Technology as it happens
Established in January 2005, Neev is an Outsourced Product and Application Development Company that helps companies around the world architect, develop and deploy applications on the Cloud, accessible on Web and Mobile platforms. Acquired by the Publicis Groupe in April 2013, Neev Technologies is now part of Razorfish. Neev leverages emerging technologies and works on robust, industry standard mostly open source platforms. Whether it is a high performance, always available customer facing product e.g. an online store, a sales force enabling mobile application or architecting a cloud setup to optimally support and grow with your business – Neev makes it happen.
An ISO 9001-2008 certified organization with two development centers in India, Neev has handled over 200 projects with scalability and Agile development being the cornerstones of its project execution.
headquarters
other locations
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Office No. 4 & 5, 2nd floor, L-Square, Plot No. 8, Sanghvi Nagar, AundhPune, MH 411007India
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Performance Optimization and Mitigation of Security Risks through Website Re-engineering
Neev revamped a slow, underperforming eCommerce site facing severe outages and security risks. This impacted traffic to the site and also the volume of sales of the client. Neev re-engineered the client’s portal into one that has helped garner revenues of at least $50,000 on weekends.
The client’s eCommerce site had performance and security issues causing delays and outages that impacted sales and traffic. Also, shipping computations like estimated delivery date with FedEx API integration, implementation of promotions and use of promo code had to be incorporated.
Neev carried out the requirement analysis, project management, development and testing phases. Inbuilt design patterns that exist in .NET framework were utilized. User experience and usability were greatly improved. Integration was handled via web services. Stored procedures were used to process the data in the backend and XML files were used for bulk data exporting. For effective exception handling, NHibernate was replaced with ADO.NET and LINQ in some key areas like that of order processing.
The site was modified for optimum performance. This included code revamps in key areas and prevention of DDOS attacks through migration to Cloud for increased performance and security. These changes resulted in minimal delays and outages translating to increased sales and traffic.
Read more here.
A Cloud-based Online Video Editing Platform and Marketplace
Neev developed a cloud-based online video editing platform for Tubifi Inc. that brings down the cost of creating video ads by more than 90%. The platform integrates with stock footage vendors and creates a virtual marketplace for ad-consumers, video stock providers and ad-creators.
To develop a SaaS based video compiling and editing platform that can integrate with video stock footage providers and bring together ad-consumers, stock footage vendors and ad-creators. The client approached Neev Technologies to design and develop a functional MVP (Minimum Viable Product) to acquire investors, do a quick launch to gather a user base and then add more features.
Neev Technologies developed a video editor on a browser wherein users can search content from multiple stock footage vendors and use relevant footages in their compositions.The solution separated the video transcoding and stock footage download from the video editor - Stock purchase requests were queued in Amazon SQS andexecuted in the back-end so that downloads can be optimized for traffic and bandwidth usage, while the user need not be online.A dedicated team of architects, developers, quality analysts, and performance engineering experts used a scrum-based Agile process to deliver a successful product in a relatively short time frame.
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Building a light-weight Video Streaming Portal
Neev designed, developed and deployed a fully scalable cloud-based application that could support heavy traffic, typical of a video content streaming portal.
Apalya wanted to create a new product myplex.tv (my own multiplex) and position it as the “Next Gen Netflix of India”. It was meant to be a platform where various content providers would upload their content which would then be transformed to a format that would facilitate streaming.
Neev designed and built a scalable solution on top of Amazon cloud. With a web-based front-end and a mobile application for mobile access, this was a true web-mobile-cloud integration. The solution provided cost savings with the help of cloud and also speeded up video transcoding - launching new machines and doing transcoding in parallel whenever computing power was needed for streaming.
Video streaming was done using Wowza streaming server and Amazon Cloudfront. The solution also integrated an Ad server which provided the ability to introduce ads before, after or during the streaming.
Read more here.
A Magento-Based Ecommerce Store for a Leading Fashion and Lifestyle Brand
Neev developed an eCommerce store for a leading fashion and lifestyle retail brand in India – the first eCommerce site for the brand thus enabling the client to garner increased revenues through online sales. The store is built on Magento Community Edition and uses a custom Magento theme . Citrus payment gateway is used to enable purchases using a variety of options like credit card, debit card, net banking and also through the cash-on-delivery (COD). Neev built the store in a duration of two weeks.
The client’s primary requirement was a robust payment gateway that would provide customers with a variety of purchasing options. Provogue also needed the order data in a customized format and required the store to have superior performance and a less cumbersome check-out process.
With Neev’s vast expertise in building eCommerce stores using Magento, Magento was the tool of choice for Provogue’s first eCommerce store. Magento Community Edition Ver 1.7 was chosen as the client required only the basic features of Magento. In line with initial estimates, the store was setup in a matter of just two weeks. MVC design patterns were used. PHP framework was used to develop the store and integrated in the backend with MySQL DB.
Read more here.
An iPad-based B2B Sales Management Application
Neev developed an iPad-based application for a client that connects the sales team of fashion and lifestyle businesses with retailers who make wholesale purchases. The application acts as an on-the-go marketplace through which sales personnel can download and share collections, suggest orders and receive and submit orders even when offline. Retailers can browse, edit and approve orders by simply signing on an iPad.
The client required an application that enables the sales team of leading fashion and lifestyle businesses sell to retailers in bulk easily, quickly and effectively.
The application was required to enable buyers to receive collections, browse through suggested buys and place orders for wholesale purchases on-the-go or at tradeshows.
Neev built an iPad application that forms a bridge between retailers and sales personnel. The application automatically downloads the collections whenever the device is online. The application could also work offline. While it enables sales personnel to conveniently serve retailers and to close a sale, it enables retailers to browse through collections, receive suggestions and place orders at the comfort of their homes or shops or at tradeshows.
Neev used the iOS 6 SDK for developing the application. The application was developed using SQL-Lite. We used Crashlytics for superior crash reporting and Flurry for onboard analytics. FMDB was used for data storage.
Read more here.
Building a Cloud-based Social Networking Platform Using Ruby on Rails
Neev built a cloud-based web application that has emerged as one of the world’s largest social networking platforms for social entrepreneurs to connect, discuss, share, innovate and help each other. Catering to a global audience, the application supports 12 languages. The social platform has an in-built search feature that allows any profile or discussion to be searched based on tags, relevance, type of activity, etc.
Even though Ashoka had over 3000 social entrepreneurs as fellows across the globe, it was observed that these social entrepreneurs were often functioning individually and much below their highest potential. There was a need to connect all these entrepreneurs and enable them to help each other rather than Ashoka being the sole source of help for them. Thus emerged the requirement for a platform that enables social entrepreneurs to get on board, connect, interact, share and discuss their ideas, innovations, news, ask doubts, provide solutions and help each other.
Neev developed a RoR based application, which is hosted on Heroku platform available for all social entrepreneurs. The whole application was built in less than 4 months using an Agile methodology. As the social entrepreneurs are from across the world the application is multilingual and supports 12 languages to start with.
Read more here.
Building an e-Commerce Portal for Designing and Purchasing Diamond Jewelry
Neev developed 16Diamonds.com, a diamond jewelry store dealing with an unusually large number of SKUs and providing a very engaging user experience - offering a plethora of options to customize jewelry online.
The client wanted a Magento-based online store where customers could view and design their jewelry from the necessary components made available by registered vendors. The site would enable the customer to sort, search and customize jewelry items in a user-friendly interface. The client also wanted to update a daily inventory of 15000 SKUs through a .CSV file in less than 30 mins.
Neev used Magento Community Edition for building this e-commerce store. Neev managed the entire Software Development Life Cycle including server management and documentation. A custom script was written for uploading inventory as opposed to the default module in Magento which led to considerable performance optimization. ‘One Step Checkout Pro’ and ‘Sales Representative Commission Manager’ were the two Magento extensions used in the project.
Read more here.
A Web-based Twitter Monitoring and Analytics Tool Helping Businesses Improve Efficiency
Neev designed and developed a web application that lets the client’s customers monitor tweets and generate valuable insights. Neev also supports and maintains the system. The application helps businesses know their influence on Twitter and enables them to react to positive/negative tweets quickly. This application is helpful in identifying customer dissatisfaction, consumer perception of a product, for brand management and in various other ways.
The Twitter research and strategy application offers customers a view of trends. It uses advanced mathematical models, extensive text mining, sentiment analysis and data analysis to provide actionable insights and solutions. The application lets the client’s customers organize relevant tweets based on geography, experience, competition, author, keywords, number of tweets, etc. Over 300 of the Fortune 500 companies have signed up for this service.
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Online Video Based Learning Management System (LMS)
Neev created a full-fledged LMS that helped Apollo Munich train its large number of insurance advisors distributed across the country efficiently and cost-effectively. The video-based LMS with video streaming capability viewable across PCs and Tablets, provided a better learning experience to the advisors and helped them learn quickly and easily. This helped Apollo Munich ramp up their advisor teams quickly based on market demand.
Apollo Munich required a tool to train their large base of insurance advisors effectively and quickly and thus provide the flexibility to ramp up advisor teams as per market demand. The tool would be viewable across desktops, laptops and tablets and be accessible over low bandwidth internet connections.
Neev built a custom Learning Management system (LMS) called iLead using Drupal 6 and AWS. Drupal Customization, Video encoding and streaming was done via VASOP. The solution was optimized for portable devices like tablets and for smooth streaming over low bandwidth Internet connections. Flow Player was used for Video streaming. A Custom Reporting Tool was also built on Drupal.
Read more here.
Building a Custom SDK on iOS for Social Gaming,with Customizable Leaderboards by Location
Neev developed a custom SDK for the iOS platform named Appucino that enables game developers offer their game on a social gaming platform.This is achieved through a simple integration of the SDK onto their gaming applications. It lets gamers compete for ranks in real world locations through a location-specific leader board, create user profiles and chat with eachother.For the game developers, it enhances user engagement, brings new gamers to their app and also gives an opportunity to increase their revenues.
The client Games2Win wanted to build a social gaming platform for mobile gamers on the iOS platform that would incorporate certain features of social gaming into existing games. With the help of this platform, game developers canadd location-based customizable leaderboards, chat and user profiles to their gaming applications.
To implement the social gaming platform, Neev built a custom SDK for iOS that could be integrated into any gaming application with the addition of just five lines of code. This enables game developers to integrate the SDK into their applications easily and quickly. Once successfully integrated, they are required to submit the game for publishing on Appucino. A game developer can login into their Appucino developer account and view all the games submitted by him/her on their dashboard. Appucino makes use of the Google Maps library to enable gamers to compete for ranks by real world locations.
Read more here.
An iPad-based Data Visualization App
Neev developed an app to visualize data logged from calls handled by the client on behalf of their customers. This would then be sent to customers’ management team to improve their decision making process. Neev handled the UI/UX Design, Development and Testing of the App.
The client had to handle a large volume of calls on a daily basis, many of which were not being analyzed accurately. The management teams of many of their customers wanted more details about the calls being handled. They wanted to know about the geographical distribution of the callers, demographics and the specific enquiries made during the call. Making this information available to the management would enable them to take informed decisions. The data, which was previously available only after one month was required to be made available on a daily basis. To ensure security of customer data, each customer is to receive only the data which is specific to the process outsourced by them. The App had to be lightweight and designed for iOS, providing for easy and visually pleasing access on the iPad.
An easily understandable overview of the data logged during the calls is provided. Most of the data is represented graphically. For instance, if the software is to represent the geographical distribution of the callers it would even classify the areas as urban/rural etc.
Neev built the entire graphical framework from the ground up, using JavaScript.
Read more here.
An iPad-based IT Infrastructure Performance Visualization Tool for CIOs
Neev created a data visualization application for infrastructure monitoring for use on iPads. This tool was created for CIOs of client’s customers who avail the client’s IT infrastructure services. The application gives such busy executives a summary view of the performance metrics of their IT infrastructure in the form of infographics. This not only saves time for the CIOs but also helps the client serve its customers better.
Omnitech provides IT infrastructure services to businesses all over the globe. In order to provide greater clarity and transparency, Omnitech wanted to develop an application that would enable the CIOs of its customers to have a quick, overall view of the performance of IT infrastructure managed by Omnitech, on-the-go. The application was required to load fast, be user-friendly and work like a native application.
Neev ideated, conceptualized, designed and developed a data visualization application for iPads for use by CIOs of Omnitech’s customers. The application was developed by understanding the various metrics and parameters to evaluate performance of IT infrastructure services and creating a data visualization model of the same. The application summarizes various performance metrics data offered by Omnitech and displays them in the form of infographics. Custom widgets were created to build the infographics and represent graphical data based on the metrics available.
Read more here.
An iPad-based Stock Market Data Visualization App
Infocast is Hong Kong’s biggest financial information services company with customers spread across ASEAN.
Neev developed Orbiter, an iPad application that displays in real-time the Hong Kong Stock Market information, with over 1000 stocks, in a visual manner that resembles the planetary system. The application provides a rich graphical UI that empowers traders with concise and easy-to-use information.
Infocast needed a crisp, visual way of depicting complex data sets of real-time stock prices. The information was to be shown in a planetary model with the Hang Seng Index as the Sun. The stocks would be represented by planets and the orbits would indicate the percentage change in stock value.
In order to provide a high-quality user experience without compromising on application performance, Neev integrated OpenGL ES framework for graphics with native iPhone framework. The graphics module, which supports over 1000 stocks and works independently, greatly accentuates the user experience. Neev also enabled traders to easily access information about a particular stock through search and direct touch. A watch list was provided to personalize the stock information, making the application a one-stop shop for all trade-related information on the Hang Sang Index. The information can also be viewed in multiple languages. Presently an option of English or Mandarin Language is provided.
Read more here.
Real-time Order Management through mobile devices
Neev transformed a slow, paper-based order-taking process for Hershey’s Mexico (www.hersheys.com) into a quick and easy mobile based system which drastically improved the productivity of field salesmen and made the order management process highly responsive and efficient.
The Hershey Company is the largest chocolate manufacturer in North America. Hershey's products are sold worldwide. Neev delivered an innovative mobile-based solution for Hershey’s Mexico.
In Hershey’s Mexico, sales people used to collect orders for new sales on paper. This led to a long turnaround time. Besides, sales people could not carry laptops as there was a high risk of laptops getting stolen. Most stores in Mexico did not allow sales people to enter their stores with laptops. Hershey’s needed a mobile application for taking and tracking orders that would run perfectly on Blackberry and iPhone devices.
The solution had the core features of a web-based order management system that could run perfectly on Blackberry and iPhone browsers. Neev developed the UI for the mobile website. The application was programmed to interact with SAP backend through a wrapper. Neev used simulators and real mobile devices to run an extensive set of tests on the mobile website.
Read more here.
A High Traffic E-Commerce Showcase Portal for a Mega Sale Event
GOSF was a unique event launched by Google India. A mega online sale event, the first of its kind in India, held on 12 Dec 2012 or 12.12.12, with a traffic expectation of over 15 million in a single day.
Neev provided an unconventional solution for Google India by creating a unique Zero server architecture that is capable of handling high traffic and is responsive and also loads fast at the same time.
Google India was looking at launching an exclusive 24 hours online shopping festival wherein over 90 eCommerce ventures would offer various deals to its consumers. With a traffic expectation of over 15 million in a single day, the website was required to handle unprecedented loads without any downtime.
Neev’s technology team created a unique Zero Server architecture, the underlying concept being that if there are no servers, there is no question of them failing. The thought of by-passing the database and the Web servers was a radical move. The entire site was replicated across CDN servers, which meant that in the event of a server crash or the AZ going down, the site would continue to be live.
The Zero Server Architecture led to significant savings in hosting charges. Cost effective CDN from Amazon ensures that the cloud bills were low. It did away with the need of a database server and a web server, there by significantly reducing the support cost and maintenance costs for monitoring the servers and backing up the data.
Read more here.
Reviews
the project
Magento Implementation for E-Learning Firm
"They were very eager to meet our requirements and collaborative in how they wanted to come to a solution."
the reviewer
the review
A Clutch analyst personally interviewed this client over the phone. Below is an edited transcript.
Please describe your organization.
We provide online education to pre-kindergarten through to age twelve students, across the United States and internationally, through both public and private schools.
What is your position?
I was the product manager for the consumer line.
What business challenge were you trying to address with Neev Information Technologies?
My department is focused on homeschoolers, and people who need some sort of supplemental education to whatever fulltime program they're currently enrolled in, whether it be public, private, homeschooling, or otherwise.
As a way to reach this audience, we have an e-commerce site that we use to promote and sell individual courses and materials. The one that we had at the time was pretty outdated. It was built roughly eight years ago and we hadn't done a lot of development on it. We hired Neev to help us update the overall e-commerce and shopping experience on it.
Please describe the scope of their involvement.
They designed all the visuals and also migrated the content of the previous site. We worked pretty quickly with them in order to move our entire catalogue over to the new Magento site. They did a fantastic job in helping us move over a lot of content and established a very beautiful shopping experience that has made the customer a lot more educated upfront about what they're actually purchasing; all within a very quick timeline. It certainly has had a positive impact on our company.
I think there were a very low number of developers assigned to our project. I worked with only one or two people on a daily basis. There were a few others involved in the background, either directly with me, or subcontracted. Given the scope of all that we did, I'm guessing that there were three to five developers.
We did some level of quality assurance [QA] with them. Unfortunately, I don't have a big team: there's myself, and a few people in the marketing department that support the consumer business side part-time. The consumer practice generates about 6 million of a 900 million dollar business. We're pretty tiny by comparison. Only about 30% of that comes through e-commerce.
For the migration process, I essentially gave them an Excel document that had all of our courses and product descriptions, durations, metadata, and so on, that they could upload into Magento. The migration was pretty simple, but in the process, some formatting got kind of wonky. We could have done a lot more in terms of external QA and consistency across the course descriptions. For example: some might have had a bold heading, and some not; inconsistent bullets, etc. We had a very short timeframe, so that was good enough for us. If we had more time we would have been able to correct those items before launch.
How did you come to work with Neev Information Technologies?
On our old site, we were using Drupal; our entire solution was proprietary. We made an internal decision to switch to Magento. Prior to engaging with Neev, we had gone through a cost and capabilities process, and worked with the likes of Oracle and about a dozen others. We found that we really liked the flexibility that Magento offered. At the time, we engaged some US-based groups, but couldn't get the funding together, so we ended up stalling for about a year. We picked it up again after coming across a review board for Magento. I think Neev had a gold or silver star rating.
Could you provide a sense of the size of this initiative in financial terms?
We spent about $100,000 for the project.
What is the status of this engagement?
Since completing the project, we've continued the relationship. We essentially built an e-commerce site that didn't have e-commerce functionality, due to limited funding. What we had at the time was a beautiful website that educated the customer upfront, but didn't actually allow them to purchase anything. Lo and behold, people didn't actually buy stuff. We were able to prove our case, in that the site is better, but now we needed more time and money for building the e-commerce portion. That started two weeks ago, and we will be investing a further $90,000 to give it credit card functionality, and throw in some more bells and whistles like reviews and such.
Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?
We didn't do a lot of user testing. Again, it was funding related. We tested internally, using my team, the team from the private tuition department, operations, systems, marketing, school services, etc. We had a few people try it out and the feedback was very positive. The user experience is a lot more intuitive, the branding was more aligned with our main website, there's a lot more information upfront, and it was easier to navigate. Aside from not being able to process credit cards, it certainly matched what most people think of when they envision an e-commerce site. What we had before was woefully outdated. This is more in-line with industry standards.
How did Neev Information Technologies perform from a project management standpoint?
They provided us with direct access to Redmine. We used their tool for project management issues, task delegation, progress tracking and resolution. They always managed to deliver on time, usually before the due date, and certainly within budget.
What distinguishes Neev Information Technologies from other providers?
I haven't worked with many other e-commerce vendors. They were very eager to meet our requirements and collaborative in how they wanted to come to a solution.
Is there anything Neev Information Technologies could have improved or done differently?
We mostly communicated through Skype. On occasion it would not work; overall I found connectivity wasn't always what it needed to be. I found that the way we held meetings, on occasion, was not the best: it was me on one side of the phone, and a bunch of people on their end, using Skype (which is already questionable connectivity-wise). We would lose calls sometimes, or there would be static. Many people in a room with an echo and a single person on the other end was not ideal communication, but it was the best we had.
In some ways, I would have wanted them to be more prescriptive. It's a tricky line, as a client dealing with vendors. You need a website, or e-commerce site, and have certain expectations, but you don't understand the technology being used to build it. I have no scope of the cost of building a recommendation engine, or a product detail gallery. If I don't know the capabilities of Magento, it's hard to know what to ask for. I found that, on occasion, they went too far in saying they can offer whatever we want. We can't afford everything we want, so it was frustrating to have them propose solutions that weren’t within our price range.
Other times, they let the functionality hold them back: they tried to remain too true to the Magento way of doing things, avoiding the effort needed sometimes to comply with our specific requirements. For example: pricing, in our business, is different from most companies. Instead of charging for a single course, we could sell it with a payment plan. This is done in the back-end, because we're not optimized for consumers yet. This pricing approach would get us some push-back from Neev, and some other vendors, because of its complexity. We wanted to keep it as it is, rather than simplifying it.
I do think that there was some miscommunication on the threshold of quality. For example, one of our requirements for this site was the search capability. I should be able to search for 'math', and have math courses pop up. The approach that they had proposed, and the only one that we could afford, was to retrieve every course which included the word 'math’, 'The History of Math', for example. Because of the broadness of the search terms, it turned into an unusable feature. I found that that was one area where we had no more time to improve, due to our constraints. It was a combination of me not knowing well enough how to establish requirements, and them not being more upfront with what they planned to deliver. There were a few instances of that occurring, but, overall, it was a good experience.
I wanted to be a bit more flexible with what we were trying to accomplish, and they were somewhat resistant. Overall, they were very accessible and knowledgeable. They gave us more or less good guidance on how to accomplish our goals.
the project
Magento Site Migration Large-scale Wholesaler
"They were able to leverage their deep platform knowledge to our benefit, and we weren’t expecting to have that happen."
the reviewer
the review
A Clutch analyst personally interviewed this client over the phone. Below is an edited transcript.
Could you provide a brief description of your organization?
I work for a 65-year old wholesale distribution company, selling to the laundry and dry cleaning industries.
What is your position?
I’m the chief executive officer.
Could you describe the business challenges you were attempting to address when you first approached Neev Information Technologies
We needed to have our Magento platform migrated to an AWS [Amazon Web Services] hosting service, but we didn’t have the necessary technical expertise to perform the migration in-house. We knew we needed to find someone that had the experience and know-how.
Could you describe the scope of work in greater detail?
It was really moving our entire Magento platform and database search, from an existing hosting provider to Amazon, as well as getting all of the security elements in place, backups, and monitoring of the site performance. It led to a lot more Amazon-related work, too. There was some considerable data preparation and conversion involved, along with some custom backend development, configuration, and testing.
How did you select Neev Information Technologies as your solution partner?
I did a lot of Web searching, reading of some industry blogs, and things like that. Their name and their site came up for what I was looking for on several occasions. I decided to investigate their offerings further [and] their previous work. Their site seemed to indicate that they had some extensive experience working on site migrations, so I decided to give them a ring. I was pretty impressed with that they had to offer and based my decision on that.
Could you provide a general cost estimate for this particular project?
We spent about $15,000.
When was the last project completed?
The project was completed in June of 2014.
In terms of results, could you share any statistics, metrics, or user feedback that would demonstrate the effectiveness of their work?
I don’t have any specific metrics or figures to share. Our site has been up, problem-free. The search function works far better than it did beforehand, just by separating our solar search engine from our database engine. They knew enough about that, especially on the Magento side, to optimize performance for us. Before it was just a hosting environment, period. They were able to leverage their deep platform knowledge to our benefit, and we weren’t expecting to have that happen. It was a pleasant surprise.
When working with Neev Information Technologies, is there anything you’d consider unique about their approach or development methodology that distinguishes them from other vendors?
Nothing so unique now. From my perspective, they’re very responsive with regards to their relative distance and time zone differences. We had some initial hesitance and unease about using an offshore provider, especially because of cultural differences in workflow [and] project management, but also with regard to timing and consistency. We haven’t experienced problems with any of those things.
In retrospect, are there areas in which you think they could improve as a service provider?
No. They’re good at what they do from a technical side. I think a lot of companies want to do everything: Design, technical, creative, strategy, and more. But, Neev Technologies know what their strengths are. We told them from the outset that we have another company we work with on the design side, and they’re not trying to take that business away. I respect that. They know what they’re good at, and they’re sticking to it.
the project
MVP Development Education Management Startup
"Our initial experience was that they were quite approachable and accommodating."
the reviewer
the review
A Clutch analyst personally interviewed this client over the phone. Below is an edited transcript.
Could you briefly describe your organization?
I work for an online educational startup. We’re only about a year old. We provide alternative education for skills that are in demand. We focus on data, data analytics, ecommerce, and the 21st century skills that are required in the workplace today. We conduct these courses that result in certificates for the students.
What is your position?
I’m the vice president of technology. I’m responsible for the strategy of technology and the products that we have.
Could you describe the business challenges you were attempting to address when you first approached Neev Information Technologies?
When we first approached Neev Technologies, we had only three or four of us with the founding team. We did not have anyone else working for us on a full-time basis. That’s when realized we’d need our own platform to deliver our courses and we couldn’t build this ourselves. We looked at the results and figured out Neev could meet our needs. The challenge was then to build a learning management platform. We wanted a solution partner that could potentially take control of delivering it. Our original intent was that they would be a trusted advisor and a technology partner for us.
Could you describe the work in greater detail?
Our contract with them was to develop the MVP: A multilevel product of a platform. The contract was really to design and develop our technology platform. Because we did not have our own technology team, we looked to them for technology expertise that would move us from conceptualizing the product to designing the product to delivering the product in the acceptable manner.
How did you select Neev Information Technologies as your solution partner?
It was through some business contacts we had at the time. A close business associate of ours had used Neev Technologies in the past and recommended that we investigate their offerings. We did so and decided they’d be good to contact. We felt confident in their capabilities after speaking with them about their previous work and how they’d approach our own project.
Could you provide a general cost estimate for this project?
We spent between $60,000 to $80,000.
When was this project completed?
It was finished at the end of May [of 2014].
In terms of results, could you share any statistics, metrics, or user feedback that would demonstrate the effectiveness of their work?
Not yet as we’re just launching the product. The project started sometime in November and then went onto until the end of May. We’re launching the product right now. The initial feedback on the product is that it doesn’t look too great, especially in the U.S., people are telling us that it looks OK; nothing great. We have received some positive feedback regarding the functionality of the solution, which is nice, but the visual part could have been done better.
When working with Neev Information Technologies, is there anything you’d consider unique about their approach or development methodology that distinguish them from other vendors?
I think they’re really approachable folks. Our initial experience was that they were quite approachable and accommodating.
In retrospect, are there areas in which you think Neev Technologies could improve as a service provider?
Neev could have played a greater role in the end-to-end delivery of the product. The version that was produced at the end of the engagement was not what we had originally expected, although it was working fine. As a startup, we were looking at Neev to play a customer advisory role but that was lacking. They have a solid organization, and we know they have the capabilities to deliver.
Despite the inability to process credit cards, the website received positive feedback. It was user-friendly and with an informative interface. Neev Information Technologies was able to deliver on time and within budget. As suggested, the team could improve on communication and transparency in the transactions.