SPEC INDIA

Please describe your company and your position there.

Century Plyboards is the largest seller of multiuse plyboards and decorative veneers in the Indian organized plywood market and exports its range of products to over 20 countries. I had been working as a Sr. Technical Project Manager with Century Ply for close to 2.5 Years.

For what projects/services did your company hire SPEC INDIA, and what were your goals?

Century Ply has been working towards digitizing/automating workflow for the Sales team. As SPEC INDIA having prior experience in this domain with quite similar nature Enterprise customers, we imperatively proceed with them for the project.

The overall project was kicked-off with an objective to streamline the ordering, lead maturity process, and project execution. It was primarily meant for the Sales team to track primary sales, channel partners, influencers, projects/prospect leads for better conversion, and business forecast with extensive Dashboards and BI solutions at a later stage.

How did you select SPEC INDIA and what were the deciding factors?

It was a Management decision based on their experience working with manufacturing companies with a similar solution.

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

The project was to help the Sales Team with nearly real-time Channel Partner’s data – orders, order status, account ledger, outstanding handy while on the field.

Moreover, the system was designed to help the Sales Team to do their visit planning effectively with their own Territory Channel Partners, Influencers, Projects; ultimately to help boost sales and increase revenue by means of Primary & Secondary Sales.

Key Deliverable: Mobile CRM, User Guide, Source Code, AMC Support Engagement. Key Technologies: ASP.NET MVC, MS SQL, HTML5/CSS, Cross-Platform Mobile App

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

The deployed team was composed of 2 Team Leads, 4 Developers & 1 Project Manager along with a Designer & QA/Test engineer for the required time of involvement.

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

The project did well with the Territories it was rolled out, the Sales team were able to track their sales and lead maturity with ease. Also, the system was later extended to different geographical regions and verticals within a company.

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

We followed an iterative release process, wherein we were releasing the project modules in on an average monthly release plan that can call an Agile development.

Furthermore, we were having weekly project progress meetings for the entire course of execution and the project was developed in a very smooth manner. SPEC had appointed a Project Manager at the onsite location that really helped in swift communications and quicker turn around in Requirement and UAT Phases.

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

SPEC INDIA's team had prior experience working on similar solutions that helped to get through the project requirement mapped to business use cases and finally to Technical Implementation very well.

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

SPEC INDIA has been in the Software Industry for the last 32+ years and I’m sure they are much evolving as time changes with market demands. We're fully convinced we can get all sorts of IT/ITeS from SPEC INDIA at any given time in the future.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I have been working with Hitachi Hi-Rel since 2001 and currently, I am the IT consultant for the entire organization. Hitachi Hi-Rel offers an exhaustive and pioneering product range of power electronics with complete customized solutions.

For what projects/services did your company hire SPEC INDIA, and what were your goals?

We worked with SPEC India for an Enterprise Service and Maintenance Application. We required a centralized application for all our field staff who go on the field regularly for post-sales services.

Using this application, we wanted that they can see their daily visits, when they visit the customer they can take note of what service is required, if any replacement is needed then check for a quotation as well as check for inventory.

Basically, we wanted a solution where our field staff with minimal internal communications can process the requests easily.

How did you select SPEC INDIA and what were the deciding factors?

SPEC India was selected based on their experience they had working on custom software and local support they proposed to provide to us while rolling out the system.

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

Scope of Work: We needed a software where service executive can view / request and update all the preventive maintenance / breakdown calls assigned to him in real-time, with provision to request spare part needs to be changed, if the deployed system is within AMC or Warranty etc, with capability to share the quotation at the customer site only and do the needful repair and update in the system.

Key Deliverable: eSAM Solution, Source Codebase, User Manual, AMC for the System Technologies Used: Micorsoft Technology (MVC .Net with MS SQL, MS Dynamics Integrations, Web APIs)

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

The deployed team was composed of 1 Team Lead, 2 Developers, and a Project Manager with a needful Designer and Test engineer at a specific project requirement phase.

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

The project was delivered by SPEC India pretty much in line with our expectations. It really helped us a lot improvise the productivity of the executives and customer satisfaction.

On-field executives could check for the inventory and tell exact process / timeline to customers on the restoration / resolution based on the things were made easy for them.

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

The Waterfall Project Management methodology was followed since the availability of the business stakeholder was minimal and we had quite defined requirements, it was executed at quite smoothly where the team would update our team at regular intervals (weekly) update us with the progress of the project.

The project was completed within a defined timeline of the original project estimated with.

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

Their flexibility and experience working on custom software especially for enterprises like us was impressive.

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

They are quite self-motivated, don’t see anything upfront.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am a project lead with an IT Solutions firm leading the operations with an onsite-offshore model since then. We have been working with several offshore partners and SPEC INDIA is being one of the very preferred partners I’ve been working with for more than a decade now

For what projects/services did your company hire SPEC INDIA, and what were your goals?

We were looking for a custom web portal to manage the Real Estate Apartment Lease properties in the NY and NJ region. We have 100+ apartments hence managing their leasing documents, rentals, service requests, etc. was getting difficult manually and we required customized solutions that can help us with the operations.

The goal was to ease out operational time for Apartment Management, Apartment - Lease Agreement documentation, Rental and Late Fees Calculations, Monthly Rental Collection Report, Summary Dashboard with % occupancy & available empty apartment visibility, etc.

We also wanted the system to handle all the Society Management activities like Service Request placement, fulfillment, organizing events/functions, Manage Subscription for paid / privilege outdoor utilities with accounting.

How did you select SPEC INDIA and what were the deciding factors?

SPEC: I had researched & approached multiple agencies, and among them, SPEC INDIA stood out as a mature company from the initial consulting phase to drafting project scope. SPEC also demonstrated their experience with digital transformation and delivering business-critical solutions for varied domains & global enterprises.

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

The project is a custom portal for the management of all the apartments within a Real Estate Group, handling the leasing of properties and society maintenance activities. The system works as a Document Repository for all the tenants leasing apartment and moving-in.

Primarily the system is designed to keep track of all the Rentals Property (payment collection, due date reminders, and calculation of Late Fees for non-payers, etc.) The system also helps in managing and maintaining subscription of the paid club resources and utilities, based on the pre-paid plan/access model.

The system also comes up with lead generation and inquiry module for individual/group looking out for an apartment on the lease

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

We had a team of 4 developers and 1 Project Manager. We were assigned a designer, Technical Architect, QA team as part of overall contractual terms. Interaction with Project Manager was very convenient being a single point of contact for any kind of project discussion and conclusion.

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

I am thankful to the SPEC Team for digitizing all the manual work. As we were using multiple excels across different stakeholders, it was getting difficult tracking every apartment rental entry, managing leasing docs, and their data. The monthly reports and dashboards are very useful in identifying the vacancy/rent collection information.

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

SPEC was able to understand the business workflow and digitize it in the most optimal way. I could utilize their extensive experience in custom development and domain knowledge. We executed the project with agile project development methodology

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

SPEC has been impressive in terms of all-round work carried out for the project, Team has gone beyond their regular roles/duties and help us identify optimal workflow and digitized them in a simplistic manner.

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

I am happy with the way the project has turned out, however, an early suggestion for cloud migration would have been appreciated.

Please describe your company and your position there.

Prism Johnson Limited is one of India’s leading integrated building material companies having a wide range of products from cement, ready-mixed concrete, tiles, bath fittings, sanitary ware to modular kitchens. I am currently heading the entire IT department and have been associated with Prism Cement for almost 15 years in totality.

For what projects/services did your company hire SPEC INDIA, and what were your goals?

We worked with SPEC India for a custom enterprise CRM solution – mPower. Around 2014, with a growing customer base & field staff it was getting difficult for us to manage all things manually, this is when we realized a need for a system that could help us manage the CRM. Our main goal was to enhance and maximize the productivity of our field staff and also make sure that all the data is maintained properly with each customer being served on a timely basis and accurate reports are generated for respective managers/management review so timely actions can be taken.

How did you select SPEC INDIA and what were the deciding factors?

SPEC India showed us a couple of projects they had executed which were quite similar to our requirement which gave us confidence that they would be able to fulfill the exact requirement we had.

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

Mainly our target was to eliminate all the manual workflow the field staff used to do on the go and automate it completely so that the manager is updated in real-time about their performance and also it is easy for them to manage as all operations are done on the go. We already had SAP as an ERP System, but its access was limited to office staff and back-office team. The sales team on the field had to still dependent on the call center / back office team to get the required data from SAP. The Integration with SAP has been so much intact, that even after 5-6 years of system running all the daily schedulers / syncs are working errorless leading to complete data sync without any support requirement.

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

The deployed team was composed of 2 Team Leads, 4 Developers & 1 Project Manager along with Designer & QA / Test engineer for the required time of involvement.

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

Using mPower, we are able to easily plan/manage route allocation of all our field staff, making sure that all the customers are visited at regular intervals and also our managers can check for the productivity/sales done by the executives along with meaningfully measuring the performance of Sales Team Member. mPower has been used by our organization for almost 6 years now and I much appreciate SPEC for an error-free system that still runs without a single bugs/support requirement; each SAP integration, ordering workflow, etc. features are intact and working supremely flawless.

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

The best thing I liked working with SPEC India was that though I was introduced to each resource working on the project along with their roles, there was a project manager assigned who was the main POC who would update project status at regular intervals through JIRA Project Management Tool.

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

Their understanding of the domain along with their flexibility to work is impressive.

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

Frankly, I don’t think there is any suggestion for improvement as we are very much happy with their work for now.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I had been associated with Century Ply as Head of IT for almost 4 years and it’s then when we had carried out the CRM implementation with SPEC INDIA

For what projects/services did your company hire SPEC INDIA, and what were your goals?

We were looking for a custom solution for our sales team that was mostly on the field to carry out their day-to-day operations with their Dealers / Retailers / Projects meets and Ordering, Feedback, Payment, etc.

Since there were quite some past impressive implementations SPEC has done in past with quite some enterprises, we zeroed in on SPEC INDIA for the implementation.

Since the Sales team has always been on the field, having a mobility solution that provides an option for Dealer / Retailer sales recording, feedback collection, tracking prospects, leads, maturing leads to a project, etc. – these were very much set of Primary Operations.

Since each Sales Team member was having trouble keeping track of Dealers / Retailer to meet on a given day, ordering, collection, maturing lead, reminders, etc. were getting difficult to manage.

We thought of introducing an m-CRM (mobility – CRM) solution to organize the data collection, consolidate them to a centralized location with seamless access to all the sales teams and management to make correct decisions

How did you select SPEC INDIA and what were the deciding factors?

SPEC has built a similar solution with one of the leading Battery Manufacturing companies and along with other similar Enterprise Customers. Moreover, we had closely met the core Management team before awarding the project and found to be much promising toward the quality deliverable within the stipulated timeline we were looking for.

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

The Project was kind of a mobility solution for Sales Team on the field to carry out their day-to-day operations with ease and improved productivity. The Project intended to increase the time availability of Sales Team members with actual customers – Dealers/Retailers/Project Influencers.

Also Project/Opportunity tracking, and maturing the actual Project been a key module for promoting sales. Further, the system was in the backend integrated with ERP to provide nearly real-time data to the on-field users with utmost accuracy and availability like Customer Sales Order tracking / Outstanding / Sales history or even Complaint status/closure details.

Overall, it was to enable the Sales Team with all possible data points to be more effective with target customers towards improved sales and closures.

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

SPEC had deployed a very competitive team of 4-5 Developers with 1 Team Lead and Project Manager for the original project development along with Designer and independent Test Engineers based on the project requirement.

Further, during the Support & Maintenance model, we had a dedicated team of 2 support engineers to take care of any issues/bug within an agreed SLA and major/minor enhancements required to take care of changing business requirements.

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

The Project really helped in digitizing the Sales workflow and automate Project/Lead maturity workflow in the best possible manner. In fact, with the success of the PLY division with the implementation of the m-CRM; other Century Ply vertical like LAM and DV also opted for the extension of the m-CRM for their Sales Team and channel partners.

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

SPEC INDIA has been effective enough to put the right kind of people for the right work/activities required as part of the project.

The communication platform or the channel was well established with a Single Point of Contact for us, and the SPOC was all we needed to approach for discussion and communication. Moreover, access to their resources during business hours was very easy and effective for any sort of support or incident resolution.  

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

: SPEC INDIA has perfectly assigned SPOC (Single Point of Contact) who had indeed in-depth knowledge how the Sales Team of the manufacturing industry works and it was the most impressive part of the engagement, since it was almost zero effort towards explaining the pain areas and possible solution to the same.

The Team was very quickly able to map the business requirement in the system very efficiently keeping different use-cases into account. I

’m sure at times they were able to bring quite some value addition to the solution based on their prior experience working with different clients and systems and we were happily accepting a few of the suggestions and improvements towards the advancement of the overall system.

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

Adapting to the requirement and learning quickly based on their experience has been their Key Strength, I’m sure they are suitable for any sort of business engagement in the future I have for them.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am working as a Senior functional consultant at Brown & Company PLC headquartered in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Brown & Company PLC is one of Sri Lanka’s leading conglomerates in operation today with 50 plus subsidiaries and associates focused on trading and strategic investments. 

For what projects/services did your company hire SPEC INDIA?

Spec India implemented a Tablet based Enterprise Mobile Sales Force Automation (SFA) System implementation.

What were your goals for this project?

• Empowering field force with anywhere, anytime access to system
• Eliminate redundant activities and improve productivity
• Fulfill orders in near real time, boost win rate and grow revenue
• Enhance sales team’s level wise focus and ensure timely achievement of targets across the level of field sales force
• Enhance customer satisfaction
• New market developments and enhancing current client base

How did you select SPEC INDIA?

with the recommendation of Top Management

Describe the project in detail.

Once we selected this vendor, we had a series of requirement gathering meetings with multiple Business Units that handle different product lines, to discuss our goals and objectives.

After few weeks, we received mock-ups and initial designs of the android apps. After a few iterations and discussions with our business users, we finalized the design and provided feedback.

The vendor came back to us with wire-frames and concepts for other sections in the app, including an updated Division Specific Operation form.

What was the team composition?

Initially, we were assigned a project manager to support us and serve as the main point of contact throughout the project. I only spoke with our project manager, but I was made aware that there were 2 front-end and two back-end developers, as well as a QA resource working behind the scenes.

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

It was not successfully implemented in all required BUs in Browns and Company due to the below mentioned loopholes in the system and the business processes. Currently only Battery divisional staff uses SFA system.

• BPOs use the TAB to enter sales only. Very less BPOs used to enter day to day visits.
• SPEC took long time to prepare the reports.
• Sales targets have not entered and hence the target achievement cannot be captured.
• Lack of monitoring
• Lack of use of all the available functions by BPOs
• Time to time signal drops
• Capturing of date and time of the customer visits in reports

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

The project manager that we were assigned was easy to communicate with and provided us frequent updates. We had onsite meetings at least once a week and used other communication methods as well. Overall, I was impressed by the timelines of the team. We received ample warning if a deadline wasn’t going to be met.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Vendor was well experienced in mobile app development and user experience. We learned much more than we thought possible. We have worked with other vendors for different implementations, but this was a particularly collaborative and positive experience. I will certainly engage with this company again for any mobile app needs that we have in the future.

Are there any areas for improvement?

We were satisfied with their approach. In the end, quality is more important than the speed and we ended up with a good product.

Please describe your company and your position there.

Jyothy Fabricare Services Ltd is into Laundry Service (Brand Name : FabricSpa) I am Head- IT for the business

For what projects/services did your company hire SPEC INDIA, and what were your goals?

We were looking for a custom solution for our Laundry Business, a solution that can ease out our day-to-day operations at Store & Factory.

We being the pioneers in the space not much standard products were available meeting or needs. We needed a customize solution for the business. Goal of the project was automate business processes.

How did you select SPEC INDIA and what were the deciding factors?

We had worked with Spec for one of our prior projects, which they has successfully delivered for us.

Given the prior experience and knowing the multinational and Technical capabilities of SPEC, we selected them as the preferred implementation partner.

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

The scope of the project was to automate the complete business functions / locations & processes.

The operations ranging from Collection of the garments, Tagging of the garments was to be automated, without loosing track of the garment. It used ASP.NET & SQL Server

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

SPEC had deployed a team of 8-10 Developers with 2 Team Leads and a project manager for the original project development with Design and QA engineers.

During the AMC period we have been having 1 – 2 dedicated support engineers available for all kind of support & maintenance as well as enhancement work.

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

SPEC INDIA’s team have designed and developed Fabricare system which we have been using since 2013.

It has brought in a lot of efficiency in managing the business processes. Recently, we migrated entire system on cloud platforms and that migration too went flawless.

Overall it has been a good digitization journey.

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

The project management was good, with Weekly/ Monthly Meetings with the stakeholders including the business heads.

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

1. The team is responsive & takes responsibility
2. Business First approach
3. Technical strength
4. Good Leadership capabilities

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

- Nothing Specific as such.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the CEO of a health system, we have 4 locations in the northeast US.

For what projects/services did your company hire SPEC INDIA, and what were your goals?

We needed to develop a customized solution to manage our payment flow through our organizations that could eventually be white-labeled for external sales.

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

We found this vendor through a professional referral from another customer of theirs.

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

They converted our prototype system into an Azure microservices application in under 4 months using ReactJS. Our system is live and currently in use already and is under continuous development.

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

There were 5 people on the project team including a designer, a project manager, and 3 developers.

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

Our clinical staff LOVE the application and we are able to make key business decisions because of it. We've had no downtime and we are very confident that our solution will continue to improve.

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

I was not used to such a large project as ours being on time and on budget, it was beautiful to watch. Their colleagues were truly an extension of our organization. Conflict resolution had been courteous and professional. It has been a pleasure to work with them.

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

Their professionalism, ability to stay on the timeline, and on budget amazed us.

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

They should consider running ALL projects under the Agile framework from the start.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the Marketing Director of the company. Smart Laboratories Pvt. Ltd. was founded in 2008. The aim of the company is to deliver superior quality healthcare and personal care products to diverse consumers across PAN-India.

The company has a team of more than 700 people and more than 5,00,000 retailers and 1000 stockists.

For what projects/services did your company hire SPEC INDIA, and what were your goals?

We hired SPEC INDIA for developing custom software solutions to cater to our end-to-end business requirements. Being in the Pharma Industry, our sales team (Medical Representatives) are the front face and backbone of the company. We were using 3rd party SaaS system for reporting and thus data security was the prime concern.

Moreover, it was not catering to our several business workflows and processes. So, we decided to have our inhouse custom made solution developed to protect our business-critical data and cater to our business needs.

We also wanted to facilitate our retailers to have real-time visibility of new schemes, promotions, loyalty schemes and can place orders by themselves rather than waiting for the company sales team to provide information.

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

For quite some time, I was searching for a trusted technology partner to provide a technical solution to the problems faced by our company and give shape to my idea and vision. SPEC INDIA was referred to me by my partner.

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

This project includes multiple Mobile Applications for Sales Team, Retailer, and Super Stockist. It also includes Web panel for Admin, Head Office, and Managers for reporting and real-time tracking of field sales users through the map. The project started with the discovery phase which helped us understand the business challenges and goals.

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

The project team includes about 9 people, but certain individuals like Designers, Technical Architect, QA experts, etc. would come and go depending on the skills needed at a specific point of time. Managing the project was fairly straight forward and hassle-free as we were assigned a Project Manager who acted as a single point of contact throughout the project.

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

I term it a success as the productivity of our front-line sales team increased multifold after rolling out the App for a Sales team. Top management is also having accurate Sales Data Visibility and Transparency which is helpful to devise our company strategy for the future.

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

Project management was very impressive. There were regular updates from the team and any delays were communicated well in advance due to unforeseen reasons. The team had gone beyond their regular roles/duties and helped us identify and communicate with the third party vendors like Google API, a payment gateway, and more.

Synergy with both teams was such that we feel that it is our in-house product development team. We used Skype, Github, etc. for communication and project management.

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

Their capability to deliver robust business-critical systems along with SLA-based support and maintenance was great. It helped reduce overhead to have in-house IT team.

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

We are happy with progress and engagement so far. My only advice will be to keep doing great work.