Unleashed Technologies

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the senior science consultant at a nonprofit that provides membership, organization training, tactical assistance, and information on best practices for drug courts.

What challenge were you trying to address with Unleashed Technologies?

We were developing an online database of evidence-based programs in the criminal justice system. We wanted it to be user-friendly and allow people in the field to access relevant information.

Our previous system wasn’t very sophisticated or user-friendly. People couldn’t really do searches on it. We were looking for Unleashed Technologies to develop a more intuitive system that used the logic behind our model. It would make everything appear three-dimensional. 

What was the scope of their involvement?

Unleashed developed our web platform in Drupal. They did some bespoke work on top of the CMS and implemented 3D modeling software.

Conceptually, the design came from us, and we had a lot of specific requirements for it. Unleashed did all the technology-related work. We wanted to have a 3D model that was always visible and meshed with a traditional UI with text and menus. Unleashed provided their own ideas for bridging that gap.

It was a collaborative effort with a lot of back and forth. They had an advantage in the design, in the sense that we had a previous model. Our guidance to them was that it should look the same on the outside, but work completely differently from the old one. Unleashed came up with a clean design based on the old model and avoided all the pitfalls.

What is the team composition?

We worked with Matt (Creative Director) on the design mockups. Once we moved into development, we worked with a project manager and a developer.

How did you come to work with Unleashed Technologies?

We started off with an RFI process and asked different companies to present. Unleashed impressed us with their grasp of what we wanted. We gave them a lot of leeway in terms of design, and they advised us in terms of best or better practices.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent  $100,000 so far.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Unleashed in August 2019, and the project is ongoing. We launched phase one of the product last week, and we’ve moved into phase two. Phase one took a bit longer than expected, but, under the circumstances, with the unusual last year we’ve had, it was understandable.

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

Although we’ve only been live for a week or two, we’ve done several usability studies. People tried out previous iterations on-site and gave positive feedback.  Unleashed addressed any issues our users identified.

How did Unleashed Technologies perform from a project management standpoint?

We’ve used their in-house project management tool, but most of the work has been done through direct communication with the project manager. We have weekly conference calls with them, where they show us the newest features.

There were times when Unleashed’s schedule required them to spend more time on different priorities, and we’ve also had to devote time to other projects, but we’ve been able to work things out. The communication is excellent.

Even though we had weekly check-in calls, if we didn’t have much to discuss, we adjourned them early. Unleashed was quick and efficient, so there wasn’t a lot of wasted time.

They did good work in all the areas I’ve mentioned, but one of their best qualities was their flexibility in the face of changing timelines or requests for reworking things.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We were impressed by how quickly their team grasped the 3D model from the very first meetings, and how well they communicated with us on the requirements.

They were quick to respond to our requests, whereas, with our previous developer, the answer was usually “We can’t do that”. Unleashed figured out a way to address most of our concerns.

Are there any areas they could improve?

There were occasions when we completed a big deliverable or sets of deliverables, and we knew that we were going to have a period where we weren’t going to be meeting every week. We would’ve appreciated it if Unleashed provided a specific date when we were going to reconvene after the hiatus period. That would’ve completed their project management.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

The advantage for us was that we really knew what we wanted. We were very clear on what the expectations were and what the model behind our program was. I think that that’s why things went smoothly.

Had we asked them for a good website, but we didn’t know what that meant, I’m not sure how it would’ve gone. Unleashed will work with the client to see the project through, but it’s important to do the requirements work beforehand.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the editor in chief for Airforce Magazine, a nonprofit that advocates and educates the public on aerospace topics and supports the air force and space force.

What challenge were you trying to address with Unleashed Technologies?

Our website was very outdated, with low traffic numbers. We needed to have it revamped.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Unleashed Technologies totally redeveloped the website. They moved it from SharePoint to WordPress and integrated it with the AFA.org for single sign-on capacity.

What is the team composition?

We are currently working with Latoya (Delivery Manager) and Michael (Business Development Specialist) but have interacted with others over the course of the engagement.

How did you come to work with Unleashed Technologies?

We put out an RFP. I was familiar with this team from their work for another organization. They were professional, and ultimately, we chose to work with them. 

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent $200,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from February 2018–December 2019.

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

They did a good job on the website. We have more than doubled traffic this year from that of 2019, reaching more than a 100% increase year-over-year (YoY). 

We’ve also seen an increase in Google index, along with phenomenal traffic growth, enabling us to attract and sell more advertising. We can support a more sophisticated ad sales model and have become a legitimately competitive player in our space. 

How did Unleashed Technologies perform from a project management standpoint?

Unleashed Technologies did fine overall. They were communicative and kept us updated. We used Teamwork. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

They provided top-level support and got involved to solve problems when they came up. For example, we kept falling behind and their junior team members couldn’t get things fixed, so their upper-level teammates stepped in, rolled up their sleeves, and got it done. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

Their project manager left in 2019, and due to poor handoff, we lost a lot of ground and had setbacks. The new project manager was okay but didn’t really understand the software and user side of things, so I felt she didn’t really add value to the conversations. 

I preferred to speak directly to the developer. Also, we wanted some of the content on the website to be able to be gated to give us control over how we wanted it done. We’ve not yet reached that goal.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Extraco Banks is a $1.5 billion, privately owned community bank based in central Texas. We have 15 branches along the I-35 corridor. Besides offering traditional commercial and consumer banking products, we also offer insurance, trust, investment, and mortgage services. We were started in 1902 and are in our third generation of family management. 

I’m the senior VP and director of marketing and mission strategy. We have a lot of mission-based programs around entrepreneurship, financial literacy, and community outreach. I also manage customer experience, so all of our customer feedback.

What challenge were you trying to address with Unleashed Technologies?

I took over Extraco’s marketing department in late 2017, and it was immediately pretty obvious that our website CMS was not good. Other than some very basic templates for adding content, we didn't really have any control over the site. We also couldn’t add any Google snippets ourselves; we had to open a case through the company that created the website. It could take 6–8 weeks just to add a very basic snippet, like a click-to-call button. We realized that we needed to have a new website built out.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Unleashed Technologies designed and developed an MVP website on Drupal. They’re also hosting the website for us.

We had a kickoff call and initially focused on transferring the content from the old website to the new one. Then, we added additional functionality through a resource center, which we did not have on the old site.

Since we just built out an MVP, we have a lot of ideas for enhancements we want to do. We’re working on those now. For instance, we want to build a choose-your-checking tool for customers that’s a bit more interactive and focused on how customers want to bank. We’re also currently working on some mobile-specific templates, and they’re also helping us with our SEO.

What is the team composition?

Our main points of contact are Ryan (Project Manager) and Chris (Lead Web Developer). We have a weekly touch base call with the team.

How did you come to work with Unleashed Technologies?

We went through our due diligence process and met with 3–4 different vendors throughout the US. Unleashed was one of them, and we decided to move forward with them based on their expertise in the industry. We felt like their price point fit the proposed budget that we had in mind for building out the new website. As part of our due diligence, we always check references, and they had really good reference calls with past customers. Overall, we felt like they were the right fit for Extraco. 

How much have you invested with them?

The MVP site was $116,000. Then, we did an extended growth package, which is essentially our retainer, and that’s $104,400 for the next two years. We also have the hosting on top of that. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We had our kickoff call in December 2018, and it took us about a year to go through that process. We launched the site in February 2020.

Our relationship is ongoing. We have a retainer with them, so we have allotted hours each month. 

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

It's hard for me to gauge the success metrics because we were so limited in being able to put Google Analytics tags on our previous site. I can't compare them; it's apples to apples. However, I will say that we've had really good engagement with the forms that we have on the website. The forms have actually been a really integral part of our response to the pandemic. We rolled out curbside delivery pilots at a couple of our branches, and we use the website web forms in order to receive those orders from customers. For our business customers, we also created a website web form for business change orders, which are very time consuming and challenging to execute through a drive-through only environment. Being able to do a web form for that and then preparing the change order for customers ahead of time so we could just deliver it to them through the drive-through was a big win for us and also for our customers’ experience, during a time when they couldn't bank normally with us.

We really like the Drupal CMS; it’s super flexible. We’ve had a lot of requests for additional changes or ways for us to be able to add content to the website, and Unleashed has been very responsive and flexible to working with us on that. One of the most recent things we added was the ability to add a carousel for some of our events so that we can add additional pictures. We’ve been really pleased with what’s been built out and our ability to add additional content. 

The resource center is really integral to our marketing efforts because we’re housing all of the content that we create for drip campaigns and such in the resource center. We're linking to that as well through a lot of our commercial social efforts as well. Additionally, we're using the resource center as an internal training tool, in an effort to offload some of the internal chats that occur between our frontline and our call center. We’ve worked with the call center on the most frequent internal questions that they've received, and we created content for that and put it in the resource center as well. The resource center isn’t just customer-based; it’s also employee based.

How did Unleashed Technologies perform from a project management standpoint?

We have a weekly touch base call with the team. I appreciate that because we have a lot of ongoing projects as we continue to enhance the website. I really like the Teamwork portal that they use; my team and I can go in and send messages to them, and they’re incredibly responsive. The messages come through email, and you don’t even have to be within the Teamwork platform to reply. That’s been a great tool to have for communication with the team.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their expertise, flexibility, and affordability are noteworthy.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, nothing comes to mind.

Any advice for potential customers?

They did a really good job with project management when we were working on building out the site, so it’s hard for me to even come up with something that a potential client would need to do; they just managed it so well that you don’t have to think about setting things up or planning ahead. They just go ahead and do that for you upfront.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the chief digital officer. We are a nonprofit organization that was founded in 1873. Our mission is to publish in an independent forum to talk about matters related to the Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard. We're nonpartisan, so we don't lobby, nor are funded by the government.

What challenge were you trying to address with Unleashed Technologies?

We were in a website contract with another firm about 11 years ago, and we were in a .ASP environment. We needed a new web services provider.

What was the scope of their involvement?

They designed and developed a brand-new website from the ground up. They built it in open source on the Drupal platform. We started off in Drupal 6, and then we skipped Drupal 7 and went live with Drupal 8 about a year ago last March. 

As a nonprofit and a publisher, we have a multitude of commerce that we do on our website. We sell books and we have two magazines, so there's a subscription model to that. We're a foundation, so we take donations. We're also an association, meaning we have a membership model. There are membership discounts on books, renewals, and subscriptions, which adds complexity to the site. Those are the things that Unleashed helped build and integrate into one platform.

They've since done hosting for us and helped us to build three blogs on WordPress. They transferred the hosting to the Azure platform. They replaced our LCRM as well as our financial publishing software, a three-system integration; it integrates with the website and two other systems. We just completed that implementation and go-live last year.

What is the team composition?

Initially, our main point of contact was Michael (President) and Scott (COO). We entered into a partnership with Unleashed when they had about four people on staff, so we worked very closely with Michael and Scott, both of whom are co-founders. As time has passed, we've worked more closely with Ryan (Project Manager & Digital Strategist). 

How did you come to work with Unleashed Technologies?

Another organization recommended them, so we interviewed them. One big thing for us was that they really needed to understand who we are, what our mission is, and how we operate. Over the 11 years that we've worked with them, they have really done that. That's important to us because we are a nonprofit and an association. I think that their understanding of our mission, who we are, and who our readership is has had a big influence on design, audience, and how they develop our platform.

How much have you invested with them?

What I like about the pricing model with them is that it's a fixed fee, or what I think they call a growth package. We have to budget very seriously, so having a fixed fee is a super important part of our partnership.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our work together began in the fall of 2011, and it's ongoing.

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

We’ve consistently seen record numbers of traffic and commerce increases since we’ve engaged with them, and I think part of that is the technology, the design, and the ease of use. On one of our WordPress platforms, we have more than a million visitors each month. Oftentimes, we’ll be cited by The New York Times, The Washington Post, or the DRUDGE REPORT, and Unleashed has built the platform so that it can sustain that amount of traffic. 

Year-over-year, we’ve seen increased revenue. Our main Drupal website now does about $1.1 million in commerce. That’s selling books and memberships direct, which is a big deal for a publisher when you’re doing it off of your own website. When we met them, we were doing around $400,000 a year.

How did Unleashed Technologies perform from a project management standpoint?

We follow the agile methodology and at times have done scrums. We have bi-weekly meetings. Everybody is organized, and we bring people in as needed. They’re very structured in the sense that we have these meetings; however, we're super agile when we need a break-fix or have to re-prioritize stuff, so it's a good relationship.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’re always available. They are creative thinkers in terms of architecting solutions, and they’ve helped us iterate over the years. To provide a specific example, one of our major clients is the ROTC and NJROTC. We have a longstanding agreement with the Navy and Marine Corps to provide books in print to ROTC and NJROTC students. When COVID-19 began, these students couldn’t get access to their textbooks. We went to Unleashed and explained that we wanted to provide textbooks to these students until the end of the year. We wanted to avoid doing so with a more traditional e-book because we didn’t want to ask these students to download an app and overload their data plans.

In a matter of a week, Unleashed said that we could publish the books online and provide units with coupon codes to find the books. They said they could make them protected pages so that they're not searchable by Google. They architected this solution for us and then let us know how to upload content ourselves.

Now, there are more issues with students not going back to school, such as all of the California ROTC units. We went back to Unleashed, and they figured out how to have the Navy buy a digital book for each student. In that sense, they’re a true partner, and we share success with them. We had to figure it out; it was a proof of concept, and we did it, which makes me proud to work with them.

Are there any areas they could improve?

We met them when they were a new company. There have been growing pains over the years, which is expected with any entrepreneurial or small company. 

Any advice for potential customers?

You have to like the vendors that you work with. Be clear in your goals about what you expect in terms of time and materials, especially for nonprofits and associations. Form a relationship with your project manager; get the project manager you want, not just the one you’ve been assigned.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the director of marketing for Binswanger Glass, we’re the among largest companies that manage both residential and commercial glass. We’ve been in business for the last 140 years. And we provide everything from auto glass to a thirty-story high rise building made of glass.

What challenge were you trying to address with Unleashed Technologies?

When I first started, the team didn’t have anyone managing the website. So, I quickly contacted Unleashed Technologies.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Together, we went through some audits and cleanups, really trying to get the website in a better place. Not only did we look at locations and making sure that was up to date, but also SEO. We’ve been working together to make sure we’re ranking on Google’s first SERP. So, we’ve been trying to get our keywords organized, have tags on the right pages, and things like that. They’ve managed out blogs, adding to the website, and including tags as well.

They’ve also made a lot of changes to our copy and content. They’ve made buttons bigger so users didn’t have to search for it. They’ve managed Google My Business—we had a bunch of branches that hadn’t been updated in a long time. We audited all of those and brought them in-house.

There are probably a million more things—it’s been a fast five months—but those were some of the big projects they’ve tackled. We just signed an agreement to completely redesign rebuild the website coming up. They’re going to do everything from a creative standpoint to SEO.

What is the team composition?

I worked with two people regularly, as well as the CEO and a few others.

How did you come to work with Unleashed Technologies?

Before I started here, Unleashed Technologies did an RFP with them, and they stuck out as a really good partner.

How much have you invested with them?

Last year, we spent about $20,000 per month, and this year, we plan to spend over $100,000 with them.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in June 2019 and it’s ongoing.

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

We definitely have more people finding and visiting the website. Visitors are also more engaged and are spending more time on the platform. We’ve also gone from page five on Google’s results page, to page one, simply by making sure our tags were placed properly.

Our company is very excited to have someone focused on the site again. We’ve made a lot of changes and it’s received a lot of good feedback. Unleashed Technologies stands out as one of the best teams I’ve ever worked with. They’ve done a great job for us.

How did Unleashed Technologies perform from a project management standpoint?

They’re super-fast to get back with me on everything. We haven’t had any issues with timelines. If anything, they’re usually poking me to get things approved. They’re always on top of it. We have a weekly call when we go over what’s going on. Of course, there are sometimes things I need to get done immediately, and they’re champs. They’ll make sure it gets taken care of.

At first, we had an agreement that had them working on our site for 20 hours per month, but we scaled to a bigger package, 40 hours per month to get everything I wanted done.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their customer service and can-do attitude stick out the most for me. I’ve worked with other companies in the past who haven’t been responsive at all. Unleashed Technologies also rarely push back on anything unless they know they can’t meet the deadline.

Are there any areas they could improve?

We haven’t had any issues so far, though I don’t predict any challenges either.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Building a relationship with them is really important. If you’re looking for a good company that’s well rounded, they’re a great company for that. As long as you partner with their team and keep up on the project, you’ll be successful.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the associate director of administration for a small nonprofit organization that offers property and facility education. 

What challenge were you trying to address with Unleashed Technologies?

We were tasked with standing-up a website with shopping cart in an unrealistic timeframe and needed someone who could get the job done. The main goal was to make the website self-sufficient and easy for our learners.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Unleashed Technologies built our website using WordPress and Shopify. They designed the platform to have an easier user interface and be geared towards the learner. It needed to have our course listing and calendar, as well as an embedded shopping cart. We needed very seamless integration and they delivered. Our onsite marketing person handled most of the design features and content, but Unleashed Technologies also provided some graphics.

What is the team composition?

My main point of contact was Scott (Creative Director & Co-Founder, Unleashed Technologies). 

How did you come to work with Unleashed Technologies?

They responded to a request for information (RFI) we had sent out for a different project. Our virtual chief information officer (vCIO) spoke with them in relation to the RFI. When we faced the short timeframe demand for this project, we reached out because they stood apart from the rest.

What is the status of this engagement?

The project kicked off in November 2019, and the website was launched in December 2019. We’re currently doing some minor tweaks, but the majority of the project was completed in those few weeks.

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

We’re not tracking any metrics related to the site. Everybody from our company, including our leadership, is very pleased with turnout of the site and shopping cart. Unleashed Technologies met the deadlines without any hiccups.

How did Unleashed Technologies perform from a project management standpoint?

Their project management style was outstanding on all levels. They were responsive, timely, and thorough. We occasionally emailed, but mainly used Teamwork to communicate. Our weekly scheduled calls allowed us to review and discuss tasks for the project. The process was well-managed, and we were always in touch. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

I’ll reiterate that they were very thorough and responsive. They were also excellent with accuracy and timeliness. I was impressed with their entire team from the beginning all the way to the end, and even now during follow-up.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, I can’t think of anything for this project. Hats off to them.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Understand that Unleashed Technologies owned the project and made it a very smooth process. It could’ve been a disaster because of the short timeframe, but they made it seamless.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the senior director of technology services for an international education organization. We support professionals in international education, most of whom work in higher education institutions.

What challenge were you trying to address with Unleashed Technologies?

We were operating on a legacy CMS that was fraught with functionality issues. We wanted to adopt a new system with current-state features to reflect our brand and organization objective.

What was the scope of their involvement?

After an extensive discovery process, they documented our findings to develop a custom website. Providing wireframes and mockups, they guided us towards making architectural and visual decisions. Using Drupal, they then redesigned the look and feel of the site and modified its information architecture.

A key feature is our new search functionality. Although we wanted to retain the same content, we drastically renewed how we serve up resources. They also implemented microsites—so that we can have a publishable magazine, as well as independent conference sites. That level of organization was a new step for us.

What is the team composition?

I worked with up to 10 different people. The team consisted of a project manager, design specialists, integration specialists, and an architectural requirement specialist.

How did you come to work with Unleashed Technologies?

Upon undergoing several request for information (RFI) and RFP processes, we decided on Unleashed Technologies because their company seemed to be able to offer a full suite of website management services. Above that, they seemed very competent. They seemed to be able to support us in the long term.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent little over $200,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We have an ongoing relationship that began in early 2018.

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

The site is visually beautiful, and many people have been impressed with its look and feel.

We just launched the website a month ago, so we’re just starting to look into measurable metrics. We’ll be using Hotjar and Google Analytics to keep track of how our users are navigating our website.

How did Unleashed Technologies perform from a project management standpoint?

They’ve been very good on that front. We’ve had a great project manager who strikes the delicate balance between doing what we ask and staying within scope. He actively manages conversations about adjustments and required changes, which I appreciate. They take their client very seriously.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I’ve worked with several vendors over the years, and they’re exceptional about managing change and keeping things within scope. They help us adjust our own expectations, and will discuss with us how to defer things. It’s a critical part of keeping within budget, and not all businesses effectively prioritize your immediate goals, so that was remarkable about them.

Are there any areas they could improve?

The discovery phase was quite laborious, so I’d wish it had been a little more efficient. I expected it to be a long process but would have liked to see it slightly abbreviated.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

In terms of a content comprehensive site redesign, I think you should take some time to understand what your goals are for the website. That would help drive the direction of the discovery phase.  

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the director of operations engineering for WorldAware, a risk-management solutions company. I oversee production operations of all of our technical systems, our internal IP systems, as well as the customer-facing services we offer.

What challenge were you trying to address with Unleashed Technologies?

We sought a reliable company that could fully manage our Drupal hosting. We wanted our internal team to focus on the content and delivering it to customers without having to worry about maintaining our website.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Their first task was migrating content and our hosting from our previous provider so that it was all under Unleashed Technologies’ control. They now provide hosting services for two Drupal-based sites—our marketing site and the CMS used to back a product of ours. Unleashed Technologies also manages all of the maintenance for those two sites.

What is the team composition?

We work with Jenna (Frontend Web Developer, Unleashed Technologies), Julie (Project Manager, Unleashed Technologies), and Colin (Director of Technology, Unleashed Technologies).

How did you come to work with Unleashed Technologies?

They had an existing support agreement with our marketing team, so we met them through that reference. We initially asked them about what they would recommend to help us address our pain points with our existing hosting provider. We were confident in their abilities to start implementing their ideas.

How much have you invested with them?

So far, we’ve spent a little over $3,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in July 2019, and we’ve entered into a two-year agreement with them for Drupal hosting.

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

Our hosting transfer when quite smoothly in that we had no outages and our customers could still access both of our sites. Unleashed Technologies moved all of our content and made sure that the services in our cloud connected with the Drupal APIs that pull content into our products. It was a pretty significant change that has been 100% successful.

How did Unleashed Technologies perform from a project management standpoint?

I mostly communicated with Colin, who provided regular updates regarding their progress and what our responsibilities were to the project. He worked backward from our hard deadline to get us from Point A to Point B. They hit every milestone and communicated well at every step. The success of the project shows that effort truly paid off.

What did you find most impressive about them?

When dealing with technical people, soft skills are sometimes hard to come by. But early on in the decision-making progress, they were able to very clearly articulate what services they were going to provide and how they would be helpful. There haven't been any surprises because of that. During the sales process, being able to talk to their technical team made us feel very confident that this was the right place. This was probably the most fun and professional and stress-free web site migration I've experienced in years.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, they've hit it out of the park. Everybody has communicated well, and our expectations have been met. All of their hard work and planning has paid off.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

We benefitted greatly during the sales cycle of having the technical people from both sides meet to make sure everybody was on the same page.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Air Force Association is a nonprofit advocacy group that supports Air Force members and their families. I’m the IT director, and my job involves providing solutions for whatever IT changes we may face. This includes updating obsolete technologies, redesigning or rebuilding websites, and working with databases and infrastructure.

What challenge were you trying to address with Unleashed Technologies?

Our nonprofit has several web properties, one of them being the Air Force Magazine which is a monthly publication distributed to thousands of Air Force members. The magazine’s previous website suffered from inflexible technology—it was old, poorly designed, and in severe need of an update. Rather than revamping the existing site, we decided to rebuild it entirely.

What was the scope of their involvement? 

Unleashed Technologies is redesigning and developing Air Force Magazine’s website. Our goal is to utilize new technologies to expand our services while also improving the overall UX and content publishing for our admins.

After completing the initial discovery phase, Unleashed Technologies proposed moving the site from Microsoft SharePoint to a WordPress platform. They then started working on the design. We’ve since finalized the wireframes, and they’re currently working on the initial build.

What is the team composition? 

We work with about six resources, including Mike (CEO, Unleashed Technologies), Chris (Director of Growth, Unleashed Technologies), and Scott (COO, Unleashed Technologies). There’s also Julie Myers (Project Manager, Unleashed Technologies), Chad (Senior Solutions Architect, Unleashed Technologies), and another tech specialist.

How did you come to work with Unleashed Technologies?

I met their group while attending a tech conference a couple of years ago, so I thought of them while shortlisting companies for this project. We looked at various local vendors, put out RFPs, and evaluated several companies. Unleashed Technologies came out at the winner based on their previous experience with military projects.

How much have you invested with them?

The Air Force Magazine team has taken over communications with Unleashed Technologies, so I don’t have concrete insights into the project costs. However, we’re keeping a tight watch on their monthly spend, and they seem to be on budget so far.

What is the status of this engagement?

Their work started in March 2019 and is ongoing.

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

The Air Force Magazine team is happy with Unleashed Technologies’ ability to grasp their requirements and deliver according to their vision. 

How did Unleashed Technologies perform from a project management standpoint?

They perform exceptionally well, staying on target for every task and working in a timely fashion. Whenever there are potential delays, it’s often more on our side because we have our own throughput limitations.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’re eager to understand and address our concerns, and I appreciate how willing they are to revisit items that might not have been clear to begin with. Often, vendors can adopt a defensive stance when confronted about a certain decision or deliverable. But Unleashed Technologies is always happy to revise work to produce what we need.

Are there any areas they could improve?

One of the reasons we partnered with Unleashed Technologies was that they had built similar sites for other military associations. However, during the initial design phase, we noticed that they were bringing some of those ideas into play for our project without fully listening to what we were saying. This wasn’t their fault, per se; it’s only natural to draw from past experience. But it wasn’t quite what we wanted. Fortunately, the entire team has worked to better understand our needs and requirements before suggesting ways to move forward.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the vice president of innovation for the Virginia Society of Certified Public Accountants (VSCPA), a nonprofit that serves as the essential strategic partner for Virginia CPAs. Our mission is to empower our members to thrive by driving innovation and vision, creating a culture of learning, influencing students to become CPAs, and advocating members' interests. 

What challenge were you trying to address with Unleashed Technologies?

We needed a partner to rebuild our website and improve our e-commerce strategies to ensure we had the tools to drive revenue, learning, membership, fundraising, and various other key organizational metrics.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Unleashed Technologies was our exclusive web dev partner. They managed everything from our exploratory discussions to strategy development to the implementation of the actual site. They took us through a discovery process to determine what we wanted on our website and for them to understand how our processes and automations interacted with our member database and other tools. We provided them with our brand guidelines, and they used that to create the design and wireframes. They then took the Drupal site all the way to launch.

What is the team composition? 

I interacted with the CEO, a client services manager, and a project manager. My team interacted with about five of them.

How did you come to work with Unleashed Technologies?

We met them at an annual conference that involved nonprofit associations. When we sent out an RFP for our project, they were on our shortlist because they had a strong reputation and good recommendations. 

What is the status of this engagement?

The project lasted from August 2016–October 2018. 

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

We just recently launched, so we’re still digging into the metrics. However, we sent out a communications survey to our members and got highly favorable and positive reviews. Our staff is also happy with their work, particularly our technology director. Unleashed Technologies was a great partner.

How did Unleashed Technologies perform from a project management standpoint?

They had terrific project management skills, always communicating and letting us know if there was a delay. They had biweekly meetings and used a plethora of project management tools to track the project. We also communicated via phone.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’re excellent strategists and know how to come up with creative solutions that meet our ultimate goals. We’d been with our previous web developer for 15 years, and this partnership was much more dynamic and forward-thinking.

Are there any areas they could improve?

We had a few unexpected costs and road bumps, but that might've been resolved with better planning on our part. With a website overhaul of this magnitude, there will always be unanticipated complications as you dig deep into the backend architecture.