UniKwan

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the CEO of MM Activ. We are India’s largest scientific and technological event management company. We work with both private companies and government agencies.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with UniKwan?

We have many industry partners and stakeholders to consider when creating design requirements. We had been working with another company for the last 8–9 years but wanted to find a partner that could offer more.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

UniKwan has worked with us on several projects doing development, UI/UX, and collateral design work such as event logos and motion graphics. They also worked on web portals, mobile apps, and digital service integrations with other platforms.

What is the team composition?

We have worked with 10–12 of their members during our collaboration, with the typical team size being 4–5 people.

How did you come to work with UniKwan?

UniKwan was found through a reference. We had multiple meetings with them in order to get an idea of their skillsets and leadership. One of our selection criteria was finding an agency that could work with multiple stakeholders and deliver on schedule. They fit our criteria and had reasonable pricing, so we established a long-term contract.

How much have you invested with them?

The cost of their services has been around $35,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with UniKwan in December 2017 or January 2018. The collaboration is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

UniKwan has brought a lot of value to our events and company. We have continued to grow our relationship.

How did UniKwan perform from a project management standpoint?

We have worked under tight timeframes, but they’ve delivered on schedule 99% of the time. Project management is one of UniKwan’s best qualities.

They had been using their own tools for communication, but we preferred to use our own given that we are a large organization with multiple locations across the world. The team was hesitant at first, but they adapted to our request.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They are able to understand our challenges and deliver what is expected. Not many people are able to put themselves in the client’s shoes and interpret requirements accordingly.

Are there any areas they could improve?

UniKwan has done a great job from a vendor perspective. On the organizational side, my suggestion would be for them to go global. They may have a couple of overseas projects already, but they should increase their overall efforts in this area.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We run a small boutique digital marketing agency, providing services related to online engagement, including social media marketing, search engine marketing, and email marketing. We provide strategy, content, and operations in terms of running clients’ online presences. I am a cofounder of the company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with UniKwan?

We have a relationship with UniKwan where, whenever a client needs something the other can provide, we utilize each other’s services.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We have collaborated with UniKwan on behalf of 2 clients, including one which was supposed to be an educational institution for design thinking. They wanted to build a website, but I don’t think that the project materialized, given that the opening of the school was postponed until 2018.

The other client was a company providing last-mile financial inclusivity solutions to rural India. UniKwan has helped them develop their online presence, in terms of a company website. We’ve worked with the client on their digital marketing outreach effort. We have also helped develop content for the websites on both projects.

App design is another component of our work. We have worked with client companies for Android and iOS app design, and creating an engagement model for them. UniKwan has also created video content, creating the corporate video for one of our clients. Their final area of service is animation.

We have other projects in the pipeline, but nothing concrete, as of now.

How did you come to work with UniKwan?

I found them through a relationship with one of their founders. A client of UniKwan was looking for digital marketing services. Since UniKwan doesn’t provide this in-house, they have synergistic relationships with partners. It was proposed that we take over the digital marketing for this client, and from that point onward, we have engaged with UniKwan whenever one of our clients required the services of the other company.

How much have you invested with UniKwan?

They work with us as a partner, and represent themselves in an individual capacity, so we have not paid UniKwan directly. Overall, in terms of our joint venture, the business they’ve brought onboard for us, and the business we got for them, our total business has amounted to 200,000 Indian Rupees. [$3,100]

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with UniKwan in November 2016.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The main skillsets which UniKwan has brought to the table are UI and UX design, in terms of motion design and designing the look and feel of the website itself. They have also provided testing for the products. We don’t work directly with them on this, but these are the services for which we refer UniKwan to our onboarded clients.

A website we’ve designed for one of our clients went live in June. I don’t have exact metrics in terms of number of hits, but in terms of my expertise on digital engagement, the website is highly-optimized for the user experience.

How did UniKwan perform from a project management standpoint?

I have no direct say on this matter, given that UniKwan participates in all our joint ventures in an individual capacity. They represent themselves as a unique company, and not a part of our group. I am not aware of how they actually work with the clients.

What did you find most impressive about UniKwan?

The UI/UX design is very good. I had seen what was present with our client company before. What UniKwan has done to that website is amazing; they have taken a mediocre product, which was probably not optimized in terms of loading time and other aspects, and changed it into an A+ website, not only in terms of aesthetics, but also in performance standards, like page loading times and optimization for multiple devices. They’ve done a wonderful job, and the client has told us that they look-and-feel of the website completely reflects their corporate branding.

Are there any areas UniKwan could improve?

I’ve only worked with them on 2 projects, which is not an adequate scope for me to say what needs to be improved. If anything, I would say that UniKwan lacks in-house language skillsets, but this is probably not a service they’re considering, and it’s why they go to companies like ours for content.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We are working on a location-based mobile product called Whatpoz. We are mostly working on the location technologies.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

UniKwan is helping us with the UX design, overall data collection, and media creation for our product. Our first focus was on the Android app, and they’re also working on the iOS.

How did you come to work with UniKwan?

I went onto their portfolio and looked at their work with previous clients. They had worked for some big companies, and based on that, I found them reliable. That was my main selection criteria.

How much have you invested with UniKwan?

The overall cost of their work will be around $10,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together September 2016. They have completed phase one and we’re working on the next phase. I want further help in defining some of the things for the next phase.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

UniKwan has been helpful in setting up the customer UX, and they’ve helped us save a lot of money from this perspective. They are really adding value to our product. We are doing beta testing and we’ve received some end-user feedback. Overall, they’ve found the UI simple to understand. I’m really happy with that. We’ll take the feedback we get back to UniKwan. The interface and overall product experience are generally easy to understand and market.

How did UniKwan perform from a project management standpoint?

From a product-management point of view, based on timing and other factors, although it was a challenge to understand the overall concept of our user experience, the screens provided by UniKwan helped me get an idea of the completed UI and UX. This helped define these elements for our product. I am generally happy with UniKwan’s management. It has helped us get to market faster.

What did you find most impressive about UniKwan?

They have been able to understand many aspects of our product, once we started working with them. UniKwan has enabled us to interface with users and understand who our customer selection was. This has made a difference in filtering our exact target, as well as get a sense of our budget and other project details.

Are there any areas UniKwan could improve?

They can work from a user experience, development, and technology point of view, but providing full-scope development services would really help us.

What tips or recommendations could you share that might increase the likelihood of success with UniKwan?

They could market the skills they have more. I only found out about some services later on. I actually wanted to assign the media and UX work to another company, but eventually used UniKwan for this as well.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

NAGRA is a software developer for pay TV companies. Our Bangalore office has around 400 employees. 

What is your position?

I am the director of our customer engineering team in Bangalore.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with UniKwan?

My team develops user interfaces for set-top boxes and multiscreen devices. We needed help with layout and user-experience design. 

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement in greater detail.

UniKwan has worked on user interfaces across a variety of our set-top boxes. Our low-end models only have functionalities like channel surfing and reminders. They're on the low end in terms of complexity, but we have also worked with UniKwan on higher-end models, which are richer, are higher-definition, and have more user-experience aspects built in. There is one person from UniKwan's team working directly from our office.

How did you come to work with UniKwan?

UniKwan was already a contractor for my company when I started working for them three and a half years ago. I was not involved in the decision process, but we have continued working with them across multiple teams in the company because of their competitive prices and ability to design proof-of-concepts in collaboration with clients.

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

The average cost of UniKwan's work has been between $4,000 and $8,000 per month over the past years.

What is the status of this engagement?

I personally started working with UniKwan in August 2012, so their collaboration with my company has been even longer. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

We have a big customer in India for which we've used UniKwan's services over the past four or five years. The revenue we've generated from this engagement is significant, amounting to between $4 and $6 million per year. I cannot say how much of this revenue has been directly attributable to UniKwan's work, but they are important enablers in the equation.

How did UniKwan perform from a project management standpoint?

We don't typically involve UniKwan in project management tasks. This is an internal function of our company. Once we have identified what needs to happen within our UI, we will involve their team for design work.

UniKwan works on-site with us when the engagement requires a high degree of interaction with our team. They also work remotely, delivering the results to our site.

In the past five years, we have switched two to three resources because of attrition. Otherwise, UniKwan has been reasonably consistent.

What distinguishes UniKwan from other providers?

Having an agile team and delivering to our expectations are some of the main reasons we've gone back to UniKwan consistently.

Is there anything UniKwan could have improved or done differently?

In terms of product management aspects, since UniKwan doesn't specialize in the set-top box domain, their team has less of an understanding in this area than we would like. Typically, we need to have a higher involvement from our side in order to make them understand implications around user experience. 

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CTO of a company that develops ways to automatically pick out interesting moments in home videos. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with UniKwan?

We have AI that recognizes various scenarios in a video, such as laughter, interactions, or one person walking around. It uses video and audio features to select the most interesting moments on the video. We needed to package this technology in an app that could be marketed to consumers. 

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

UniKwan designed an iPhone app that integrates the technology we already had to collect and display selected moments from a video. When the camera is recording, the app will show the best moments to the users. In addition, they created promotional videos for us to show to customers on our website. We had one person working full-time on our project. They added more resources as needed when we got closer to our launch date.

How did you come to work with UniKwan?

I came across them through common contacts. A friend had recommended them. We saw their work, and we found them to be creative people. We thought their work was among the best, and the cost was also a factor.

How much have you invested with UniKwan?

I think it was around $5,000 per month.

What is the status of this engagement?

I started working with UniKwan in April of 2014, and the project was completed in April of 2016.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We got around 1,200 orders for our device. The promotional video was a very important part of our marketing strategy. UniKwan did a fantastic job on that. The UI and UX were good. We won two innovation awards in 2016.

We did a number of pilots, allowing people to use and experiment with the system. We got a very positive response from that.

How did UniKwan perform from a project management standpoint?

They were timely in their delivery. We had no complaints. The launch happened on time. We had a good experience working with UniKwan. We used email and phone calls for communication, which worked well. Their deliverables were on time, and they were very professional.

What did you find most impressive about UniKwan?

I think the promotional video they made is very good. They had a very good person working on that. His work is exceptional.

Are there any areas UniKwan could improve?

Our project went well, and we didn’t have any feedback for them. The only improvement could be if we were in the same location; then, we could have done more things together.