TNation

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am an IT consultant at Medianetworks. Clients hire me to do their production of IT or advise them on how to best go into projects with partners or internally.

What challenge were you trying to address with TNation?

I had been working with a client for a few years, Biogen (a medical company), and was their in-house consultant for many projects. We had an e-learning platform and some blog sites that we were trying to address. We also had some functionality on the websites that we needed to get going.

What was the scope of their involvement?

I ran the projects with TNation. One was an e-learning solution that was built from scratch, where they used their own PHP based CMS. It was a fairly straightforward solution. There were several solutions in the market, but they were really expensive to use. We addressed it and chose to build it from scratch because it had to be very secure. There is a lot of private medical information in it that shouldn’t be shared with the public.

We basically built an advanced presentation engine with videos, animations, and quizzes, along with e-learning stuff. The approach that TNation used was more or less very open. They even suggested that we use some custom builds. When we addressed the needs for the specific challenges we had, they agreed that we needed to build it and that it would also be cheaper than if we used their proprietary software.

The other project was a fairly large WordPress site that needed to be built for communication for patients. The WordPress site was more or less out of the box, but with a lot of customization. Additionally, we also built a mobile application.

What is the team composition?

There were five people on the mobile team, four people on the WordPress team, and 4–5 people on the team for the e-learning solution. It was very large and complicated. We had a central point of contact throughout the engagement.

How did you come to work with TNation?

Since we know all the IT community, as well as all companies and vendors, doing stuff is quite expensive and elaborate in production. We tried to seek cheaper options, but we also needed someone who had a semi-high to a high level of technical knowledge. We also needed a company that was big internationally, because we wanted to be a fairly large client in a similar organization.

One of my old friends knew TNation and had worked with them, and we began partnering up with them. We did some projects with them and really liked what we saw so we continued the work with them.

How much have you invested in them?

We spent several million Krona ($200,000–999,999 USD).

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked with them on this project from 2012–2017.

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

The client was really happy with the whole thing. There was a high level of satisfaction with them in that period, and we were really happy with using them as a developer, as well as in terms of pricing because in terms of Danish value. They solved the whole thing. We had a Danish guy working for us and I would say we had a fairly close relationship with them. I don’t think there was anything that was misinterpreted.

How did TNation perform from a project management standpoint?

In terms of their own organization, they are really good at clarifying how people should work with them, and they have nice people working there. They were really an awesome partner.

We had several meetings. We had several projects going on and we were really tight. I was the focal point for all of that and acted as the client’s project manager. We also had access to their project management tool, which was fairly good.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They have a really nice place, and it is nice to visit. It was a nice experience to be able to go there and have a close relationship with them.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Nothing specific in terms of the project. There wasn’t a time I felt something wasn’t good enough.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I would suggest that the client have a really close relationship with them. Visit them and get to know them. Start working with them in a close way.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the co-founder and managing director of an international financial media organization. We’re based online and have six TV studios around the world, as well as 35 journalists.

We’re like Bloomberg and Reuters, but we focus on small and medium businesses. The main financial networks do blue-chip companies and short-term trading rather than long-term investments.

What challenge were you trying to address with TNation?

We’re on the seventh iteration of our website, and TNation has worked with us on the last four iterations. Their work has involved rebranding, implementing a CMS, coding, and developing intellectual property.

What was the scope of their involvement?

While they did branding one earlier iterations, they helped with some of the design on this one along with another vendor. Launched in August, our website uses their proprietary CMS, which runs on CakePHP. We’ve looked at potentially moving to JAMstack, but that’s still in infancy with aspects of intellectual property (certain robots and spiders have crawling issues), so it makes sense to stay with the CakePHP for now.

The website also contains a huge amount of SEO work, which was detrimental to our business model beforehand. Now, our SEO draws millions and millions of readers to our website.

What is the team composition?

It has varied from 5–15 depending on where we are with our projects. Over the summer, we were working with was as many people as they had. Marco (Web Developer, TNation) is our project manager, and we have a head developer. I’ve also gotten to know the founding directors over the years, so I can go to them with problems.

How did you come to work with TNation?

We were using a company, and they outsourced to TNation. In the end, we started dealing directly with TNation.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent around £320,000 ($414,200 USD) so far.  

What is the status of this engagement?

We’ve worked together since 2007.

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

Our website regularly ranks in the top two and three spots organically, without any sponsor results or PPC campaigns. We’ve grown 50% in the past year, and our customer retention rate is 92%. The website is the biggest asset in all that. The backend collects an enormous amount of data that has prepared us to grow more into the FinTech space. We can track what investors are searching for, reading, as well as where they’re searching from

How did TNation perform from a project management standpoint?

Because the website has been so expensive, the project went out to tender to three other firms, and our board independently chose TNation. Beyond being 9–5 guys, they’re able to produce mission-critical changes on the weekend, which is when we have to schedule most of them because we can’t execute them when the markets are open.

Everything is organized on two levels of Trello boards on two levels. Plus, they have their own project management software. We mostly communicate on WhatsApp, email, and phone.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Mistakes are always made and there are always challenges, but the real test is how they deal with correcting and improving so as not to make the same mistake twice. They’re pricing competitive compared to UK-based agencies from the tender process as well.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I’d certainly advise anyone in my industry to work with them. I work in news and media space, so if a company wanted to build an e-commerce website I couldn’t speak to their level of expertise in that.