Webtown

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We are a Hungarian insurance company operating for more than 20 years. We are a Dutch-owned company, but we operate in 15 countries, mainly around Europe and with one business unit in Japan. In Hungary, we only deal in life insurance and have been a market leader since our inception. I am the head of marketing technology. My team is developing all digital platforms, including our website, our online sales platform, applications, the CRM system and the data warehouse.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Webtown?

Our parent company established that we had to use Liferay for our corporate website. There is a limited pool of developers in Hungary that can work in that framework. One of those companies was Webtown. We did look at two or three other companies, but it was a pretty straightforward selection.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We worked with Webtown for frontend development. Our layout is being done by another Hungarian agency. Webtown has been working on our main website, as well as all other domains connected to it, like our online sales platform.

The main requirement for the platform was security-related, which was the main reason for selecting Liferay. Other than that, we had no solid requirements around the platform.

Webtown developed the whole portal system for our main website. It consists of five or six subcategories, each with different subpages, including a magazine section where we publish articles. We also have several applications running on the site, including one which analyses investment trends and signals changes to customers. It had a complex development process requiring integration with our internal systems.

The online sales platform needed to implement insurance-calculation logic in the website itself. Instead of delivering quotations from our internal systems, they are directly calculated within the portal. This part took two or three sprints to complete, with four developers working on it.

I’ve spent limited time with Webtown. One of the people in my team was the contact person, and actually took part in the discovery sessions. I visited their office around six times, mostly discussing our contract, strategy, required resources and other high-level details.

How did you come to work with Webtown?

They were discovered by our procurement department. We simply googled “Liferay developers Hungary”, and found a limited number of companies. We approached Webtown, went through a tender process, and selected them based on their experience with the framework and their price level.

How much have you invested with Webtown?

I don't know how much we've spent in total, but in 2016, we spent around 60 million Forints, which is equal to around $200,000 USD.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Webtown almost three years ago. I only arrived at the company in February 2016, so it was a bit before my time.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The two main metrics concerning the development would be budget and deadline. Because we were using the agile methodology, which was new for us, we didn’t meet any of those KPIs. Still, I would like to emphasize that this isn’t something to put against Webtown. We’ve needed to learn together, and have continued the collaboration. We’ve learned a lesson, and improved the collaboration. Right now, we are capable of planning ahead, allocating budgets and setting feasible deadlines.

How did Webtown perform from a project management standpoint?

We’ve had several issues with Webtown, stemming from the fact that we were just starting to develop in an agile methodology, and weren’t familiar with the process. Most of the miscommunication came from that point, but, beyond that, Webtown was always open to discuss any issues we experienced. At one point, we realized that we were going past the original budget we’d allocated for a specific task, but Webtown was open to renegotiating. The problem didn’t originate with them, but they were still quick and open to resolving it.

What did you find most impressive about Webtown?

The development skills are very good for their team. We’ve had some very tough tasks, and never encountered something that Webtown couldn’t do. They always came up with a solution, and always tried to solve our problem.

Are there any areas Webtown could improve?

Webtown needs to be more transparent in how they plan the work, so that we can know what the developers are doing, and when. We didn’t always know what was going on on their side.

BACKGROUND

Please provide us with a brief description of your company.

Our company is responsible for most of road-related tasks in a major city in Hungary. Our operational activity includes the whole traffic management on the approx. 5500km long public road network including ITS system and traffic observing camera system (around 500 devices).

Furthermore, our daily tasks include maintenance of all roads, bridges, underpasses, and undergrounds accessways, and daily control of roads and road assets.

To serve all the activity with the most accurate, detailed and up-to-date data, we have our own 3D mobile LIDAR-based urban mapping solution and on-line data publication system than can support any related activities in the city where GIS/engineering/survey data is needed. Our company decided to implement a complete 3D data acquisition, 3D data production, and GIS publication/analysis system (RODIS)  As of October 2012, RODIS is running and fulfills all the requirements as expected. Thirty experts work to provide high-accuracy GIS [geographic information systems] data, models, various thematic maps, and GSI data analysis results for any departments of the City Council, as well as for the public sector.

What is your role at the company?

As CTO of the company, my role is to harmonize the activities between directorates. I'm also responsible fort technology-related strategic actions.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What was the business challenge that you were trying to address? What was the goal of the partnership?

We needed a flexible and scalable enterprise portal solution for our company. We have various management tasks to solve where different departments share information and workflows. We started to negotiate with few service providers to find the solution that could be the best for us. The goal was to find the best system that we can build on our internal and external applications to satisfy our needs.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of the project, and can you describe the specific services that were provided?

The scope was to change the current portal solution to a modern, flexible one. Webtown offered Liferay as a feasible platform. As we compared the system with the competitors’ products, we decided to go on with Liferay. The first project scope was the external site, the intranet, and the timecard management system.

In the first project - based on the Liferay solution - we created a common online platform for our external and internal activities. With WebTown we built useful functions like a timecard management system and a phone administration system on our unified, main platform.

For the external site, a new system, a map-based traffic control system was developed, where the users can see the cameras, traffic lights, and information tables in the city.

What was your process for selecting this company to work with? Why did you choose them over others?

Three companies were invited through our RFP framework. Webtown offered the Liferay solution, which fit the strict requirement of our governmental procurement constraints. They had the most experience in this technology, so we selected them.

Can you give us a general estimate of the size of the project in terms of dollars and manpower?

If we include the current license and support fees for 2017, I would say $250,000 – $300,000.

What was the timeline of the project? Is it ongoing?

We started to work with Webtown in October 2011 and they are still working for us.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the results of the project? Are there any success stories or metrics you can share?

The result of the project was an internal and external online portal. One of the main parts of the project was the timecard management system. The implemented applications are working adequately; we are satisfied with their work.

Is there anything that sets Webtown apart compared to other partners you may have worked with?

Webtown met our most important objective: finishing the project on time and with a high standard for quality. We were satisfied with Webtown’s work and their services. Their advantage is that they offer real cost savings for users, mainly from the payment of the license fees. They provide us quality work: the software is more stable and reliable and performs at a higher level than if it had been done by a small developer team.

Do you have any constructive criticism? Is there any area that they could improve?

Sometimes the notification time after sending small change requests took a bit more time that we had been expected. Their support would be more efficient if they could react faster. But for us, this delay was acceptable, since our requests were always responded to in a short time period.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

We are a lottery company based in Hungary. We have more than 1,800 employees and a large partner network in the country, consisting of more than 5,000 franchisees who are using our systems. We have a 400,000-person customer base.

What is your position?

I am the CIO of the company. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with Webtown?

We wanted to create a web-portal service for our partners in order to reach them better digitally and to distribute information about our promotions and other news. Secondly, we needed to organize education materials better. We have a special terminal software and device through which we can sell lottery tickets and make sports bets, and we needed to provide better training for it. The third module was an online shop for our internal partners working with our terminals. They could use it to order gadgets, posters, and other items for the lottery shops. The third module is used by franchise partners to follow daily incomes and budget plans. 

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement in greater detail.

Webtown has been developing our Symfony PHP platform. Our database is MySQL. They worked together with our marketing department during the wireframing and design process. We gave Webtown a design codex for our color scheme and UI/UX.

Webtown built two physical and four VMware virtual servers, which house our database and application frontend, and configured our infrastructure. Our requirements were for an under 10-minute switching time between the two servers.

We are also planning to implement an enterprise CMS platform and have used Webtown's services for it.

How did you come to work with Webtown?

We announced a tender and used an outsourced consulting partner who found potential developers in Hungary. We collected 10–12 names and requested a solution from each one. We looked at each company's background, revenue, market stability, and other criteria. Webtown's price and value were the best out of all candidates.

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

Our first project had a cost of $100,000. The yearly cost of Webtown's services, including development and maintenance, is under $200,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Webtown in 2013. The site is still being developed according to customer feedback and business demand.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

Everything went well with our project. Webtown was flexible and fast in modifying our new functional changes. The feedback for the platform was very good. We announced it to more than 5,000 people, who were typically undereducated with regards to IT technology. They were able to start using the website easily and found it to be logical. Most of its features were suggested by Webtown. They designed ergonomic heat-maps and everything necessary for easily adapting our website.

How did Webtown perform from a project management standpoint?

We started to build the project management department in our own company four years ago, and it currently sits under our IT department. At that time, we were using a typical waterfall method, which was a good fit for us. More recently, we have started to use the Agile methodology. Webtown had to use Microsoft Project Professional, and they're working under our servers and following our workflow. The first project wasn't very complex, and it was easy to follow. It took under eight months to complete, and it was handled well. Webtown delivered everything on time; any delays were generated on our side after we modified our requirements.

We used to give Webtown's team access to a computer with a VPN connection, through which they can access our Microsoft Project instance. We are currently using JIRA for communication, and Webtown has adopted our project management workflows. We keep a single point of contact from Webtown's team.

What distinguishes Webtown from other providers?

The partner communication was very good. Webtown prepared everything on time.

Is there anything Webtown could have improved or done differently?

In the beginning, the quality of Webtown's work was perfect, but their test-case creation was something to improve.