Next Idea Tech, Inc

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the CTO at a retail technology company called The Peak Beyond.

For what projects/services did your company hire Next Idea Tech, Inc?

We needed R&D on a new sensor system that we were concepting and designing.

What were your goals for this project?

Our goals were to determine whether or not we could adapt new technology to offer a new interaction method fo our customers.

How did you select this vendor?

We selected this vendor via Upwork.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

We needed a non-RFID solution, and Next Idea Tech did R&D to determine alternative sensors that we could use. Our goal was to trigger a UI change on our shopping display screens when an item in front of the screen is lifted. NIT proposed mechanical switches instead of RFID. We didn't wind up choosing their proposal, but we were pleased with their work.

What was the team composition?

I'm not sure the size of NIT's team. My point of contact was Zak.

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

We worked with a few teams to try and find the right solution, ultimately deciding on NFC technology. Going through this R&D process was critical in helping us get closer to our business goals and in fidning a solutiont hat will help us grow.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

I only spoke with Zak, the communication was effective.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Their professionalism and the timeliness of delivery most impressed us.

Are there any areas for improvement?

I can't think of any.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the director of email marketing for a B2B publishing company in New York City.

What challenge were you trying to address with Next Idea Tech, Inc.?

We were facing several challenges related to putting out development fires. Our team needed them to create SaaS technology and other applications. It was also important that they did database work and structuring.

What was the scope of their involvement?

They’re our main partner for development services for our email marketing platform, which we also use for other touch communications. The system had a lot of limitations. We got around them by hiring them to leverage our APIs and doing work outside of the interface in order to optimize it. In that effort, they managed database services, SaaS app development, HTML coding, API creation, JavaScript work, and everything related to web development.

At this point, we’re working on budgeting. We have a lot more work to do with them, so we’re working them into that budget.

What is the team composition?

We worked with 2–4 of their teammates at any given time. Zak (CEO, Next Idea Tech, Inc.) was our primary point of contact.

How did you come to work with Next Idea Tech, Inc.?

I found them online and immediately fell in love with the quality of work the team can achieve. 

How much have you invested with them?

We spent over $100,000 on the project.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started the engagement in June 2018 and are still collaborating.

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

I can’t share specifics, but we unequivocally wouldn’t have been able to run our day-to-day operations if it weren’t for their work. All the complex data tasks they’ve done, including cleaning up our database and applying online widgets, are core to our operations. It would be a lot more difficult to function without them. 

How did Next Idea Tech, Inc. perform from a project management standpoint?

The handle the work exceptionally well. Zak’s mother-in-law works with him as a project manager. She has a wealth of experience that makes it easy to keep things organized and tidy. We typically communicate through phone calls, text messages, or Slack. He used project management tools on his end, but I don’t like to use them. In that respect, he was very accommodating in receiving my feedback through whatever channels I saw fit.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They were able to take an immense amount of work off my plate. Their ability to truly listen to our needs was commendable. Developers tend to complete tasks according to their own vision, but they always kept our needs in mind. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

Their documentation could be a bit more thorough, but I’ve never requested that from them. So, I can’t fault them for that.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Have your project organized ahead of time. You should know what your site will do and what it needs to include. Save yourself time and money by volunteering that information instead of making them force it out of you in the early stages

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the senior director of product engineering for a clinical trial management solutions provider. We offer a series of applications for medical trials. Our clients mostly include pharmaceutical companies.

What challenge were you trying to address with Next Idea Tech, Inc?

We did some upgrades to our software and are currently adopting more modern applications like microservices and more responsive web interfaces. We have a team of 15 people, but we had a project in which we needed more resources, which is where Next Idea Tech came in.

What was the scope of their involvement?

They helped develop a web application using Angular, JavaScript, and TypeScript. They also worked on some automation and with architectural designs.

What is the team composition?

We have a scrum team here that works with Next Idea Tech’s team of two.

How did you come to work with Next Idea Tech, Inc?

We already knew about them and reached out to see if they had the resources to help us. I’m pretty new to our company, and Next Idea Tech was already working on other projects here which I wasn’t involved in. However, I was involved in getting them on a new application project that my team is in charge of.

Next Idea Tech has a responsible team that’s really good at estimating and completing work on time with high quality. I monitored their performance, and when we needed resources, my first thought was to talk to them.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in June 2019, and the collaboration is ongoing.

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

Our experience with Next Idea Tech has been really good and their code quality is remarkable. The feature they’re working on is very critical for us and we have a very tight deadline. We trust them to do it. So far, it’s been working really well and I don’t have any complaints.

How did Next Idea Tech, Inc perform from a project management standpoint?

We have daily communication with Next Idea Tech, which spans project managers, UX designers, business analysts, myself, tech leads, and our developers. Whenever they finish a part of the application, the team reviews the changes, approves them, and sends them back to our development branch to become part of the base application.

Next Idea Tech keeps us updated on the project’s status with full honesty. We have three weekly check-in meetings where we discuss potential issues. I’d give them a 10 for project management. We use Microsoft Teams and track the work in Microsoft DevOps.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I have been impressed by their customer focus and quality of work. Next Idea Tech is very responsive, the team members are always available and can be contacted by email, Teams, or phone calls. They adapt to changes in scope and keep us informed of the progress of the project.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I have no complaints.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the Owner/CEO of TypeTrail Media. We are a web design, advertising, and marketing agency located in Saint Peter, MN.

For what projects/services did your company hire Next Idea Tech, Inc?

I sought Next Idea Tech to develop a custom web app to interact with the Twitter API. The app would schedule and automate actions on twitter using chron jobs and a service worker on the Amazon AWS platform using a program written in C#. The app would be able to automate actions in the API for developer docs.

What were your goals for this project?

I have a list of hundreds of thousands of Twitter accounts to interact with, and to schedule and automate this activity saves me countless hours. There is no way it would be possible without automation.

How did you select this vendor?

I searched candidates in the online marketplace who could meet the project requirements and discovered Next Idea Tech whose profile mentioned. "We specialize in custom design and development using .Net, C#, PHP, SQL, Angular and more. Also DevOps (help businesses with AWS and Azure, cloud ops). We also do UI/UX design." So I sent Zak the specific requirements for the project and he said that he could do it.

Describe the project in detail.

I sent the requirements to Zak Elmeghni the CEO of Next Idea Tech, he responded he could complete the project. I was glad that in my estimation he was very talented with web app development C#, .Net, and AWS. He made the customization exactly as I requested and completed the project in less than 24 hours.

What was the team composition?

I dealt directly with Zak, I believe he personally completed the work. To my understanding he also leads and manages a team through his IT company.

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

This campaign was personally targeted at growing my profile's engagement with influencer Twitter accounts. It was important when scheduling and automating the activity of following accounts to set the apps performance not too aggressively, but also to use the time saved through automation to be spent personally liking, replying, and messaging users, and to maintain very authentic engagement and activity on the account. This app worked 100% as advertised, exactly the same as the manual actions would be performed. That creates as an opening to build relationships, where I could follow up with users who were engaged with a personal greeting, liking, and replying to users, and it worked as you would expect.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

The workflow with Next Idea Tech was very effective. Zak took the time to make sure the requirements were clear and well understood. As a Certified Project Management Associate I can tell that Zak has a very strong understanding of Project Management, and he walked with me through conception & initiation, definition & planning, launch & execution, performance & control, and the project close, very smoothly.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

I would describe my interaction with Next Idea Tech as excellent and professional. There was an appropriate attention placed on status of the project. Next Idea Tech was very responsive to the pulse of the project lifecycle. In smaller projects where I needed extra time to make sure to provide clear requirements Next Idea Tech was patient, but also was graceful with follow up to perform and execute the project plan. I would highly recommend Next Idea Tech and look forward to working with them again in the future.

Are there any areas for improvement?

I found there were no areas for improvement, and give Next Idea Tech an excellent rating for the completion of this project.

Please describe your company and your position there.

We are a SaaS company that provides software that helps companies track remote workers.

For what projects/services did your company hire Next Idea Tech, Inc, and what were your goals?

We hired them to assist in a migration to the cloud as well as other .NET projects.

How did you select Next Idea Tech, Inc and what were the deciding factors?

Their references were stellar.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and technologies used.

Numerous.

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

3

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

This was a complex multiple month project that required attention to timelines and coordination with multiple vendors and stakeholders. They were able to handle the complexity of the project and the time-sensitive deadlines. We were very happy with the results.

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timelines.

They are always communicative and keeps us abreast of any obstacles that they face. We used various tools, ranging from Trello, Jira, and Slack for communications and tracking.

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

I appreciated the quality of developers that they had on staff as well as the involvement of their management team. I've worked with other consultants/contractors in the past and NIT was definitely head and shoulders above the others.

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

No recommendations for them.