What was the scope of their involvement?
One of the projects was an in-house CRM [customer relationship management] environment for sales and prospects. This was more for operations, with the customer being the employee, and the prospects being the workflows, operational processes, and more importantly, the metrics around that. So, it encompassed scorecard items for the processors, the quality control people, and piping the data in, then getting reports to ensure we could track the optimal utilization of the resources. This includes the managers and the training they need to work with, based on the feedback they receive from the quality control people reviewing the work.
Sun Dew has also worked with us on creating a corporate identity. We will be rolling out a new logo and website. They’ve also worked on our communication brochures. So, their work has not only included application development but branding work as well.
They used a number of technologies. They said they would be using PHP and a couple of other technologies to get the website published. Because they were creating a talking mechanism between various agency management systems, they also used a database based on MySQL. They used HTML to create our intranet help files, making sure we’re creating our own data repository for documentation and client references.
They did the design and development of these projects. I liked working with Sun Dew Solutions because they walked us through a gap analysis. We’re not tech people; we just know what we want to see as the end product. We got together to decide the milestones, the deliverables, and more importantly, to decide the audit points of how to ensure we are getting what we’re paying for and when. Once this was all done, they put together the project documentation, assigned the resources, introduced them to us, and then got the work done.
How did you come to work with Sun Dew Solutions?
We needed the website done, and I believe we had looked them up on Google, trying to search for someone based in Calcutta. I met with them and did an initial project. We just kept giving them more and more work as we developed a relationship of trust. They have delivered on their promises. They are not cheap, but they’re not a sweatshop like some other Indian companies that will lowball a project and not deliver.
How much have you invested with Sun Dew Solutions?
We’ve invested at least $25,000 to $30,000, if not more, for the CRM and corporate identity work. There are some bills that are still in the pipeline, and then some that we paid before for a couple of other sites they did for us. In total, it’s a little under $50,000.
What is the status of this engagement?
We began working together around November of 2013, and the work is ongoing.
Sun Dew is still providing frontend and backend development as a valued partner. The team has the technical skills and the design sense to deliver the platform, and they repaire bugs promptly. They are committed to understanding and solving business challenges.