Visual Antidote

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a senior IT specialist and as a team of one, I support all of our technologies and our teams.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Visual Antidote?

We used iMIS Engagement Management System (EMS) for some of the things we wanted to accomplish, and it helped us manage our members and events. We also utilized it for accounting purposes, especially when we donated to different charitable causes.

It helped us oversee our billing and renewals, too. Despite that, we found our iMIS EMS was limiting us with some of the things we wanted to do. As a result, we hired Visual Antidote to help us with customizations so that we could have a little bit more flexibility on our platform.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We were working with Visual Antidote for a number of years and over the course of these years, we had several different projects. For example, this year the team helped us install a new process automation module to eliminate some of the day-to-day tasks from our staff’s desk, especially tasks related to emailing or some background database tasks that we needed to run. On top of that, they conducted multiple tests to ensure that everything was working properly.

There was also a time where they updated our event registration confirmation system. It was an out-of-the-box confirmation e-mail where our end users could click on the add to calendar button to automatically remind them about our event in the future.

What is the team composition?

Our main point of contact was James (Senior Consultant), but we also worked with Parteek (Software Developer) and some of their technicians. We collaborated with one of their senior engineers on a desktop app and browser-based versions we were developing, too.

How did you come to work with Visual Antidote?

We wanted to move away from our previous consultant. Then, we saw Visual Antidote at a conference we attended in Boston. After speaking with James as well as one of the owners of Visual Antidote, we were impressed with the scope of their work. Since then, we thought they’d be a good fit for what we needed. More importantly, they were based in Toronto so their response time would be a little bit quicker and we’d have an opportunity to have some face time.

How much have you invested with them?

We had an annual budget of $35,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from January–February 2021.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We didn’t really keep any metrics, but their quality of work was consistently great. Sometimes projects took a little longer due to testing, but they had good response time. Overall, they helped us grow our business.

How did Visual Antidote perform from a project management standpoint?

Our communication was good. Visual Antidote missed some deadlines for several reasons such as unforeseen events.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We were impressed by how knowledgeable they were of the products that we used. On top of that, the software owner of iMIS EMS purchased some products from Visual Antidote because they did such a great job in developing them out for other clients.

Are there any areas they could improve?

We were really happy with them. They were good at being transparent and providing us what we needed to know because oftentimes what we wanted simply couldn’t be done. During those times, Visual Antidote gave us different options.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

They offer two types of quotes so that gives you a little bit on the hourly rate as well as a high-end estimate, depending on the target scope. If you’re looking to hire them, I’m not sure why they lowball quotes, but it’s always more accurate to go with the higher end of their hours.