Stylers Group

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

The owner of our company, Deepak Chopra, has written over 100 books about meditation, yoga, and so on. We have many online digital products like mobile and web applications that are centered around those topics. We also have live events. I’m an IT manager and project manager for the Chopra Center Enterprise. My role is to ensure that all the systems and software we use internally and the applications that serve our users work together perfectly.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Stylers Group?

We don’t have many development resources in-house. Stylers is one of our big partners for web development. Since they work from Europe, they have very great prices compared to development prices in the US. Previously, we were working with another company that was based in India, but we were not satisfied with the work they did.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

At the beginning, they did system integration for us. We use different customer relationship management software and marketing software like Salesforce and Sage. They were helping us connect the system with our in-house software and applications. We then created many digital products with them, including mobile applications and websites. One was a meditation challenge called Meditation Experience with Deepak Chopra and Oprah Winfrey, which is one of our biggest products. They rebuilt that system from scratch four years ago because the old system we had was extremely outdated. It was also supported by another company that wasn’t that good. That was a very big project, the platform. We have millions of users using it on a daily basis. We didn’t have a mobile application to this platform.

Later on, we had so many different applications and websites. Stylers suggested creating a single sign-on system, which was a great idea. Now, if you have just one account with our company, you can log in and use every single application and program we have. This is really great for us because now, we can track the users and see whether they buy something in our store. We can offer them other services based on what they’re buying. From the user’s perspective, Chopra Center is one entity. They don’t know that we have a separate store, we have a meditation site, etc. This allows the user to remember one account name and password.

They worked on another project for us called Chopra Ananda that we just launched last year. It’s a subscription-based meditation platform where you can sign up to get access to thousands of meditations. Stylers designed that site and the mobile application. The site was built on Laravel, and the other languages they used were PHP, Node.js, Java, etc. The mobile apps are for iOS and Android.

How did you come to work with Stylers Group?

Our decision to hire them was based on references and the fair price they offered. They offered some research. I have many bad experiences with Indian developers—they’re very good when they clearly fathom what needs to be done, but when they need to be creative and come up with solutions, they’re usually not. You usually have to tell them what to do. The US market is very expensive, so because of that, I can see that many companies are starting to develop in Eastern European countries. These developers are both cheap and very creative. They are experts in the field. I was asking for quotes from different Hungarian developers, and Stylers seemed to be very good. They were always very disciplined. They provided ideas on how things need to be stored.

How much have you invested with Stylers Group?

We spend between $100,000 and $200,000 annually with them.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in January 2013, and the work is ongoing. The meditation project was finished in six months, but they continue to provide support. They have redesigned the product every year or two. We still have a very good partnership after five years of working together.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

Five years ago, we had around 600,000 users or less. Now, there are about 3.6 million users in the database. Stylers made it easier with the single sign-on system and other corrections. Now, we know more about our users, and we can now manage the database.

Stylers always handles any issues quickly. There are always bugs with web development. The platforms always change so quickly, but what’s important is how you react to these kinds of changes.

What I really liked with Stylers is that they came up with ideas of what we should do and what should be the next step. They don’t just do what we ask them to do; they’re also thinking about strategies and suggest innovative solutions. They were pushing for the mobile application, and I’m so glad we made that decision. The mobile application was really useful to our users.

How did Stylers Group perform from a project management standpoint?

Stylers is very good with that. Many times, I was able to reach them on the weekend if I needed to. Even with the nine-hour difference, I can reach them almost any time. In the beginning, I was worried about how the time difference would affect the relationship, but it’s turned out to be much better than I actually thought. I have had requests from my IT for changes at 3:00 or 4:00 in the afternoon and I send it to Stylers. When I wake up in the morning, the work has already been done. I usually reach them via Skype. IT projects always have delays. But I never experienced something huge, like I experienced with other teams. They assigned me a full Scrum team with a few developers, a QA person who is doing all the testing, and a project manager. I’m very satisfied with that part.

What did you find most impressive about Stylers Group?

They have a smaller team, not like an international company. Because of that, they can be much quicker for innovations in the market. They handle their clients more like a small family-owned restaurant instead of a big chain restaurant.

Are there any areas Stylers Group could improve?

I can’t think of anything.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I was the COO for VisualMD.com, a startup that provided services mainly to pharmaceutical companies, such as content curation and creative campaigns to boost their marketing. The company collected real human data and then used that human data to visualize human processes.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Stylers Group?

I worked with Stylers to basically build a portal and contribute to our online marketing and social media. We had an internal team for marketing and a digital department as well, but we were actually building a portal that specialized in video-based content delivery, so a YouTube-type thing, just on a smaller scale. It had a significant infrastructure, backend and frontend. We hired them to build the frontend.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Stylers was part of the whole creation process, starting with the conceptualization, the specification of the frontend of the portal, the design, the full execution, and the delivery of the actual product. They also provided maintenance services for the product. After that, we really wanted to push the product, so they contributed to our social media and online marketing effort. Mostly, they did the distribution; we created the content ourselves, campaign management, placement, and then they did the distribution of the content via paid marketing.

How did you come to work with Stylers Group?

I was handling the outsourcing in the company that I ran, which worked with a few partners. I looked at companies in Eastern Europe, where prices were much more competitive than in the US market.

What is the status of this engagement?

I probably started working with Stylers around 2009, and the relationship was ongoing until about 2012, when I left the company. I don't know how long the relationship lasted between the two companies after I left. I was running the company for quite a long time, over 10 years, so I have a hard time remembering when exactly we started working with them.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

The reason I chose Stylers is because people underestimate the six-to-nine-hour time difference between the east and west coasts. If we had problems during the day, and went into actually releasing the work order, we could have their team start by three or four o’clock, and not lose a day.

Beyond their responsiveness, the quality of the design and coding as well as how they handled the relationship, was impeccable. Comparing the services that I received from them to a US service provider in a similar category, it’s about 30% to 35% cheaper. I picked Stylers solely for business reasons, and I never regretted that decision. It’s why they stuck around for years.

How did Stylers Group perform from a project management standpoint?

I believe they are ahead of the curve, actually, and I learned quite a lot from Stylers Group about how to manage the digital product. They had a very advanced way of actually measuring efficiency and providing the service that I needed. That’s why development is still very rare in the US, especially the Scrum-based system. I’ve been in this business for around 25 years, but I learned this approach from Stylers Group. It has a big future in the industry, in terms of how digital-technology projects are being developed.

I dealt with a project manager with whom I reviewed the work at the beginning and end of each day. Basically, the development progress communication was daily, and then they managed their own resources with their own people.

Obviously, this was an ongoing, 24/7 job. I remember that they had about 30 employees at one point, but how many were assigned to my project was unclear. The work was managed by a single person, which was my specific request, which made everything very convenient.

We handled daily communication through Skype and e-mail. If I had something extremely important, I could call the project manager directly. This could have happened at 2 o’clock in the morning on a Saturday, which did happen once or twice. They’re totally reliable. Whatever they do, they take it seriously, and are very professional.

What did you find most impressive about Stylers Group?

I’ve worked with different groups from all around the world—Argentina, India, Ukraine. It differs by country, but, when it comes to outsourcing anything this big, it’s very important to me that the people working on my behalf are not working bees. They need to have an A to Z manual for figuring out how to execute certain things and making decisions. But, if they make a decision, they must be willing to stick by that decision and take responsibility for it, in order to save time and money in the production timeline.

This is something I haven’t seen in many places. They can tackle question after question, go back-and-forth on the rules, see the complexity of the problem, actually make a decision on your behalf, and then they take responsibility for it. If the decision is wrong, they don't blame you, and they take ownership very well.

Are there any areas Stylers Group could improve?

It was a while ago. When we split, I believe that their portfolio was too narrow. They have the potential to become a much bigger company, but they are a fairly young group, and need to figure things out