Program-Ace

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

We are South East Asia's Leading Publisher of Specialist and Focused IT News. We run several focused IT news portals. I am a founder of the company and currently work in the role of Group Publisher.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Program-Ace?

As part of the service to our customers, we create downloadable specialist IT content such as Guides, technology Assessments, and White Papers. We needed a portal which acted as a back end to our news portals to manage the process of "gated downloads" of our special guides and ebooks.

This enables us to have one central repository of all details collected from every download from every one of our news portals. it allows us to also serach and analyse the data from the download information we store. Finally we need to link this download portal via API's to the customer databases of some of our large customers.

So that if we host a docuemnt for a customer and someone downloads and provides details they want to share, those details are automoatically populate din our database and at the same time into our customer's database.

What were your goals for this project?

The solution needed to be user intuitive, simple to manage, problem free, robust and cretaed in a way which made future enhancements simple to implement.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

We have worked with Program-Ace for many projects over the years. they are expert in ensuring they understand the brief in detail and have always delivered on time and successfully. We have built trust with them over the years, so even though we went out to tender, as their price was competitive we had no hesitation in choosing them for this project.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

We designed the high-level architecture of the portal and database. Program-Ace reviewed high-level design suggested changes. Program-Ace created detailed design document, project plan and quotation.

We signed off Program-Ace did full software development Program-Ace created sandbox test environment Program-Ace did all QA up to V1 pre release We conducted final bug test on V1 Pre-release

We went Live stage 1 Program-Ace reviewed API SDKs from our customers Program-Ace designed integration architecture for API project Program-Ace developed API integration to our customers system Program-Ace conducted all testing for this integration Customers signed off and we went live Program-Ace provided written user documentation for our inhouse users

What was the team composition?

Project lead Development team QA team

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any information that demonstrates the impact that this project has had on your business?

The front-facing part of the project is absolutely critical part of our business, capturing valuable information about our readers and matching readers with IT vendors.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

We use program-ace internal project management tool combined with skype and google docs to manage all aspects of the project day to day. Conference calls and web meetings are conducted only when needed

What did you find most impressive about this company?

They are very good at getting a deep understanding of the deliverables you need. This means when V1 is delivered it meets the exact specification you had in mind at concept stage. They are very straight and honest, if something cannot be done they are very clear in explaining and setting the expectation correctly.

Are there any areas for improvement?

No major areas for improvement.