PopcornApps

Please describe your organization.

I work for Microsoft, the largest software company in the world. We create products across multiple product categories, including gaming, productivity, operating systems, mobile applications, CRM [customer relationship management], and so on.

What is your position?

I am a digital retail channel marketer, working with the worldwide retail channel management team. I focus on the digital programs and tools that are both field facing, and partner facing. I handle content syndication programs, ratings and reviews, and internal programs like site tracker auditing, which is a program that allows our internal teams to keep close check on how our partners are executing on their online properties.

My team focuses on delivering the assets and guidance for third-party retail partners around the world, necessary for better selling our products through their physical and digital channels. To be more specific, I work on the digital strategy team. If a consumer goes to Amazon.com, BestBuy.com, or any other retail site in the world, the product content that they'll find on the online websites, on CRM activities, and on social media posts related to Microsoft products, will have originated with my team.

What business challenge were you trying to address with PopcornApps?

I've worked with PopcornApps on a couple of different projects. One of those was for the internal site auditing process. We have been leveraging our internal field resources for keeping track of executions and reporting through an internal tool on how partners are doing with regard to publishing our content across different phases of the customer journey. This includes search and navigation, online banners, landing pages, product detail pages, CRM mail, and social media posts, as well as in-store digital experience, such as QR [quick response] codes that drive to mobile product pages, and others.

We've been having the field do that for a long time, and it has been very taxing on them. It takes up much of their time. We decided to reach out to a third-party team, in this case PopcornApps, to conduct our digital auditing, and provide reports on a biweekly basis, from an outside perspective.

Another big project, which we worked on a year ago [in 2014], involved developing an app for us, which is more their core competency. They did a great job with that.

We're an internal-focused team. Every year, we have an event in which consumer channel marketers from around the world visit us in Redmond, Washington. We have a physical retail experience center, which is basically a fake set of stores, which we populate with all of our internal fixtures that will be represented in stores, worldwide. We give tours and show these to our partners. We wanted to amp up the stories around each of the digital fixtures and provide the experience lacking in physical representations, so we created an app. It was an interactive, mobile app that had the ability to drive users to specific imagery and content around particular fixtures within the rack space, via the use of an NFC [near field communication] tag. They could save something in their favorites, and send it to their email, for later referencing.

Please describe the scope of their involvement in detail.

PopcornApps operates across 50 top accounts worldwide, and five product categories, to a total of 250 site audits every two weeks. This gives us high-level reporting across our execution goal on topics like how partners are posting our banners, if the detail pages include all the rich content that we've provided them, in the form of videos and imagery, if they have ratings and reviews on their site and, if so, are they using a platform that can allow us, as a brand, to respond to consumer ratings?

The auditing process is something that requires advanced retail channel marketing experience, which PopcornApps doesn't necessarily have. Nonetheless, we determined that they could do our auditing for us if we trained them and ramped them up during a period of time, so that the auditing checks that they do are aligned with the way our field team has been doing it. [This way] we could, during the next few months, get our internal team out of the business of having to do that, be able to simply access the PopcornApps reports, and get the knowledge needed.

We're in the early stages of this process. They've been working on the project for about two months. We assigned the field leads who have been doing these audits to work very closely with the Popcorn team and get them to ramp up. It's taken a bit longer than we'd anticipated, but this is the first time we've tried something like this. To PopcornApps' credit, they are very persistent, learn quickly, and are able to do a good job of project management in terms of wrangling many different feedback inputs in the form of our digital leads. They're taking all the direction and guidance, from many different sources, in order to get their reports up to a standard.

How did you come to work with PopcornApps?

They have a history with our general manager, who had done much of the work with them in the past for a different company. He reached out to them. It was an established relationship that my leadership leveraged.

What is the status of this engagement?

They've done several projects for us during the past year and a half besides the ones I addressed. The relationship is ongoing.

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

We didn't have the time or budget to implement user metrics for the app. I did get good anecdotal feedback from the attendees of the event, saying that this is a great way to enhance the tour experience. It's very intuitive, easy to use, and not buggy at all. It's able to provide a holistic picture around each area of interest within the rec center. The NFC integration was great and very easy to use. Overall, I have very good feedback on it.

How did PopcornApps perform from a project management standpoint?

They're on time and very reactive. I wouldn't say that they're 100 percent proactive, but that has much to do with the fact that this is a very new space for them. They're reliant on us for a certain level of guidance.

We decided to do the app late in the game and asked PopcornApps to do it with not much lead time and money. They performed amazingly. I'm actually surprised that they were able to pull it off. Another complication was that we had them create the app for Windows Phone because that is what our internal employees are given. Not many developers are versed in developing for Windows Phone. It's a very minor player in the mobile space. They were willing to learn and able to adjust their processes to fit the Windows development particularities. They delivered on time and with a very small budget. I was surprised that they did it for that cost. PopcornApps were overall great partners, very collaborative, responsive, and willing to go the extra mile.

Is there anything PopcornApps could have improved or done differently?

In their eagerness to keep and maintain the business relationship, they tend to overcommit. They tend to say yes to anything, which causes scenarios where we'll ask them for something that's above and beyond, they'll feel compelled to say yes, and the result will be less than we'd hoped for. They should assess themselves a bit better, in order to be more accurate when it comes to committing to a budget and timeframe.

Please describe your organization.

I work for a multinational technology corporation. Popcorn Apps actually did work for Intel Media, which was a start up inside of Intel in the media space.

What is your position?

I oversaw all of our system deployments for our content services group. Popcorn Apps was brought in to implement Salesforce for us and for customer advocacy, which is what we call customer care.

What business challenge were you trying to address with PopcornApps?

Originally there was nothing beyond Salesforce. That was kind of the first step, and the system stood up fairly quickly. After that, we got a better view of what their technical expertise was, so we actually expanded their role into additional areas.

Please describe the scope of their involvement in greater detail.

I don't know the total scope but I can tell you that they did business intelligence and analytics work for us. They also did some Hadoop work in the analytics space and some coding around some of our applications which were sitting on our set-top box. So they did quite a bit of work for us.

It was primarily web applications and mobile application development. The work for Salesforce was actually some of the better web work they did for us. They actually did the entire website, and all of the customer acquisition screens for signing up as a customer were all done through Salesforce. They also did mobile application work for us which layered in a couple of different datasets to give a view of the best areas where we could place antennas on top of buildings. They basically did a city map and had overlaid signal strength on top of it so we could go and see where the best place to have an antenna would be.

How did you come to work with PopcornApps?

We actually ran a request for proposal [RFP]. We had a couple of in house vendors that we reviewed as well. So after running the RFP we actually had 4 or 5 vendors that came in, two of which were internal. Those were already preferred vendors within our corporate network but we chose to go with PopcornApps because of their ability to deliver and the confidence that they had to deliver the type of Salesforce applications that we were looking for before. So it was really their track record of delivery that got them in the door.

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

The size of the project was between $10,000 and $50,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

The project began probably towards the end of 2012. The division was sold off from us to Verizon but they were still working with the same team at Verizon. They actually survived the sale of the division to Verizon as well, so they're still working on the project.

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

PopcornApps absolutely delivered on time and on budget. It was never a concern that we had gone over budget or the schedule was delayed. If there were any delays from the project they came from our side in terms of changes that we are making. The delivery by PopcornApps was on time. Their ability to scale and to deliver within the time frame, given the scope of work that we had given them, was superb. They delivered every single time for us. They were probably better than our internal teams.

I don't have any hard metrics. We actually had no customers before the division was sold off, so it would be hard to say that there were any business process improvements that we were able to realize. The one thing I will say is that we were able to fully automate the entire acquisition process from when a subscriber would come to our website, be interested in signing up, choosing the packages, capturing all of the relevant customer data and driving all of that into Salesforce through a seamless integration with our existing website. All of that was of tremendous value for us because that meant that we didn't have to have human glue trying to stick all those pieces together. I thought that was a great capability they brought on the back end, really being able to optimize the customer care screens. They also did a great job of monitoring our social feeds so that we could understand how our customers are engaging with our platform. All of that end-to-end customer care and acquisition process was a great focus for us. It was something that they completely took on themselves and delivered.

What distinguishes PopcornApps from other providers?

There are quite a few resources that we interacted with, and they all are able to really bridge that gap between business process and systems implementation. I know that seems like it should be common sense, but a lot of companies do not always have all of the business analyst types of roles that we would like to have, but they brought that capability as well. They really did some process engineering with us.  They were able to fully understand the business side as well as the technical side. It wasn't like we had to have 2 or 3 different resources, and we had a great experience with their project managers.

Is there anything PopcornApps could have improved or done differently?

I think they would probably agree with this: they're not graphic designers. They are not layout specialists, so if you're looking for a very specific look and feel of your website, application or system user interface, then you really need to have a vision of that to bring to the table with them. I wouldn’t expect any type of integrator or shop like PopcornApps to have it all in-house. I would definitely say that's one thing they could improve, but it’s not necessarily a bad thing.

Please describe your organization.

Beauty Entourage is a traveling hair and makeup company that specializes in grouped bookings for special events. We do mainly weddings, red carpet events and fashion shows. We do all the hair and makeup on location.

What is your position?

I’m the owner and founder of Beauty Entourage.

What business challenge were you trying to address with PopcornApps?

When I first approached them there were two reasons. We were looking to streamline our booking process. Because we're a mobile company, we travel onsite for a majority of our services. It is difficult for us to cash out our clients with their credit card processing and then also manage the group bookings we do. Typically we have multiple artists on location for an appointment and they're doing anywhere between 10 to 25 appointments in a short time period. The initial reason I was looking for a development company was to manage that process and also to manage the artists that join our team with their portfolios, profiles and their schedules.

Please describe the scope of their involvement in greater detail.

It was primarily end to end development of our mobile application. They created our applications as well as our overall platform. So for the website, which we already have, they will be building on top of it, but also creating portals on the back-end. We kept them busy between the back-end portals through the websites as well as the admin portion of running the business on the desktop as well as a mobile application for iOS and Android.

How did you come to work with PopcornApps?

They were recommended to me after a bad experience I had with another company. They came in right away with a lot of help, support and feedback for the situation that I was in with the other company. They let me know what should've been done at that point and what they want to be able to pick up, what they wouldn’t be able to pick up, and gave me more realistic expectations. I did more research with other companies because I was hesitant to go with anyone at that point, because of the bad experience with the previous company. They were great with checking back in and answering any of my questions. I chose them for that reason, because they were so attentive to exactly what I was looking for and also very supportive and helpful through the process of understanding what they do and how they do it.

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

The size of the project was between $75,000 and $150,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

I found them back in May. It took me a couple of months before I decided to actually go with them so we started work on the project towards the end of August. I actually had a meeting with them this morning and we are on schedule for launching within the next 2 weeks.

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

The app hasn't been launched yet, but they have given me deliverables on a weekly basis. I didn't even expect to have deliverables each week. They stayed on task and I think they were also very sensitive to the situation knowing my experience with the other company, and how I worked with another company for six months and they weren't able to produce anywhere close to what Popcorn Apps has been able to produce in only half the time. So I have to say that it was an amazing experience.

I have been able to download the application on both IOS and Android to see their progress. Prior to being able to download the apps, they sent me screenshots and they tweaked my design suggestions. They overall have been very hands on and I can't say that enough, just because the difference between the two experiences are like night and day. I would say that their deliverables and my overall experience so far has exceeded my expectations.

What distinguishes PopcornApps from other providers?

Compared to the overall experience with that other company that offered similar services, I will say the biggest difference for me was that Popcorn Apps’ communication was amazing.

Is there anything PopcornApps could have improved or done differently?

It's hard to say. They thought of things at times that maybe I hadn’t captured. It's really difficult for me to critique and say that they could've done this better or that better because overall their work exceeded what I expected. In comparison to my previous experience, I can’t say in general what I think they should improve, because they really have done a great job.