Spiria

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Business Solution Manager for Agriculture of Norterafoods

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Norterafoods is a company in the processing and sale of ready-to-eat vegetables, offering a wide range of fresh, frozen and canned products to promote healthy and sustainable eating.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Spiria to accomplish?

• IT Mission: Development, optimization, innovation

SOLUTION

How did you find Spiria?

Referral

Why did you select Spiria over others?

Referred to me

How many teammates from Spiria were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

Setting up GitLab instances and automation pipeline:

• Understand, explain and document the GitLab and AWS infrastructure for our application.
• Ensure the correct configuration of AWS services for the operation of our custom application.
• Explain AWS troubleshooting, monitoring and alerting tools to diagnose potential errors
• Set up new feature development capabilities
• Ensure the stability and proper functioning of the application

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

• Implementation of one of our applications, functional.
• Significant reduction in implementation times, improved system performance, and increased end-user satisfaction.

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

Their project management was exemplary. Everything went perfectly well, with deliverables submitted on time. We had weekly meetings to discuss progress, and the status was constantly reviewed against the budget. The management was impeccable, responding to our needs with responsiveness and efficiency.

What was your primary form of communication with Spiria?

Virtual Meeting

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

What impressed me most about Spiria was their ability to combine technical expertise, flexibility, and speed.

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

Our collaboration was perfect, I have no suggestions for improvement.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the VP Software Development and Security of Aifred Health

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Aifred Health develops an AI-assisted Clinical Decision Support solution to help treat patients suffering from mild to severe depression.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Spiria to accomplish?

• Rapid proof of concept for a SaaS product.
• Retain experienced developers to develop critical components.
• Reliable post production support

SOLUTION

How did you find Spiria?

• Online Search
• Other

Why did you select Spiria over others?

• High ratings
• Close to my geographic location

How many teammates from Spiria were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

The scope of work included custom development of a cloud based clinical decision support solution using modern web and cloud technologies. The delivered product is a progressive web app deployed as a SaaS based solution with a custom UX/UI for a clinical workflow in psychiatry.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

Development followed an iterative approach using well defined sprints. The progress was communicated with a dedicated project manager and directly with the developers.

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

Project milestones were met with the aid of sprint completion reports. Backlogged items were regularly prioritized, and ad-hoc needs were well understood by the Spiria team.

What was your primary form of communication with Spiria?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

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

Spiria has shown exceptional communication throughout the development life cycle and were pro-active on sharing any discoveries that may pose risks to the expected timelines.

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

Industry specific knowledge related to the health and medical device sector was a challenge at the early stages of development. Spiria was able to adjust but committing to increase their understanding of the regulatory requirements we needed to satisfy.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Vice President Sales & Marketing of Northern Cables Incorporated

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Northern Cables is a world class manufacturer of commercial and industrial power and control cables with three facilities in Canada and employs over 200 skilled Canadians. 

As "The Armoured Cable Specialists", Northern Cables is focused on manufacturing high quality interlocked armoured cables. They produce both copper and aluminum products to CSA and UL standards, and source all raw materials exclusively from North America. Learn more and get wired with Northern Cables by visiting their website at northerncables.com

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Spiria to accomplish?

• Real time web based automated inventory with the ability for customers to reserve items live on line.
• substantially reduce staff’s manual-entry tasks
• improve customers’ experience
• increase inventory sales

SOLUTION

How did you find Spiria?

sales contact

Why did you select Spiria over others?

• Close to my geographic location
• Great culture fit
• Good value for cost
• Company values aligned

How many teammates from Spiria were assigned to this project?

6-10 Employees

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

• Discovery phase 
• User experience design (UX) 
• Interface design (UI) 
• Custom web application development
• Quality assurance

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

Weekly meetings, two week long sprints with presentations and demos, continuous feedback.

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

All work was shared in Teams, followed up in a weekly meeting that would hit on all aspects of the project. PM would track progress, production, testing, roadblocks, and budget.

What was your primary form of communication with Spiria?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

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

I was impressed with their ease of communication, culture, professionalism, and knowledge, providing answers and solutions to all our challenges.

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

No...

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the member services coordinator at a milk marketing board in Western Canada. For the purposes of the project, I was the client product owner.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

We wanted to upgrade our mobile app and web based console that are used for milk pick-up and delivery. Our previous applications were outdated and unstable. Our goal was to create a system that was secure, user friendly and extremely dependable.

SOLUTION

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

We searched for developers and sent out a request for proposal. Three organizations were shortlisted. We chose Spiria based on their past projects, design skills and cost estimate.

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

We provided Spiria with an exhaustive list of functional requirements as part of the request for proposal process. Upon launching the project, Spiria met with the project team for multiple grooming sessions where functional requirements were expanded into design details. Spiria was very diligent during the grooming sessions. They were constantly seeking to understand the “why” behind each functional requirement. As a result, Spiria proposed multiple solutions that streamlined and improved the application.

Upon completion of development, Spiria put the mobile app and web console through an exhaustive QA cycle. They also built a suite of UAT cases for the milk marketing boards. Before launch day, the mobile app and web based console went through QA cycles with the Spiria team as well as UAT with the milk marketing boards and milk hauling companies.

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

I worked closely with the project manager, Integration and back end lead, mobile lead, web lead, QA lead and UI/UX lead during the course of the project.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We completed the project on time, on budget and within scope. We received positive feedback from both the milk marketing boards and the milk hauling companies. Both parties noted that the applications built by Spiria provided a better user experience and returned dependable, secure data.

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

The project manager was extremely easy to communicate with and provided regular updates to myself (client product owner) and the client product manager via regularly scheduled meetings. The updates were saved to SharePoint so that they could be easily accessed by any member of the project. Updates from the project manager that were provided to the general managers of the milk marketing boards were detailed, timely and professionally presented. The project manager was extremely diligent in tracking every aspect of the schedule for the project. Risks to the project were identified early and mitigation strategies were put into place.

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

Every member of the team bought their best work to this project. No one was satisfied with the status quo. When we ran into problems, rather than pointing fingers, the team quickly pivoted to understand the issue and then provide solutions. I felt as though the milk marketing boards were part of the Spiria team. By having a thorough understanding of our business and the requirements for the project, Spiria built excellent solutions.

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

There was almost nothing that Spiria could have improved on with this project.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

We are a health and wellness website delivering editorial and medical content to users to help manage unique healthcare journeys. I am the Sr. Product Manager of the site and manage the day-to-day planning and development.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

Spiria was brought in to help develop the entire site, including platform architecture, tools and service, database models, and frontend user experience. Our objective is to deliver the most relevant and useful content to users based on their healthcare needs.

SOLUTION

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

I was not included in the selection of this vendor.

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

We work concurrently on many initiatives, including platform architecture, tools and service, database models, and frontend user experience. The site is built on the Django platform in collaboration with Wordpress.

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

Two members of the Spiria team worked with us. Nathan and Ivan were our developers.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

User experience and content delivery has drastically improved in my time working with Spiria. The site is stable among our large network of sites and communicates with many of our internal tools despite its unique architecture.

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

We worked very closely with Ivan and Nathan to map out project timelines and objectives, including valuable grooming and planning sessions for our development sprints. We shared documentation through Confluence, Miro, and Figma to accomplish our goals. The team is always very responsive to all communications.

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

The ability to explain a problem and uncover a solution that fit the unique needs of the site. This allowed us to prepare more effectively for upcoming initiatives and manage various projects at the same time.

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

No.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the CEO of a tech start-up from Montreal with the goal to offer at home services with help of technology.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

We hired Spiria Digital Inc, to build an really simple App for our customers to be able to book appointements for the services that we offer and subscribe to a membership if wanted, they was also supposed to create an Admin and employee plate-form for us to manage the requests and the technology.

SOLUTION

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

We searched online for a few days then we end up on their google Ads, we called them since they are from our area and did some projects with businesses that we heard of before.

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

We talked about the technologic needs of our company and then planned to develop the UX,UI in first place, once this step done they were supposed to create the Data base (Admin) plate-form plus the IOS and Android side of the technology. Once everything ready we were supposed to Beta-test the app then summit it to Google and Apple, the project was estimated to last 20 weeks at most.

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

Spiria created a team of 6, the project manager, the UX-UI designer, the back-end developper, the IOS developper, the Android developper and the Q&A member.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

They published the App on App Store and Google Play, the app is not working at all the user cannot even create an account on the plate-form at this moment... There are a lot of basic functions that have never worked.

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

Their project management style is horrible, they change the project manager on my project one month and a half after the project started, which creates a lot of delays for her integration, they did it also for our UX-UI designer 3-4 months in since he wasn't productive enough and delayed our project of over 30 days then they changed the back end developper also 4 months in the project since he wasn't capable of getting the job done.

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

Nothing at all.

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

Of course they should make sure that their employees have the knowledge and the experience to take on some app development projects before accepting the contract and the money from their potential customers. They should keep an eye open on projects that shows a lot of problems in the progress and should accept when something is too hard to do for them without pushing the client to keep paying for their faith to just maybe make it happen.

Company Responses

The vendor responded on October 18, 2021.

The client requested the development of a mobile application to essentially facilitate customers' booking for varied home services. Early on and shortly after coming to a detailed agreement, the project's initial scope had to be expanded, as the client's CEO's vision for the application and desired functionalities changed significantly. The agreement, the project's scope, and the price were thus revised and approved by the client, including the services' costs.

Further, along with the development of the application, the client requested numerous changes to the application's functionalities, often backtracking from previous demands or putting forward entirely new requests (out of the agreed-upon scope). These issues and the client's representatives' collaboration and involvement in the project were lackluster and caused multiple and important delays.

The client also failed to pay for Spiria's services in a timely manner and tried to renegotiate the price and scope of the agreement on multiple occasions – both of which caused delays in Spiria's work on the application.

The client thereafter unilaterally ended the agreement, the whole despite having agreed to the project's scope and price and having approved and complimented Spiria's work throughout the development of the application.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the CIO of HealthPRO Procurement Services Inc. We are a healthcare group purchasing and services company in Canada.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Spiria?

We have hired Spiria for a variety of projects over the last several years including a complete rebuild of our public website. The project of this discussion has been the complete redesign of our customer/member portal including all UX/UI components.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

Because we have worked with Spiria in the past, and have always been delighted with their work, and their ability to meet project and budget deadlines it was a no-brainer.

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

Their team conducted extensive interviews with our staff and our members, gathering user feedback and detailed information and current state shortcomings and future state vision. From there, they broke down the portal into separate and areas, reduced redundancy, and made sure that the portal was more intuitive and user friendly.

They also worked to streamline the user journey. Because of the scope of the ask it took two months, but they produced a prototype. We had to pause this project temporarily due to internal issues unrelated to this project or Spiria. However, we will resume this project shortly.

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

We had six people from Spiria work with us. Project Manager CX/UX Research Lead Strategy UX & UI Account Manager Senior Director – National Sales

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

I am pleased with the deliverables from Spiria team. The UX/UI prototype has been well received by all stakeholders and the feedback has been positive. Their work also perfectly reflects the vision we had at the start, helping us create a user-friendly and easy-to-navigate member portal.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

The project manager, Strategy team, and CX/UX/UI team were amazing to work with. They communicated often and provided us frequent updates. Because of COVID all our meetings and workshops were virtual but it worked fine. Feedback was almost exclusively done through the workshops, but some follow-up was through email. Everything was delivered on time and to our satisfaction.

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

Their ability to take a very disparate set of requirements from a variety of sources we provided them and the have them return a cohesive and brilliant solution was just brilliant.

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

No areas of improvement needed for our latest engagement with Spiria.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the test automation manager of Lightspeed HQ, an e-commerce software company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Spiria?

We had a surge of work and needed help. We want to find a third-party vendor that could support our in-house team. 

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We had a developer from Spiria help with test automation. They used Python, Pytest, and Selenium. They also helped the CI/CD pipeline with continuous integration and delivery pipeline. CircleCI was used in the CI process to do automatic launch of testing suites. They also did QA, including creating test cases, planning, and some work in Jira and the backlog tasks that we needed to be done.

We had our internal test automation framework that only had the capability of doing API testing. We didn’t have the option to do end-to-end tests using UI components like a web browser. They helped us to develop the capability to do UI testing with Selenium.

What is the team composition?

There were three people including a team lead, who was my main point of contact. We also worked with the director who joined some of the meetings and did assessments if we needed more people.

How did you come to work with Spiria?

When I joined the team, we were already in negotiations with them. They were a referral from our VP who had used them at one of his previous jobs.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from April 2019–May 2020.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

They were on par or above the expectations we have of our permanent employees.

How did Spiria perform from a project management standpoint?

Project management was very good. They were very accommodating to changing priorities. They gave great granularity in the monthly reports of the work they’ve done. We track the work in Jira. We communicated a lot on Slack. The bug tracking was done on TestRail.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’re very good in terms of service, follow-up, and making sure that we are satisfied with their work. They’re flexible. I found them to be very open to discussion and very good at tracking the work of their team and doing a follow-up.

Are there any areas they could improve?

The quality is there and we get what we pay for, but the cost was a bit high for us compared to other companies. However, the quality was the best I’ve had with an external company.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Make your expectations clear on the project and the type of support you want.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

We develop 3d printers. I am the lead developer on the CAD software used to prepare designs for printing

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Spiria?

Spiria was tasked with helping us develop the initial version of the CAD software.

What were your goals for this project?

The goal was to produce an MVP version of the application within approximately one year.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

Our manager had previous positive experiences working with Spiria. Spiria was known to have deep expertise in 3D software development and c++.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

Spiria helped design the foundational framework for the application. They did a lot of the more difficult initial development tasks in the 3D view, such as building the transformation tool

What was the team composition?

We had 2 people from Spiria and 2 people within the company working on the product.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any information that demonstrates the impact that this project has had on your business?

We were successful at launching the product and it was very well received. We have been able to continue the development of the product without much hand holding from Spiria.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

Our side handled the project management.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

They have a lot of technical knowledge. They helped me do things that I would have taken much longer to figure out on my own. They are very easy to work with. No ego, no bs., just working together to get the job done.

Are there any areas for improvement?

There were occasional miscommunications so perhaps communication could be improved. But this is pretty normal when dealing with remote, outside contractors.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm VP Product Management at Power Factors, a Renewable Energy IoT SaaS company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Spiria?

We worked with Spiria to design and develop a brand new iPhone mobile app.

What were your goals for this project?

Our goal was to increase engagement on our Drive platform by Solar and Wind asset managers.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

We were interested in working with a local vendor who could collaborate closely with our PM & UI staff. We received proposals from a couple vendors. We chose Spiria because of their technical knowledge, prior experience with our sister company, and willingness to meet our aggressive timeline while staying within our budget.

Describe the project in detail.

The project was split into three parts. The first part was UX design of the mobile app. This was based on the home page of our current web application but optimized for mobile navigation. We iterated on several mockups before finalizing the UI. The second part was agile sprints to develop the application. At the end of each sprint, we received a demo of the sprint deliverables and discussed scope for the next sprint. Finally after approving and making any last minute changes we were able to test and deploy the app to Apple App Store.

What was the team composition?

We were fortunate enough to work with their Director of Mobile Development who personally created our app. We also had a project manager who managed the sprint backlog and any administrative aspects including time & costs.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Our app has been downloaded and used on a regular basis by asset managers at several of our key customers. We also leverage this app for marketing purposes at trade shows and sales calls.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

The entire team was extremely responsive and their communication very clear. Since we are also a software company the development process was well understood which led to a smooth collaboration.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Their breadth of experience goes beyond mobile app development. We are now working with them for additional .NET software work.

Are there any areas for improvement?

We did run into an issue during the last major iOS upgrade. However, the team responded quickly to resolve the issue. Overall, they were a pleasure to work with and we look forward to continuing & expanding our partnership.