itCraft

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the manager of the digital department for a wholesale services company. I’m responsible for the development of our mobile app.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with itCraft?

Our main concern was how our mobile app would work in the end. We have many systems and the exchange of data between our company and any external partner is always a big challenge.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They take care of the mobile app development. They started everything from scratch. They designed the plans for development and technical background. They are responsible for every aspect from design to tracking. We provided them with what we wanted from a customer perspective and they helped us design everything. They’re our mobile app partner so they coach us on how it should work. They’re constantly developing new functions.

The app provides our customers with virtual entry cards. The plastic cards with barcodes are no longer needed because they’re in the app. The app provides smartphone versions of the promotions that are available in the stores, along with a list of our stores and directions via Google Maps. It also provides the name of the sales representative so they can call their own salesforce member directly. It updates the status of the turnover on specific producers so they can get a bonus from us. The app is for iOS and Android.

What is the team composition?

We’re in close contact with a project manager, two IT staff, and the company owner.

How did you come to work with itCraft?

They provided the best offer for the complexity of the project and a customer-friendly approach, and their quality versus price was very good.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent €50,000 ($62,001 USD).

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in June 2016 and the work is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The number of users is steadily growing from week to week. itCraft is one of our best partners with respect to the quality of work that we receive. They help us with complex technical topics, and our systems are sometimes not ready for mobile app work. It’s going really smoothly.

How did itCraft perform from a project management standpoint?

We are really happy with the quality of customer service. The agency is always open to our questions and our feedback and their response time are very good. It’s a pleasure to be a customer who is well taken care of. We have regular status calls and we update the project list weekly.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’re open to all of our ideas, feedback, and questions.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They could make more suggestions as to how to improve the app given their experience in this area. We could use more benchmarks or specific ideas from their side.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I recommend them.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Sodexo is an international company with headquarters in France. We deliver many global services, including catering and technical maintenance. I’m the IT manager in Poland.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with itCraft?

We needed mobile applications developed.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They developed our iOS and Android applications that support our processes. The current version is very simple. It has a guide for users, explaining what they need to do and then, at the end of the guide, there is a short form where they enter information about price, location, and result of the work.

There are no integrations in the current version. All the reports and results are sent by email to one person. Currently, we’re working together with itCraft on the upgrade of the application and an integration with a database and additional web platform where we have some dashboard center reports.

What is the team composition?

We cooperate with one product manager who is dedicated to us. We have one developer for iOS and one for Android.

How did you come to work with itCraft?

I did some research and tried to find a good supplier offering a high level of quality. We reviewed many companies and itCraft was the best one available on the Polish market.

How much have you invested with them?

$10,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in November 2016 and the work is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The cooperation with itCraft allowed us to implement new solutions for our employees and allowed us to save some time. The employees are very happy with the application. The quality is very good.

How did itCraft perform from a project management standpoint?

We have some face to face meetings with the project manager and the owner. We have phone calls to discuss the status of the development of projects. The communication is very good. They’re very open to discussion. They have many good ideas and add additional value for us.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They team is experienced and they’re fast. They’re responsive to our needs.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I haven’t seen anything that they need to improve. They do everything we need and expect from them.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I work for an accounting and HR services provider called CDB [Centrum Doradztwa Biznesowego - Center for Business Advisory] based in Warsaw, Poland. We also provide CFO outsourcing for small and medium-sized businesses. I’m the CFO, co-owner, and a member of the board.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with itCraft?

We were working on an artificial intelligence project related to the workflow of accounting documents.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

itCraft has helped us with the entire project and is currently providing further application development. We’ve used PHP, PostreSQL and Apache Solr to build the solution on the CentOS Linux distribution.

We started with a general idea and charts for the document flow. The team learned our business and processes between the app and our customers to make the first description of our requirements. They started the development and made a first implementation of the web app.

The app interprets the text in invoices and then uses them to make decisions. The app’s learning process is the basis for those decisions. We also created a simple online acceptance process for invoices that allows customers to create descriptions and perform additional operations. Everything is automatically recorded in the ledger.

What is the team composition?

We’ve typically worked with three people from their team, including the co-owner who acted as an app architect and handled most of the communication. We’ve also worked with two programmers.

How did you come to work with itCraft?

A friend who’d used itCraft for a project referred them to us. He told me that they were fast and that the collaboration was very good. I got in touch with the group and asked for an offer. I compared them with competitors, but itCraft stood out in terms of professionalism.

How much have you invested with them?

The total budget for the first stage was $50,000. We currently have a monthly service fee and development fee of $1,000 - $1,500. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in March 2015. The main part of the project is completed, but they are still providing maintenance and development of additional features on a monthly basis.

We’re planning on creating mobile interfaces for the app for smartphones and tablets. We focused on the web version initially because most of our clients are in the B2B sector and using the app during work hours on their computers.

There will be new processes via mobile devices for travel expenses and other purposes for employees who are accessing the app from various places. itCraft will help us with this project as well, so the collaboration will continue for at least a few years.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We track the number of documents that the app processes, but haven’t kept any statistics about our collaboration with itCraft.

We’ve only given customers access to part of the app’s functionality, but feedback has shown that the user interface is intuitive, accessible, and simple. The most difficult part is defining rules and going through the learning process for tracking documents on our side. Customers only see the documents which they can then describe and accept. The process is nice and quick, so we’ve heard positive opinions on that aspect.

Our employees—especially the accountants working on the system—have a lot of requests, but this is not itCraft’s problem. This has more to do with our ability to quickly implement those new ideas.

How did itCraft perform from a project management standpoint?

We use the MantisBT for project management. We can post new tasks, errors, questions, and requests there and their team will reply and inform us about the implementation process. Initially, we had frequent meetings because our work was based on our ideas. We began discussing things over Skype after the documentation was ready. This made the process easier because we didn’t have to go to their office.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their team’s positive attitude is the most impressive thing about them. They tried to solve the problem before asking for any money. itCraft is also quick and open to our ideas. They’ve never dismissed anything as stupid. They’ve listened to us and tried to find the best, most cost-effective solutions for our business.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They could hire more IT specialists. We’ve sometimes had to wait for them to deliver solutions because they have so much work that they can’t always react quickly. They’ve tried their best and moved quickly when possible, but we have had to wait a few days for solutions at times.

I would also like to have a more updated software for project management. MantisBT is a bit outdated.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the owner and founder of Wodsup.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with itCraft?

I hired itCraft to build a new solution for my small company to help CrossFit trainers take notes about their training history.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

I showed the basic idea to Carl [Founder, itCraft] and his team, and they prepared an analysis for me that contained all the project details and variations. We decided which way to go, and then they created the first test solution without graphics or complex coding. After we decided what was good for the project, they created a complete solution and implemented the system on my webpage.

What is the team composition?

I cooperated with Carl in the beginning.

How did you come to work with itCraft?

I found them on the Internet along with some other firms. I called and met with several companies, and also conducted a small analysis of the local market. itCraft is a small company, and they gave me the best offer, so I decided to work with them. I also checked their former projects, especially in the local market, and saw that they had good programmers and offered the flexibility to create new solutions.

How much have you invested with them?

I've spent around $75,000 with them.

What is the status of this engagement?

We’ve been working with them since January 2017, and the project took around six months. We’re still making a lot of adjustments to the project. It’s always changing, and they’re very quick to adapt the system to the local requirements and those of the users.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

They work quickly and efficiently. At the beginning of our project, we had a small deviation between the signed agreement and the expectations later on. However, we’ve solved that problem. That was a mistake from the asset/investor side, and I don’t think they tried to cheat me in any way.

How did itCraft perform from a project management standpoint?

They were responsive in all modes of contact, including email, phone, and meetings. They gave me the option to use their own project management tool which provides all the information. They also shared all of the materials regarding changes with me quite often. I’m happy with our communication, and they always reply to my queries.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They are very professional people. They are quite flexible, and also have very competitive prices.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They have their own language which is sometimes hard for non-IT people to understand.

They were happy that some parts of what they delivered were ready to go, but I was expecting something a bit different from a business perspective. That's why they spent the time to adapt things based on misunderstandings between the analysis and expectations.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

They should invest with people who are better prepared to sell their idea. itCraft offers really good programmers and engineers, but they’re not as good on the business side of their activities.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Home Doctor is a startup for patients and doctors which is similar to Uber. It’s a mobile app and website with geolocation that enables patients to call doctors and have them arrive in 60 minutes. I’m the co-owner.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with itCraft?

They developed the mobile app for patients and doctors along with the whole website and infrastructure to set up the operation. This includes the financial settlements, reports, calendars, etc. This is the first time I’ve used an external service provider. I’m not a technical person, which is the reason we decided to outsource the work.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We told them what we wanted to do and what we needed, and they returned with a proposal on the cost. They also presented a plan to make the apps so we could visualize how they would look. They took us through the steps of ordering the doctor and accepting the patient on the doctor’s side.

They uploaded the infrastructure of the ordering app to our simple website. They didn’t contribute to the website visuals, but they did develop the entire backend. This includes the doctor ordering, patient acceptance, and payment processing, reports, maps, etc.

They helped us a lot in terms of developing the whole idea and recommending which functionalities were or weren’t essential. For example, we decided not to have a map which shows when the doctor is arriving because the patient isn’t going to utilize that feature while they’re waiting. They were good advisors on the business side in order to optimize the system and keep the cost within budget.

They also helped us choose the service provider, OVH, and linked us with the payment processing company.

What is the team composition?

One of the owners of itCraft was our single point of contact. He was leading the project together with us. We didn’t have contact with other team members, but there were 4–5 other people involved. There were two people assisting in iOS, two for Android, and also one more person. We discussed everything with the co-owner, and then he would follow up with his team.

How did you come to work with itCraft?

We conducted research on good IT partners who had experience with mobile development and the medical industry. itCraft had both. We were also looking for someone who provided value for our money. We invited itCraft and two other companies for a briefing. Afterwards, we based our decision on our perception of the company’s expertise. itCraft was professional and able to communicate with us in a coherent way. They didn’t use typical IT language, which was nice for my partner and I because we’re not technical people.

The process of finding a partner took time because of our lack of expertise in this area. We didn’t have a company in mind before we started the research, and we also didn’t receive any recommendations.

We also didn’t know how much the project would cost. itCraft was the only company who could explain their cost structure to us when they presented their price proposal. They showed us how many programming hours each part of the system would take.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent between $45,000–$60,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We developed the idea in June of last year. We started talking to itCraft in September, and they started development in October 2016. They finished in December 2016, and we launched in January 2017.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We had patients and business the first day we launched because it was renowned in the market. We launched in Warsaw, and our first patient was a blogger from that area. He stated, “Uber for patients has just arrived in Warsaw.” There was a lot of talk on the internet about our project.

We’ve gotten very good feedback on the apps. We didn’t have time to develop a sophisticated manual for doctors on how to use the app, but none of them called to say they didn’t understand something. It was so simplistic and user friendly. We accredit the app’s simplistic and user-friendly nature to itCraft because they recommended we keep it as straightforward as possible.

We didn’t have any technological issues with the system, and it’s working 24/7. We haven’t had any shutdowns, and there haven’t been any minor issues.

We don’t track patient downloads because they’re using stationary devices, such as desktops and laptops. The app is on the App Store and Google Play, but we decided not to do Windows. Patients don’t need to be mobile in order to use the service. We didn’t really need the mobile app for patients, but we decided to build it anyway. The mobile app for doctors is critical because they use the geolocation function and Google Maps to find patients.

How did itCraft perform from a project management standpoint?

In the beginning, I spoke to the project manager once a week. During development, it increased to 3–4 times per week. They would come to our office and meet with us whenever we wanted to have a discussion. They delivered according to the pricing structure, and even managed to do it three weeks ahead of schedule.

We had a simple project management dashboard through Excel which showed key tasks and milestones. We communicated through email, phone, and meetings. Depending on the phase of the project, we may have had questions on whether or not to include certain functions. For example, we decided to skip the phase involving financial settlements for taxes.

In the beginning, they delivered a very detailed script on what they wanted to do and when they would need it from us. Their project management skills kept us on track. They have other projects as well, so it was in their best interest to keep ours moving. Their project management was better than if we would’ve done it on our own. In respect to productivity, they wanted to release capacity of their people as soon as possible to allow them work on other projects.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They were very honest and transparent. They would let us know if they thought a feature would cost too much because they were reasonable, and didn’t want to charge us as much as possible. This is a unique trait compared to other companies I’ve worked with.

They were also ahead of schedule, and the fact that they delivered three weeks early on a three-month project was impressive. We were able to launch earlier and able to gain more business. People need the service mainly between October–March, so that helped us. The combination of our disciplines allowed us to stay on budget.

Are there any areas they could improve?

We had a discussion about the maintenance fee. Due to being a startup, we were not able to continue doing a maintenance contract with them. We still have a good relationship. It may take longer, but they’ll help us if we need it. If we had a maintenance contract with them, it would be done sooner. We made the choice not to have the maintenance fee, so we have to wait for help with any issues.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I admired their value for money as a strong IT partner. They don’t overcharge for their services, which means there’s little room to negotiate. They’re reliable and do their best to work with clients. We didn’t have any surprises. Their project management keeps everything on schedule. They’ve done a lot of mobile apps and systems, which is important when choosing a partner.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Buena Vista Media Group is an organizer of our networking conference, Poland IT Meeting. I’m the managing director.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with itCraft?

We wanted to have a partner who offered multiple, quality services for a good price.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They created and currently manage an iOS and Android application, and also manage the registration option for our website. They also provide website development, consultation, and management services.

Users can utilize the app to register for our conference, fill out data about themselves and their company, and schedule meetings after checking the list of possible partners. They can also update their photo or data and decide what table and time they want to meet partners at. The app shows what time users, partners, and tables are available at the conference.

We are still working together on the fourth version of the app.

What is the team composition?

We work with three people, including Bartosz [Co-Owner, itCraft], Rafal [Tech Lead, itCraft], and sometimes with Karol [Co-Owner, itCraft]. We’re in contact with Rafal almost every day, and Bartosz at least once a week.

How did you come to work with itCraft?

We had to take some risk when choosing a vendor. Through searching, we found itCraft and chose them because of Bartosz’ attitude and personality. We got to know their team before signing the contract.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent $30,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in November 2014, and the work is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

itCraft was creating, managing, and servicing the app and website services. They are always supportive of us. It’s hard to measure the commerce impact they’re making on the project, but everything is working great. If there are any issues, we are in contact with them. The attendants of the conference have told us it’s one of the best applications.

How did itCraft perform from a project management standpoint?

They are almost always on time, and we have daily contact. I also receive good responses when I send messages. They’re fluent, so we have no problems with communication. We connect with them through many channels.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their customer service is of the highest quality.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Not that I can think of.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I suggest future clients provide itCraft with clear ideas of what they want, because they’re able to deliver.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the director of AJJ Capital. We are a consultancy based in Dubai.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with itCraft?

Over the last two-and-a-half years, much of what we do has been related to mobile application development. We didn’t have the skill set within our own organization, so we needed a good development partner.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

One of the projects they worked on was a mobile application for iOS and Android that allows people to locate group fitness training in their area. It integrates with Stripe and with social media.

They also built an administration panel, which allows the business owner to monitor what’s happening with the business. The app can be applied in different countries where each country has a discrete database where they run their own business independently using the same platform.

The full development took around eight months and we are very pleased with it.

What is the team composition?

For the app project, we had a dedicated project manager and around 18 people (including developers and graphic designers) working on it.

How did you come to work with itCraft?

Initially, we wanted to get good value for money, and Eastern Europe and India were potential areas for us to source a good IT company. We had previous experience with India, but communication was a challenge. We tried Ukraine and Hungary, identified nearly 30 companies, and conducted interviews with around 20. We decided on itCraft.

How much have you invested in them?

We have spent over $250,000 in total so far.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our engagement started in February 2016 and the relationship is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We just finished the app recently and our clients and beta testers are very happy with the application.

How did itCraft perform from a project management standpoint?

We communicate primarily through Skype and email. We don’t use a project management tool because once I give them the work, they manage it from their side. I do receive high-level basic reports where we stand, however.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They are professionals and are extremely good from a technical perspective. The owners of the company are very smart and been very helpful. They often suggest critical value-added ideas.

Are there any areas they could improve?

From my point of view, no. I am happy.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Communicate with them frequently. If ever there were any issues, it was due to me traveling between countries and I couldn’t communicate on time.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the owner of a software provider that provides on-demand tailored software solutions. Our customers are mostly in the mobile sector.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with itCraft?

We needed more resources for a mobile iOS and Android project for one of our customers.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We received the specifications from our customer and sent them to itCraft. The product provides Bluetooth communication for phones and tablets connected to coffee machines. If you have a coffee machine, you can launch the app and connect to that machine. The app can connect with coffee machines from major brands.

There’s a variety of products you can launch using the app. You can even customize different things like the coffee strength and the amount of milk foam. You can also perform some basic configuration of the coffee machine, including the readout.

What is the team dynamic?

There were 7 people from itCraft involved in the project. They worked with my team to reach the project deadline.

How did you come to work with itCraft?

We wanted someone who had proficiency in mobile technologies. Our ideal vendor should be honest and offer a good price.

I know the owner of itCraft because we worked together at another company. Eventually, we each started our own company.

How much have you invested with them?

The project budget was around €90,000 [$100,000].

What is the status of this engagement?

We’ve been working successfully with itCraft for 7 years, and we have a long-term relationship. This project started in January 2017 and was completed in July 2017. The project duration was 30 weeks. This is not the first project we did with them.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Our customer hasn’t been published the app yet, but they were happy with it.

How did itCraft perform from a project management standpoint?

The project manager was from my team. Our project had an intense timeline and required coordination between 2 parallel groups of developers—Android and iOS. itCraft’s team was very good. We communicated with them daily.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’re very friendly people and provide good quality work. If they see any problems, they are proactive. They don’t just simply do what we tell them—they try to come up with solutions themselves.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They had someone who resigned in the middle of the project, but that person was replaced by someone else. Fortunately, the transition process went smoothly. I’m really satisfied with them, so I can’t think of anything to improve from my standpoint. I wouldn’t have worked with them so long if I wasn’t happy.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am a senior consultant at PCG Polska. PCG Polska is an integral part of Public Consulting Group, a global firm specializing in professional services for institutions and companies operating in the public sector. The recipients of PCG services in Poland include over 3,500 schools, 60 universities, and numerous hospitals and long‑term care centers. For this project, we were working with long-term care facilities in a consulting capacity. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with itCraft?

PCG Polska and itCraft established a partnership aimed to implement SupraCare; a technology for care support and optimization in long-term care facilities.

The system responds to the operational challenges of care providers who operate in an extremely complex environment (an average long-term care facility with 100 patients would generate 1,500 daily tasks, that’s 550,000 per annum). At the same time, there are few IT solutions dedicated specifically to long-term care and designed with those specific needs in mind.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We partnered with itCraft to create the SupraCare platform. PCGP is a reseller of that system. Since it’s a complex business and there are few technological options for automation and management, we wanted to build a system that would improve automatic staff scheduling and plan thousands of activities. That’s from individual patient plans. That was the main requirement for the system to automate staff scheduling, to help create individual patients or residents’ plans, and then also to provide additional data for better facility management. The system had to be a web-based application and also available on mobile devices. We use tablets in long-term facilities.  

We also maintain our relationship as a client of itCraft for when clients need additional features in the system or want to use the system in a new area that needs further development. When that happens, we hire itCraft to build the additional features and develop the new system. It’s quite a complex business relationship. We’re partners, but in a way, my company is also itCraft’s client. They’ve done system development on everything from business requirements to user testing, implementation, and training. Currently, itCraft is responsible for implementation services and PCG is a system reseller.

What is the team dynamic?

We have one dedicated contact person with whom we have a good relationship. We go to that person if we have problems, issues, or questions. We always know who we can contact. This person manages a team of developers within itCraft.

How did you come to work with itCraft?

They had previous experience in the long-term care sector. It was unlikely for other IT companies to have that market expertise we were looking for. They are a decent-sized agile and flexible company. There was a combination of the size that we believe that guarantees continuity of services because we were looking for a long-term partner and not just a one-time service. They are also very innovative in their approach.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent around $200,000-$999,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in February 2015 and the work is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Our data is confidential because it is our clients who use the system. We cannot disclose specific data. The system helped our end users save around 5-10% due to better scheduling. There was no system downtime at all during the two years that we have been with itCraft. The system is up and running all the time.

How did itCraft perform from a project management standpoint?

There were no problems with project management. They created a project plan but were flexible when needed.

What did you find most impressive about them?

It’s difficult to pick one thing. We were happy to work with itCraft as they created a cutting-edge, highly flexible and configurable system for our long-term care facility clients. Their design and development process was rooted in a deep knowledge of the market and its trends, as well as their previous relationships with long-term care facilities.

In our experience itCraft delivers high-quality work at every step of the project. They are a trustworthy business partner and it has been a pleasure to work with them. They provide customers with excellent support. They always try to find a way to make things work and are constantly improving our system. We have always found them to be helpful, responsive, and knowledgeable.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I work as an IT consultant for a few companies in Poland. I am mainly responsible for delivering software projects. For this particular project, I was working with an international healthcare company’s local branch, which I’ve been working with for almost 10 years. The division I work with is mainly responsible for the sales process for products manufactured in Austria and China.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with itCraft?

The branch recently established a sales representatives division comprised of 10 people working directly in the Polish market. After a few months, they noticed that they didn’t have control over the work. Control may not have been the main requirement, but rather the ability to gather information about customers—to track them and see whether or not they were return customers, what they were buying, and if there were any special offers or warranty conditions the company could promote to them. Because of this, the company decided to build a CRM system to gather this information and track the work activities of their sales representatives.

My role was to govern requirements and work with itCraft in order to obtain results. The overall goals of the project were to keep returning customers while attracting new ones and improving brand awareness and customer satisfaction. itCraft was responsible for design and development of the CRM solution as well as support. 

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

The first part of the project included customizing an existing open-source CRM solution. We entered production mode after 4 months, after which the users were able to fulfill customer requests, create promotions, and so on. The CRM system was PHP-based, with a MySQL backend database. The web frontend was Bootstrap, along with some other web frameworks.

After one year, we used itCraft to work on a connected site for end-users, which allowed every customer of the company to create a fully-customized personal account. Since our sales representatives are very mobile, we also created a native iOS mobile app with push notifications. It can notify salespeople of nearby customers who haven’t been visited recently in order to check on their status. I found this to be the best part of the system. 

How did you come to work with itCraft?

I created and sent out a list of requirements to several companies, including itCraft, who I had found through a friend’s reference. I liked the response from itCraft; they said that they could base the product on open-source technology, and we’d only be charged for the professional services. I had been looking at other companies, but their fees were high, in my opinion, compared to itCraft’s. itCraft’s offer was fair, so we made the decision. 

How much have you invested with them?

The cost of the first part of the project was $30,000, while the overall budget was much higher, between $100,000 and $150,000. 

What is the status of this engagement?

The 2 main phases of the project are already finished, but we are willing to open new initiatives, regarding an implemented CRM solution. Right now, we’re working on new requirements for the end-user part of the system. We want to expand its functionality. Initially, we weren’t sure if our customers in the healthcare space would be willing to work with an online system, but the first project revealed that they did want to use it. We offered an extra year of warranty for people who registered on the system, and we found it to be a success. The system will also be expanded to other subsidiaries of the global company, beyond the Polish one. They want the expanded version to work in the same way, and I hope we will be able to use itCraft. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The main feedback, in my opinion, that actually sold the customer, was the fact that they are able to track the end-user, which has resulted in a bigger market presence. This was the main issue in the past, but the new CRM solution shows us who we should call or send offers. The sales to target customers have grown by 25-50% year-to-year, after one year of the implementation.

How did itCraft perform from a project management standpoint?

We mainly communicated using Google products like Docs, Drive, and Gmail. I proposed using G Suite, and itCraft was flexible and agreed. They have been responsive, allowing me to communicate on a daily basis around any issues with the production system. We were able to fix anything within a couple of hours. Overall, we found that they were on-time and able to follow schedules, which was really important for us. If we agreed on a date, they delivered by that date. They proved their ability to handle demanding projects with frequent requirement changes.

What did you find most impressive about them?

My 2 main factors are ability to follow the schedule, and a fair price, both of which have been fulfilled by itCraft.

I also found their ability to follow our changing requirements to be very impressive. We are not the toughest customer, but we changed the project scope several times. itCraft was able to handle those changes, which mostly occurred during the first project when we redesigned the sales process model. itCraft adapted it just months before we went live, which was impressive for me. From the release of the system, we only experienced 3-4 bugs, 3 of which were not related to itCraft’s work, but to the technology. Even during tough challenges, they were able to find a workaround.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Sometimes, they are really busy. If we want to start a new project, we have to ask itCraft about scheduling before starting. Like any customer, we want to start right away, but the waiting period is usually one month. They are busy people and have other customers, but this could be improved by hiring more people.