Rapidops, Inc.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

We provide a time tracking and invoicing application. Development and marketing companies use our platform to track their projects and see how many resources are being utilized. They can also convert the data into invoices in order to get paid through online services.

We are a growing consulting company, so we were trying to understand how much time we were spending on certain projects, what the resource utilization was and whether the allocation was high or low. We first saw this opportunity through an internal issue, but have since offered our tool to the public as well.

What is your position?

I am the owner and founder of the company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with RapidOps?

We needed development resources for our idea.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement in greater detail.

RapidOps provided both web development and application development for our company. Our mobile app has been developed for Android.

How did you come to work with RapidOps?

I reached out to people in the Charlotte community, trying to find someone with a local presence who would also be affordable. I found RapidOps through a friend. I researched their capabilities and we had good initial communication, so I chose RapidOps.

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

The total development cost with RapidOps was over $50,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with RapidOps 2 years ago. The project duration was 6 months. We maintain communication with RapidOps and they provide us great support, but the core development was only in the beginning. We work with RapidOps on adding extra features or fixing bugs.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

The general feed-back we received was that our product was very easy to use. Onboarding to it is very simple. Users have always been able to figure out what the product was supposed to do and they knew how to handle each task.

We have over 2,000 clients for the product and it's a growing business. The best thing about it is that we don't have to invest a lot of time into teaching people how to use it. It's very intuitive.

What distinguishes RapidOps from other providers?

Communication with RapidOps has been good. They've been able to take our roadmap ideas and provide the research and development behind them. I'm not a technical expert, but RapidOps has been able to give us advice on what was or wasn't possible. It made it easy to work with them.

Is there anything RapidOps could have improved or done differently?

Overall, I'm very happy with the product created with RapidOps.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

We are a tourism software company run by our state government. We collect data, acting as a Yellow Pages for the tourism industry. We have collected over 30,000 tourism locations and events which are stored in a centralized database and distributed through a web service.

What is your position?

I am the IT manager of the company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with RapidOps?

We needed to develop a mobile application for which we initially used in-house resources. Our own team was not as skilled as we thought and we experienced a high turnover in that particular area, which delayed the project.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement in greater detail.

We initially hired RapidOps for implementing a small WordPress plug-in for our web service. They finished the task successfully in 4-weeks' time. Soon after that, we engaged RapidOps to develop an HTML5 mobile application for our company. Our in-house developers were already working on it. They delivered the documentation to RapidOps, who picked up the project in broken pieces and delivered the finished product as requested in 3-4-months' time.

How did you come to work with RapidOps?

I had used RapidOps in the past for an e-commerce business which I run on the side. They had delivered good results to me, so I introduced RapidOps to my company. We did go through a proper selection process, asking for 3 company references from RapidOps.

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

The cost of our WordPress implementation was around $2,000. Our mobile application had a cost of $30,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with RapidOps at the end of 2014. Our projects have been finished.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

The quality offered by RapidOps has been outstanding, compared to other outsourced vendors I've worked with. RapidOps always ensured that any changes came with quality assurance.

How did RapidOps perform from a project management standpoint?

RapidOps has maintained good communication in order to ensure that everyone was on the same page for the status of deliverables and their requirements.

What distinguishes RapidOps from other providers?

RapidOps never tried to rush the work, and they've come up with creative ways for solving problems. Creativity is the main strength of RapidOps.

Is there anything RapidOps could have improved or done differently?

We are based in Australia, while RapidOps is in India, so there is a significant time zone difference. We usually have to stay late or have RapidOps start up early for meetings.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

We are a predictive analytics company. We have created a big data predictive analytical platform for Fortune 500 enterprises in retail, finance, manufacturing and healthcare domains.

What is your position?

I am the Director of Products for the company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with RapidOps?

We have a unique offering in the predictive analytics space, for which we need frontend and backend development from our in-house team, as well as external vendors. Our biggest challenge has been acquiring talent, specifically in terms of developers for progressive technologies like Node.js. It's very hard to find people and, even when we do find them, it's very hard to integrate them into a team and keep them. We hired a team at RapidOps to expand our product development team.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement in greater detail.

We use RapidOps for multiple things. They have a 100-person team, and we have 7 RapidOps resources on our team. We do add and remove specialized resources on-demand. RapidOps has been in charge of designing and developing various modules of our analytics product - including analytics, visualizations, configurations and API layers. We use them for research and development and agile delivery.

How did you come to work with RapidOps?

We approached RapidOps through a common connection. We started with a trial project and found them to be responsive. Their lead architect was in charge of putting together our team, which worked out well. We had some ups and downs in the initial adjustment period, but it has since worked out pretty well.

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

The monthly cost of RapidOps' services is between $25,000 and $50,000. Right now, we are still in the planning phase for a new release, so our work volume is lower.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with RapidOps 2 years ago. We have an ongoing relationship. Because our 2 internal developers have left the company, RapidOps has become our sole development resource.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

RapidOps has become our go-to team for full-stack product development. I have some outstanding people from them working on my team since the last 2 years. RapidOps has done phenomenal work for us. When I joined the company, we were severely lacking resources. RapidOps picked up the work and helped us continue it. As of now we have delivered almost 20 product releases together and they could not have been better. I usually have about 7 RapidOps resources on my team and together we have built some of the best analytics software out there. It's being used by Fortune 500 enterprises. This is an important metric of RapidOps' success and their commitment to a client like us.

What distinguishes RapidOps from other providers?

One thing which I've appreciated about RapidOps is their commitment, knowledge and speed. We are a small team facing high expectations from the market. With help of RapidOps, we were able to multiply our speed to market with some amazing technologies. It is very hard to find a technology partner with product mindset and expertise in truly cutting-edge technologies. 

Often times we run into crunch-time nearing product releases. My RapidOps guys are so motivated that they work through the nights, and help us deliver on very short timelines without compromising anything.

Is there anything RapidOps could have improved or done differently?

RapidOps' approach to product focus and technology is a good blend for a company looking to develop disruptive products. Despite some small hiccups here and there, they have got it right.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

Zurn is a billion-dollar manufacturer and seller of plumbing for commercial and industrial waterworks pieces and parts. They're known for a large breadth of engineering solutions for the construction and retrofit markets.

What is your position?

I was the Digital Marketing Manager. I reported directly to the Vice President of the company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with RapidOps?

Zurn runs a strategy called OneZurn, which implies filling an entire project with their products, as applicable. The plumbing industry is typically dispersed in terms of products: one company would be in charge of sinks and faucets, while someone else would take care of toilets, plumbing parts, and drains. We wanted to obtain the business for entire projects. We ran several marketing and digital strategies in order to support this goal.

One of these campaigns was called the Plumbing Schedule. When an engineer designs a hospital, school, or commercial building, wherever plumbing is put into the building, there will be a section of the blueprints just for that. There is what's called a p-schedule, which is a big table which indicates where certain pieces and parts are. Our strategy was to create a digital tool that would allow engineers to take pre-determined bundles from the Zurn catalog and populate this plumbing schedule tool. If there was no good fit for a Zurn product, engineers would be allowed to copy and paste items from another product set. The need was for getting as much as possible of our product entered into the schedule.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement in greater detail.

We initially had a solution designed internally in the form of a spreadsheet. RapidOps' goal was to convert that spreadsheet into a databased fluid frontend. We could then edit, create, modify, and delete pieces and parts of the groups, as well as create groups and bundles of products. The software worked through a login system. Based on a series of questions about the components' application, whether they'd be used in a bathroom, or whether the engineers wanted double or triple sinks and so on, the application whittled-down the available bundles. Every piece and part was then populated, down to insularly products. RapidOps created the backend and frontend for our solution nicely, working based on a spreadsheet done by my company.

How did you come to work with RapidOps?

I've used RapidOps for multiple projects in the past, mainly on website development. I've worked with them on both small, 6-page sites, and huge ones having 300+ pages. They featured little interactive elements as well as a lot of dynamic data. RapidOps was the first developer that came to mind for the current project. We considered only one other company, a local vendor which had been used for several other company projects. They proved to be completely over their head, so I went to RapidOps. I was able to explain our needs rapidly and they gave us a quote which proved to be 90% accurate. We had to make a few tweaks along the way, so cost differences weren't to do with them. We hadn't defined the scope completely when hiring RapidOps.

Even though they had mainly worked on web-based products with me, I thought that RapidOps would be a good choice, which proved to be true.

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

The original quote for the project was $10,000. There was some scope creep, but the final cost only had a variation of 5% more or less.

What is the status of this engagement?

We rolled out the product in stages. The first version took less than 3 months to launch, while the final version, which reached most of our target audience, took 3 months to complete. The largest part of RapidOps' involvement in the process took place around April 2015.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

I left the company before the software gained much usage. At the time, it had been accepted very well. The only negative feed-back I received was about the user interface, which was too basic. We were rolling our software to engineers, who tend to be computer-savvy, but they still needed guidance. This was immediately addressed by RapidOps by producing several user manuals. They put together screenshots and written documentation which helped push the usability and acceptance of our product tremendously. From what I've heard, the product is being used on a limited basis by dealers and a specified group of resellers working with the company.

The engineers who tested the platform immediately pushed back in terms of not wanting to enter specific product information, which could be mined by our company. They didn't want to receive calls from sales people asking about their position on specific projects. Engineers wanted to anonymize the process, which RapidOps took care of to an extent, but there were some other engineering-specific requests about the tool. The tool ended up being used by a different audience, which, in retrospect, is actually better.

What distinguishes RapidOps from other providers?

One of the key strengths of RapidOps is their ability to quickly understand the scope of a project, even if it wasn't clearly defined at the time. RapidOps' team either base their approach on previous experience or simply perceive what is needed. I could give RapidOps only a piece of the entire scope and have them create a solution quickly.

Is there anything RapidOps could have improved or done differently?

RapidOps' team is very literal in their understanding of the scope. They seem to understand the goal quickly, but also aren't willing to go outside of possible uses or variations of that particular scope. 99% of the time, RapidOps was spot-on in my dealing with them, but for the remaining 1%, there were instances in which a task was interpreted completely literally. In the particular project which I've discussed, we gave RapidOps spreadsheets; they built the software exactly as the spreadsheet looked, not taking into consideration the user interface. Unfortunately, we didn't make a mockup interface because we didn't have a clear idea of what the tool would be capable of doing or of its ultimate use. From my team's standpoint, we had to take the blame. RapidOps' first iteration for us was basically an online spreadsheet, which was a very literal translation of our needs. This was fine, as it opened up conversations on what we wanted the software to look like.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

Our startup has developed a responsive web app through which certain niches can find locations that fit their needs. Our initial focus was on dietary needs, like food allergies, vegetarianism, and veganism. I have children with food allergies, so it became difficult for me to find meals that would fit their profiles. This was the basis for our product concept.

What is your position?

I am the founder of the company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with RapidOps?

The business challenge was to create a scalable database for what was initially an iOS app. When opening the app, it would find dishes that met a dietary profile, which could be obtained in locations close to the user.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement in greater detail.

RapidOps built the backend for the database using MongoDB originally. We're now using a hybrid of MongoDB and Solar. The app's APIs [application program interfaces] are written in Node.js. The initial app build by RapidOps was for iOS. Later on, we built a responsive web app using AngularJS.

How did you come to work with RapidOps?

I don't come from a development background, so I didn't have any existing relationships within the field. I contacted different tech companies around Charlotte, North Carolina, asking them about the developers they'd used. I ended up with a list of three firms, put together a scope, requested proposals, and met each team. I chose RapidOps based on the strength of their proposal. It was a combination of value and approach. The difference for RapidOps was that they came back with a more open-ended proposal. I thought that there would be more potential there to build a relationship and evolve the app later-on, addressing the challenges that may not have been anticipated in the beginning. The other developers proposed flat-fee arrangements for the project and also included change fees. I didn't think that this would be best for me.

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

The total development cost has been $200,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

I started working with RapidOps in 2012. The project is ongoing. We initially published an iOS app in the store at the end of 2012, and switched focus to the responsive web app. We've pivoted recently towards an AngularJS version of the responsive web app with a slightly different business focus: we no longer address food allergy meals, but rather focus on restaurants which offer vegan meals. The iOS app enabled us to learn what users wanted and we've rebuilt the app accordingly.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

The iOS app received incredible feedback in terms of design from everyone to whom we showed it. It looked great and moved fast. It received upwards of 20,000 downloads. After the switch to a singular web app, we've grown rapidly, increasing by 20% each month.

What distinguishes RapidOps from other providers?

RapidOps has shown flexibility and willingness to adapt. In other words, I haven't had to build incredibly-detailed specifications and face the situation of being told by the developer that something does not fit in.

Is there anything RapidOps could have improved or done differently?

Everyone within the development field could improve in terms of making estimates for the complexity of a build and how long it will take.