Whitesmith

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I work as the head of digital marketing for a large traditional publishing company called Trinity Mirror. We publish the largest number of regional papers in the UK, as well as one national title called The Mirror. We have a large online presence, with the third-largest news website in the UK.

What challenge were you trying to address with Whitesmith?

We were looking to improve the image of our company and establish ourselves as a leader in the tech and digital media arena. That meant including more creative digital content.

What was the scope of their involvement?

I provided precise creative briefs and did the marketing ideation. Whitesmith implemented the work.

We haven’t done any massive digital builds, but we’ve done several projects that made interesting use of UX [user experience] and applied their knowledge of why people share things online.

For the UK election two years ago, they helped us track every potential candidate’s Twitter account, using an algorithm to surface the best tweets.

On another project, they tracked the Twitter accounts of nine international football leagues, looking at which players were following other players. That gave us insight into which players were transferring from one club to another, since they would be likely to follow their future club mates during those periods. Whitesmith built a bot that checked accounts every five minutes, and then presented visually appealing graphs online. It was one of the more complex projects we worked on.

From Whitesmith’s perspective, the goal of the work was not to get certain traffic numbers, but that’s my constant consideration. I often give them creative briefs, and they come up with suggestions in terms of technology and UX elements. They’ve been very much involved in determining what would work best creatively.

What is the team dynamic?

I’ve worked with an account manager, a project manager, as well as with designers and specific developers— mostly frontend, Node.js developers.

How did you come to work with Whitesmith?

I had a large following on Twitter, and tweeted an invite for people to retweet me. I was approached by around 35 companies within a day or two, spoke to a few, and made a shortlist of 12, based on various criteria. Whitesmith was our second choice. I didn’t like the work done by the first company, so I chose Whitesmith for the next project.

Their contact gave me confidence that he knew what he was talking about, and they had competitive pricing. With many development companies, we often find that there’s a lack of understanding about UX and design. From some of their work, I knew that Whitesmith would be good at this, but they were much better than I expected.

How much have you invested with them?

Our projects range between £5,000–£25,000 [$6,000–$33,000] each.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Whitesmith in September 2014. We have an ongoing project at the moment: a paranormal map of the UK.

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

We’ve been nominated for UK marketing awards for projects Whitesmith built for us. The company is generally happy with their work. I’ve worked with a number of vendors, and Whitesmith has been my favorite in terms of the quality produced.

How did Whitesmith perform from a project management standpoint?

They’re based in Portugal, but our manager has come to the UK from time to time for face-to-face meetings. We normally communicate over the phone or through online platforms, which works well. Whitesmith never delivers late.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Not only do they have the technical skills, they also bring an understanding of design and what makes a good user journey. We often find that, if a company is good technically, they tend to falter on the creative side, but Whitesmith has brought these two sides together well. They offer a good marriage of soft skills—how things should look and work—with solid technical knowledge.

They completely exceeded my expectations in terms of speed of work.

Are there any areas they could improve?

For the kind of work we’ve done together, I couldn’t be happier with Whitesmith. I’ve found that they’ve become busier, so I need to book their time in advance.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Ably is a platform-as-a-service, real-time messaging product that we sell to developers. I’m the co-founder and CEO.

What challenge were you trying to address with Whitesmith?

We no longer wanted to maintain a site we'd built, so we needed a reliable Ruby on Rails development team.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Primarily, they collaborate with our own team on Rails development. We use them to give us more capability, as we’re rather opinionated about how we architect and engineer everything.

Our relationship with them is slightly different than what others' might be. While they’re a highly skilled team that we rely on, we don't use their proprietary products and services.

What is the team dynamic?

We worked with four to five team members who were frontend experts and Rails developers. Daniel, the liaison officer for Whitesmith, has been involved in high-level project management but not the daily work.

How did you come to work with Whitesmith?

Daniel was active in a London Ruby user group. We’re both based in London, and I used to be a Ruby developer. We looked at others, including hiring in-house. Whitesmith was strong enough technically, and we’re more focused on the code than the product; since we’re all engineers, it's what we do naturally. It was also more cost-effective to hire them than keeping the work in-house.

How much have you invested with them?

We pay them £300 [$408 USD] per day.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in January 2015, and the relationship is ongoing.

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

They’ve been a great extension of our team. They care—and they’re committed. When we’re under pressure, they respond accordingly. They understand our business needs, providing more resources when we need more people and being flexible when we have to slow down.

How did Whitesmith perform from a project management standpoint?

The way we engage with them is slightly unique, but it works well for us. It’s more of a traditional agency relationship, as they provide their thoughts on interface design, project management, etc. They do a good job of being part of our team and following our coding conventions. They’re assigned a task and they get it done. If they know we have a deadline, they make every effort to meet that. I don’t have any issues with the speed of their work.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I can’t think of anything to improve.