Profound

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Senior Product Manager of Arqiva

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

At the heart of broadcast and utilities in the UK and abroad, Arqiva provides critical data, network and communications services

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

• Provide expertise to support Arqiva in the development of a future state customer Journey
• Design and produce wireframe mock ups to support development of a customer headless portal
• Production of high quality service blueprints
• Development of fully formed development user stories

SOLUTION

How did you find Profound?

Referral

Why did you select Profound over others?

• High ratings
• Great culture fit
• Good value for cost
• Responsiveness

How many teammates from Profound were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

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

• Creation of customer journey and service blueprints 
• Validation of existing customer requirements 
• SME stakeholder workshops to help define product definition - produce document 
• Feature prioritization 
• User story definition and creation 
• Concept development of customer headless portal 
• Creation of UI dashboards

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

• High quality baseline framework established 
• User Stories and Customer Journey maps that formed the bedrock of the product development build cycle

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

Not only was the scope clearly defined it was stuck to rigidly. Progress was clearly reported on tracked delivered against by a dedicated project manager

What was your primary form of communication with Profound?

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

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

• Ability to respond quickly and to change in scope. 
• Ability to get to grips quickly with complex subject matter and engage with broad subject matter experts. 
• The quality of their written output was exceptional

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

Im struggling to think of significant areas of improvement

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Head of Ecommerce of Interflora British Unit

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

We’re Interflora, a community of local artisan florists crafting beautiful blooms and delivering gorgeous gifts across the UK and internationally.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

• Replatform the three consumer-facing websites into a single, harmonised architecture
• Increase agility and adaptability to serve multiple channels
• Improve customer expereince

SOLUTION

How did you find Profound?

Referral

Why did you select Profound over others?

• High ratings
• Pricing fit our budget
• Great culture fit
• Referred to me
• Company values aligned

How many teammates from Profound were assigned to this project?

6-10 Employees

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

The scope of work for our technology transformation project was ambitious and transformative. We recognised that our existing ecommerce platform, developed over the past two decades, required a refresh to meet modern customer expectations. Our challenge was to harmonize three consumer-facing websites and a telesales operation into a single platform while dealing with end-of-life constraints and high hosting costs.

Our business requirements included incorporating our internal designers and developers into the project to ensure ownership of the new stack, upskilling the team on the new technology, and establishing a design system for future development acceleration. The plan involved adopting a cloud-native composable architecture to achieve unfettered freedom in crafting front-end user experiences and enabling instant service across multiple channels. 

We collaborated with Profound to conduct discovery and customer research, leading to the development of a design system and a compelling user experience. The technology stack selection process involved working with leading platforms like commercetools, Algolia, Amplience, and Pimberly, all aligned with microservice-led architecture principles. 

Key deliverables included launching all three sites within a record time of nine months, reducing hosting costs by 20% through SaaS adoption, achieving a fortnightly sprint release frequency, and the ability to deploy key changes rapidly. Additionally, the project provided us with enhanced scalability, enabling us to handle increased site load and optimise marketing campaigns efficiently. 

Overall, this technology transformation has equipped Interflora with a next-generation digital estate and a strong internal capability to continuously evolve our platform and deliver exceptional customer experiences.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

• 20% reduction in annual hosting costs 
• Ongoing new functionality delivered by SaaS vendors 
• Release frequency improved to fortnightly sprint releases 
• Ability to deploy key changes in hours (if necessary) 
• Ability to cope with increased site load 
• Ability to more easily launch and optimise campaigns

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

Very well managed project involving multiple internal and external stakeholders. They were responsive to our needs and provided on-time delivery.

What was your primary form of communication with Profound?

Virtual Meeting

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

Great group of people. Highly skilled, drawing in further expertise when need be.

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

No

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

 I am the CEO of a Refurbished Electronics Company

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Refurbished devices

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

• Front end revamp
• Brand style consistency across sites

SOLUTION

How did you find Profound?

Referral

Why did you select Profound over others?

• High ratings
• Pricing fits our budget
• Great culture fit
• Company values aligned

How many teammates from Profound were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

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

Profound was given a brief to re-imagine the front end of our sites, to modernise, and ensure consistency with our brand style guide.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Team review and approval of designs in Figma

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

Profound always ensure we were kept within the loop, with regular calls, and updates. They hit the nail on the head with this project.

What was your primary form of communication with Profound?

Virtual Meeting

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

They ability to understand the scope, the vast knowledge base, and experience they hold.

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

None

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

 I am the Head of Portfolio Delivery of a Tire Retailer & Wholesaler

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Retail and Wholesaler of tyres.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

• Rebuild our B2C website onto a best-of-breed MACH architecture to improve functionality, improve SEO performance and provide a platform for future growth.

SOLUTION

How did you find Profound?

Existing vendor

Why did you select Profound over others?

Profound were our existing e-com partner

How many teammates from Profound were assigned to this project?

6-10 Employees

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

Discovery, Definition (gather and document requirements), Design, Build (integrate Commercetools, Storyblok, Bynder and Algolia with our ERP), System testing, Integration testing, Performance testing, Cutover planning, Go-live, Hypercare.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The new B2C website is performing exceptionally well. Performance is significantly better than the old website, resulting in improved SEO. Order volume through the new website has increased significantly.

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

Profound's project management was good, with excellent collaboration and communication. Main criticism would be overly optimistic timescales at the outset and a lack of appreciation of constraints on the customer side or where we needed more guidance to navigate through all the new tools.

What was your primary form of communication with Profound?

Virtual Meeting

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

Profound have some very talented people who engage is a collaborative and constructive way. Their technical expertise makes you feel that you are in safe hands.

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

Given our internal lack of knowledge in the new SAAS applications recommended to us by Profound we were expecting to be guided more closely through the process of getting up to speed on them. Profound could also do with being more competitively priced.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Marketing Director of Conquip Engineering Group

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Founded in the UK in 2003, Conquip has grown rapidly to become a large, global brand, recognised for innovative engineering and manufacturing, excellent service and as a genuine solutions provider to the infrastructure and construction industries.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

• Improve user experience for mutli-region websites
• Increase conversion on the website
• Managed service maintenance

SOLUTION

How did you find Profound?

• Referral
• Other

Why did you select Profound over others?

• Close to my geographic location
• Great culture fit
• Referred to me

How many teammates from Profound were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

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

User journey development Managed service maintenance Hosting and live and development sites Alert and uptime management

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Service desk Incident prioritsation and management User experience recommendations and project implementations Service level and security SLAs

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

The team at Profound has excellent communication with ours. We find and agree clarity on the scope of work and cost, we project manage using a ticketing/web-app platform and updates are regular and clear, either via the app or with Teams calls and screen shares. They think of almost every eventuality and ask plenty of questions to manage expectations along the way.

What was your primary form of communication with Profound?

Email or Messaging App

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

All-round capabilities - managed service, infrastructure capabilities and projects for improvements.

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

I can't think of anything.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Director of Horizon Platforms

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Rental of powered access platforms for working at height safely.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

• Allow customers to hire online

SOLUTION

How did you find Profound?

Referral

Why did you select Profound over others?

• Great culture fit
• Referred to me
• Company values aligned

How many teammates from Profound were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

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

Profound worked with us to develop an online platform for our customers to manage their hires with us. This included quotations, orders, off hires and invoices. The deliverables covered everything from the front end, content management and ecommerce including necessary middleware to feed data into our erp system.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Ability for customers to manage their hires.

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

Overall, they were good, and the team delivered the objectives. There were delays and these could probably have been overcome by spending more time understanding our core erp system. The more complex integration is where delays occurred.

What was your primary form of communication with Profound?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

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

Great people and excellent problem solvers. They really try hard to find creative solutions to problems.

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

Communication at times could be better. Especially around what was and was not going to get delivered. However, overall they performed really well.