SM Innovations

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the owner of a military medical supply company. We cater to the needs of active-duty soldiers and their dependents.

What challenge were you trying to address with SM Innovations?

We needed them to put up a new e-commerce site for a new program in our Hawaii office. The focus of our program in Hawaii was to provide medical supplies and other products that women needed during and after pregnancy.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We had a vision of creating a non-retail website where our patients could order medical supplies from. Since we are a nonprofit, SM Innovations had to create a website that was intended for people with insurance.

Our initial platform was built on Wix, but it was very limited. SM Innovations upgraded that product, and it became the first legitimate presentation that we offered to the community we were serving. They built the site on Amazon. Nobody in our team was equipped with this expertise, not even its terminologies, so their team had to handle that challenge as well.

We are currently working with their team to create an additional web page that features all our business promotions in Hawaii.

What is the team composition?

We worked with five people in total. We mainly spoke with Nima (Chief Strategist) and Scott (Creative Consultant). Kayako was hired by Nima to work on the frontend of the website, while two other engineers from their team did the backend and plugged everything together.

How did you come to work with SM Innovations?

SM Innovations was referred to us by our partner who worked with them in the past. We initially had a side project with them, but it fell through. Despite that incident, I decided to continue our working relationship and folded their team into my core company because I liked Nima’s way of working.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent $47,000 on the e-commerce project.

What is the status of this engagement?

The initial project ran from August 2020–January 2021.

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

We were happy with the quality of their work. We didn’t know that there would always be some tweaking needed even after the product went live, but they handled that well by onboarding Kayako. I was extremely pleased with the design she came up with for the front cover of the website. Everything changed when she stepped in.

Initially, our expectations were unrealistic but we’re trying to get past that now by focusing on measuring the volume of orders and users.

How did SM Innovations perform from a project management standpoint?

The project management went well. I talked to Nima about the difficulty in dealing with small, family-owned businesses, and we seemed to have handled things the same way. He had to hire Kayako to work on the frontend of our website, and I had to hire another person to create our web platform — these two people became the liaisons of our companies. For me, that level of understanding showed how committed Nima was to address the weakness in the process.

What did you find most impressive about them?’

I have not worked with any other providers, but I find SM Innovations’ work to be impressive. I get that they are a young company, but I’m comfortable with their team. Scott was accommodating and open to changes, even after they installed the product. Their team went back and made changes when necessary.

Are there any areas they could improve?

There were issues with communication but Nima was quick to address those by hiring another person to do the work. I liked how quick they were in terms of implementing changes and improvements, so I was comfortable enough to let them know that I wanted to work with them again on another project.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the chief technologist and co-founder of Marin PET/CT Imaging. We do outpatient diagnostic medical imaging for nuclear medicine and CT scans.

What challenge were you trying to address with SM Innovations?

We needed a website designed.

What was the scope of their involvement?

When SM Innovations came on board, all we had was a landing page with some basic information. The team came on board and built out the site with the features and functionalities we wanted.

What is the team composition?

I specifically spoke to Nima (Chief Strategist), but I also interacted with three or four people through Slack throughout the course of the project. 

How did you come to work with SM Innovations?

Before SM Innovations, we had a brand developer doing our logo and things of that nature. He turned out to not be very knowledgeable in the web design area, so we started looking elsewhere. 

I knew Nima personally and was aware of what his company was doing, so we called SM Innovations and asked them what their capabilities were. They explained to us their team, their history, their skills, how they work, and what they could provide for us. We decided to move forward with them.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent about $10,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started discussions in February of 2020, but didn’t start working until April. We wrapped up in December of the same year.

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

Their quality of service was fantastic. SM Innovations was always on top of things and reaching out to us — they wouldn’t just sit around and wait until we reached out to them. They were very proactive in terms of getting things done and moving everything forward.

How did SM Innovations perform from a project management standpoint?

They finished the project very promptly. They were the ones who were actually pushing us to stay on track. 

We mostly keep in touch over the phone, through Slack, or through emails.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their two greatest strengths are punctuality and professionalism. The quality of SM Innovations’ work is extremely high. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

There’s nothing that comes to mind.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Pull the trigger and go with SM Innovations — they’ll impress you.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO of a company that produces educational materials for architects.

What challenge were you trying to address with SM Innovations?

I needed help creating an app.

What was the scope of their involvement?

They worked on our iOS/Andoroid app from start to finish. Pretty much all the features were custom. They used React Native on AWS.

What is the team composition?

We work with three people from their team. These include a CEO, project manager, and a manager.

How did you come to work with SM Innovations?

I found them on UpWork.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent $25,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

I found them in July 2019, and we launched in August 2020. Their work is ongoing with working on advanced features.

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

They’ve incredibly informative and have taken the time to educate me. I’ve been very happy working with them.

How did SM Innovations perform from a project management standpoint?

We used Slack, Jira, and Google Sheets. The team was great at scheduling and managing deadlines. Whenever I gave them work to do, they completed it super quickly.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They really took the time to understand me and my goals. Nima (Chief Strategist) did a great job of translating my needs for the project.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, nothing comes to mind. I’d suggest them to anyone going forward.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

My advice is to be explicitly clear. They do a good job of translating things, but sometimes it takes time.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the managing partner of PPC Ad Editor. We’re a SaaS company that helps medium to enterprise-level digital marketing agencies develop PPC campaigns.

What challenge were you trying to address with SM Innovations?

We needed to develop additional key capabilities and move our platform to AWS.

What was the scope of their involvement?

SM Innovations provided 3–4 resources specialized in PHP to design, build, test, QA, deploy new features for our SaaS solution. They worked within our staging and production environment and were heavily involved in each stage of the product lifecycle.

The second part involved AWS-specific services. SM Innovations helped us create an AWS environment to host our software. They configured the environment configuring, made sure the architecture would meet our needs, implemented the designs in AWS, and then migrated our code to the cloud.

What is the team composition?

At the project’s peak, we’ve worked with four people: two junior developers, one senior developer, and a project manager.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent about $50,000–$60,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

The project started in September 2019 and is ongoing.

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

First, I’d point to SM Innovations’ ability to ramp up. When the senior developer got on board, it took the team very little time to understand our software — a complicated piece of code and rules that they weren’t familiar with. Their onboarding speed was exceptional.

Second, I appreciated their ability to react to problems. In testing, whenever an issue comes up, SM Innovations addresses it in an impressive turnaround time, which has been extremely well-received from our team. Their ability to work quickly and collaboratively with unfamiliar software has been key to the project’s success.

How did SM Innovations perform from a project management standpoint?

SM Innovations runs everything appropriately thanks to their project managers. We started with weekly standups but moved to daily ones during the testing and UAT phases. Their processes are on point, and every meeting is well-structured: the team always understands what they need to get from us in each standup.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their commitment to the timeline has stood out. This project involves a lot of work and heavy lifting, but when we set a date to get a version to beta testers, SM Innovations spent nights and weekends to make sure we hit that date. Their commitment to results is the number one thing I’d point out.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They have smart junior people, but the time SM Innovations gave them to onboard and join us was too short. I’d give those folks a longer runway to get more acquainted with the work; that way, they’ll be much more productive on the job.

Any advice for potential customers?

If you have a well-defined scope, they will run like a machine. If there’s a moving target, state it upfront — that will change the processes that SM Innovations uses.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the CEO and founder of a company that manufactures Hawaiian botanicals for physicians.

What challenge were you trying to address with SM Innovations?

We hired another company to build our website and UX originally, but they were unable to deliver in the timeline we had specified, so we reached out to SM Innovations to take over that project.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Their team built two websites for us from scratch. One of those is an e-commerce site with a shopping cart, and the second is a forum for patients and doctors to connect and enhance their education in plant-based wellness. They are also contracting out to an SEO service provider to help us launch the sites as well.

What is the team composition?

The number of people working on our account varies, but at any given time, I would say we have around 4–5 people involved, including a UX project lead, 2–3 people working on the backend, and a team performing SEO and marketing.

How did you come to work with SM Innovations?

I originally found them on UpWork, and then contacted them directly about working with us based on their reputation and past projects.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in November 2019 and are continuing to work with them to this day.

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

On a day to day basis, their team comes up with even more ideas about how we can accelerate our business than we do. We are incredibly satisfied with the deliverables they’ve provided to us and the contributions they’ve made to the project on every level.

How did SM Innovations perform from a project management standpoint?

Their team makes it incredibly easy to work with them, managing their work fairly independently and keeping us updated on everything that’s going on. They always answer our questions fairly quickly and don’t hesitate to reach out to us for clarification when needed.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The team that they have in-house has an incredibly impressive list of accomplishments in terms of the projects they’ve worked on in the past, and it shows in their work. Everything they’ve created for us so far is fantastic.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, I really don’t think they have any room for improvement.