Trigent Software - AI Development

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Our company is a credit union based in New Jersey. I am a network administrator for the company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Trigent?

We needed to upgrade our Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 to Foundation 2013.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Trigent modernized our site. We use SharePoint as a repository for internal documentation. Trigent performed the migration to Foundation 2010 as an intermediary step and then to SharePoint Foundation 2013. We had one initial point of contact from Trigent as well as a project manager and a software engineer working for us. We interacted directly with each of them.

How did you come to work with Trigent?

I Googled SharePoint migration companies and found a chart listing the top 10 ones. We considered one other company but chose Trigent because of their response time.

How much have you invested with Trigent?

The total cost of our project with Trigent was approximately $11,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked with Trigent through the month of September 2016. Including the initial meetings, the project took 4 weeks to complete.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The data was migrated without any issues. Once the new site was up and running, we kept it in a test mode, and worked directly with Trigent's software engineer, tweaking it to our needs. This was done easily, and there were no issues.

How did Trigent perform from a project management standpoint?

We had weekly calls with Trigent. Our project manager put together a task list featuring resources and completion dates. As we went along, those dates were met on time. Our initial rep put together a nice proposal explaining Trigent's plan. It was a professional process, and it gave an indication that Trigent did this for a living.

What did you find most impressive about Trigent?

I've only dealt with SharePoint in a limited capacity and have only been part of one migration, so it's hard to have a comparison point. I deal with a ton of vendors and, compared to them, Trigent is excellent. They're responsive, made sure we were happy and worked many additional hours in order to accommodate our needs.

Are there any areas Trigent could improve?

There was a miscommunication early on regarding the hour interval during which Trigent would be working because of a time zone difference between our companies. It was something that was unclear on both of our sides, but it was quickly hammered out.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We're in the litigation support business, helping lawyers in their day-to-day practice and interactions with the courts. A large part of our business now consists of process services, but we also offer publishing, couriering, and other services helping lawyers do their daily work. I am the chief information officer of the company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Trigent?

We use technology as a way of enabling our operations, so we don't see ourselves as a technology company per se. We had been developing using consulting resources from various places, and decided to offshore the process at one point.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We've used Trigent to develop Windows applications. One of our modules is a courier program running on handheld Windows devices.

We are in charge of the design and most of the project management, in a true Agile structure based on the actual manifesto. We needed a company that could provide us with independent developers who were able to think for themselves. We maintain high-level direction for projects with small scopes, interacting with developers on a daily basis. Trigent assigned a project lead who served as a middle person, but we rely on developers working independently for each of the 5-6 projects we're running with Trigent at any point. Any escalations are done to the owner of the project on our own team.

At peak capacity, we've used 12 developers from Trigent and we maintain a team of around 10. We always interview the developers being taken on and monitor them closely for 30 days. After this, most of our developers will last on the team for 5 years or more.

How did you come to work with Trigent?

We looked at a few companies in the offshoring space and were a little hesitant regarding how a developer could work with us, as a smaller organization. One of my employees at the time had worked for Trigent and served as a reference. We called them, liked what we heard, and invited Trigent to work with us. We also spoke to 5-6 other companies, both small and big, onshore and offshore.

How much have you invested with Trigent?

I cannot provide a figure, but we've used an average of 10 developers from Trigent over the course of 10 years.

What is the status of this engagement?

We've been working with Trigent for around 10 years.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The fact that we've been using Trigent for consistently such a long period speaks volumes. If we were not happy with their performance, we would not continue using Trigent. Our company offers multitudes of services and Trigent has developed all of those offerings.

How did Trigent perform from a project management standpoint?

We monitor our projects closely and consider this operation to be an enablement of the core business. We have used Clarizen for project tracking, but we have so many open projects at any time and have a flat organization, so using tools of this kind didn't lead to efficiency increases.

What did you find most impressive about Trigent?

Trigent was flexible enough to work with our own established business practices. Like my colleagues, I'm a hands-on manager, covering business decisions and regular operations. Trigent has the ability to work with our project management leadership in an interactive manner and determine what the end-product should be based on requirements. I didn't see this flexibility when reviewing other companies. Since I am offshoring my work across the world, I need the confidence that the person assigned to it will offer a professional result in efficient time. The common belief is that a 30-60% efficiency is very good when offshoring, but our team from Trigent is more efficient than the local one.

Are there any areas Trigent could improve?

Trigent has had some growth issues, and we've changed the way in which we work, but the important thing was that they were able to remain flexible and make the needed adjustments. The good absolutely outweighs the bad. I have very few negative things to say about Trigent, and I would recommend them to people in a similar situation.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We are the Jewish studies center of a university. We're primarily a social demographics research non-profit group studying the Jewish population through interviews, surveys and focus groups. We act as evaluators and as the tech provider of another organization focused on trips to Israel for young adults. We host and administer registration applications and the administration site for them. I am the assistant director of the program.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Trigent Software?

Twice a year, there will be close to 30,000 people registering within a few weeks, to become eligible for a free trip, which is where Trigent comes in. We're a research company, not a software organization, but have somehow been given the opportunity to manage this registration site. In any case, we do not have the expertise here to ensure the system's operability, so that's become their role. 

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They didn't develop the platform, but Trigent has helped our organization perform load testing for the registration site. We need to be confident that we can handle 20,000 applications over the course of a few hours without any system failures or unexpected downtime.

The same technical resource from Trigent has been working with us throughout our 7-year collaboration. Trigent rents servers which can be used to bombard our registration site, given that our type of test requires multiple IP addresses. We run the same scripts multiple times, making sure that the load can be handled.

I usually stay in touch with our sales rep from Trigent, or whoever oversees our contract. We get in touch to discuss the scope and make sure that everything is the same since the last time we'd used Trigent.

How did you come to work with Trigent Software?

We were trying to find a local partner and did a search for "testing capabilities Boston," which led us to Trigent. We saw references, talked to people that had used them, and came to choose Trigent. We've had a good experience throughout, even if they're not local. Trigent may have a representative in the US, but the team that we've worked with is in India.

How much have you invested with Trigent Software?

The cost depends on how many days and servers we rent. We usually request 7 IP addresses and work with Trigent for one week, which has come to around $7,000 biannually, for the last 7 years. We primarily pay for the rental of the testing machines.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Trigent in 2009-2010.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

There were no instances of our servers going down during our tests with Trigent, or in a real environment. Ever since we started our work with Trigent, there were no cases of downtime during registrations.

How did Trigent Software perform from a project management standpoint?

We've primarily worked with one person from Trigent, and kept in touch through Skype calls, both before and during testing. He will let us know what information is showing up on their systems, and what their tools are doing, while we provide information on CPU usage, and whatever else is measured when servers are under load. We've always had a positive experience working with Trigent.

We don't have much to share regarding documents. We simply provide the link to our registration site, and a Trigent's technician will go through our 50-60-question application form, creating an Excel of that data, and sending it back to us to make sure that it matches what would come from real registrants. At the end of the engagement, we will receive a report of the results, as well as the script.

Trigent has been very flexible regarding hours, always working within Boston time.

What did you find most impressive about Trigent Software?

Trigent has been very easy to work with, accommodating, and knowledgeable. We've only used them for load testing but, for our purposes, Trigent has been very helpful.

Are there any areas Trigent Software could improve?

Trigent's tool couldn't handle HTTPS on our last testing run, so we had to turn off our secure protocol, and switch to HTTP. We plan to figure out a way for Trigent to test HTTPS in the future.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

Our company provides tracking services for visitors, contractors, students, faculty, and volunteers entering a school. We run instant background checks against our database for alleged sex offenders and other categories. Our system gives schools the option of allowing visitors in or not, protecting children from various issues. We also track individuals assigned to picking up children.

What is your position?

I am the Quality Assurance Manager. My department is in charge of testing applications before they are released to the public.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with Trigent?

We needed development resources.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement.

Trigent was involved with the development of our software. They also assist us with testing in order to make sure that the application is working as expected. This includes performance, regression, scalability, and load tests.

Right now, we're working with 3 testers from Trigent. We manage them directly and also have on-site testers.

How did you come to work with Trigent?

I don't specifically remember, but it may have been a cold call from Trigent.

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

I don't have this information.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Trigent in October of 2014. We have an ongoing relationship with them, in a testing capacity.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

I have worked with many offshore developers in the past. Working with Trigent has been wonderful.

How did Trigent perform from a project management standpoint?

Trigent has taken responsibility for our projects and delivered in full. We used Microsoft Envision for testing, which includes Microsoft Test Manager for bug testing. We also used Selenium, which is an open-source tool.

What distinguishes Trigent from other providers?

For the most part, Trigent did a great job and took responsibility for the work, seeing it through to completion. I can reach them at any time with a question.

Is there anything Trigent could have improved or done differently?

Any technical issues with our software were resolved immediately, so I have no complaints about Trigent.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

Navistar produces medium and heavy-duty trucks and school buses.

What is your position?

My current job title is process information officer for product development. All development and user support of product development or engineering within Navistar comes through my organization.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with Trigent?

We've been doing business with Trigent since 2001. We have a bill of materials system that we implemented in 1995, and the vendor who developed it went out of business. As you can imagine, a bill of materials system is at the heart of our business, and so we needed to find out how we would continue to support this software knowing that the creator of the software was going to go out of business. At that point, Trigent stepped in through a third party and took over the software.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement in detail.

We've been working with Trigent ever since 2001, building, maintaining, and improving the bill of materials system. They did a rewrite that we implemented in 2008. They also provided a patented algorithm as part of what we call the order coding process. It allows us to take a customer order and code it to make sure all the features on the order are compatible, that the order is billable, and that we can provide a bill of material to our manufacturing operations to build the product. Trigent also developed something called the spectrum system. It's an automobile part management classification system where all our new part numbers are created and managed.

How did you come to work with Trigent?

We found them through a bankruptcy lawyer who happened to know of Trigent, and Trigent was in the same location and area where our previous vendor was. We got lucky because Trigent's CTO, Chuck Rehberg, a pioneer of artificial intelligence, was part of the original AI team at our original vendor who originally produced our bill of materials system.

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

In our relationship through the years, we've spent more than seven figures – maybe we are in the eight-figure range. Every year, we put together a set of statement of works that lays out Trigent's role for the year, which includes supporting the software, and enhancing the software. They also provide 24/7 helpdesk support on some our main components.

What is the status of this engagement?

We are still working with them.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

I can tell you that from a customer perspective of Trigent, we're pleased in terms of the quality of the software. They use a scale called the CMMI [capability maturity model integration] scale, and it's a real indication of the quality of the software vendor and the processes that they follow before they deliver their software. Trigent has been consistently high on the CMMI scale, so we're very pleased in terms of the quality that we get from them in relation to the cost.

Trigent has both an onshore United States presence and an offshore presence in India, and so we can leverage a lower cost resource to do some of the more repetitive support-type functions. They do develop software offshore as well.

How did Trigent perform from a project management standpoint?

It's a joint effort. They've typically provided a project manager. Navistar has to provide a project manager as well. Trigent uses their project manager to make sure that they're on track and delivering to the statement of work, and then Navistar uses its project manager to make sure we coordinate properly with any interfaces we need to provide. Navistar is accountable for final testing and signoff for the delivery of the software and the implementation on our production servers.

We're using what's called an agile method of development, and that allows them to deliver incremental deliveries via sprints. They space out a series of sprints during the course of the project, and they do pretty well in terms of the delivering to the sprints.

What distinguishes Trigent from other providers?

Their ability to leverage onshore and offshore resources and keep the cost reasonable is distinguishing. They do deliver a quality product to us. They do have a real knack for listening, understanding, and breaking down a complex problem and coming up with solutions for that problem. We always get Trigent involved if we're struggling with understanding a problem and coming up with solutions because they have a real good knack for identifying a solution.

Is there anything Trigent could have improved or done differently?

There are some cases where they may miss a requirement. Through the years, some of the requirements we ask for get a little bit lost or skewed in translation when we give them to the U.S. Trigent president expecting them to be sent to their offshore developers. We've found that when we actually sent somebody from Navistar to India to work with the team, it helps to bridge a communication gap and make sure that the folks sitting in India understand the requirements.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

Green International offers civil and structural engineering through our office in Westford, Massachusetts. Our company has around 90 employees and we focus mainly on public sector work. We have four divisions, including water transportation, water resources, civil sites, and structural engineering, which includes both bridges and buildings. Our company has been around since the 1950s. Although we have done much work overseas, during the last 25 years we've mostly focused on the New England area.

What is your position?

I am the vice president of the company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with Trigent?

We were planning on creating an intranet for the office a couple of years ago. Since then, we've started using Office 365, so we decided to use SharePoint as our intranet, to be used for company announcements, discussion boards, file sharing and so on. We also wanted the ability of sharing files with our clients, beyond using FTP [file transfer protocol], Dropbox, and other services. A number of our clients were blocked from using Dropbox due to lack of security. The IT [information technology] firm that we were contracting was not up to speed with SharePoint. We found that we'd need to use a more specialized developer, and found Trigent.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement.

Trigent has done SharePoint customization for our company. I found Trigent to be astute. We worked through teleconferences exclusively with Trigent's team in India, after an initial call with their local reps. We scheduled calls usually at 8:30 in the morning, which equated to the end of the day in India. Trigent would even plan meeting during the rest of the day, if we asked them to. We used Basecamp, which worked well.

How did you come to work with Trigent?

We appreciated the fact that, even though Trigent is based in India, they have a local office close by. A number of firms that we collaborated with in our business had used Trigent, which led us to pick them. We only reached out to one or two other candidates, but didn't have a bidding process. We talked to Trigent, having a couple of conversations back-and-forth and received a quote that was in line with our budget. Trigent seemed to be a reputable company and had a good price.

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

The total development cost with Trigent was $14,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Trigent three months ago [March 2016]. It was initially a two-month engagement that took a little longer to finalize due to decisions on our part. We sometimes didn't get back to them as quickly as we should have. Trigent completed what they promised and did not delay us in any way. We may want to create some custom SharePoint sites in the future for specific projects, but we're not ready to embark on this yet.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

The system is live, but it's currently not being used as actively by our members as we'd have hoped. It hasn't caught up yet, but we are posting our company announcements on it, instead of having email blasts, to encourage users onto the platform. We haven't had many opportunities to test the file transfer yet.

Trigent earned their money in solving a particular problem. We've found that, in SharePoint, when someone is given access to a folder, the access is all or nothing by default. The user will have access to the whole site, which we didn't want to do. Our aim was to have project folders for clients. Trigent figured out a solution for this, doing the necessary workarounds. It wasn't a standard functionality, which we didn't consider in the beginning. Trigent gave us everything that we asked for, so we're happy. Three quarters into the project, we began to think that we would not be able to do what we wanted, which disappointed me. Once we made it clear in terms of how we wanted it to work, Trigent was able to solve it within a couple of days.

How did Trigent perform from a project management standpoint?

We worked through Basecamp, at Trigent's recommendation. It worked very well.

What distinguishes Trigent from other providers?

We never had a face-to-face meeting, from what I remember, but I did appreciate the fact that Trigent had a local presence in our area.

I haven't worked with other developers like Trigent, but I found them to be very competent. I can only compare them with three different local IT firms which, in every case, promised us the world, but failed to deliver. Even though we were working with an Indian team in Trigent's case, I felt that they were always very careful to go over the scope with us in the beginning, making sure that we were very clear on what they were going to do. Trigent did a good job on following through with the scope. I was impressed with this.

Is there anything Trigent could have improved or done differently?

The only issue we ever had with them was the fact that they tended to speak a bit fast at times. Sometimes, I had hard times with what the project manager from Trigent was saying because of his speaking rate. They tended to overexplain issues and had to pay close attention to ensure that I understood them. I know that Trigent always tried to be thorough and cover everything in the scope, but I thought that, sometimes, there was too much information, which wasn't getting to the heart of the matter.

During our collaboration with the Indian team, we noticed that the Internet connection would be very slow. There were some challenges while working through GoToMeeting, much more so than what we'd experienced in the United States. I don't know what the particular problem was, but we definitely had a lag. We worked around it, and it wasn't a deal breaker by any stretch. We might have had to spend five to 10 minutes at times getting GoToMeeting to work.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

We are the 4th largest manufacturer of mail-order catalogs in the world. We work with around 300 publishers. Our job is to layout, plate, print, assemble, address, bind and drop-ship-mail 15 million catalogs every week.

The catalogs themselves are the only things that are sent through the postal system in paper form; everything else is done electronically. We have a seat on the PostalOne! Board for electronic communications and integration with the postal system—our company actually holds a founding seat on the board. As such, we have a lot of back-and-forth integration with the postal system, and we’re very efficient in terms of mailing catalogs.

Our company also has a strategy for combining mailing for customers who want to ship out catalogs during the same week. This includes nearly our entire customer base. We sort all names and addresses for the catalogs together, as one massive file, creating books without printing the addresses on them. We then use a device called a co-mailer, which, instead of pulling the necessary pages for putting a book together and addressing it inline, takes a finished book and adds it to the bundle. Those bundles can contain 30 different types of catalogs but, as long as they are in the sequence by which the postman walks the route, they can be delivered in sequence and have proper postage paid for each one. The postal system doesn’t care what is in the bundle, as long as the items meet requirements.

We have to be accurate to 2 in 10,000 catalogs; 99.6% of them have to be in order. There will always be a few which don’t print well, but they simply get replaced. We have to be accurate in terms of walk sequence across the entire country but the farther into the postal system’s sorting and delivery stages we enter, the more money we save. If catalogs are sent to the local post office, then we have to pay local postage. If they’re sent to a bulk center, of which there are about 50 around the country, we will save 2 cents apiece. If we have a large enough volume in order to justify the difference in trucking between going to a bulk center and going to a sorted center, we can go to those sorted centers and save 3 cents per catalog. If we go to the sorted center with bundles that can be taken off of the pallet and given directly to the postman, we can save 3.5 cents each.

Ninety-eight percent of our customers’ mail, even in the case of smaller customers, is delivered through this system. It is a meticulous process that involves a lot of just-in-time manufacturing. We have to have 30 different manufacturers’ catalogs available to go out every night to the right delivery centers.

What are your position and responsibilities, please?

I am the systems manager. My responsibilities include phone, infrastructure, ergonomics and so on.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with Trigent?

We have to have a very accurate in-process inventory and very accurate tracking of the movement of things from one place to the other. This, in part, led us to our collaboration with Trigent. I have developed the logic for these systems, but trying to keep up with the coding when managing a facility like ours, combined with all of our servers and virtual environments, is a tough task.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of Trigent’s involvement in greater detail.

Trigent is responsible for coding and interface development for all the various projects in our company. The in-process inventory that we run for the machines that assemble catalogs, the terminals mounted on forklifts which move pallets from presses to stitchers to co-mailers and the in-and-out of physical inventory are all run by an application for which I developed the logic and which was coded by Trigent.

We have a system that picks up the barcode for the pallets of mail that are scanned by the postal system during different portions of the process. When a pallet is opened, separated and delivered to the delivery locations, all that will happen through scans of the load. We receive that information from the postal system on a daily basis through a secure interface. We can then show reporting for any mailing, down to when the pieces are ready to be delivered. This generally happens the day before reaching the customers’ mailboxes. We can track catalogs from planning all the way to the anticipated delivery the next day, live, online. This happens through an application developed by Trigent.

We can produce reports of potential locations and overall postage for each category in order to know what we’re spending on the mailing for each individual package. We’re currently working with Trigent to collect that information into a database and highlight different quarterly mailing periods for the customer so that they can see exactly what they are spending and how efficient their discounting programs are.

How did you come to work with Trigent?

We had done some work with another outsourcing company in the past. They weren’t available when we needed to develop the next piece of our in-process inventory platform. I started to look at different companies. One of the people who worked with the first developer had gone to work with Trigent. That person contacted me, and I looked at some of the things Trigent had been working on. I gave them a small project, assigning them to rewrite something which we had cobbled together in-house. Trigent took an access application and turned it into a web-based SQL solution. I then mocked-up the in-process inventory and talked to Trigent about different things that we wanted to do. After the first successful task, they followed-up on that mock-up. We consequently had proof of capability and went right into the in-process inventory. Trigent did a wonderful job with that.

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

The total development cost with Trigent has been between $200,000 and $250,000. My chief executive officer considers the collaboration to be extremely cost-effective. The value that we’re getting from the applications developed by Trigent is excellent.

What is the status of this engagement?

We have been working with Trigent for around three years and the relationship is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics, metrics or other feedback from this engagement?

Some of our projects have gone over their original estimates, in part because getting an accurate scope from our internal staff is sometimes quite difficult. We often work with higher-level people in our company. They want a magic button that will solve a problem when pushed.

Once specific example of this is a job costing application through which we monthly collect the actual costs and hours for specific jobs. Through it, we can see what our profit is for any job. That process involved capturing information on the different components of the layout and plate making for the presses, printing time, assembly time and costs for ink and paper. All of those factors have their costs; collecting this from the various tracking systems, inputting this information on a monthly basis for different jobs and calculating the output would have taken our controller a couple of days of work.

The vice president of finance wanted a solution that would automatically input that information for her. We went a step further: because so much of this information comes from different systems which were access-based, we already had databases for how many plates are produced for a job and an accounts database that tracks the amount of time necessary for a job by either days or shifts. We also had someone who could produce reports for ink and paper, so we actually expanded the scope of the request, from simply doing an input to collecting the information from different resources and putting together a review sheet which can be examined by a controller who can then determine if something is out of order.

If someone made a mistake in keying something, it would show up. Our vice president can look at this data and, when she’s happy with what the report is showing, she can choose to import the information and send it to the job costing in-post. If the data inputs come out clean the first time, the whole process will only take 45 minutes, instead of a day and a half.

How did Trigent perform from a project management standpoint?

Trigent’s team generally delivered projects on time and within budget. On our part, any development project will greatly depend on how accurate the instructions are from our customers and how well we understand the data. If we’re given a vague description, we will have to work with Trigent in order to refine the scope until the solution performs as it should.

For example, we’re now working on a functionality which will give us the ability to have period reports, rather than single-job ones for postage and mail efficiencies. Identifying the categories for mailing, as well as how postage is applied—it differs based on the weight of a piece, discounts and so on—involved collecting figures from three or four different records, rather than a single one for all different pieces. We have been working on this for a couple of weeks. Today the programmer who has been specifically working on that project nailed it. We are down to 10 million total pieces in one mailing report, with tenths of a cent difference between the projected report and the actual data.

We use Basecamp for project tracking. We can post example files, spreadsheets, and run discussions. Despite the time differential, Trigent is very good at working with us. They sent a project manager from India to our company for two days at the end of April 2016 in order for him to work with us, see all the processes, the printing, binding and everything else. He acquired a real understanding of what our processes were actually about, rather than only having an abstract view from discussions and data. This made a good impression on the staff here. We could show him what each member’s role was and their importance within the company.

We have standup calls at seven a.m. every day. We can see the work being done and discuss it using Basecamp. It’s a very good collaboration. When something is nailed down in terms of what needs to be done by Trigent, they generally beat their assigned deadlines. I have a dedicated project manager who keeps things in focus and a very good team of programmers with whom I can communicate well. We schedule and manage the development process effectively. Any time a deadline is not met, it will be because I haven’t given Trigent the information they need to accomplish the work. Trigent’s own process is excellent. 

What distinguishes Trigent from other providers?

I have not worked with many companies in terms of development, but I have worked with vendors for support, product implementation and so on. I would put Trigent within the top one or two percent of all software companies I’ve worked with for support, overall responsiveness and quality of work.

RATINGS

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

We're an accounts receivable outsourcing company. We typically partner with manufacturing companies dealing with deductions in the accounts receivable world. In other words, our clients are offering a product to their customers, creating invoices and receiving short payments for them. There may be deductions for promotional items, shipment delays, or any number of things. Our company helps them by analyzing those deductions and trying to recuperate that money. We bill our clients based on a percentage of what we're able to collect for them.

What is your position?

I am a controller in the company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with Trigent?

We try to integrate some technology into the process in order to do our job quicker. We sometimes outsource the development effort, which is where Trigent came in.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement.

Trigent helped us with a Microsoft SharePoint migration for our site. We've hired them on two different occasions, each related to SharePoint. There was an initial setup as well as an enhancement project.

We had weekly calls with them and dealt primarily with a team lead. Typically, there were two or three other resources on the call with us and I'm sure that there were many others working behind-the-scenes.

How did you come to work with Trigent?

We found them through a web search. Trigent has many overseas employees, but they do have headquarters in the Boston area, so we contacted them locally and got the ball rolling. We only considered two other companies, one local and one offshore, before settling on Trigent.

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

We've spent around $20,000 for the development with Trigent across two projects.

What is the status of this engagement?

The work has completed. Our internal team has become sufficiently versed in order to allow us to make changes, additions, and edits. If something that was beyond their capabilities came up, we would consider Trigent as a viable outsourcing option.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

We're a widely-dispersed company, operating nationwide. Our staff is divided into small pockets of two to three people in each state, so communication can become difficult. SharePoint has been an ideal tool for us and we wouldn't be abe to take advantage of it without the support of Trigent. We've used it since its implementation and it has proven to be a wonderful thing. We are able to communicate across the country and share documents much easier.

Because we represent our clients transparently, we become embedded into their teams. Through SharePoint, we're able to have a client email address which we can use as our own company email. It opened up a backdoor between two worlds, allowing them to work together while also being separate.

How did Trigent perform from a project management standpoint?

When dealing with their overseas group, two potential barriers were taken into account. The first one was communication, which may not have been a big issue for the team lead, but it did get tough when dealing with backend support. The general time zone difference was also significant. When we were working, they were sleeping, and vice versa. This worked out well in one regard: Trigent would work on things during the night and we could see all the changes in the morning, having an opportunity to digest them and create a question list which their team would start working on again. The hard part was the lack of physical conversations and interaction.

Trigent was definitely in budget, but there were delays with regards to initial project timing. A lot of this had to do with the amount of data that we needed to migrate. Downloading it took a long time, which was underestimated. We came to be a few weeks behind as a result, but we stayed within the dollar budget.

The second project was smaller, and by that time, we had gotten to know each other better and knew what to expect. It ran without issues.

We didn't use any specialized project management tools. Communication was done through PowerPoint documents and spreadsheets.

What distinguishes Trigent from other providers?

They have a presence in the US, acting as their sales group, and they're competitively priced due to their overseas resources. Communication may have been a little difficult, but overall, they delivered a good product.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

We are a financial consulting firm based in Boston, operating seven satellite offices in the US. Our primary services include traditional investment consulting and we also have a discretionary line of business. We are a small to mid-sized firm, with around 260 employees.

What is your position?

I am an IT manager in the company. I manage our business applications and project management functions.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with Trigent?

We had a need for developing custom business applications. There were no off-the-shelf solutions that fit our requirements and we did not have any in-house development resources. We looked to outsource the development work and hired Trigent for this purpose.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement.

Our application was initially built using the .NET Silverlight platform. We soon after reached out to Trigent for some SharePoint web development as well.

On the .NET side, the application developed by them was aimed at what we call "managed research". It's a function we perform for clients who are looking to compare investment managers. Our research team needs to collect and restore a lot of data from various sources and produce PowerPoint decks which have comparison points for selected managers, as well as internal and external commentary. We create templates based on various asset classes used. Our research team can produce what we call "search books" quickly. Prior to having this application, everything was done in Excel, and producing just one of these books would take days. The same operations now take us 2-3 hours, so it was a significant success.

The SharePoint project was the first extranet that we'd ever built for clients. It gave us a way for loading documents, either generic ones, for certain client types, or specific to one client and their plans. We implemented the appropriate permissions around this and had an easy way of uploading and maintaining documents, as well as letting clients maintain their own access going forward. They can give user permissions as they see fit, from their side.

The initial .NET development project had a large team assigned to it, consisting of around 5-6 resources, including a dedicated project manager. We brought some of the Indian developers to Boston for the requirements gathering. It was a brand-new application, so it entailed a lot of upfront establishing of requirements. This was done within a two-week face-to-face period.

The SharePoint team was definitely smaller, with only one or two resources.

How did you come to work with Trigent?

I wasn't working for the company at the time, but I believe that Trigent was found through an internet search coupled with reference checking. Cost was an important consideration at the time. It was the first outsourced development project that my company undertook, so they were looking for reasonable rates.

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

The ongoing maintenance of our software has a yearly cost of $80,000-100,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We initially started working together four or five years ago. Since the initial projects, we've maintained a relationship for ongoing application support with Trigent, which we renew every six months, taking into account expected work volume.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

We've gained efficiencies in our daily operations across various teams. We've run several additional projects for our research application in order to add functionality and tweak elements. It's now a very stable platform, and in fact, we have a hard time filling our contracted maintenance queue.

On the SharePoint side, there's been some turnover in terms of resources from Trigent. There have been gaps with regards to the knowledge transfer. We sometimes have to start again with new resources, explaining how things work. We've insisted on keeping enough documentation for the software. We don't have a fulltime SharePoint administrator, but we do have enough material in order to handle the first troubleshooting steps and understand whatever it is that we would need. We can usually make an initial assessment of a situation before turning things over to Trigent for additional research. It has been beneficial for our internal skillsets.

We have many disparate SharePoint processes, including CRM [customer relationship management] synchronizations, so building up a knowledge-base has been important. The system is functional at this point, even though it's not the best-looking solution ever made. This is more to do with our initial specifications.

How did Trigent perform from a project management standpoint?

They've been on-time and within the specified budget for the most part. Nothing has ever derailed a project, but there have been gaps in some of the improvement projects we've undertaken, involving mostly things which were lost in translation and not detected until our quality assurance runs. As we identified problems, we always put in place another checklist item in order to close the gap for subsequent projects.

In the past, each of our teams made its own internal test plan, and we didn't review them together. Until testing, we would not discover that some requirements may have been misunderstood and didn't meet our initial needs. For the most part, it was a very good working relationship. We had the same project manager as the main point of contact for a number of years. He exchanged one year ago, but the transition was very smooth. Trigent has been very open and engaged with us in terms of joint project management activities, making sure that we are getting the most out of our time and aren't losing ground or having scope creep.

There has been some staff turnover within Trigent, but there was never an instance in which we specifically requested the replacement of a specific resource.

What distinguishes Trigent from other providers?

I've always felt that they are open and engaging in terms of making improvements, no matter what those may be. Sometimes, a vendor will tend to make excuses if something goes wrong or is not up-to-par. Trigent does not have that response. If they ever make a mistake, they will say so. They've always been forthright, which has made it easy to have discussions when there was something to be improved.

Is there anything Trigent could have improved or done differently?

Sometimes, the general communication was not ideal. In the past, we needed to reach out to them for status reporting and they weren't timely about maintenance issues or ongoing project work. We've worked together actively in improving that process. We put steps in place in order to ensure that expectations on response time and things of this nature were set. We've created a workflow for maintenance queues and have an automated notification system. Everyone is aware of new issues and what their priorities are.

General documentation was always an aspect which would fall through the cracks. We've made an effort to ensure that this would always be part of the project plan, especially for technical documentation. We found ourselves in the position of having to ask for documents years later, after the original developer would have left the company. Unless we specifically asked for it, it wasn't something that Trigent automatically did. This is also an area in which we've made improvements.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

We specialize in benefits administration and order processing for courts and state agencies. We work on behalf of different corporations, as an outsourced service.

What is your position?

I am the Director of Administration Services and IT.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with Trigent?

We were in a growth period and needed to build some efficiencies within our existing system, moving towards a new, user-friendly solution. It needed to flow differently and address the specific needs of our order processing. We reached out to Trigent in order to develop a new system.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement.

Trigent has developed a web-based workflow system for us, with data entry and document processing capabilities. The technology used was chosen at the recommendation of Trigent.

In terms of the actual screen flows and the general flow of the data, as it pertains to the documents that we need to process, there has been a great improvement. What used to require a lot of clicking and opening in order to enter data, is now displayed with the flow of a normal document, speeding up the process. There used to be calculations that were done manually, outside of the system and prone to errors. They're now done within the actual tool, which was a huge efficiency boost.

Trigent has helped implement and enhance our reporting mechanisms in order for us to look at productivity and review the data which is sent to our clients. We do have this requirement from some of our collaborators. It used to be manually driven, requiring us to create it outside of the system on Excel spreadsheets.

Trigent was in charge of the full initial design, starting from scratch, and also worked on the second phase. Once we had the functional system in place, I worked with them in order to make some tweaks and fixes.

We're a small company and this was the first time we undertook a project of this size. We made it clear that we didn't have the necessary technical skills and were depending on them to guide us in terms of what would be best for our business. Trigent has been by our side through this flow. The specifications for the project came about through our conversations with them. There was a two-week period in which their team was present at our headquarters day in and day out, fleshing out what the specifications needed to be, based on our needs.

There was a team of five people assigned to our work, including a project manager, two testers, and the developers themselves.

How did you come to work with Trigent?

I can’t be sure because I wasn’t here for the selection process.

What is the status of this engagement?

I wasn't present in the company when we first started the project. We've now activated a support arrangement that also includes ongoing development work. They're continuing to make enhancements for us each month, based on our feedback and guidance.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

Making actual measurements of success has been difficult to do, but I can say that what used to take us 20-30 days in order to process an order, is now a five-day operation. It was a massive improvement which has enabled us to pick up additional clients without a significant need for additional hiring.

How did Trigent perform from a project management standpoint?

Trigent was always good in terms of maintaining timelines, and any delays were on our part.

The only area in which we've had to ask for additional information was billing and reconciliation. We wanted to make sure that what we'd accomplished equated to our budget. Because we're not technical, there was additional difficulty in understanding how development time was spent and how it impacted our budget.

We collaborate through an application called Bugzilla. We communicate with our project manager, letting him know what issues we want to work on each month. Based on what we report to him, he will make prioritizations, which are submitted and tracked through our tool.

What distinguishes Trigent from other providers?

Working on projects of this kind can usher moments in which the client won't see eye to eye with the developer. There may be questions and misunderstandings on certain things. It's natural to go through this, but overall, we've had a good relationship with Trigent. I can email and call them at any time and get a response. I haven't gotten this personal touch from any other vendor I've worked with. It's important to have this, given the nature of what we do. Quick response times and having someone available to help us is something which we have with Trigent.

Is there anything Trigent could have improved or done differently?

They have improved significantly in helping us understand billing components in terms of the amount of work and the costs associated with their operations. If they could continue to improve this, it would be even better, especially for people who are not technically-oriented. Other than this, they've been very black-and-white. Whenever we went through designs and specifications, Trigent has been thorough in making sure that they can grasp everything required by us in an enhancement and working through a gray area. After a development run, it's important not to have to go back and mention again that we wanted features X, Y, and Z.

Any prospecting clients who lack development experience should make sure that they ask about any issue on which they're unclear, and understand that they're working with a team of technical experts whose job is to correctly relay a business need, translating it effectively into a particular software application. The client shouldn't be afraid to ask the right questions and make sure that the development team received the right information in order to create the product.