pretty tall order. The middle ground is not easy to find. Myplanet was very helpful in going through this process with us, and we trusted what they told us.

I work for our CMO [Chief Marketing Officer], who was monitoring this process directly. The fact that Myplanet understood how to work with executives was helpful. Sometimes, nothing's more dangerous than the big reveal, because we never know what we're going to see. If the board doesn't like it, it will be a problem. Myplanet was very responsive in not doing that, and making sure that, for every step of the way, we'd have regular check-ins, and got approval from everyone for things which weren't changeable, and required decisions on the same day. Keeping us on-task was important because, while we were undertaking the website project, we were also merging 2 instances of Salesforce, 2 instances of HubSpot, and planning a global partner conference for 1,500 people.

What did you find most impressive about Myplanet?

Myplanet has understood the marriage of design and function. A site which drives conversions and which works for a business is more important than simply a good-looking one. Coming from the demand generation department, I see web leads as an essential factor, so I may be biased. When talking with Myplanet, we went through how everyone else did the same work, and how users were looking for information. We received non-biased feedback on how we could build a website which was best-in-class and would achieve the results required, instead of just being fancy.

Are there any areas Myplanet could improve?

We had massive scope creep, but this was our issue more than Myplanet's. I wasn't a part of the scoping discussions, so I couldn't say for sure. 

Please describe your organization.

Sunsail is one of the largest yacht charter companies in the world. We have bare-boat offering, which means that clients sail the boats themselves, skipper holidays, including an onboard skipper, as well as flotilla holidays, which come with a lead crew that attends to the customers. We also offer sailing courses, as well as events management for corporate entities.

What is your position?

I am the global general manager of the company.

What business challenge were you trying to address with Myplanet?

We had a very bad website, which ran on an unsupported platform. The challenge was making a new site on a supported, responsive platform. It needed to be content-rich, non-transactional, and able to be rolled out as a template to our other global domains.

Please describe the scope of their involvement in greater detail.

Myplanet helped us develop our website and implement it within a certain budget and timeframe. The platforms we used are IBM Domino and Drupal 7. We needed a multilingual, multi-currency solution, which is why we made this choice.

How did you come to work with Myplanet?

We came across Myplanet accidentally. Our parent company owns another company called Myplanet. One of us contacted the other in order to make sure that we wouldn't be treading on the other's domain names, or anything of the sort. A relationship sprung up and we came to use Myplanet for another part of our business. They proved to be very good, so we also came to use Myplanet.

Could you provide a sense of the size of this initiative in financial terms?

This is confidential. I can say that Myplanet was on-budget and on-time.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started our project with Myplanet in June 2015. It was completed at the beginning of November. We have an ongoing relationship. Myplanet is working on 2 other websites for a sister company. Myplanet will resume the work with us in order to make our website transactional and roll it out to other domains.

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

I have nothing but the highest respect for Myplanet. They listened, worked with our teams and guided them, and were consistently logical.

How did Myplanet perform from a project management standpoint?

There were some stressful moments, but our project manager from Myplanet helped us keep the work on-time and on-budget. We managed the project alongside Myplanet and had a fantastic, collaborative experience.

What distinguishes Myplanet from other providers?

I appreciated Myplanet's organizational skills and their ability to rationalize, putting logical steps in place. Myplanet helped us develop a content management system which could be operated by anyone.

Is there anything Myplanet could have improved or done differently?

Myplanet's services could have been cheaper, but they were worth every penny. In every other respect, Myplanet was on-point. We always had conversations about what could be done, which came down to time and money.

Please describe your organization.

Accessible Media Inc. is a non-profit organization based in Canada. We work as a digital broadcaster, operating 2 television stations, an audio service, as well as French and English websites. We serve the blind and lower-vision community in Canada.

What is your position?

I am the Director of Digital Strategy for the company.

What business challenge were you trying to address with Myplanet?

We had been tasked with upgrading our website. The page at the time had been running for about 3 years, and it wasn't a very robust or flexible platform. It was based on SharePoint and didn't really respond to our audience's needs in terms of an online experience. We had very low traffic and a high bounce rate, being unable to feature content online. At the same time, our audience was starting to tell us that they were consuming more and more content online, in a social media format. We weren't able to keep up with this demand, so we decided to go through a full redesign. We had a one-year strategy setting period, figuring out accessibility for the site, developing wireframes, a content strategy, and an internal digital capability.

Please describe the scope of their involvement in greater detail.

The design of the website had already been done by a different partner. We handed Myplanet fully-developed functional specifications and designs. Myplanet handled all aspects of the hard coding, development, and testing for the site. They proposed using Drupal, which we were also interested in. Myplanet recommended the 8th version of the platform, which was just being released at the time.

How did you come to work with Myplanet?

At the end of 2015, we went through a request for proposal process, selecting Myplanet for our development process. We scanned the local environment, looking for companies that could understand who we are. They needed to have a good sense of the broadcasting landscape, and also understand non-profits. We are unusual in the sense that we work within both of those environments. With Myplanet, the fact that they deeply understood the blind and low-vision community, stood out to us. Myplanet's lead developer is a member of that community, which enabled us to translate wireframes and what we were trying to do.

Could you provide a sense of the size of this initiative in financial terms?

The total development cost with Myplanet was in the range of $175,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

The development phase was kicked-off at the end of November, 2015. The website has been launched, but we are continuing to work with Myplanet on further refinements.

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

We've only reached a month past the release of the project, so we're still gathering comparative metrics. In general, we've seen much more traffic to the site and a lower bounce rate. Our bounce rates were hovering around the 60% mark, depending on the page. They've now been basically slashed in half. There is a lot more engagement on the site and more flexibility in terms of the type of content that we can host. We have much more video and short-form content that our users love to consume and share. There is a lot of positive feed-back for the site. People have found it to be much easier to navigate and visually more interesting, which may sound ironic, given that it's a website for the blind.

How did Myplanet perform from a project management standpoint?

Myplanet is very deadline-driven. We haven't had any issues in terms of staying on time and within budget. Both sides of the project felt that there should have been more time factored into it because of our use of Drupal 8. Myplanet has a deep understanding of Drupal, but because that new version was so very new, there were some unexpected things which we came up against. There was the added complication of making the site fully-accessible, which can be difficult to pull off if someone is not completely familiar with the CMS [content management system]. This isn't really negative feed-back for Myplanet. We both learned from the experience.

What distinguishes Myplanet from other providers?

I loved the way in which Myplanet approached the development. They are an Agile company, which can be an uncomfortable thing for an organization which isn't used to it. Working with Myplanet was an easy and pleasant experience. We never felt uncomfortable, and they appreciated that we could make quick decisions because of the work we'd done previously. It was a mutually-pleasant experience with little friction, even though releasing a website can be a high-pressure engagement.

On the personal side, Myplanet had a lot of empathy for what we were trying to do. They felt and understood the mission we had for the site. Myplanet worked with us during the usability testing phase which, when dealing with users with vision impairment, cannot be done in a standard way. We had to invite people on-site or have telephone testing. Myplanet understood this and worked with us.

Is there anything Myplanet could have improved or done differently?

We all thought that more communication in the early stages would have been a good thing. We had an Agile process by which we moved quickly in order to produce code. We should have had a 2-week pause in order to have more conversations, set expectations, and clarify what the roles around the table were. It took us a bit longer to get up to speed, but we got there.