The Smyth Group

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the Revenue Cycle Analytics Director at Integrity Billing Company. We provide comprehensive Revenue Cycle Management services to clients nationwide in the healthcare space.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire The Smyth Group, and what were your goals?

Our goal was to create an online portal to faciliate HIPAA compliant transfer of correspondance between our clients. Since we didn't have in-house developers to build a solution, we hired the Smyth group to design and develop a solution.

SOLUTION

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

The Smyth group was recommended to us by word of mouth through a client we had a longstanding relationship with. After several meetings we were convinced they were the right choice for our project.

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

We had an initial meeting to discuss our goals and the specifics of what we were hoping to provide to our clients. The team delivered mockups and work began immediately upon approval. We opted for a security focused and intuitive file sharing system built with Javascript, HTML, and CSS.

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

A Project Manager was our main point of contact as well as several full stack developers and designers.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

After the launch of our web portal, our clients appreciated the intuitive design and security compliance allowing us to share files.

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

We communicated regularly via Phone, Email, as well as scheduled Zoom Meetings when necessary. The deadlines were clearly communicated and agreed upon, and work was completed on time.

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

We appreciated that despite our basic understandings of the devlopment and design process, we were able to communicate our problems and work together to create comprehensive solutions that exceeded our expectations on more than several occasions.

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

N/A

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the Training Development Manager for a large OE that works directly with dealership employees and delivers content to them in the form of a yearly curriculum, quarterly continuous learning, and daily additions to a gamified engagement portal.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire The Smyth Group?

To help us analyze and determine the best strategy going forward, and help put together a big picture when it comes to 3-5 years down the road.

SOLUTION

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

They've always been incredibly attentive, have understood our needs, and have proposed solutions that met both our short- and long-term goals.

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

They audited our content and structure, conducted interviews with both internal and external users to get a more detailed view and feedback, and are currently building a proposal!

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

Probably 4-5 people have been engaged. I can't recall titles, but they've all been incredibly supportive.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The Smyth group is a very forward thinking, methodical, results-oriented group that is determined to work with us to find the right solution. They've never been looking to sell us an out-of-the-box answer to our unique situation, and that's not something you see very often!

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

We've always had great rapport. The zoom calls have been personal, professional, and productive!

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

They're clearly a smart group of hand-picked individuals, focusing on creating custom solutions for custom problems.

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

The only thing I would have like is more constant communication/updates from the project manager.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Product Manager, Marketing Technology at Columbia Sportswear Company

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire The Smyth Group?

We've hired The Smyth Group for years to assist with redesigning key, high traffic areas of our B2B order entry site. Most recently, we leaned on The Smyth Group to design and build a Mobile proof of concept based on requirements/workshops ran with our Sales/Sales Ops stakeholders.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

Internal recommendation from leadership that have used The Smyth Group in the past. They came highly recommended.

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

For the mobile proof of concept initiative, The Smyth Group started with scheduling a half-day workshop with consumers and Sales/Sales Ops staff to understand how a mobile app could meet. Smyth Group met with our GIS team to understand what requirements/limitations existed for a proof of concept. Smyth Group assigned staff to collaborate with GIS backend developers to iterate on a mobile solution as GIS hand bandwidth. A finalized PoC was presented to the business and made available for use and the gathering of feedback.

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

1-3 UI/UX Designers, depending on stage of a project 1-3 fullstack engineers, depending on stage of a project

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

N/A

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

The Smyth Group integrated themselves in our GIS team's preexisting development practices/processes. Workflow was highly effective.

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

How effective the UI/UX Designers were in running workshops and interfacing directly with both our consumers as well as internal staff.

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

N/A

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the founder and CEO of a software-as-a-service company. We provide a check-in management platform to the health & fitness industry.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire The Smyth Group, and what were your goals?

We have our own in house development team, however, they are stretched thin with all of the projects that we are trying to tackle. We were also looking for additional guidance on the latest software technologies to use.

One of the more pressing needs we had was a Reservations application that several of our customers had been asking for. We hired the Smyth group to build this for us and by releasing this, we were able to retain existing customers and attract new customers.

SOLUTION

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

We were familiar with the Smyth Group through a Founders networking group called Founders Network. We had heard very positive feedback from other founders regarding their experience with working with the Smyth Group.

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

We started off with a discovery meeting, in which we shared the current platform that we were using and our thoughts on how to improve it. From that, the team presented mockups for us to review and to provide feedback.

The team then built the application and gave us a chance to test and provide additional feedback. We then released a production version for our end customers to test and gain final feedback.

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

We worked with 1 project manager, 1 full stack developer and 1 UI/UX designer.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The feedback from both our customers, both staff users and member users has been overwhelmingly positive.

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

We had a weekly call with the team to sync up and share progress from the prior week. We primarily used email for ongoing communication. To manage code, we used the Atlassian suite (Bitbucket, JIRA). To review mockups, we used Adobe XD. To manage testing scripts, we used Notion.

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

We were impressed with their design-led approach and their in-depth knowledge of the best technologies to use. We were also impressed with their speed of delivery and the well organized code development which has set us up for scale and further improvements.

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

Nothing to suggest for improvement on the project, as they did a great job.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We’re an HR service provider, and I’m the senior director of the IT development process.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with The Smyth Group?

The Smyth Group is our consultant company.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

The Smyth Group helps us with UX guidance, which is one of their most interesting roles. They’ve acquired not only expertise on our business and products, but they’ve also come in with expertise from the industry standards. Most of our full-time employees have been here forever, and we’ve not necessarily had the time or the bandwidth to keep up with the industry's best practices, especially when it comes to UX and Angular development.

I serve as the Scrum master, project manager, and other roles — I’m a jack of all trades. The Smyth Group is very self-managed and self-governed. They always check with me, but they’re very proactive in telling me when a code needs to be updated.

We have a very complex business model. When an employer sends us an applicant to do a background check on, we need to verify that all of the information that they're giving us is correct. We analyze the information and see what other questions we need to ask them.

If an applicant is from a determined country and is applying for a position, we need to do a complete background check within that country, including criminal records. We have several analysis rules, and The Smyth Group has come up with very elegant ways to handle some of our extreme complexities — no other forms in the world need to do this, but we do.

They’ve also done mobile app development for us. We have another business similar to this one, and they helped us create the app.

What is the team composition?

We work with three people from The Smyth Group, but we’ve worked with up to seven people at some point. We have one person that has been giving us UX guidance for various products and projects for about seven years. Another person helps us with Angular development, and a third person does QA for us. We’ve also worked with various developers and project managers throughout my time on this project.

How did you come to work with The Smyth Group?

I believe that there were outer relationships between my coworkers and their team members, and the relationship started before I joined the project. I brought in other UX people, but my boss told me that The Smyth Group had a UX person, so we gave them a try — it was fantastic, and we’ve not let them go.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent around $200,000–$1 million.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with The Smyth Group at some point around the year 2014, and the engagement is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The quality of The Smyth Group’s work is fantastic. I’ve wanted to hire 2–3 individuals that work on their team, but they won’t let me. One person left them, but I know that they’ll replace them. I don’t have to worry about it, which is great. They also cover the people that go on vacations, which is really cool.

We try to keep confidential the fact that we use outside consultants, so we don’t have feedback on their work from people outside the company.

How did The Smyth Group perform from a project management standpoint?

We communicate mostly through Slack and Zoom, and InVision is one of the tools that The Smyth Group uses for the UX products. That tool is probably the best one that they’ve helped us with, and it’s my favorite.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The Smyth Group’s professionalism is impressive. Additionally, they all seem to have the same sense of humor, which makes work fun. They’re a fun group and get the work done.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I can't think of anything that The Smyth Group could improve on.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Spend the time upfront clearly defining what it is that you’re trying to accomplish. The clearer you are with your expectations, the better will be the products that you’ll have developed.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the CEO of an automotive inventory management and marketing company. Our national team helps dealers recondition and market vehicles - focusing on bringing vehicles to market as quickly as possible.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire The Smyth Group, and what were your goals?

We are looking to develop a web and mobile platform that will help our national field team manage and process clients' inventory for sale quickly and efficiently. We've partnered with The Smyth Group to build a product that allows our team to manage our client's inventory more efficiently, perfecting the process and increasing transparency in our services, to help bring vehicles online faster than ever before.

SOLUTION

How did you select The Smyth Group and what were the deciding factors?

We wanted to partner with a company that had experience working with large enterprise companies, that understand the entire development process - we wanted a firm that does more than just write code. We wanted to dive deep into the needs of our employees, to better understand the why, and to build a product that will change the industry. We believe, and have confirmed, The Smyth Group is delivering on our wants and vision.

They are helping us create, not just develop, the future product that will take our company to the next level.

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

We needed to develop a platform that supported 500+ employees in the field, manage million of vehicles on a near real-time basis. We started working on the why and how - that meant sending The Smyth Group into the field to shadow our team members, seeing the job from the employee perspective. We used that information to create detailed diagrams, wireframes, documentation that clearly explained the purpose for our platform.

Our teams met every week, reviewing the UI, confirming and reconfirming the goals of the app, and what value we were trying to create. We used Adobe, Zoom, Notion, and many other tools/platforms to keep our teams in sync.

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

Every week we worked with project managers, designers, UX, developers, and other stakeholders in the process - not to mention the owner of the company. Each week we had leaders from different departments joining the calls to demo and discuss the progress they were making. Watching the product come to life every week was very rewarding.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The team was very intentional with their weekly meetings, following the timeline, updating it each week as the project moved forward, and resetting goals as we closed each sprint. We never had deliverables not met or missed goals. Their team was on top of the roadmap and made sure to communicate any changes or updates.

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

We love building products, and we want to enjoy the process - Let's laugh, smile, have fun and create stuff that will change an industry. The Smyth Group has made this project fun and more rewarding because of the way their team and our team interact. We will create a better product because of their team and the partnership we have.

We used simple tools to communicate, like email, Zoom, Notion, Adobe, and other tools you would expect. Nothing was over done and that makes it easy to focus on the project goals.

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

The culture, experience, and their ability to quickly understand what we were trying to accomplish. They went all-in on understanding our business and what we wanted to accomplish... and because of their process, many times they were presenting features that our team had not thought of! I am amazed by their organization, documentation, and level of experience to achieve our vision. 

Even when we struggled to explain our ideas, they figured out how to make it clear and present the perfect solution.

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

At this point, I would not recommend they change anything. Its been one of the better experiences I have experienced to date.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CSO of an automotive company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with The Smyth Group?

We were looking for a platform to handle our inventory management. 

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

The Smyth Group is helping us design and build a tool for our representatives to intake data, information, and pictures of vehicles. They’re developing an AWS software that covers our entire process from start to finish, from the moment the rep is out on a customer’s lot to the moment it gets uploaded to the server and distributed to multiple websites.

They’re also helping us with some marketing strategies. We give them the colors we want, and they come up with various color schemes, tell us how to put it together and how to package it nicely.

What is the team composition?

I’ve worked with two project managers, two lead designers, and over 10 individuals that have given input into the design and programming language aspect. We’ve also worked with the database team and the injury design team. It has been a number of different teams that specialize in their one field.

How did you come to work with The Smyth Group?

The Smyth Group was referred to us by word of mouth. We interviewed different companies and, after having the initial call, we felt that The Smyth Group aligned with their approach in how they go about bidding up the work. 

The way their contract read, as far as who owns the IP and the fact that they utilize staff only in America, aligned more with what we wanted.  We got to speak with their developers and designers that live here in America. It was important to us to support that type of local work.

We built a rapport with Jamie (CEO) and another member and felt comfortable utilizing them for the project. We decided to use their experience as well as their familiarity with the automotive sector.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in July 2020, and the partnership is ongoing. We have plans of releasing our first version in June 2021 and will continue to work with them for ongoing projects and updates.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

What happens in our industry is that the way things have been done is the way things are always done. The Smyth Group has been able to eliminate a lot of the features that people don’t touch or need to touch on a daily basis, and only gave us information that was important.

We had their lead designers go out and ride along with our reps to experience and get all aspects of what it was like to be a rep for a day. They made all the suggestions, based on that experience. 

They’ve made the process more user-friendly. You can innovate to an extent at the expense of someone else. However, this is not the case for The Smyth Group. They have innovated in a way that doesn’t disrupt our business workflows, meets the management ownership expectations, and also makes our reps more efficient. 

How did The Smyth Group perform from a project management standpoint?

I would give The Smyth Group a perfect score on project management. They’ve met all deadlines and are always reporting the project’s process. Due to the COVID-19 situation, we’ve only been communicating through video conferences using Zoom and Google Meet.

I didn’t realize the benefit of the strategy that they have. They ask really great questions and collaborate among their team members to really narrow down what the end-user is trying to accomplish. I find their collaboration, data retrieval, and questioning of our product and what we’re trying to do as keys in making this great decision.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The most impressive aspect is their ability to ask questions and get to the bottom of something. For companies that don’t have any technical background or a CTO, like us, to be able to communicate with them in a way that is understandable for non-technical people is really important. Another impressive aspect is their ability to help us think through the process of what we’re trying to accomplish. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

This is something that we need to potentially improve on our side. However, as a company, you can estimate a completion time for a project based on the information you received, and the information they received from us wasn’t complete enough to give an initial timeline.

We initially had a timeline for completion in February, which now we’ve moved to June. We realized much later how much larger our project was than we anticipated.  

Any advice for potential customers?

To have someone technical, either a technical document or someone on staff within your company to help run the project, that will probably save you time and money.

Otherwise, The Smyth Group is fully capable of doing everything by just extending the time and cost of it. The better blueprint you have, the more success on anything you’re going to do.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the owner of n IT consulting company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with The Smyth Group?

One of my clients needed help changing the application they’d been using for years as it didn’t really fit their needs. The Smyth Group is helping us with this project.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Our client’s old app was written in Microsoft Access and wasn’t very scalable. There had been situations where only one user could use it at a time, so our first goal was to take and enhance parts of the application that did function well and grow it organically. 

The Smyth Group has helped us rewrite the app into a complete, self-contained .NET application connected to SQL on the backend. At first, Doug (Product Engineer) got to know the product and started fixing a few aspects of it. He then went into building the actual .NET application. It took us longer than expected to work around a lot of the unknowns inside the Spaghetti code, but once we got through all that, everything was in pretty good shape. 

We’re now in phase two and are adding some features that will help the client moving forward. 

What is the team composition?

There was a point in the project where we needed to get other resources to jump in and help, but for the most part, we’re just working with one person, Doug.

How did you come to work with The Smyth Group?

I’ve known Jamie (CEO) for quite some time. He and I, and a few people that work for him, have been involved in volunteer work over the years. I knew that they had the expertise, so I called The Smyth Group to see if they had the resources to tackle my client’s needs. 

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent an amount in the $50,000–$200,000 range.

What is the status of this engagement?

We’ve been working with The Smyth Group for almost two years now. We started having conversations in late 2018 and kicked off the project around April 2019. The project is still ongoing as we’re now moving into the second phase.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The Smyth Group has definitely helped cut down the billing errors on the app and saved our client money. We’ve made decisions that ultimately eliminated places where errors would be made, so it’s definitely made the client feel more comfortable with their business.

Mistakes are common due to the fast turnaround times within the transportation and logistics industry where my client is placed. For the most part, though, their billing team’s day-to-day operations have been simplified so my client has been generally secure around that aspect. 

How did The Smyth Group perform from a project management standpoint?

We don’t really have a need for a project manager as my client has their own team that communicates their vision directly to Doug. They also conduct weekly meetings and use an internal application to manage the workload. Doug also knows my client well enough now to make suggestions that get to the root of a problem. 

I’m able to call Robert (General Manager) whenever there are issues. Everybody gets busy and distracted by juggling multiple projects, but he’s always been great and can always help us get back on track. The Smyth Group checks in with me fairly regularly as well to make sure that they understand what’s expected of them. We discuss what we’ll need in the next phase of the project so that their team knows what kind of workload to expect. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

The Smyth Group is honest and forthright. Sometimes, there are things that are difficult to tell them, but we can expect our concerns to be heard and treated professionally. Their team is able to come up with long-term solutions to any issue that comes up. 

Everybody’s been kind and friendly, and we all get along because we have the same objectives, so it feels like a partnership. They take care of me as I take care of my own client. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

I would want the team to keep us updated on what’s going on, as there were a few times when, as things got busy and overwhelming, they would drop off the radar. It only happened a few times over the course of the project, so it’s not egregious and, other than that, I don’t think I have anything else to critique. The issues we’ve come across are pretty normal to run into with this kind of project.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Agmark logistics is a bulk liquid logistics company, and I served as the VP of Technology.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire The Smyth Group?

I hired the Smyth Group to develop a mobile app for field workers (drivers) on both the iOS and Andorid platform.

What were your goals for this project?

I wanted an application that was easy to use for a less technically savvy audience, and a workflow that minimized the opportunity for errors in the data collection process.

SOLUTION

How did you select The Smyth Group?

I interviewed a number of local, nearshore, and offshore firms. I appreciated the resources that TSG applied to my project. They had dedicated resources for UI\UX, specific platforms (ios\android) and project management. I selected them because they excelled at the UI\UX discovery, prototyping, and iteration.

Describe the project in detail.

The purpose of this project was to create an MVP of the mobile app that I envisioned. This MVP, if successful, would lead to further development overtime on both the Android and iOS platforms.

What was the team composition?

PM, UI\UX Designer, iOS Engineer, Android Engineer.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The MVP was a success. We were collecting the required field data with minimal errors, and very basic training required. The application has since gone beyond the MVP phases, and continues to be enhanced.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

We has weekly touchpoint meetings, and adhoc communication in between. Easy and efficient.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

They have talented professional in every role, and their ability to collaborate on UI\UX with high fidelity prototypes helped to flesh-out the design before coding began. This made it easy to collaborate with stakeholders and prevent missed expectations.

Are there any areas for improvement?

They get a solid thumbs up from me, no glaring areas of dissatisfaction.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I worked with The Smyth Group when I was the director of e-commerce optimization at a digital experience company. We were system integrators for Salesforce, Commerce Cloud, and Magento. We also provided maintenance work within the e-commerce software area.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with The Smyth Group?

One of the things that we always came up against was a lot of time was spent on QA before launching a new site. There were problems with custom implementations and development, so we wanted to keep an eye on the course of life of a site, even post-launch. We wanted to see whether the site was operating as needed and make sure we weren’t causing any ongoing issues when adding new functionalities.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Most of the project was consulting services and training from The Smyth Group. We had an established QA department that handled most of the work already. However, our team really needed to be trained in a new methodology language on how development and QA work in conjunction. 

They did training with us on multiple occasions over the course of 3–4 months. They came through, talked to us, went over the overall core concept, and evaluated what we were doing within our business and software development practices. Their team came back with solutions on how to integrate our developer-first QA program. 

Every few months, they would come back to check in with us and see how we were doing using the program. If we had questions, we could work with them on that. They allowed us to continue to develop on the work that had been initially done. 

What is the team composition?

We worked with around 6–7 people during different stages of the project; including Jamie (CEO & Owner), development managers, front-end developers, QA people, requirement gathering people, and a few project managers within The Smyth Group.

How did you come to work with The Smyth Group?

I had a previous experience working with members from The Smyth Group on some volunteer projects, previous companies, and in different places. I already knew who they were and their methodology, so I asked them to work with me on this project.

How much have you invested with them?

Most of the cost was handled by our controller, but I remember it was around $20,000–$30,000 in total. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from around March–June 2017.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

It’s a little hard to determine metrics from a quantitative standpoint because our project required a lot of retrofitting, and it took us time to implement. However, throughout the course of new builds, we wanted to reduce the time for QA by 10%–25%. In the end, we achieved a reduction of around 25%–30%, which was helpful. 

From a qualitative standpoint, The Smyth Group really helped our team reevaluate how we thought about testing, development, and what the throughput should be. We had gotten a little off there, so it was really helpful to rebuild our team’s understanding of how to move forward.

How did The Smyth Group perform from a project management standpoint?

The Smyth Group’s project management teammates were really on top of everything. I don’t remember interacting with any specific tools; however, they were very easy-going and responsive. If there was any question, they were quick to respond and handle the work.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The Smyths Group’s knowledge and capability is their most impressive aspect. We worked with pretty large brands, products, and high-dollar projects, and they brought us an even higher standard. Their team was really professional, accommodating, and helpful. 

Introducing a new framework could be challenging; however, their team made it easy. They helped us understand why something needed to be done, and what was the importance of it.

Are there any areas they could improve?

The Smyth Group did well working with a lot of our IT staff and other members, however; making changes like this requires an institutional change across the business. I don’t know if we got as much of a long-term institutional change as we needed. I’m not sure if it was dismissed, so it was also our fault in how we adopted the program.