Nodes

Please describe your organization.

We are a sports event company. We organize the Ironman events in Denmark, [including one] full distance [race] in Copenhagen and two half-distance races in two small cities in Denmark.

What is your role and responsibilities?

I’m the managing director. I co-founded the company five years ago and then we acquired Ironman.

What was your goal for the work with Nodes?

We’ve worked with them ever since we started. For the last couple of years, it has been on a mobile app. Development for us in terms of mobile was getting the results and all of the live timing out into the pockets of our spectators and also giving the participants a superior time while being in Copenhagen and experiencing the event. We use the mobile app to guide them around our race sites and so on in days leading up to the end.

Please describe their scope of work.

Back in the early days, they developed our website before they specialized in Facebook and mobile apps. We have done Facebook marketing with them as well, but definitely the primary work that they’ve done for us is on the mobile app.

Which platforms were used for mobile application development?

Both Android and iOS were used.

What was your process for selecting Nodes with which to work?

We had a shared office space with them when we started operations. We were both small startups. We knew who they were. We knew the quality they delivered, so it was quite easy to reach out to them.

Can you provide a ballpark dollar figure for the size of the work that Nodes did for you?

I don’t know how much time has been spent, but overall the initial cost of developing the app was roughly $60,000. Overall, we’ve spent around $100,000 on the app until now.

Are you satisfied with Nodes' performance?

Definitely. We entered new territory when we built the first edition of the app. It had some difficulties in the beginning, but today it’s state of the art compared to other apps in the market of sports events and definitely something that sets us apart from the rest of the events around the world. It’s quite innovative and still easy to use for the average person. One other strength is they have interest in the sport as well, so they understood the needs of a spectator and a participant in an international traveling event. They built the app with low roaming costs since we have a lot of internationals travelers who attend, so it's important that it doesn’t take too much data. I think they had a good look at the market and the needs of our customers and could contribute to developing the app based on that.

Is there anything unique or special about Nodes that makes them stand out compared to other developers?

I think their size sets them apart. They are quite big compared to other firms in the Danish market and therefore they have more resources to put in, in terms of building apps and delivering projects. They also have a feel for the market that we are a part of. That has made a huge difference. We didn't have to tell a developer how we saw the market and get their team up to speed. They actually knew our challenges for themselves, which made the whole development process a lot easier.

Looking back on the work so far, is there anything that you think they could improve upon, or something that you might do differently?

It's difficult to say. We had some difficulties the first year in terms of having data from our timing company being put into the app. It would've been nice if it worked right away. But, looking back, it was foreseeable that there would be a problem and, then afterward, they reevaluated and changed it without us having to pay for it. You always want it to work right from the beginning, but we realize we were in new territory and there was some risk involved in the project.

Please describe your organization and your role and responsibilities.

I'm the group marketing technologist. I work with tools and technologies in marketing. I work with Web, mobile, and social as well as digital innovations in the industry. I concentrate on trade products and off-trade products, this includes supermarkets and other places that sell directly to consumers.

What was your goal for working with Nodes?

Nodes helped us in development and design as we tried to drive traffic to our customers, so we built a mobile app. We built a platform for our customers to communicate about sales and promotions. Retailers can express their value proposition, and the sales reps can use the app as an opportunity to help retailers using a free tool that offers some added value to the consumers.

Please describe the scope of their work.

They did everything for development and launch. We have our own internal design agency. We were quite clear on what we wanted to do, but they executed it and used their own design ideas. It's not only a mobile application. It's also quite heavy on backend development and API [application programming interface] integration. They did that heavy development part as well.

What was your process for selecting Nodes with which to work?

We had a [tender] with five vendors throughout a four-week process, and we chose Nodes. We looked at both traditional agencies and app developers like Nodes. The niche we needed was a combination of technology and understanding social behavior of users.

Can you provide a ballpark dollar figure for the size of the work that they’ve done for you?

Between 2,000 and 3,500 hours. It was a fairly large project.

Is the work still ongoing?

The work is still ongoing, with the strategic framework. It launched in November of 2012. The app is for iOS and Android. We did a pilot for Windows, but it's not being supported.

Are you satisfied with their performance?

Yes. Their work was very good in understanding consumer behavior within mobile applications and developing a framework that could be driven, but this was the first time they had a scope where it had to support the mainframe throughout the campaign. I think they underestimated the project size and the huge scope of our organization. So, they were very strong in building the mobile application but not as strong with supporting and maintaining such a large backend.

Do you have any statistics or metrics to track improvement from the project?

We just run this application in Denmark at the moment. There are 130,000 downloads. That's good for a country with a population of 5 million people. It's the biggest food and beverage app in Denmark in that category. The application depends on which campaigns we are running. In the weeks where we run national campaigns, we have retention of about 40 percent. When we do no special marketing, the retention is below 5 percent. Even though we tried to make a platform where our customers should provide all the exclusive content and sales, we see that retention is driven by the communication that we drive nationally. We have 2,200 outlets, and about 500 of those use the application as a platform.

Is there anything unique about them that really makes them stand out, compared to other companies?

They are very good at combining app development with social media behavior, combining both behavior and technology from social platforms into mobile applications. They are by far the best ones in Denmark.

Looking back on the work so far, is there any area that you think they could improve upon or that you might do differently?

I would suggest they take more ownership of the application once developed, and putting it inside our business, and shifting from a marketing perspective into more of a development perspective, driving the application and letting it grow. This is more about what we can do as a company but also something that Nodes can focus on more.