SM Innovations

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am co-founder and CFO/COO. EVCS was founded in 2018 by two serial entrepreneurs who saw the opportunity to provide California businesses with charging stations as the number of electric vehicles on the road continued to multiply. EVCS set about developing a unique and industry-disrupting approach to mobility power – most notably employing a complete turnkey approach that utilizes both public and private grants, rebates, and other financial incentives to reduce the downside while optimizing the upside for participating site owners.

For what projects/services did your company hire SM Innovations?

1. EVCS needed to upgrade their system architecture away from Google Sheets in order to scale their operations.
2.  EVCS project managers needed a more effective way to oversee the roughly 200 active electric charger station builds in varying stages of the development process.
3. EVCS also needed to streamline communication with their development partners or site hosts, so they could proactively manage their large project pipeline with their small team.

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

1. SM Innovations aligned EVCS’ project development processes to the Salesforce-native Opportunity Stages from “Site Host Agreement Signed” to “Closed Won”
2. EVCS project managers get enhanced visibility into their various projects in development by utilizing the Opportunity Kanban view
3. EVCS external partners are granted access to an Experience Cloud page, which serves as an easily-accessible portal to get updates on project statuses, outstanding documents, and next steps as needed.

Describe the project in detail and walk through the stages of the project.

1. SMI made an assessment of our issues/challenges and what functionality and capability we needed for the new system to deliver for us.
2. We walked through the design aspect of the new system to ensure that it met all of our needs.
3. They created a roadmap that includes timelines, and design phases that would allow us to design the solution that we were looking for.
4. They clearly explained what they needed from us to make this project successful (for example, data, data validation, engagement, etc)

How many resources from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

We worked with 5 SMI resources.

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

Having brought their entire project management process into Salesforce, EVCS now has the necessary systems in place to raise another round of funding, grow the size of their team, and effectively manage a much heavier project workload at scale.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Very effective. We have two weekly check-ins to discuss progress and then we had separate management-only meetings to make sure the project was on track and the SMI was delivering on its promise and commitment and vice versa. We also had a slack channel that allowed us to communicate with each other at a moment's notice. Overall communication flow was excellent and a big contributor to the overall success of the project.

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

We were happy with their responsiveness and sincere desire to deliver a product and experience.

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

I think that there is always an opportunity to do something better, however, in this case, I think we had a great experience, and the team really delivered on all fronts and frankly even exceeded our expectations.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the Founder and CEO of OptionsSwing, an educational community focused on personal finance and the stock market. We enable everyday people to learn and trade alongside thousands of other like-minded people in a private community.

For what projects/services did your company hire SM Innovations?

Our company adopted Salesforce MyTrailhead to create our own educational portal for self paced learning and enablement. We brought in SM Innovations after working with two failed implementation partners to right the ship and get us across the finish line.

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

Salesforce was directly involved in recommending and selecting SM Innovations as they were a trusted partner with a proven track record. As we initially spoke with Nima from SM Innovations, the two deciding factors was whether they fully understood what needed to be done for us to successfully launch our product (including the complex integrations between our payment provider Stripe and Salesforce) as well as their level of confidence in being able to deliver in a short time period (as we were already 6 months behind schedule).

Describe the project in detail and walk through the stages of the project.

At the point in which SM Innovations was brought in, we had already gone through two other implementation partners who both failed to deliver a proper implementation of Salesforce MyTrailhead.

The general project scope was that we were storing customer information inside our payment processor (Stripe) and needed to bring the customer data brought into Salesforce so that a new or existing customer record could be referenced along with the subscription details/status, and payment can be shown for proper license assignments. We then needed to create the appropriate automation to apply and remove MyTrailhead licenses from customers.

How many resources from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

We mainly worked with Nima (Chief Strategist) and Scott (Technical Architect) to deliver this project.

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

We were able to successfully implement MyTrailhead with SM Innovations help. Not only were we able to productize MyTrailhead (and also the first Salesforce customer to do so), but we were able to build a new revenue stream for our business. Today, we have 340+ active users and the feedback has been great.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Nima and Scott made sure to communicate through both email and text to ensure our needs were being met. Overall, we were able to deliver a complex project in a relatively short amount of time and proper communication and understanding were key components to our success.

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

I appreciated that they made every effort to deliver the project to completion. Understanding the complexity and issues that occurred with the two prior failed implementation partners, they came in to quickly address the main issues, work with the internal Salesforce development team, and ultimately deliver the correct working product that we had always hoped to build.

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

As some of their team is located west coast where as our team/business is based east coast, I wish that better working hours could be established to avoid any late/evening communication. Otherwise, very happy with the overall experience and delivery of their work.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the owner of a medical supply company that provides to active-duty soldiers and their dependents.

What challenge were you trying to address with SM Innovations?

We didn’t understand the makeup and the work required to launch a website, so there was a learning curve that we had to go through as a company — that was one of the biggest issues that needed to get resolved.

What was the scope of their involvement?

The beginning of the project was focused on launching a website for our Hawaii office, that was tailored to that culture and industry. That education and ordering platform deals with very detailed products, and because we’ve never launched a website before and SM Innovations hasn’t dealt with the medical industry, we had to get all the information to launch the website effectively.

We hired SM Innovations because of their background in the retail industry. Our relationship evolved because we launched a site with no retail products, and it was mostly dealing with healthcare insurance. Most of the website engineers don’t have backgrounds in the medical or insurance industry, so it’s taking some time for all of us to understand what we could put on the website — that’s the piece we’ve been working on since we launched it.

We’re still in the research phase, but the goal is to launch a shopping cart so that I could go into the retail market.

What is the team composition?

I work with Nima (Chief Strategist), a project manager, web designer, and a couple of engineers who work on the backend.

How did you come to work with SM Innovations?

They were recommended by a business partner I know, so it was a word-of-mouth recommendation.

How much have you invested with them?

To date, we’re nearing the $100,000 mark and it’s still moving forward.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in August 2020, and we have a couple of projects that are pending right now. We had already laid out the plans and the quote is getting ready to be submitted.

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

The business has grown almost 37% since we started the launch, and a lot of it has to do with the ease of ordering products on the platform. The ordering process has been very efficient, and the patients have given us a lot of feedback on the ease of placing orders and providing insurance information.

How did SM Innovations perform from a project management standpoint?

We’ve inserted Scott (Creative Director) who in my opinion, is a very good project manager, and serves as the liaison between SM Innovations and our company. We get daily and weekly updates and we have a lot of Zoom meetings. Scott engages with the engineers, so I put an exact person in that place to represent us — Scott and that person have been working together to get our projects up and running.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The addition of Scott into this program and having him as the first line of contact has been vital to the success of the launch. Without Scott, I don’t think we would be as successful, so I think SM Innovations has done itself well by adding that layer of management into the program.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I would like to see SM Innovations take the next step and provide an audit type of program, so that we can sit down with their management team, and take a look at the analytics. This includes who’s visiting the site and who hasn’t completed their orders — basically information that we can manage to make changes accordingly.

I’m sure it’ll be very expensive, but that would add a lot of value to the company.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I think it’s going to be on a case-by-case basis, and it’s going to depend on the industry that they’ll serve. Our industry is very intricate and it has nothing to do with retail, so our site itself is very unique. I don’t think anyone who’s thinking of using SM Innovations is going to have any issues unless there’s a technical reason.

As far as from what we’ve seen from SM Innovations, they’ve stood up to the challenges and have held themselves accountable — the website is running decently right now and we're happy that they’re our partners.

This review was published on March 5, 2021

David Scheidt

President, Cal Med Hawaii

Healthcare

1–10 Employees

Irvine, California

$10,000 to $49,999

August 2020 – Jan 2021

Project summary
SM Innovations developed a non-retail e-commerce site for a medical supplier. The product was built on Amazon and intended for a different program. The team currently assists them in adding new site features.

Feedback summary
Thanks to SM Innovations' commitment, the client obtained an efficient e-commerce platform. The team was keen on providing top-notch service even after the project's completion. They understood the project well and exhibited a strong willingness to apply changes in order to improve the end product.

BACKGROUND

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.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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.

SOLUTION

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.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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.

RATING:

Overall rating: 4

Quality: 4 - I don’t give anybody a five, so four is my top score. Everything was perfect.

Cost: 3 - Truthfully, I didn’t know how much it really cost to put together a quality website, but I get it more now.

Schedule: 4 

Willing to refer: 5 - I have no problems with sharing their work with anybody in the industry.

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.