ConvergeSol

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO of Lodestone Security, and we are a security consulting firm with 20 employees. We’re domestically oriented with offices in Connecticut and Texas as well as a presence in Miami and Los Angeles. 

We provide services to mainly small-to-medium sized businesses in the area of cybersecurity. That includes proactive security such as vulnerability and risk assessments, penetration testing, and policy and procedure review or development.

The other side of our company is DFIR (digital forensics incident response). After an incident, such as a break-in or ransomware, we get involved from a digital perspective to identify the root cause of the incident and any data leakage that may have occurred. We also provide guidance on recovering from the incident.   

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with ConvergeSol?

We had a marketing challenge. We had worked with another marketing organization that helped us put together collateral for two different campaigns. (The main reason for the campaigns was to get our name out and raise awareness).

But, the other company handed us the deliverables without helping us implement the campaigns. ConvergeSol said they had the resources to help us out with that.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We already had the marketing collateral for the two email campaigns, but we needed a place for our audience to go after seeing the collateral. So, ConvergeSol recommended that we put together a landing page for companies to learn about our services.

They updated the out-of-date words on our website and used those for the landing page. Once they put together the landing page, we executed the first email campaign. They used the email template (put together by another marketing company) on our MailChimp account to execute on an email list that we built together. 

The team also put together a huge list of keywords for Google Ads that we could use. They provided me with hundreds of words, and we went through it together to delete words and add new ones. They implemented the ad campaign by narrowly defining the geographic location and time of day. That way, we’d capture people looking for firms that do our type of work. After a couple of months, we did the second campaign.

What is the team composition?

There were two people. I primarily work with Jignesh (CEO, ConvergeSol). He was on all the calls and facilitated the discussions, which included explaining marketing terms to me. Another marketing person actually executed the campaigns.

I had no one else responsible for marketing internally, so I worked with ConvergeSol on 100% of marketing tasks. 

How did you come to work with ConvergeSol?

I’ve known ConvergeSol for about eight years and worked with them in different capacities. 

We talked to four other companies. The first two were traditional marketing groups recommended by my parent company. The others were ConvergeSol and the company that initially built my collateral. 

It became clear that the first two big companies would be too expensive and the other company that built my collateral doesn’t normally do what I was asking. 

So, I became comfortable with Jignesh’s team and their approach primarily because of the work I’ve done with them over the last eight years. Generally, I throw him a problem and he comes back with answers. In this case, it was a very affordable, complete answer, and so I was happy to choose their company.

How much have you invested with them?

I’ve invested around $4,000 in their services. It was kind of a monthly fee (we worked together on a variety of tasks over a period of time where we had a retainer agreement). 

What is the status of this engagement?

The engagement began in September of 2018 and concluded around March of 2019.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

It was very well-executed. There wasn’t a direct contract that we got as a result of this work. However, there were people I’ve spoken to at conferences or other events that have said, “I got your email, and it’s one of the reasons we’re talking to you.” We’ve probably had about a dozen people that have talked to us as a result of the campaign.  That’s what we wanted.

We’re a relatively new company that’s trying to get our name out there. This campaign, word of mouth, conference presence, and publications are all coming together to create a story. We weren’t looking at this email campaign as our only mechanism. It was a way to round out our existing approach.

How did ConvergeSol perform from a project management standpoint?

I have to give ConvergeSol a lot of credit. They were really on top of scheduling regular meetings and holding sessions where we could all get together. 

Obviously, with the time zone difference between the east coast and India, it made it a little bit tougher for them. We could have an early morning meeting on my side, and that is going to be the end of the day or even evening for them. 

But, I would say they were very, very organized and persistent about emailing, setting up meetings, and confirming meetings before they happened. They were also really good about rescheduling if needed. They were like a really good waiter that’s always at your table when you need something without hovering, and that was nice. 

We sent them all the login information to access our email distribution, then they prepped things on their end, and then we had a meeting to talk everything over. There were a lot of little checkpoints we had to do, and they were really good at making sure we did them. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

I was really impressed by their overall organization and the flow that we went through. It was their idea to create a landing page, and it was their idea to do Google Ads. 

Instead of just satisfying our initial request, they took a step back and looked at it holistically. They considered what would be the best thing for our company and how we wanted to be serviced. They asked, “How do you track things, and then how do you continue to drive more business?”

When I hired ConvergeSol, I wanted them to tell me how to approach the challenge instead of leading me down a road where we’re going to spend a lot of extra money for no reason. They were really good about that. Also, they gave us additional collateral that I wasn’t expecting.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I was very happy with the overall engagement. The only tough part was sometimes it was hard to coordinate because of the time difference. But, that’s the area where they bend over backward to make sure they can attend meetings. Overall, they were helpful in all aspects and they really worked around the difficulty of time differences.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

The best thing to do is to tell them exactly what you want. If you’re a company that already knows exactly what it wants to do but just doesn’t have the resources, I know ConvergeSol can achieve those goals. If you’re a company like mine who had a framework and an idea, and you’re looking for some direction, I think they’re a really good company to help with that, too.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am a partner in a law firm.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with ConvergeSol?

Our existing website was antiquated and was having several issues, so we needed to create a new, updated version.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They developed the website completely from scratch. They provided everything from design, to wireframes, to development. Users can easily navigate the site to find more information about me and my company. ConvergeSol also included links that users can click on in order to contact us.

What is the team composition?

I worked directly with one project leader.

How did you come to work with ConvergeSol?

My co-worker has used them in the past and recommended them.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent about $25,000 with them.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from 2017- February 2019.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Aesthetically, the new site is a huge improvement. It’s also less buggy than before. Now when potential clients find our website, they know that we are a professional, reliable company that doesn’t use gimmicks or shortcuts. I’m really happy with the final product.

How did ConvergeSol perform from a project management standpoint?

We primarily conversed through email, and their communication was excellent. They responded quickly and tried to help me every time. Their work was always within budget and without defects.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They offered fair prices, responded quickly, and came up with their own ideas as well.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, they were great.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO of Keystone Solutions. We’re a managed IT services provider.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with ConvergeSol

We have a customer that had a custom web development that we decided to contract out of house for.  

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

The project was an internal lead tracking system. ConvergeSol was tasked with modernizing an older system to be a mobile-friendly in-house customer management system. It took inbound lead information out of email and mail marketing campaigns and walk-in clients so employees could track them all the way through a closed sale. Some of these processes were automated so as to route it to the correct employee. ConvergeSol also developed reporting capabilities off of the data.

They also did a fair amount of design. We told them the interface was supposed to have a corporate feel, so they delivered simple menus, pages, and layouts. There weren’t many custom graphic design changes between the old and new system, but they did recreate and augment some functionality. The system was built in ASP.NET and has a SQL backend.

What is the team composition?

We worked with 3–4 people, but I had one main point of contact who acted as the project manager. There was also technical lead that I communicated with.

How did you come to work with ConvergeSol?

We posted the original job on Upwork. They applied to it, and we held some initial conversations and vetted them against other proposals. Communication-wise, they got what we were trying to do the quickest and the best. They also had initial mockups and layouts, which helped us feel good about where things would finish up.

How much have you invested with them?

We signed a $4,000 contract for initial deliverables, but after some other add-ons (non-scoped functionality) it rose to $10,000. We’ve contracted for another year’s worth of work at the same rate, so at the end we will have spent $20,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started in August 2018, but after we deemed the initial deliverables satisfactory, we chose to continue working with them.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Because it’s an internal tool – we don’t have any traffic metrics. In terms of usability, however, it’s been pretty easily adopted. So far, ConvergeSol has been able to overcome every challenge. Everything works as we expected and needed it to.

How did ConvergeSol perform from a project management standpoint?

From the beginning, we received weekly status update about work performed. We’ve slowed down into a monthly cycle unless something strange comes up, but all urgent problems with bugs or functionalities are fixed within a day or two. It happens as often as necessary to make sure we’re on the same page.

What did you find most impressive about them?

At this point, they’ve been able to be what we needed them to be. We want to continue working with them and we’re currently talking to them about other projects for other of our customers. They’ve met all the criteria we needed to the point where we don’t feel the need to vet someone else. If a task is in their wheelhouse, we’ll use them going forward.

Are there any areas they could improve?

On the website itself, no. Very early in the project, we had a little language barrier issue. It was quickly remedied however, when they added an additional development point of contact. There hasn’t been a problem since.  

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Similar to any other contract, communicate very clearly and make sure what you’re trying to do is very well documented. Spell it out to the letter.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We’re a fintech company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with ConvergeSol?

They were augmenting our staff in helping to design and develop some of the product.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Our development team was building alongside the team from ConvergeSol. We gave them components to build in our entitlement system and collateral management system.

What is the team dynamic?

Over 3 years, I’ve worked with 1 developer all the way up to 5 depending on where we were in the project. One of our team was managing them, and I got involved at a high level with Jignesh.

How did you come to work with ConvergeSol?

I had worked with Jignesh [CEO] before and I was familiar with him. I knew he had moved to India and I knew that was someplace I might be able to find some resources. I approached him to help us build our product, and he had the capacity for me to tap into. We looked at a couple of other vendors. We’re a small company and our needs were unclear, but ConvergeSol was flexible in handling that. They gave us a level of support that I felt very comfortable with.

They had people with the right technology and background. We’re a Microsoft centric shop and develop in ASP.NET. They had the right team available for us. With Jignesh and his team, they also understood the business from a background perspective. It was easier working with them because they understood what we were looking for without having to go through a full primer on the business itself.

How much have you invested with them?

We have spent $250,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working them 3 years ago, and the project was complete in March 2017.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

What they did became part of the product. I wouldn’t be able to attribute something specific to them. They helped us achieve our goals. Without them, I would’ve had to build the product differently.  

How did ConvergeSol perform from a project management standpoint?

They were on time and on budget. We communicated through email and calls. Our project manager had daily calls with them, and I had a weekly management call. They made their team available at all times.

What did you find most impressive about them?

From a company perspective, they have good people on the team. There were times we were testing and some of the team was on vacation, but they called them in to help. They had backup resources that we weren’t paying for, but they were training them. When we needed additional resources or when people left, we didn’t feel the pain of that. I’m sure there was overhead on their part, but they kept us staffed well and kept our project moving.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Their developers were doing the work they were told to do; they weren’t contributing to the feedback cycle and development. They were not adding value from a design perspective. They focused on making sure they delivered what we asked for instead of giving feedback.

Do you have any advice for future clients?

They’re a good team. They deliver, they’re committed, and I would recommend them to anybody.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We’re a compliance firm. ConvergeSol is our IT developer and, essentially, our IT partner for the proprietary system we’ve built.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with ConvergeSol?

We wanted to find a long-term partner for our proprietary software, someone we could grow with and trust. So far, ConvergeSol has been fantastic in this respect; they’re very productive, easy to communicate with, and their principal has a great demeanor.

The platform was developed by a previous vendor and it was a result of our co-owner’s vision. We quickly realized that we needed an IT team that we could trust, especially as we had to meet client needs in terms of enhancements and also had to monitor the system for any hiccups.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They essentially monitor our system, performing checks throughout the night, as well as any type of development. We’re currently working on an upgrade to the project, so ConvergeSol is providing enhancements to the proprietary system.

What is the team dynamic?

We work personally with the CEO, Jignesh Prajapati, and his team. He determined which developers would be working on our streams and enhancements. Overall, there are three developers besides him, as well as admins and other resources. We mostly work with Jignesh, but, if the task is at a higher level, we work with the rest of his team depending on what the stream or enhancement is. We typically send emails to everyone, which provides great transparency, both to us and to their team. We communicate twice a week through calls and receive daily emails for updates and monitoring results.

How did you come to work with ConvergeSol?

We’ve been working with them since I started with the company. The decision was made by one of the partners years ago.

What is the status of this engagement?

I believe we started working with ConvergeSol three years ago.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We receive weekly updates on the billing and exactly what ConvergeSol is working on, which is something I hadn’t seen in my 20-year experience working with IT professionals. They provide transparent weekly invoices, essentially a statement of work. We know specifically what they’re working on instead of seeing a catch-all report.

It’s been easier for me to escalate to the partners and to make sure that we’re working on the right items whether it’s maintenance, enhancements or code changes. I can see documents on a weekly basis and tick and tie those to the invoice. Anytime we have an enhancement, it will be included in the report along with the required working hours. This makes it easier for us to manage the work.

Jignesh has great vision and he’s very collaborative. He has come onsite and I’ve had the opportunity to work with him for about three days. It was a valuable experience and has allowed him to go through our systems and identify what could be streamlined.

How did ConvergeSol perform from a project management standpoint?

We have great communication during the weekly meetings. The project I’m involved in is currently ongoing and it’s going well. We receive updates on the billing and the services specifically provided. We work with his entire development team.

Jignesh and his team have built a change tracker for us, so, anytime we have an enhancement or see something in the system, we can create a ticket and assign priority to it, have it picked up by his team, and receive a confirmation email the next day announcing that they’ve opened a ticket and are starting work on it. Upon resolution, we receive another message saying the item is fixed. I haven’t seen this with other vendors. They’re extremely responsive and easy to communicate with.

What did you find most impressive about ConvergeSol?

If we have an idea for an enhancement, they won’t simply do it because we asked for it, but will also provide other ideas. I find this to be rare. The way he runs his company and their approach to helping us troubleshoot issues, whether trying to track a root cause of an issue or anything else, is very collaborative.

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

As soon as the client starts speaking with Jignesh, his overall knowledge and way for setting up the team will come across. His vision and ability to collaborate with the team will be helpful to anyone.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a financial analyst for a private family office and my role is tracking the financial information for the main investor. We have different investments in our portfolio. We have private equity, fund of funds, hedge funds, direct investments, and previously, we had some managed accounts. I track their financial information on a monthly basis, doing some due diligence on new prospective investments, and running some risk metrics for the current portfolio.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Converge Sol?

We didn’t have a platform for our financial information. We needed to implement a lot of systems. Although we have specific software for our investments, we needed to take that information from that software and put it into a portal so my boss can view this information by logging in and going to that specific investment. We had internal software that was built by one of our consultants. They had built us a risk management report in Python. Later, they left and we were left with this great piece of software and reporting, but things changed and the report started failing. Converge Sol has people who understand Python and were able to help us with those issues. They were going to do the coding and fix it in order for us to run the monthly report that we needed to run.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They created some widgets for us to take information from our software to this portal. We also have monthly reports that we create so we’re able to take some of these widgets and put them in a format that my boss is used to seeing. So we could take a lot of information, put it into a summary page, and post that into this portal that we have. That was one of the main projects that they had.

Another project involved some managed accounts we had. Since we are a small family office, we asked them to help us with the reconciliation and operational process. The Converge Sol team had someone we could call depending on the schedule of the P&L.

We always had to have one person doing the reconciliation on a daily basis; it was either someone from my team or someone from their team. They would reconcile at least seven or eight cash accounts, position accounts, and P&L. We have approximately 45 investments that we have to run monthly personal and fund reports for, so Converge Sol created an app for us that automatically does this instead of us manually going in there and creating it investment by investment. Whenever we need assistance, they’re always willing to help us or allocate the resources that we need for that specific project.

Now that we actually have a portal where we are saving all this information and reporting, we’re trying to evolve that portal. We want to have drilling-in capabilities. So if I see a fund like Microsoft, and I want to see the performance compared to the benchmark, I want to be able to click on that investment and see that activity or that performance. I know they’re working on enhancing the current portal that we have and they sent me a demo already. The current portal is working and functional, but we want to go to the next step now. We want to be able to run this report. We want to be able to take our portfolio and compare it to a benchmark. It also includes a lot of additional features like charts and top 10 holdings. We want to be able to do that all in one site. They have access to our servers because that’s where we have everything hosted and where we have our SharePoint, our app, and our risk report, and they work the backend.

How did you come to work with Converge Sol?

We had a CTO bring them in. Converge Sol was very knowledgeable and way cheaper than what other companies were planning to charge us.

How much have you invested with Converge Sol?

Between $50,000­–$70,000 per year. We have a fixed fee and the portal upgrade would be part of that.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in 2010 and have been working together since.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

When they built the portal for us, my boss was really happy because we went from having nothing to having something. They actually have something that’s storing all this information rather than just emails or not knowing where everything is. Having the information available on one page and being able to click on it and drill down into the information that is making up that change is pretty impressive for me and is something we were looking for.

How did Converge Sol perform from a project management standpoint?

I think they’re great. There’s a group that does the engineering, maybe five to seven people that I’ve seen in emails or I have interacted with. When we were doing the managed accounts, they had at least two people: one to do the work, and the other to review it. Then they would send it to me to do the final review. If something wasn’t booked the right way, I would tell them how to book it going forward. They always had two people when it was their day to do P&L. Jignesh, the CEO of Converge Sol, was my main point of contact and the other people would be cc’d. Whenever something fails or our report is not working or there’s a glitch with the app, I can email him and he will get back to me. If we didn’t have managed accounts and everything was running smoothly, we would barely talk unless someone sent an email checking on how things were going. They can see what I’m running, what is working, and what is failing. If the app isn’t working on a particular day, I will email them and he will be pretty good at staying up or at least getting back to me and saying, “Let me look at it to see what’s going on and get back to you.” By the next morning, it will come in and I will have a full report of what went wrong, what the issue was, how they fixed it, and how they are going to prevent it from happening again. When it comes to managed accounts, if they have P&L on Tuesday and Wednesday, he will have two people that work overnight in order to reconcile managed accounts, we don’t get trade files right away. Trade files are available at 5 AM, hours after the market closes. By the time I came in to the office, they would say, “All right, these are the issues that we’re finding. These are the breaks that we have. Let us know if these breaks are good. Can we carry these breaks to the next reconciliation day?” Then I will tell them yes or no, or if they need to go back and fix it. For them the operation side was new, but they promised they could do it and that they would build a team and hire more people so they could assist and service us in that sense. When we had our risk report, it was not their job to fix glitches with our coding, but they promised somebody who could fix it for us. They would have that person look at the report. They were able to tackle many issues and they had the resources to do it. That says a lot to me.

What did you find most impressive about Converge Sol?

They’re very knowledgeable and wear many hats and that makes them special for us. They are able to handle anything that we throw at them.

Are there any areas Converge Sol could improve?

The time difference hasn’t been as much of an issue now, but when it’s morning here, it’s night over there. So whenever we had an issue that needed to be solved right away, we would have to wait until the next day. I noticed he is trying to fix that by having a support person here in the U.S., which will be very helpful.

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

Just be mindful of where they are, but besides that, they’re a great and professional team. We haven’t had any issues or complaints besides being far away from each other.