SDP Digital (formerly RAGE Digital)

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company.

My company primarily manufactures meteorological instrumentation that is sold for various business applications, such as road weather information, airport information, and so forth. The headquarters are in Helsinki, Finland. We have about 25-plus offices worldwide. We have about 1,200 employees.

What is your role and responsibilities?

I’m an architect for our online services business. I also manage a team of engineering folks. I’m a system architect, engineer, and manager.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What was your goal for working with Rage Digital?

We wanted to develop a mobile solution for our road, weather, and airport business rapidly. The business goal was to have an entry mobile application, a native mobile application, in the market. Initially, that would be delivered to some key accounts that we have. Long-term, that could be delivered to a much broader customer base.

There isn’t a revenue goal, but it depends on how you define revenue. Whether or not we sell the application is undetermined. Even if we did sell the application, that wouldn’t necessarily be a revenue generator for us, because we wouldn’t be placing ads on the app. It would be very informational for high-end decision makers, not necessarily a revenue generator. It would augment existing product lines.

SOLUTION

What was your process for selecting Rage Digital?

I looked two or three design/build iOS companies locally. I made a couple of evaluations. A friend recommended Rage Digital to me. He showed me some work they had done previously for him. I decided that they would be the one to go with, at least for now.

Did they just do mobile app development work, or was there any training and support, or other types of work involved?

No. They were just going to develop a native mobile application for us, and that’s it.

Can you provide a ballpark dollar figure for the size of the work that they’ve done for you?

The initial cost for Rage was around $8,000 for the first prototype release. What we did to deliver the data to Rage was far in excess of that. We did all the grunt work, basically. We presented the [APIs] and all the ancillary information from our sensors. We did a lot of work on the backend, to quantify a number for that would be tricky.

When was the mobile app launched?

It hasn’t been officially launched in that it’s not in the App Store. We have a provisional license with iOS as a development branch. We have a hundred or so licenses with them. From start to finish, in terms of the prototype, they were very fast in turning that around. I would say that from inception to delivery, discussions, and meetings, the work too Rage Digital less than a month.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

How did they perform? What were the results of the project?

They performed very well. They delivered something that looked very sexy. It was definitely a good addition to the product portfolio.

Is there anything unique about them that really makes them stand out, compared to other companies?

I haven’t worked with many outsource shops, particularly in terms of native applications, so I don’t have a benchmark. They were very keen to do the work, and they had a very good design eye. They provided good input, but were respectful of what we needed. The turnaround was very fast, and the communication was pretty fast as well.

Looking back on the work so far, is there any area that you think they could improve upon or something you might do differently?

The only thing is to be a little bit more detail-oriented in terms of timelines, requirements, and so on. It’s not a very big thing. Since we had the initial application developed with them, they’ve implemented a project collaboration site called Basecamp, which has helped a lot in terms of developing these kind of fast, iterative products in a quick way in terms of collaboration. That wasn’t in place when we started, but it’s helped very much in terms of the later revisions of the application. I would say a little more attention to that process, detail side of things when working with big corporations, like us. They absolutely improved.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company.

We are a dental manufacturer.

What is your role and responsibilities?

I’m the marketing communications manager. I’m responsible for all outbound marketing activities for the company. It's a multinational corporation.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What was your goal for working with Rage Digital?

The goal for the work we’ve done with Rage Digital is to find a way to sell our products better, basically in a virtual showroom for our top-of-the-line products. We also want to provide our sales teams with a better tool to sell to the dentists.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their work?

It was the development of the app. The great thing about it was that it was more than just development. They also lent their knowledge of best practices that helped us create a better app.

What was your process for selecting Rage Digital to work with?

When we first came to Rage Digital, we hadn’t done any apps. We were looking for the apps that were out there that we really liked, and then we found the companies that designed them. We found the Hyundai app that Rage designed, and that’s how I connected with them.

Can you provide a ballpark dollar figure for the size of the average project that they’ve done for you?

I'd prefer not to.

When was the latest milestone completed for that work?

We have had an ongoing relationship with Rage Digital. We are now working on our fourth app with Rage because of the great relationship we have with them.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Do you have any statistics or metrics to track improvement from the project?

We don’t have any direct metrics at this time. We have the number of downloads for the apps, and they are steadily growing. We don’t sell directly. We sell through a dealer. The biggest compliment is that our dealers download this app and use it to sell as well. We've had significant downloads for this app.

Is there anything unique about them that really makes them stand out, compared to other companies?

I worked directly with Ted [Guggenheim, the CEO] at Rage. The key benefit to working with Ted is that he really understands what I want, even though I may not say what I want. It's very important to have a project manager who knows our weaknesses, and translates our marketing activities into app language. He really listened and translated.

Given the industry that I’m in, and the magnitude of work that I have on my plate, he was always able to give me that little push to keep the job moving as well as to keep everything on task and properly organized. When we got into the app game, they weren’t the only company that we started working with – we tried another one, too. You could tell the significant difference between the two companies on their project management skills.

Looking back on the work so far, is there any area that you think they could improve upon or that you might do differently?

It's been a change in relationship. When you first start working with a company, you don’t know everything, where you need to fill in each other's strengths and weaknesses. As our relationship grew as partners, he was able to recognize where he needed to fill in the gaps and help us more to be a better partner. I thought that was great.