Taller Digital Business

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Product Manager of an iGaming company 

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Company in the iGaming affiliate industry.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Taller Digital Business to accomplish?

• Migrate the current website to a new version
• Create a social betting app

SOLUTION

How did you find Taller Digital Business?

Referral

Why did you select Taller Digital Business over others?

• Great culture fit
• Referred to me

How many teammates from Taller Digital Business were assigned to this project?

6-10 Employees

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

Launch of the New Website MVP

The primary goal was to develop the new website and migrate all content from a project that had been running for 8 years, accumulating thousands of URLs, in time for the Football World Cup. Additionally, the project incorporated an API for sports events and odds, providing users with a richer experience.

Incremental Website Improvements

Numerous enhancements and features were implemented to improve the website’s conversion rate and offer a smoother user experience.

Creation of the Casino Section
A completely separate section focusing on online casinos was developed.

App Development

A brand-new app was developed from scratch with the goal of becoming a hub for Brazilian bettors, where users could create their predictions and participate in competitions.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The Completion of the Website MVP Within the Deadline

Delivering the MVP of the website within the stipulated timeframe was a significant milestone due to the narrow window of opportunity.

Considerable Increase in Conversion Rate

The average conversion rate of the website increased significantly, positively impacting revenue.

Timely Delivery of the App

Releasing the app before the market’s regulation was another crucial factor for the long-term strategy.

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

The company culture is highly focused on business outcomes. They are not the type to simply follow everything a client says; instead, they always question the “why” behind things to ensure the best decision is made in the end. This approach is excellent, though it can sometimes be challenging and demanding. The team consistently looks for ways to simplify processes, enabling incremental deliveries at reduced costs. Even if a delivery cannot be executed as initially envisioned, they will find alternative ways to deliver value to users while meeting deadlines. The team is highly responsive and works exceptionally well in a remote setting.

Products are managed using their own methodology, called Dynamic Flow. They avoid excessive ceremonies and meetings, limiting fixed sessions to two:

 1. Story Map: For mapping and organizing the product roadmap.

 2. Status Report: For tracking progress and updates.

Additional meetings, such as feature discussions and brainstorming sessions, are scheduled as needed. Delivery estimates are made based on the project’s delivery KPIs, using the Monte Carlo method for projections. Everything is grounded in data and numbers, avoiding subjective assumptions or “gut feelings” from the team.

What was your primary form of communication with Taller Digital Business?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

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

What I appreciated the most was the intensity with which the team engaged in the project—it felt as if they were an integral part of our own team. I also admired how they approached estimates and their critical thinking throughout the process.

Are there any areas for improvement or something Taller Digital Business could have done differently?

I believe there is room for improvement in UX and UI. The dynamic approach to delivering tasks doesn’t always benefit a user journey that requires a clear beginning, middle, and end. I also noticed a lack of continuous monitoring of the KPIs related to the deliveries.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

Our company is located in Brazil and we mostly sell cosmetics. We have a large group of sales consultants selling our products door to door daily.

What is your position and responsibilities?

I’m an IT product manager. I’m responsible for all of the digital assets that focus on our final customer.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with Taller Digital Business?

I take care of more than fifty digital assets here, not only maintaining but also developing them. Our company wanted to move towards Drupal for most of our web applications. For me, it was the chance to give our company our first generation Drupal web application.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement in greater detail.

We had an extremely aggressive time schedule, so we pretty much did all of the development in one month. That was insane for a project this big, but Taller Digital was okay with it. They told me that I could trust them, so I gave them the opportunity. They knew that if they messed up, they would not have other opportunities here. They have performed extremely well, and everything went great. The website is now live and everyone loves it. The quality of the code and the stability of the solution is outstanding compared to other partners we have worked with.

How did you come to work with Taller Digital Business?

Several of my IT colleagues recommended them to me. I started talking with Taller Digital and started noticing what their vision was and how they ran their business. From the moment that we started talking, it was love at first sight. I really felt that they were connected to our cause, and that they understood our goals for this new website.

Could you provide a sense of the size of this initiative in financial terms or work hours?

We have invested somewhere around 1,900 hours on this project.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in March of 2015, and I’m currently working with them on databases. We have a monthly contract with them for several hours of upgrading to the site. As of right now, they are taking care of small bugs and adding features. We are also running several requests for proposal [RFPs] for the development of other websites, and they are trying to close deals with us on all of those RFPs.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics, metrics or other feedback from this engagement?

Taller Digital Business has helped us achieve several things here, considering the website and coding itself on our previous version of the site. We constantly had support tickets issued to my colleagues and me because the backend wouldn’t work and the website wasn’t performing properly. It’s all clear now; we do not have to spend the time we used to on making the website work. Now we are only focused on making it better.

We have identified several key performance indicators [KPIs] for our application. The performance of our website is better now, and the security levels are better as well. This is not only because of Taller Digital Business, but because we are using a platform service provider that’s been extremely good for us. The amount of time that users are spending on our website has gone up, and the users who are uploading content to the website couldn’t be happier.

In two months after the launch of this project, we have had more than 200 pieces of content on our website, mainly news articles. They are extremely well-done, have rich content and are responsive. Our end users are using the platform as it was meant to be used. Every day, they are putting more and more content on it, and we haven’t had any major problems. Being from IT and knowing how things usually work in IT, more than anyone else, I know the project has been great.

What distinguishes Taller Digital Business from other providers?

They have an extremely good reputation, not only in IT but in the market as well, which is pretty great considering they are a tiny company with only about 20 or 30 people working there.

Is there anything Taller Digital Business could have improved or done differently?

We were in a rush, and from the beginning they did not follow all of the right processes. With more time for planning, things could have run a little less insane. But that was our problem, not theirs. They were extremely loyal and helped me a lot.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

We're an academic research group located in the city of Troy in upstate New York. We're an interdisciplinary collaboration, so we have people working from different universities, although most work in the department of science and technology studies at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. The group is made up of academics. We have historians of science and anthropologists of science studying the culture of computing and climate scientists working on environmental issues in different parts of the world.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Taller Negócios Digitais?

We have undertaken a very ambitious project. We are trying to build a platform to facilitate data sharing and collaboration among anthropologists and historians worldwide. The legal, ethical, and privacy issues in our fields are very complicated, and we are trying to come up with wide applications to tackle these issues and enhance collaboration. We inherited this platform, and we have some technical expertise in the research group, but none of us are software developers, so that's how Taller came into the picture. We hired them to help us implement this data sharing and collaboration project.

SOLUTION

How did you come to work with Taller Negócios Digitais?

I was given the responsibility of finding a company, so I started contacting several. We're using a web framework called Drupal, which is popular, has a huge community and a lot of companies working with it. A fairly mature community has been built up around Drupal. I first went to the Drupal website. I was looking for certified companies, companies that had some formal relation to the Drupal platform. Because it's open source, companies are constantly contributing to either the core of Drupal or to modules that extend the platform.

I went online and collected the names of maybe six Drupal companies. I contacted them all, and I received estimates from them. Even though now we have received more money for development, at that time we had only $40,000 to do a lot of things. I got estimates from different companies, and they were all too high – in the $50,000 to $60,000 range. The rate per hour is $150 for companies in the United States, but Taller offered us a much better rate.

I have some friends who are in the IT [information technology] business, and I asked them for companies in Latin America that I might contact. They told me that Taller was expensive by Brazilian standards, but that they were professional and would be able to respond to our needs. We chose Taller because of their good rate per hour. They seemed professional and were willing to work with us.

Could you provide a sense of the size of this initiative in financial terms?

We're planning to spend around $40,000 with Taller for this part of the project, which is to build distribution around the platform and have something that can be adapted for different research groups. We are estimating that we will need to put most of that money into this to have the distribution ready. After that, we are going to start extending the distribution in four areas, but we don't know how much that will cost because we have to get more funding.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them about three months ago, and we are still working with them. We did 100 hours so far with them, and we are now starting a contract for another 160 hours. We may continue working with them for another 200 hours or so until we are at a point that we can continue developing the platform ourselves.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics, metrics, or other feedback from this engagement?

I appreciate the commitment of Taller Negócios Digitais's developers, business analysts, and employees. They communicate with us, they are very attentive to details, and they are willing to engage with us. We're academics – we're not a business, We have different needs, and we have to discuss things that are very complicated. I think that's been very positive. They've been very attentive and consistent in working with us.

What distinguishes Taller Negócios Digitais from other providers?

Because of the needs of our project, I would say the most striking feature is actually their attention to the client. We would frequently have four-hour meetings, and they would be super patient and willing to change their minds. Because we are designing something new and complicated, we go back and forth a lot about what we need, and they are very patient. I think that's a very positive thing, and it's hard to find a company that would be willing to do that.

Is there anything Taller Negócios Digitais could have improved or you would have done differently?

Yes. We've had several discussions with them about the process. In the beginning, because of the complexity of the things we needed them to do, their pace of development was not as fast as we would have liked. We had expectations for a faster output rate for the tasks we had for them, but it turned out that this was more of a problem in our communication with them and in not understanding the difficulty of the tasks that we gave them.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

playspot is an entertainment hub focused on game publishing including browser games, mobile games, client games, and e-commerce.

What is your role at the company?

I'm the operations manager of playspot 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with

Taller Negócios Digitais?

We don't have a development team in house yet and we were looking for a company that could fill this lack in our organization acting more like a development branch of playspot instead of another third-party development company. We tried to develop other projects by ourselves and we failed. We failed, we lost money, and we lost time (meaning more money). We needed someone who could understand our needs and bring the best solutions to achieve them with little to no effort and optimizing our budget. 

What were your company's business goals for the project?

We wanted to expand our business. Since we are more than just a publisher, we are also an entertainment portal, we needed to expand to others markets and diversify our portfolio. This led us to asking Taller for help.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement in detail.

The project consists of several small projects as websites for games, e-commerce platform, and customized support system, among others. The first delivery was a website for a browser game called Barbarians. This site includes integration with payment gateway, third-party login system, and the game itself.

How did you come to work with Taller Negócios Digitais?

We talked to many development companies before finding Taller. Our business is very specific and our team is very different from the ones at traditional companies. We make money playing games, so we needed a team that understood this. We don't have a suffocating environment at work with top downs and excruciating journeys. We are easy going and we looked for someone with the same mindset. Taller won this race by far.

Could you provide a sense of the size of this initiative in financial terms?

It was 2,400 hours at first, but since Taller became true real partner, it will continue growing.

What is the status of this engagement?

The first part was delivered in August 2015. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

The project was delivered recently, so we don't have any relevant metrics yet, but we can see a big traffic increase in our websites and social media after the release of the first site made by Taller.

Their team exceeded our expectations delivering not just a site, but an entire reusable structure, which we'll use in the others projects. Taller helped us optimize the costs of a new project. Besides that, they provided full business consultancy and advising.

What distinguishes Taller Negócios Digitais from other providers?

By far their culture. Nothing is impossible for them. Everything we asked for, they found a way to provide a solution. I would recommend listening to the Taller Negócios Digitais specialists. They probably know your necessities better than you.

In hindsight, are there areas in which they could improve, or things you might do differently?

We should have started with big and most valuable part of the project instead of a "go slow to know who they are." We did this, and now we think that we wasted our time thinking small. We definitely should have aimed bigger at first with them and I'm sure that we wouldn't have been disappointed.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

We are a software company.

What are your position and responsibilities?

My role is to manage alliances with digital agencies, systems integrators and other companies that use our services.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with Taller Digital Business?

I'm responsible for Latin America and our partnerships there. We work with a small group of strategic partners that have that capability in market. Initially, the reason we engaged with Taller Digital Business is that they had capability around an open source Drupal content management platform that is widely used in Latin America.

Taller is one of the most capable firms in Latin America around the Drupal platform, and they are very active in the community. That's a very important thing in open source – to be active in a community and contributing code to the core of Drupal as well as the modules and other functionalities that extend that open-source platform. Taller was very involved in the local community. There's such a thing as a Drupal Camp, and they run the Drupal Camp for Florianopolis, Brazil. They also do work throughout Brazil and for some American and European clients, all around the Drupal content management system platform.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement in detail.

They have a few enterprise-level clients who needed an enterprise platform for deployment, so that's why they came to us. Through working with them, we also discovered they would be a good fit as a partner. They're also a reseller partner, so they not only provide services on the platform and make referrals for us, but they are also a representative for us, reselling our platform in Brazil, which is also a valuable aspect of the relationship.

How did you come to work with Taller Digital Business?

Our first interaction was in 2013. At that time, it was my first trip down to meet our partners in Brazil. That was when I first met them. They were working with one of the largest marketing communications companies in the world locally in Brazil. It was particularly interesting to me at the time that they were working with a major company like them, that they had good technical resources, and that they were well known in Brazil as a good technical shop. That's what initially led me to meet with them. That was in May 2013.

What is the status of this relationship?

Since we started working with them in 2013, we've collaborated on a few projects including the largest cosmetics company in Brazil. They've grown a lot since I met them, and they're working with some great brands.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics, metrics or other feedback from this relationship?

All the projects that we've done with Taller Digital Business have turned out well. When you're partnering with a firm on a number of projects, it's not usually the case that every project goes well, but that's been the case with Taller. The relationship has been a very positive experience.

What distinguishes Taller Digital Business from other providers?

They are very dedicated to client service –fanatical in that respect. They also have very strong technical capability and progressive processes, so they use agile methodology for the way they do their engineering. They have strong engineering and leadership, and I think their relationships and client service has been very good. I think all those are contributing factors.

Frankly, for a Brazilian firm, they interact very well with American- and English-speaking firms. There has never been a language barrier. I've worked with some other firms where maybe their CEO and their head of sales speak great English, but once you get into the engineers and the other people in the organization, I have run into problems. I don't find that to be the case with Taller. Everybody there is very good at communication.

Is there anything Taller Digital Business could have improved or done differently?

They're growing, and they're growing rapidly, so I think they're trying to figure out how they can do sales at the same time as providing great delivery for their customers, but that's just one of the challenges of growing. I really don't have anything negative to say. The relationship has been very good. My sense is that a lot of the sales function falls on the CEO, so I think that they might be more successful if they were able to hire a very client-savvy senior sales leader.