Praxent

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CTO for a healthtech startup that focuses on health plan optimizations for employees, employers, and health carriers.

What challenge were you trying to address with Praxent?

We were designing a SaaS service and needed help with UI/UX.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Praxent delivered a full graphics toolkit for our new site. We knew what we wanted, but Praxent guided us through the process of thinking creatively and keeping our scope in mind.

The team provided a clickable prototype and all of the design materials for an employee e-portal. They also created a style guide for us, too. Additionally, they built an avatar for us to differentiate us in the marketplace.

What is the team composition?

We work with two designers, a project manager, a success manager, and their general manager.

How did you come to work with Praxent?

I’ve done a similar project before with previous employers. I knew what I was looking for and found their name through a colleague online. On a whim, I called them up. Through some more investigation, I realized they had some of the best design skills we could afford. We decided to work with them from there.  

How muchf have you invested with them?

We’ve spent $50,000 so far.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in February 2021, and we finished our first phase of design in April 2021. We plan to work with them more down the line.

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

They’ve crushed it, in terms of delivering a product that exceeds quality expectations at the budget we agreed to. The team was really easy to trust and get to know. We developed a friendly and productive rapport.

We saw results come together very quickly. We developed colleagues, if not partners and friends, along the way. It was a pleasant journey. My team enjoyed themselves, too. It was the most fun they’ve had in a while.

How did Praxent perform from a project management standpoint?

Praxent did a great job of leading us through a rigorous, yet easy-to-follow methodology. It was a slam dunk. Everyone was excellent. They delivered as expected in terms of time, quality, and budget.

They’ve been kind and clear when we were asking for too much. They delivered what I expected, if not more. We had a PDF document with a Gantt chart with all of our critical items for each sprint. It seemed to work really well for us.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They were able to honor their word and commitment.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Email as a communication method can be a little difficult. We needed to develop a more streamlined way of communicating because emails were getting missed from time to time.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Make sure that what you’re asking for is clearly defined in the scope of work.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the COO for BlueStar Retirement Services, a 401(k) Recordkeeper and TPA. We do 401(k) plan administration in the financial services industry.

What challenge were you trying to address with Praxent?

We have a great participant website that is mobile-responsive, but we were looking for a true mobile experience. We hired Praxent to develop a mobile app for us that would provide an excellent user experience for our participants and differentiate us from our competition.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We wanted them to develop an iOS and Android app that built on our current participant web experience, but take it to the next level. We needed the app to be really engaging and provide a more guided experience.  We were looking to help all of our participants, but particularly young people, develop great savings habits and take control of their financial security.

Praxent divided the development into two phases. The initial phase focused on views like accessing a user’s account, information, lessons, investments, and contribution rate.

We’re now in the second phase and they’re working on enhancing that experience by creating a guided enrollment user flow.

What is the team composition?

We've worked closely with a number of Praxent people.  They provided all of the project management and the front end work.  My development team handled the back end work.  Their teams worked seamlessly together.

How did you come to work with Praxent?

I did a Google search and found Clutch. I interviewed the top five UX/UI designers and was particularly impressed with Praxent because of how they configured the project. They also specialize in the financial services industry, so they understood what we were talking about very quickly.

How much have you invested with them?

The total project will cost $400,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We engaged them in September 2020 and we are about halfway through the total project now. 

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

We just finished the first phase and are moving on to the second. We estimate that it will be done in April 2021. I’ve been impressed by how they managed our two main priorities: getting to market quickly and improving the features our participants can engage with.

How did Praxent perform from a project management standpoint?

Their project management is exceptional. I’ve been impressed with how they’ve completed each sprint. We had several meetings to discuss the budget and timeline, which was a time commitment, but it was well worth the time.

They’re very reliable, so I know that I can count on them. It became clear that they were dedicated to delivering a quality product on time and under budget.

Midway through the project, we had to switch project managers. That concerned me at first, but the new project manager that came in didn’t miss a beat.

My backend developers use Slack to collaborate with them, but we meet weekly over video conferencing. They use PowerPoint to present the sprint plan and keep us updated on how well we’re managing the budget.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They have a really good design team. I’ve been impressed with how well they can take our ideas and put them into action. They’re creative, they hear our feedback, and they come up with unique ways to present data and create an experience on the platform.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No. I’ve never been happier with an outside firm.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

New clients should make sure they have team members who can focus on the business side of the project. Praxent can do great things as long as they get good feedback, so it’s important that the business side is involved.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We’re a nonprofit that builds criminal justice software.

What challenge were you trying to address with Praxent?

We engaged them to help us with the UX design component.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Praxent has been responsible for helping us determine the UX design across a criminal and civil court case management system. They conducted user interviews, looked at old systems, and observed them doing their business.

From there, they created mockups and clickable prototypes and made sure that they met the business needs and were technically feasible to implement.

What is the team composition?

We’ve worked with six teammates including UX designers, delivery managers, client relationship managers, and other folks to make sure that the engagement went well. 

How did you come to work with Praxent?

I had worked with one of their executive-level folks, so I knew that he was capable and smart and that any organization he was associated with, I’d probably want to work with. We did some interviews with him, Praxent did a proof of concept (POC), and we hired them. 

How much have you invested with them?

So far, we've spent $215,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We began working with them in July 2020, and it’s ongoing.

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

Our customers are very pleased with our UX design, as well as ultimately the software we developed based on the designs and other business rules. We’re very happy, too. 

How did Praxent perform from a project management standpoint?

Their project management is great. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

The team’s commitment to being successful and in turn helping us to be successful is impressive. Their ability to pick up the business domain in terms of understanding criminal justice terminology is impressive. They’re very efficient at getting up to speed on the terminology and understanding the business process.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, not at the moment.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Have common expectations. Both parties need to understand what success looks like. 

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a project manager at a university. I work for the Department of Medical Social Sciences.

What challenge were you trying to address with Praxent?

We engaged Praxent to create the UI and UX for the new app that we’re creating. We have a contract with the federal government to create new tests that will be used to evaluate cognitive and motor development of infants and toddlers, ages 1–43 months. While we were creating these tests, we realized that the UX will be an important factor in people maintaining interest and doing those tests. We wanted to find someone who had experience in developing mobile application UX, and we chose Praxent.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We created high-level storyboards for each of the tests. Each test had a scientist assigned to it, and Praxent met with them one-on-one and conducted an interview. They asked questions related to what the test is measuring, who the target audience is, why the scientists are doing these tests, and what the expected outcomes are. Then, Praxent looked at the storyboards we created, and we had a discussion. 

They delivered a low-fidelity wireframe for the tests. The final deliverable was high-fidelity screens that our internal programmers could use to program iOS-based tests. The tests will run on iPads.

What is the team composition?

I worked with Kelly (Client Partner) to set up the contract and sign all of the paperwork. She also attended all of our meetings. They had a technical project manager, Rob (Principal Delivery Lead), and a couple of designers. One designer created low-fidelity designs, and he was the one who conducted the interviews and gathered requirements. Another designer was responsible for the high-fidelity design.

They also had an iOS expert, whom we didn’t interact with one-on-one. Before they delivered designs to us, they ran them by the iOS expert to make sure that everything they were suggesting would work seamlessly in iOS. One of our requirements was to use native iOS features whenever possible. For instance, if there was a transition from one screen to another, we wanted it to be a natural iOS transition. All of their designs were reviewed in-house by their iOS expert.

How did you come to work with Praxent?

We had some colleagues who’d worked with them on designing an interface for an iPad-based test. We contacted Praxent and liked what they had to offer. 

How much have you invested with them?

It was roughly $80,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our work went from May–July 2020. The whole engagement lasted about nine weeks.

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

I’m a project manager myself, so I was focused on budget and timeline. Praxent delivered everything they promised on time and slightly under budget, which is as good as it gets.

How did Praxent perform from a project management standpoint?

We communicated via email and face-to-face meetings. I believe they had some other channels, but it was our preference to use email, and that worked just fine.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They were very easy to reach. Anytime we needed to raise anything, we had a call with them within an hour or two. They were easy to work with, delivered everything on time, and listened to our feedback. 

Since we completed the project with Praxent, a couple of minor things have come up as we’re programming, such as additional clarifications and even one design slightly redone. That was no problem at all; they took care of it within half a day of us requesting it, so that was very nice.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I thought that there were sometimes too many people on the call, but I know they have their methods and procedures. Since everything came in on budget and we were very happy with the results, that was fine, but we were initially surprised that whenever we had a call, there were at least three people on it.

Any advice for potential customers?

They know what they’re doing. Just follow their suggestions, and you’ll get a good product.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the VP of business development and marketing for a medical professional liability insurance carrier.

What challenge were you trying to address with Praxent?

We were restructuring, rebranding, and renaming the company. During this complete overhaul, we also wanted to redo our website. We engaged Praxent to develop our member and producer portals on our public website.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Praxent built the portals for us from scratch. Their team designed the UI/UX and connected the portals to our underwriting software. This enables the portals to access information.

Praxent worked with our third-party vendors to develop the portals’ additional requirements. The portals needed different functions as one was for our members and the other was for the producers. For example, the members portal required a payment feature. To pay their bills online, they had to go through a third party.

What is the team composition?

I worked with Kelly (Client Partner) as well as Garrett (Senior Delivery Lead).

How did you come to work with Praxent?

We hired a COO who engaged Praxent to build a portal for his previous company. As he loved the experience, he recommended them.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent about $350,000 on this project.

What is the status of this engagement?

We contacted them in January 2020, and we worked with them through July on this current project. I look forward to continuing to work with them.

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

We don’t have metrics because we haven’t launched the portals. However, I loved their work. Compared to what we had, what they delivered is great.

How did Praxent perform from a project management standpoint?

We had weekly meetings with Garrett and his team. Every week, we went through where we were from a budget standpoint. They always kept me up to date and showed me their work along the way to get feedback. Their communication was excellent.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’re a knowledgeable and strong team that was a pleasure to work with. I don’t know a lot about building portals, and they were helpful in keeping me informed. Their team took the time to answer any questions that I had. They communicated with our third-party vendors and kept me up to date on their work together.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, I don’t think so. It was a little expensive, but you get what you pay for. Although I had limitations on what I could spend, they were great about telling me what I could get for that budget.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Be open about what you like and don’t like. They want customer feedback and will go over and beyond to give you what you want.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I'm the Project Manager for a private investment management company.

What challenge were you trying to address with Praxent?

My company undertook a project to develop a new digital client site. Our legacy site had not been refreshed in more than 10 years. The decision was made to develop a new platform to not only achieve our MVP goals but that would allow us to evolve in order to meet our client needs over time. This was the largest project our firm had ever taken on.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Praxent provided a solutions architect to help us architect and design what our new site would look like from a technical perspective. They also provided development resources from both Linux and .NET backgrounds. Praxent’s team developed the frontend with React. They provided DevOps resources that helped us design a framework, choose a deployment strategy, and get that in place for both our client and public sites.

We’d done quite a bit of the site design with another company, so Praxent came in on the technology side and helped us design what the backend would look like from architecture and development perspectives. In the past, we hadn’t shown our models or allowed our clients to be able to build models on their own, and Praxent helped us bring that functionality onto the site.

What is the team composition?

At our peak, we had six Praxent team members on staff, and I was their project manager. We worked closely with both Chris (Director of Operations) and Kevin (Managing Partner). 

How did you come to work with Praxent?

They had helped us in the past with a much smaller initiative, and we’d had a really good experience working directly with Kevin. For this project, we looked at a couple of companies, and we felt like Praxent would be a good fit for what we needed. We had to identify several resources through our interview process, which included developer testing. Praxent was able to quickly find matches for us, even when we needed to ramp up on certain parts of the project on short notice.

How much have you invested with them?

I can’t disclose that at this point, but they’ve definitely been able to work with us and find the best fit for our budget and the goals of our project.

What is the status of this engagement?

For this project, my company began working with Praxent around the end of 2016. In total, we’ve probably been working with them for about four years.

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

One of the things that anyone is tracking when they launch a website is how many issues there are and how many clients are having problems accessing the site. We were completely staffed for two weeks around the time of the launch, and we had zero major issues. Since Praxent had a significant impact on the site’s development, I think they were also a big part of us not having any major issues during launch.

Ongoing, we’re gathering and continue to gather analytics from our old site as we completely retire it, and then analytics from usage on our new site. What we’re seeing is exactly what we were hoping for: better adoption rates, so we’ve been able to drive people back to our site more times per month for longer periods each time. Again, without Praxent’s help on the development side and then their questions and feedback along the way from the management side of the house, we may not have gotten to where we are today. Also, adding the modeling functionality to the site was a huge win for us.

How did Praxent perform from a project management standpoint?

Because it was such a large project for us, we kept in touch with both Chris and Kevin. When I dealt directly with them, they were extremely responsive. This was a very large effort for us, so Kevin and I met on a bi-monthly basis to touch base on milestones, issues, and anything that was high-risk. Whenever we had questions on invoicing, Chris was always quick to respond. From that perspective, they were at the top of their game. 

There were many contracts that needed to be extended due to how our HR and legal teams do things, so being able to be in touch with Chris and Kevin every week was necessary. They were always really quick on responses and edits to contracts. They helped ensure that we met all of the scope items within our MVP.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I think the most noteworthy thing about working with them is the fact that they’re not one of these huge nationwide companies; rather, they have an interest in your project because they’re here locally. They will take more of a vested interest in not only finding you talent but also checking up along the way. If something isn’t right, they’ll come on-site to talk through what changes can be made.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Although being a local company is great from my perspective, one of the things they will naturally have a challenge with is finding all local talent. That was not a requirement of ours, but had they been able to find mostly local talent, I think we would’ve been able to extend some of the contracts even longer, whereas some of the talent that they sent us was nearshore. From our HR and legal perspectives, we try to keep some of those contracts to certain time parameters.

Any advice for potential customers?

Set a time for you to check-in with your point of contact. The bi-monthly checkpoint helped us clear up communication rather quickly. 

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a managing partner at a pathology private practice.

What challenge were you trying to address with Praxent?

We wanted to explore a business intelligence product with their team. 

What was the scope of their involvement?

We were looking for ways to make our operations more efficient. We have physicians located at different sites throughout the city, and we wanted to more accurately balance our workload while making sure the right cases got to the right specialists. We also have many hospital partners that compete with each other; asking them to interface with each other would have been difficult. We wanted to develop our own dashboard that would collect the cases we received every day, cross-reference the available physicians based on their licenses and specialties, and then assign the right cases to the right person.

They brought in folks who shadowed pathologists at different sites and met with stakeholders at the different hospitals and clients, learning the process from beginning to end. They then gave us a really well-developed wireframe for us to assess, confirming that it was the right workflow for our process. After that, Praxent developed a model of the product.

What is the team composition?

Kevin (Managing Partner, Praxent) was pretty hands-on with a lot of the work. Pete (Former Product Manager, Praxent) was his managing partner. 

How did you come to work with Praxent?

We surveyed a couple of local developers that specifically showcase healthcare products in their portfolio. We’re concerned with security and HIPAA compliance and wanted a vendor that would be comfortable with the language and needs of physician practices and the healthcare industries. Praxent demonstrated that comfort; they weren’t taken aback by some of our key requirements, nor did we have to explain a lot of those things to their team. 

How much have you invested with them?

We spent about $25,000. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from about April 2017 until the end of the same year.

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

The model within the product that they brought to us was very well-received. People thought that it had a lot of potential. Unfortunately, due to internal concerns, we weren’t able to implement it at the time. However, people were very happy working with Kevin’s team and the way they immersed themselves in an admittedly unfamiliar aspect of healthcare. 

How did Praxent perform from a project management standpoint?

Their communication was very good. Most importantly, they were very transparent, especially in managing project costs. Kevin specifically does a good job at giving reasonable expectations for potential costs and cost ranges. They also staffed the project appropriately to meet our timeline. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

They immersed themselves fully in our industry before starting the project, taking time to understand the particularities of pathology. They demonstrated this more than any other vendor we were vetting.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I don’t think there’s anything they could have done differently. They were very clear on our goals and what they would produce, and they delivered within the expected parameters. 

Any advice for potential customers?

If you’re in a less well-known industry, make time for Praxent to immerse themselves in your industry. That means onsite visits and open office hours to understand the nuances and improve the delivery by far. 

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the co-founder of Virkware, an HR startup. We offer a collaborative software solution.

What challenge were you trying to address with Praxent?

We needed support building our MVP, an HR platform that would allow employees to strengthen skills and improve engagement while at the same time allowing companies to make better use of available resources within their firms.

When we began building our product, we wanted a partner who could focus specifically on the UI/UX component of the platform. We were also looking for consultation on the viability of the software within the market.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Praxent delivered two objectives for us. First, they helped us to define the key elements of our solution, including workflows and use cases. 

To achieve this goal, the team conducted competitive audits as well as a marketplace review, focusing on three of our specific competitors. Praxent also ran several collaborative workshops with our team.

Next, based on a rough wireframe we provided, the team built a prototype that represented some of the major capabilities we’d identified in the first stage of the project. After several collaborative discussions, we finalized a version of the solution refined by user feedback. 

What is the team composition?

We worked with four people regularly. Kelly (Senior Delivery Lead, Praxent) was the project and product manager as well as our main point of contact.

We also worked with Deanna (Director of Product Strategy & Design, Praxent), and two colleagues from the UI/UX and customer research area, Mark (UX Lead, Praxent) and Victor (Senior Product Designer, Praxent).

How did you come to work with Praxent?

Though we’re based in Singapore, we knew we were going to build our product with the United States in mind as one of our core markets. We knew we wanted a partner who could conduct market validation from the US on top of the UI/UX capabilities we required.

We did a lot of online research and ended up on Clutch and selected a list of companies, one of which was Praxent. Based on collective feedback from some of our experienced, trusted contacts, we decided to reach out to Praxent at the start. 

From the outset, the team was authentic and interested in shaping the engagement, so we decided to partner with them.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent $80,000 on this engagement.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our work together took place from September 2018–May 2019.

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

The work Praxent did to validate our idea gave us the confidence to stay the course and build our solution. Now we have a final product that we’re working to make commercially viable. 

Though our engagement with Praxent has ended, the initial work they did on the UI/UX components has laid the foundation for the capabilities our team has now. 

We’re very happy with the output Praxent developed. We’ve tested it with a number of potential clients, and it still holds true.

How did Praxent perform from a project management standpoint?

Kelly was an excellent, communicative project manager. Our timeframe was very strict, and he did a great job of balancing deadlines while allowing space for us to brainstorm. He had a strong sense of ownership of the project, keeping us on schedule and contributing to content, workflow, and design.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We valued Praxent’s input greatly. Throughout the engagement, we looked forward to the collaborative discussions that took place between our two teams. We work completely remote and they were able to employ really effective tools, which made it easy to work together. We never felt like we were losing out because of the distance.

Are there any areas they could improve?

We were very happy with the quality of their deliverables. The process flows, the prototype, and the design were all extremely high quality. However, the team could have improved the presentation of the competitive audit and user interview results. 

They were detailed, but the team could have provided a version for us to present easily to senior management, board members, or potential investors. Despite that, we’re very happy overall with the quality of work Praxent produced.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Know that the team is very responsive, flexible, and willing to change their approach according to your needs.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CTO of an AI solutions company.

What challenge were you trying to address with Praxent?

We were looking for a company that could guide us in the transformation from our existing business model to a SaaS model.

What was the scope of their involvement?

One of the first things we did was set up a workshop at our office. Praxent came in for a two-day workshop, during which we discussed the strategic points for moving to a SaaS business model. 

Praxent guided us from the beginning, helping us in the initial stages of our SaaS strategy. They generated an outline of technical and non-technical aspects that we should address on the commercial, development, and organizational sides of our business. They reviewed our process and helped us define our MVP. They also advised how the architecture of the platform should look for the MVP and how it could grow and scale up in the future for more modules to be integrated into the platform.

They helped us with the design and some initial wireframes, but they didn’t do any development work. The team delivered initial wireframes that our UI/UX person was able to take to the next level. The plan is to engage them in the future.

What is the team composition?

They had a project manager, two UI/UX people, and a product architect.  

How did you come to work with Praxent?

We found Praxent on Clutch and really liked them. We had 3–4 candidates. We had a few Skype meetings with Praxent and then the initial workshop, and we knew they were a good fit for us.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from July–September 2019. They helped us with phase one, and our MVP is out there and ready. We’re in discussions with them for future steps.

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

Our internal developers and designers would sit in on our weekly meetings to evaluate whether their insights were valuable to us. When we went to them with any architectural problems, we always had a proposed solution; once we got into discussions with them, we realized the value and advantage of working with Praxent. They proposed secure and scalable solutions that allow for a better user experience.  

How did Praxent perform from a project management standpoint?

We had a few meetings per week to review designs with their architecture person. We didn’t do any formal metric tracking, but we knew from week to week exactly where they were and what the value was in their work. 

Communication was right on point. They had many sessions with us and would suggest additional meetings to provide clarification or offer good points. They recorded all of our meetings and provided us with access to the recordings. Anytime we wanted to involve somebody else in the discussion, they were willing to onboard them. All of these aspects were managed pretty well. We had 1–2 weeks where the project manager had to leave for personal reasons, and they provided a replacement. We never felt there was any gap in the process.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Praxent has quality people and quality insights. They addressed all of the concerns we had.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Initially, they could have done a better job of identifying internal gaps. They allocated a junior person to the project for UI/UX, and we ultimately got the results we wanted, but that process of adding a person to help create the wireframes could have happened sooner. There was a little bit of misunderstanding about the extent of their involvement; they were taking it very high level, but we wanted more actionable deliverables or certain wireframes to start building our own work from. That required a little bit of push from us, but, in the end, we got what we wanted.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Have a good workshop with them and a solid discussion so that you can agree on what the real need is for their services. This was very beneficial to us. Be specific about what you want from the start.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the head of business development, product strategy, and corporate strategy for the retail arm of an energy provider for industrial customers and consumers in the United States and Canada. We provide commodity services including electricity and natural gas.

In addition to providing a solutions-based approach to our customers energy consumption needs, we also have a trading arm that is active in the wholesale power and gas markets across the United States and Canada.

What challenge were you trying to address with Praxent?

We have an internally built customer-facing portal where our customers access data that’s related to their energy consumption and a few other tools. That portal needed to be overhauled in terms of its UX/UI to make it a little easier to use and a little more intuitive.

We were planning a larger brand evolution and wanted to get that out of the way before we started a larger strategic expansion of the platform itself.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Even though the platform itself was homegrown in terms of its functions, we worked with Praxent to really dig into and help us understand the psychological effects of the design and technologies that we were using, as well as how those were affecting the human interactions being driven through the platform.

We have a fairly unique position within the market, so their first task after we brought them on was really to try to understand our customers, and the from there they were able to take our existing platform, perform a true heuristics evaluation, and break down how it needed to be redesigned in a lot of different ways.

It was an in-depth, iterative process, so they would send us wireframes and we would offer suggestions from across our business to try to incorporate as many perspectives as possible. Then they would take our feedback and come back with more wireframes, and that would continue until we had a product that we were all really pleased with.

What is the team composition?

I worked with the designers and evaluators directly, but since the design was so technically focused, our IT team was closely involved in cooperating with them as well.

How did you come to work with Praxent?

I found their team on Clutch, originally. The platform was incredibly helpful as a starting point for that search because I was just able to Google UX and design consultants and then look through different companies’ ratings.

Our North American operations are based in Houston, so when I saw that Praxent operated in Austin I was pretty excited about them because it would allow us to meet with them in person pretty easily if necessary. They participated in an RFP with two other companies, but they really stood out throughout the whole process.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our work together lasted from July 2019–January 2020, which was our intended length for the project.

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

They dug into both our work and our culture in order to provide a more thoughtful redesign of our platform, and that effort really paid off in the product that we got in the end. We were incredibly pleased with the work that they delivered, in large part I think because it reflected their dedication to our account and their desire to stand behind the quality of the final product.

How did Praxent perform from a project management standpoint?

In my 3 years at EDF, I haven’t worked with a more responsive third-party vendor than Praxent. They’re not just responsive, they’re proactive, which was an incredible benefit to the engagement as a whole. They would come to me anticipating potential issues that we were able to tackle beforehand because of the thoughtfulness of their engagement.

There was a lot of open and honest feedback back and forth provided by both of our teams which really made us feel like partners together more than just parties in a transaction. Praxent also has a very organized, methodical method of tracking budgets and milestones that really sets them apart from other consultancies and helps them to keep everyone in the engagement satisfied.       

What did you find most impressive about them?

I think the most noteworthy thing that I found about working with Praxent is that they really listen to what you have to say. Most similar companies tend to pressure their clients into doing what they think is best by arguing that they’re the experts so you should listen to them, but their team understood that understanding what we do was the key to doing their job better. The flexibility and iterative process enabled by their culture made the whole project enjoyable from start to finish.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I honestly don’t have any negative comments on the engagement. They came in way under their forecasted budget, were on time with everything, and were always flexible, so we have nothing to complain about.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Make sure that no matter what you’re looking to do with Praxent, you’re open to having them come in and really understand your business. Our organization was really open to the effort that we were undertaking, so we had buy-ins from stakeholders across the business, but without that, it would have been much more difficult to establish the level of consensus of opinions that made our engagement with them as successful as it was.