Smartbox Media

Introduce your business and what you do there.
I’m a member of the board of directors at De Sousa Consulting, a financial and business consulting agency. We’re a small agency located in Europe that offers services to Spain, Portugal, and Latin-American countries.

What challenge were you trying to address with Smartbox Media?
Since we’re very small, we don’t have a lot of IT bandwidth. We went to Smartbox Media to build a platform for one of our clients.

What was the scope of their involvement?
Smartbox Media is developing a crowdfunding platform dedicated to small businesses. It has Stripe integration and makes payments at different levels. The solution is built for the web and mobile and uses PHP. We have a lot of challenges in banking in Latin America. The aim of the platform is to fund small projects.

What is the team composition?
The person who was taking care of the project passed away last week due to COVID-19. We’re currently trying to find someone as good as him. There have been 3–4 people involved, and he was the project lead.

How did you come to work with Smartbox Media?
We were looking for resources in India. I used to work with a well-known outsourcing company there, but their prices were out of my reach. We found Smartbox Media, gave them some small projects, and then moved on from there.

How much have you invested with them?
We’ve spent around $20,000 in total.

What is the status of this engagement?
We started working with Smartbox Media around January 2020, and our engagement is ongoing. I’ve worked with them on several projects, both personal and for clients. I’m hoping to finish my own project in the next few weeks.

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?
I keep my own metrics for them. We have a green light if they finish within the deadline, a yellow light if they extend by 1–2 weeks, and a red light if they go off by more than 25%. All our projects have been green so far, and Smartbox Media has even finished early on some of them. They finish within target and with great quality.

How did Smartbox Media perform from a project management standpoint?
They usually do Gantt charts to split up the work by weeks and days. We also have chapters. For example, chapter one will be covering basic programming and logo design. Chapter two will cover deep programming and live testing. It’s pretty straightforward. We evaluate their programming work based on the result and don’t need a lot of complex tools in order to track it.

Because of language barriers, we usually have to assign someone from our side to translate for the clients. A lot of the communication is also through email since we can’t give out their WhatsApp numbers to a corporate client.

What did you find most impressive about them?
It’s their personalized approach. We have a six-hour time difference from India and an almost 12-hour difference from America, but Smartbox Media accommodates this. They’re so smart that sometimes we don’t understand what they’re saying. We just tell them what result we want and then we exchange a lot of emails and graphics, and they do it for us. I’ve worked with several providers and Smartbox Media is the most accurate, with the right prices.

Are there any areas they could improve?
The natural language barrier is a fault of theirs. Smartbox Media could try to hire people who speak different languages. There are lots of clients in Latin America and Europe so if they want to grow, they definitely have to get people who speak 2–3 languages aside from English.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?
The most common issue with my clients is that they don’t describe what they want in detail. They’ll ask for a website and want 100 more features after they get it. When starting any project, especially with people on the other side of the planet, we have to be very specific. Smartbox Media is very literal. They’ll do exactly what the client asks for. Their team won’t have the same initiative as other developers. The sky’s the limit, but we have to know exactly what we want.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the managing director and co-founder of a company that builds online stores in the beauty and aesthetic space. We effectively offer a SaaS that gives doctors the ability to have a commercial online channel to help them offer their services and products to their patients.

What challenge were you trying to address with Smartbox Media?

We were looking to be able to scale up and find resources in a quick and thoughtful manner. A lot of development resources can be hard to find quickly, so by using an agency that had existing staff members, we were able to scale our business rapidly and meet some of the requirements that we had for building our platform.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We have utilized a range of services and people from the Smartbox Media team. We initially started purely using frontend developers, and then sort of shifted to more complex backend architectural services from there.

At particular times, we’ve also used them for graphic support as well as QA and testing for our business, but we’ve always been able to assemble a team based on the needs our Magento site has at the time.

What is the team composition?

When we first started, we really didn’t have what I would consider being any kind of management team, but when we got to about five people, we decided that we wanted to bring in a project manager to work with us as well.

Eventually, we had to bring in an architectural lead to help manage the backend processes as well as the project manager who then handled more of the QA and frontend development processes.

How did you come to work with Smartbox Media?

I don’t remember how exactly we first got involved, but I believe it was through a site called E-lance. We started out just working with one person, but they were looking to expand as a business just like we were so we grew into working with them more full-time from there.

How much have you invested with them?

We spend anywhere from $50,000–$60,000 a month, so over the lifetime of the project we’ve spent well above $1,000,000 in total.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together around the end of 2012 and are continuing to partner with them today.

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

Their collaboration with us has been really critical to our development as a company. As a manpower company, we had to build the quality of the processes in ourselves, so when we see problems, we build all the test cases, systematically define all the tasks associated with that process, and then figure out how to find and fix that defect at the root level.

Their team members and organizational systems have helped us to develop a ‘wash, rinse, and repeat’ strategy that dramatically increases our efficiency over those areas. It’s the only way we’ve been able to scale our business in a systematic and effective way.

How did Smartbox Media perform from a project management standpoint?

We use all sorts of tools to keep track of our work, from Test Rails and JIRA to GitHub for checking code, and we have regular meetings every day to support our Scrums. We work in an environment where we have tons of third-party extensions, and a lot of those develop bugs during updates all the time, so it’s always a cat and mouse game to keep our system up and running. Their project management is what allows us to do that at scale.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They are incredibly responsive for a staffing company. Any time I’ve needed somebody on short notice, their team has delivered. Even when it’s a graphic designer, which really isn’t in their area of expertise, they were able to provide me with one in under 24 hours. That level of service really helps you to fill the gaps and avoid real emergencies.

Are there any areas they could improve?

When you have a long-term relationship like this, you’re really always improving and resolving things. Nothing comes to my mind specifically because it’s not that there’s any one thing that sticks out. It’s just a continuous process of improvement.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I would suggest that anyone working with them have their own resources who can collaborate and keep code review transparent. When you’re working with a manpower company, you have to find the right partner, but it’s really just as important to be willing to put in the management resources, infrastructure, and time to set the project up for success.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the Procurement Manager at Al-Rabeh Company for Packaging, we do manufacture Corrugated packaging products. Currentlu serving Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia, Sudan, Jordan, Yemen and Sweden.

For what projects/services did your company hire Smartbox Media, and what were your goals?

We hired Smartbox to implement our Website with E-commerce module. We needed a well informative, simple website and an ecommerce module where we can sell the packaging products. Our Goals were to end up with a user friendly and compatible website that facilitates both as a profile and online ordering process.

How did you select Smartbox Media and what were the deciding factors?

We discussed our requirements with Smartbox, their team had a very intuitive understanding of our needs. Their team has great expertise in most of the technoligies. They suggested us the right hierarchy of technologies to use. Looking at all of these factors, we have awarded our project to them.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and technologies used.

After initial disussions, we have provided the clear documentation of what exactly we need. Then their team worked on the initial mockups. From there we asked them for more creative designs for our website. They came up with great ways to represent the information. Once done, we have provided all the required content, pictures. In the next step, they implemented the project. We did the testing for a week to make sure about the ecommerce workflows and finally made the project live.

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

A project Manager was the only point of contact. He coordinated with full stack developers and a designer to roll out the best designs.

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

After launching our website, there was growth in traffic.

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timelines.

We used Emails to communicate, the team delivered the project modules on time. There was no delay at all.

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

The best thing about their company is "Empathy". They have infinite empathy towards us. They have created such a user friendly website to us.They even trained our team to implement updates on content if needed. They provide us round the week support. Sundays are working days in Middle east. Their team is always there for us.

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

As per our project is concerned, the team did put huge efforts to pull of the project, finally it was on point. We couldnt find any flaws in them. Would love to work again.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am CEO of Behrentin Communication, an int. Communication and Events company

For what projects/services did your company hire Smartbox Media?

to design a Website for a Project. event

What were your goals for this project?

to transform my ideas into a website

How did you select this vendor?

via linkedin

Describe the project in detail.

Website design according to my ideas

What was the team composition?

i worked with the designer and Project Manager online to Exchange.

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

i was very happy since Project went good and it was a very close Communication.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

very good

What did you find most impressive about this company?

I did not know them at first, so I was impressed by the good communication.

Are there any areas for improvement?

we just have one Little bug with Windows Explorer to be fixed.

Please describe your company and your position there.

i am working in the Mobile app dev and web industry for many years now.

For what projects/services did your company hire Smartbox Media?

i hired Smartbox media for mobile app and web dev work.

What were your goals for this project?

goals were successful completion of mobile apps

How did you select this vendor?

i have known the owners of Smartbox media for many years now. i ahev worked with them on numerous tech initiatives.

Describe the project in detail.

since i did white labeling of the mobile app and web dev work so i cannot provide specific details. this project was for mobile app dev for fitness industry and some website dev work.

What was the team composition?

project manager, designer, software developers, qa

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

Smartbox media completed the project successfully.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

it was great.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

They are very knowledgeable and very prompt in their communication.

Are there any areas for improvement?

everything is great