Pixo

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Senior Engineer of an engineering company

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

We are a Pavement Engineering firm that does pavement evaluation and design, pavement testing, pavement management, develops training courses, and research for Federal and State organizations.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Pixo to accomplish?

• Pixo has provided us with as-needed web development programming and support. Specifically they have developed a web tool building framework for us that we use to deliver engineering results and data to our clients in the form of web-based data visualization sites.

SOLUTION

How did you find Pixo?

• Online Search

Why did you select Pixo over others?

• High ratings
• Close to my geographic location
• Great culture fit
• Company values aligned

How many teammates from Pixo were assigned to this project?

6-10 Employees

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

As an Engineering firm, we found it difficult to keep qualified in-house programmers to support our project needs. Therefore, Pixo has provided us with as-needed web development programming and software support since 2016. During that time, our main project with Pixo has been their development of a web tool building framework and components that we use to deliver engineering results and data to our clients in the form of customized data visualization websites.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

Using the framework that Pixo has developed for us, we have been able to deliver online data-visualization web sites/tools for over 50 clients over the past 7 years. This includes 9 commercial airport clients, 17 state departments of transportation, and numerous cities and municipalities. On the airport side, our airport-based visualization tools are making our engineering results and pavement management data accessible to over 1200 individual airports in the US and other countries.

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

Pixo has always been very responsive to our needs. And since they have provided us with on-demand programming support, they have allowed me to be part of the development and creative process from day one.

What was your primary form of communication with Pixo?

• In-Person Meeting
• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

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

The people are definitely the most impressive part of Pixo! They are very knowledgeable, responsive, listen, and are overall great to work with!

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

The only downside over the years is that there has been some employee turnover that has caused changes to the project team. But I understand that as they are in a competitive business. But Pixo always made sure that our team was restocked with talented people.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Editor, Bibliography of Asian Studies of

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

The Association for Asian Studies is a vast, international professional association for all scholars of Asian Studies; it is also the publisher of the online Bibliography of Asian Studies, of which I am the Editor, with 6 other employees in the BAS, and which utilizes PIXO as our programming partner to create, enhance and maintain our online distributed bibliographic production platform for the BAS

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Pixo to accomplish?

To migrate the distributed work of the BAS bibliographic and editorial production team from an antiquated system (FileMaker) producing records on individual PCs to then be sent by email for central editing, compilation, and export in CSV, into a modern, streamlined production framework with a centralized controlled-access web-based interface to increase producitivty of the team and of myself as editor, with XML output compatible with our online hosts (EBSCO)

SOLUTION

How did you find Pixo?

Referral

Why did you select Pixo over others?

• High ratings
• Pricing fit our budget
• Great culture fit
• Referred to me
• spcialized niche application workm similar to our's

How many teammates from Pixo were assigned to this project?

6-10 Employees

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

A customized 20-year-old application in FileMaker whose original programmers were long gone was being used by the whole team of Associate Editors of the Bibliography of Asian Studies published by The Association for Asian Studies to produce and edit hundreds of thousands of bibliographic records for inclusion in the online BAS hosted for subscribers on EBSCO. 

Over the years, the old system became less and less effective, productivity and accuracy suffered, data integrity was being lost, and our online database hosting service (EBSCO) was not able to assist in quality control, and was intending to migrate ALL of their databases to XML input, rather than the BAS's old FileMaker output in CSV. The parent Board of Directors of the AAS was losing patience with the diminishing quality of the product and the expense of producing it with such an ineffective production framework and tool. 

PIXO was contracted to work with us and with EBSCO to design a much more streamlined data production application (with controlled-access online data entry instead of individual PC-based FileMaker app), with a more efficient user interface for the Associate Editors and for me as the Editor of their records, that would maximize the value of each keystroke, use intelligent data validation in each field, create one-click data export from from the server to EBSCO, and improve our overall productivity of the whole BAS operation, with XML output compatible with EBSCO's data-integration setup for bibliographic information. 

In the first phase, PIXO worked with the existing dataset (over 130 fields of interlocking data in nearly 1 million records in FileMaker and CSV) to understand the field structures and dependencies, and modeled new data structures for us that better matched the bibliographic needs of BAS end-users and their searching practices. Then they programmed the new web application for us, provided our team training in its use, and ran pilot runs and testing in a Staging server, using all the re-mapped migrated data. The XML output of this pilot data was then tested by EBSCO and approved for compatibility. 

PIXO then launched our production server, which they continue to run on AWS on our behalf. Later phases included lots of debugging and algorithms for fixing internal problems in the legacy data and sessions with me and the Associate Editors team for tweaks to the UI to further improve everyone's efficiency. Although we have greatly increased productivity in the new Pixo setup, we continue to partner with PIXO for a large set of future enhancements and tweaks to optimize this complex system even further. S, and which utilizes PIXO as our programming partner to create, enhance and maintain our online distributed bibliographic production platform for the BAS

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

Annual production (and accuracy) of records created for the BAS has skyrocketed since implementation of the system PIXO created for and with us. Board of Directors is very happy with the results and with the return on investment. End-users of the BAS are now getting more accurate and up-to-date research support bibliographic data from the BAS, and susbscriptions have increased.

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

We work collaboratively to establish specific sub-tasks and needs and to timeline each of them, and they always met those expectation and were proactive in reporting challenges or unexpected hiccups. They've been amazingly responsive whenever we uncover something that needs their attention outside the planned development timeline.

What was your primary form of communication with Pixo?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

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

The BAS is a highly specialized product -- I was very impressed with how PIXO dove into the complex and interlocking data structures needed to make it work properly, and how quickly they grasped and even anticipated when those needs would turn into in terms of the application they have been building.

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

None that I can think of now

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Emeritus professor of University of Illinois

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

The University of Illinois is a leading university in the US

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Pixo to accomplish?

• Design an academic website

SOLUTION

How did you find Pixo?

Did a drive by

Why did you select Pixo over others?

• High ratings
• Close to my geographic location
• Pricing fit our budget
• Great culture fit
• Good value for cost

How many teammates from Pixo were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

The website (which is still a work in progress) have six main pages: About, Publications, Projects (not published yet) Resources, How to, and Updates. The website is designed for fellow academics and graduate students in my area of research, which is called Conversation Analysis. Pixotech did the design of the website based on my ideas and I supplied the content.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

The website (which looks REALLY cool) is up and running and has already reached its target audience of fellow academics and graduate students. Several colleagues in different countries have recommended it as a resource for graduate students who are studying Conversation Analysis. I am very pleased with the results.

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

Yes, Pixotech's project management was always courteous, prompt and very efficient.This was a small project for them but I felt that I got the same amount of attention that a large company would expect to receive. Great job!

What was your primary form of communication with Pixo?

• In-Person Meeting
• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

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

Quite apart from their professionalism, they were extremely pleasant and fun people to work with. When the project was over, I invited the team to a local bar for drinks and we had a really good time.

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

No, I don't think so.