ProCogia

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I work for Seaspan ULC, a shipbuilding and marine transportation business that’s based in North Vancouver. I’m the manager of analytics for both operating units of the organization.

What challenge were you trying to address with ProCogia?

We had specific requirements for data engineering and data analytics.

What was the scope of their involvement?

ProCogia is working as an augmented part of our team, specifically assisting with the data engineering division. We’re building data pipelines and bringing data from various source applications and systems to our data warehouse or data lake. We’re making sure that these data are scalable for prospective analyses as well. 

Together with their team, we’re also transforming that data and presenting it to the business for consumption. We’re mainly using the Azure cloud, which is a combination of Azure Databricks, Data Factory, Logic Apps, Synapse Analytics, and Power BI. We’re also doing quite a bit of Python coding to perform these functions. 

What is the team composition?

At the moment, one of their senior data engineers leads the highly complex data engineering activities within my team. We will probably scale up as we go. 

How did you come to work with ProCogia?

ProCogia was actually the one who found me. They cold-called our VP, who then passed the information to me. That’s where the introduction started. We found that they had a good track record of providing these services to customers in the Greater Vancouver area, but it took a year before we could properly engage them.

In the meantime, they helped me understand their service offerings, the skills of the people in their company, and how that related to what I needed in my own team. We spoke consistently throughout the year about what the next steps would be while I waited for the right timing in terms of internal demand. As project work ramped up, we eventually came to need some additional capacity, so we signed ProCogia up for an engineering engagement.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve invested $120,000 CAD (approximately $96,000 USD) so far, and that will probably double this year. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with ProCogia in November 2021, and our partnership will likely be extended.

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

We’re still in the thick of a couple of projects, so I can’t talk about business value realized. I will say that we wouldn’t be able to handle this really complex work without ProCogia. The assistance we’re getting from them has been very valuable. I’m really pleased so far. 

It’s tough to gauge whether we would get the same results if we’d worked with other resources from their team, but the person we’ve been fortunate enough to have assigned to us has been a fantastic fit for what we’re trying to do. I’d say they slightly exceed our expectations. There’s real quality in what they’re doing.

How did ProCogia perform from a project management standpoint?

The nature of the engagement doesn’t really call for project management on their side. Their communication skills, punctuality, and ability to stay within budget have been excellent though. 

We use Azure DevOps internally to build up features and break them up into tasks. We’re able to get things done on time through this platform as well. We also use Teams for communication.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I’m impressed by two things: their ability to understand exactly what we need and their flexibility and willingness to tailor their service offering based on our organization’s requirements. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

At this stage, no, I don’t have too many concerns, which bodes well for them. It means they’re doing something right.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

It’s important to be very specific about the project objectives and the skills required. You have to know what we’re looking for because it could be a hit and miss if you’re not clear on that.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the director of partner programs and channel management at Microsoft.

What challenge were you trying to address with ProCogia?

We needed help with analytics for a learning partner program.

What was the scope of their involvement?

ProCogia supported the learning partner program. They helped with all the program management, including any challenges in the proposals and an analysis of pros and cons.

They were also responsible for the data analysis work. This included all the reporting for tracking purposes to judge effectiveness and whether our partners met the criteria to remain in the program, as well as what their member tier should be. ProCogia used Power BI and Excel for the work, and our team handled the development tasks. 

What is the team composition?

There were two people from their team working with us. One person was a program manager and the other handled the data analysis, software assurance, and e-learning. 

How did you come to work with ProCogia?

When I joined the team, ProCogia was already working with the group. 

How much have you invested with them?

We spent $150,000 per year.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked with ProCogia from October 2014–February 2019.

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

We had about 1,000 learning partners in our channel that were globally distributed and the channel needed to meet specific criteria for their member tier. ProCogia’s work was very instrumental in tracking the status of our partners.

I had close to $90 million in terms of general incentives to utilize to drive programs, technologies, and other initiatives, and we made that decision based on ProCogia’s analysis with our product group and technologies. We were able to put the right journey incentives in place because of their work, helping us move the needle in the right direction. 

How did ProCogia perform from a project management standpoint?

Their project management was very good and the team delivered consistently. They had regular meetings with each member of my team. On a quarterly basis, the CEO and I had meetings, as well. 

If something wasn’t going right, I could pick up the phone and they’d fix it. One of the reasons I kept working with them was their transparency. They were upfront if a resource was leaving in the next few months and they would plan for a new one. They were involved in selecting candidates, too. 

Another thing that was beneficial for me was the hand-holding period for a month or so where they didn’t charge us for the extra person. They did this so there would be a simple transition over to the new person during the shadowing process, which we appreciated. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

They offered a flexible and transparent partnership. If I had a challenge with my budget, I could easily pick up the phone and speak to them. They were able to accommodate the scope of work so we’d be able to keep two people and keep the project going.

Are there any areas they could improve?

There’s nothing to improve — I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend them to others, as well.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Be open and transparent about what’s not working and how you can come together to fix it. Have regular meetings — one of the benefits for me was being able to reach out to them directly. 

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a senior manager at a large telecommunications company. I run the analytics, engineering, and strategy team. We source analytics and network insights that drive a lot of business decisions.

What challenge were you trying to address with ProCogia?

We hadn’t had anyone focus on analytics before, and my team had been recently formed for that purpose. I started looking into the data scientist world and came across ProCogia.

What was the scope of their involvement?

ProCogia created advanced analytics using machine learning and certain data science models. They’ve also done a lot of prototype work for my team.

What is the team composition?

We started with one person from their team. After 3–6 months, we were able to show the value of the new data products we were working on, and the team on ProCogia’s side was expanded to a maximum of five. We would go up and down between 1–5 people, depending on the level of support we needed.

How did you come to work with ProCogia?

We met their CEO through a referral. We started a small trial to see what value ProCogia could add to our team, and we went from there.

My boss told me that they had three months to show us what they could do.The ProCogia team didn’t shy away from getting their hands dirty, and their CEO actually came in to help, because he wanted to earn our business. That showed a lot of commitment at the start, and helped them gain the trust of myself and my leadership team.

I like smaller vendors because they’re willing to invest and grow with the business. ProCogia came across as a small and mighty team at the time. They knew what they were doing, and they were willing to grow with us.

How much have you invested with them?

We have yearly scopes of work with them. Their rate is quite reasonable.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with ProCogia in March 2016, and it’s ongoing. 2016 was more of a trial year, and, after they earned our trust, we gave them a dedicated scope of work.

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

We have a lot of network data inside the company, from network equipment, customer usage, and so on. We take customer privacy very seriously, so that data is confidential. We’ve done a lot of analysis based on that data in order to come up with network improvements within the company. We’ve made a lot of improvements over the last 3–5 years, and that’s come out partly because of ProCogia’s contribution. Right now, the data set we’re working on is getting one trillion records per day. My team and partners are able to work on that data set pretty well.

The quality of work is dependent on whom they assign to the project. When we have more technical leads to take care of things, the work will usually be higher quality. Sometimes, on smaller-scale projects, we might decide to put lesser-experienced people on, so the quality will be lower. It’s true for any company out there that having more senior people will lead to better quality.

ProCogia’s work is usually very detailed. They love working with the data. They understand the problem statement from the beginning, which helps us move on to the next phase. We have to create a lot of new products, some of which we aren’t sure we’ll be using in the future. If they create 10 prototypes and we’re using two of those, I’m already happy. We’ve had success with them on many of our projects.

How did ProCogia perform from a project management standpoint?

Their flexibility is amazing, in that they don’t shy away from giving us more people in order to meet our scope of work. They’re willing to go above and beyond to get things done for us. We have daily standup meetings with the team during peak times, and they just work directly with one of my team leads when it’s not necessary to involve everyone.

They’ve improved quite a bit in terms of process, and they’ve learned from my team. We have three in-house groups: data scientists, network engineers, and project managers. We’ve helped the ProCogia team integrate into the agile process, in terms of sprint planning. We set up priorities and resource assignment every two weeks, and we have burndown charts. ProCogia delivers on the commitments pretty well.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their focus and commitment stand out. When we assign them something, they treat it as high priority.

Their flexibility is also impressive. For us to compete in the industry, we have to move very fast, and we have to give them a lot of responsibility at times. ProCogia supports us through those journeys, and they keep up with our pace.

We merged with another large telecom in 2020, and a lot of the people coming from there were very impressed by the speed with which we deliver results to the business. That says a lot about ProCogia.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Resource selection is one improvement point, but it’s not just their fault. ProCogia works with us to select people for projects, so we’re also part of the selection brainstorming. We usually see a lot of success in our projects, but we do get bad resources on occasion, and swapping them takes a lot of time. More than 80% of resources have turned out to be good.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

My advice is to try them out. ProCogia will usually understand the business problem very well, and they’ll brainstorm with the client. The more opportunities they’re given, the more they’re willing to invest with the business. They’re still hungry to grow, and what they’re looking for are opportunities. 

Please describe your company and your position there.

CIO for non-profit, government contractor entity.

For what projects/services did your company hire ProCogia?

Support to roll-out RStudio and other data science pipelines on AWS with special focus on containerization.

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

Procogia had a solid track record with RStudio, data science and work with academic institutions, non-profit and agencies.

Describe the project in detail and walk through the stages of the project.

1. Setup and installation of corporate-wide EC2-based cluster of RStudio instances
2. Definition of architecture-reference for project-based work.
3. Containerization
4. Cybersecurity hardening and monitoring processes

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

one

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

Vendor demonstrated flawless execution and great ability to navigate shifting requirements due to cybersecurity needs.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

very effective

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

Deep knowledge of the product (RStudio), ability to adapt to cloud and security needs, and also deep understanding of R and data science pipelines and workflows.

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

Vendor was excellent. Nothing to be changed.