Spiria

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Business Solution Manager for Agriculture of Norterafoods

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Norterafoods is a company in the processing and sale of ready-to-eat vegetables, offering a wide range of fresh, frozen and canned products to promote healthy and sustainable eating.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Spiria to accomplish?

• IT Mission: Development, optimization, innovation

SOLUTION

How did you find Spiria?

Referral

Why did you select Spiria over others?

Referred to me

How many teammates from Spiria were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

Setting up GitLab instances and automation pipeline:

• Understand, explain and document the GitLab and AWS infrastructure for our application.
• Ensure the correct configuration of AWS services for the operation of our custom application.
• Explain AWS troubleshooting, monitoring and alerting tools to diagnose potential errors
• Set up new feature development capabilities
• Ensure the stability and proper functioning of the application

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

• Implementation of one of our applications, functional.
• Significant reduction in implementation times, improved system performance, and increased end-user satisfaction.

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

Their project management was exemplary. Everything went perfectly well, with deliverables submitted on time. We had weekly meetings to discuss progress, and the status was constantly reviewed against the budget. The management was impeccable, responding to our needs with responsiveness and efficiency.

What was your primary form of communication with Spiria?

Virtual Meeting

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

What impressed me most about Spiria was their ability to combine technical expertise, flexibility, and speed.

Are there any areas for improvement or something Spiria could have done differently?

Our collaboration was perfect, I have no suggestions for improvement.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the CIO of HealthPRO Procurement Services Inc. We are a healthcare group purchasing and services company in Canada.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Spiria?

We have hired Spiria for a variety of projects over the last several years including a complete rebuild of our public website. The project of this discussion has been the complete redesign of our customer/member portal including all UX/UI components.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

Because we have worked with Spiria in the past, and have always been delighted with their work, and their ability to meet project and budget deadlines it was a no-brainer.

Describe the project in detail and walk through the stages of the project.

Their team conducted extensive interviews with our staff and our members, gathering user feedback and detailed information and current state shortcomings and future state vision. From there, they broke down the portal into separate and areas, reduced redundancy, and made sure that the portal was more intuitive and user friendly.

They also worked to streamline the user journey. Because of the scope of the ask it took two months, but they produced a prototype. We had to pause this project temporarily due to internal issues unrelated to this project or Spiria. However, we will resume this project shortly.

How many resources from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

We had six people from Spiria work with us. Project Manager CX/UX Research Lead Strategy UX & UI Account Manager Senior Director – National Sales

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

I am pleased with the deliverables from Spiria team. The UX/UI prototype has been well received by all stakeholders and the feedback has been positive. Their work also perfectly reflects the vision we had at the start, helping us create a user-friendly and easy-to-navigate member portal.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

The project manager, Strategy team, and CX/UX/UI team were amazing to work with. They communicated often and provided us frequent updates. Because of COVID all our meetings and workshops were virtual but it worked fine. Feedback was almost exclusively done through the workshops, but some follow-up was through email. Everything was delivered on time and to our satisfaction.

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

Their ability to take a very disparate set of requirements from a variety of sources we provided them and the have them return a cohesive and brilliant solution was just brilliant.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

No areas of improvement needed for our latest engagement with Spiria.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I was the general manager of the music and video division of Shutterstock, a stock media company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Spiria?

We wanted to develop a digital music asset management system and needed to hire help.

What were your goals for this project?

The project had two objectives. The first was to transfer a legacy system to more modern web architecture. The second was to enhance the system with multiple layers of analytic functions and digital asset management tools.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

We had tried another vendor without success. We heard of Spiria through a contact of ours, so we met them and gave them a test, which resulted in us hiring them.

Describe the project in detail.

They conducted an analysis of the current system and proposed an architecture for the new one. After that, Spiria transferred the legacy system to their proposed architecture and developed the new layers of analytics features. They also conducted user testing, refined the product, and deployed it.

What was the team composition?

They assigned a project manager, an analyst, and one to two coders based on the schedule. On our side, we had a product manager handling the relationship with Spiria. Our VP of technology was also involved, and myself for the financial and contractual part.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

The new system increases our content acquisition team’s productivity while greatly improving their insight on which digital assets sell, resulting in better asset production and selections. With that new system, our team was able to focus on high-value tasks, and we were able to increase our volume by four times without having to hire more people.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

We had good communication through Spiria’s project management platform.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

The level of attention they provided was remarkable. They were focused on our needs and on delivering a solution, not just clocking hours like other firms we'd worked with in the past.

Are there any areas for improvement?

They used a rigid form of agile development which can require some adjustment from the internal team. Besides that, all was good.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I’m the CEO and owner of nForm Solutions. We create integration and content solutions for enterprise software and its users.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Spiria?

We hired Spiria to develop our web application and its APIs from end to end.

What were your goals for this project?

We wanted to create an MVP to start sales and eventually invest in further development.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

I was looking for a vendor with experience, a good track record, and an Agile philosophy. The vendor had to be proficient in all layers of development.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

We came in with a design and improved it together via functional sessions. All their developers helped to document our stories and start a technical analysis. This allowed us to avoid technical pitfalls and cut future costs. Spiria then provided the UI, analyst, and programming staff to complete the sprints and deliver stories as expected. They also provided QA and testing consulting and training. Finally, they arranged cloud-based hosting.

What was the team composition?

I worked with an account executive during the contractual phase and then transitioned to a project manager. They also provided 2–4 analysts/developers, a UX/UI designer, when needed, and a QA/testing specialist, when needed.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any information that demonstrates the impact that this project has had on your business?

I have a great product that’s much easier to use than a typical MVP is. It’s professional and modern and will deliver lasting value to our company, allowing us to go to market with confidence.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

The project manager acted as our main point of contact. They also identified our priorities and assigned tasks during sprints. Being a project manager myself, I find their level of involvement just right, although I don’t receive the expected/promised reports on most occasions, or they’re very late.

Their team uses Jira and GitHub to manage and deliver the code, and I have access to Jira to enter new stories, manage my priorities, and read comments. This has been a textbook Agile collaboration.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

I’ve been impressed by how passionate they are and their creative, cost-sensitive approach to finding solutions. Their level of documentation and detail in communication is also amazing. They know what they know, and they don’t pretend to understand something they don’t. If they lack knowledge in a certain area, they’ll ask for the funds to investigate it. I call this ethical IT.

Are there any areas for improvement?

Their project management reporting and reaction time could be improved. For instance, it would be good to know what to expect, when. Regardless, it’s a minor issue and has had little impact on product delivery. When providing estimates to clients, they ought to always include the overhead, not just pure development time. Unit testing should be performed on the client acceptance testing environment before releasing the test to the client. Failing to do so creates false bugs.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Presagis provides an integrated and comprehensive suite of commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) software for the development of modeling, simulation, and embedded display graphics applications. Our team is committed to helping clients make informed decisions under complex conditions by providing integrated solutions that are easy to use yet meet the rigorous demands of even the most advanced modeling and simulation applications.

Presagis’ vision is to make the future safe and predictable by providing software that can help clients reduce development risk, improve time to market, and reduce costs.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Spiria?

Custom software integration

What were your goals for this project?

Enhance our product with a time critical delivery

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

Recommandation

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

Undisclosed

What was the team composition?

Undisclosed

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any information that demonstrates the impact that this project has had on your business?

Good reception and feedback from our customer base

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

Project managed internally

What did you find most impressive about this company?

They have a variety of skills and are always responsive.

Are there any areas for improvement?

reaction time on issues and corrective measures