Client Interview w/ Clutch
"They are extremely reliable. Maruti Techlabs is one of the few providers I've worked with that estimates a timeline on a given task and delivers within it. That's a rare quality among developers. It allows me to trust the timeline and work accordingly."
- CEO, Buzzz Media.
The Clutch team reached out to Buzzz Media to know more about their experience of working with Maruti Techlabs. This is a 1:1 interview that delves deep into the overall engagement, how we work, project management and more. Some excerpts from the interview-
Building Custom Media Management SaaS Product Under 12 Weeks
CASE STUDY
Challenge
Before their entrepreneurial venture, the founders had worked in multiple ad agencies in South Africa. They came across a roadblock commonly faced by the advertising world - managing multiple different ad campaigns across various channels.
Managing different ad campaigns across various channels was cumbersome and mostly a manual process. The existing platforms for multiple aspects of ads (like keeping track of budgets, ad analytics, strategizing, compliances, etc.) worked in independent silos. It led to a cluttered experience and broken processes, with advertisers tracking different software platforms for different metrics. The incohesive setup also resulted in serious time sinks and decreased efficiency.
This lack of a unified system prompted the founders to come up with the idea of Buzzz Media, an automated media management SaaS platform for end-to-end management of advertisements on different channels.
For this, the founders were looking to validate the idea. After going through some freelancing websites, the founders hired external developers to get started with the project.
They had started the product development process. But the project was deserted as soon as it began due to a conflict of interest between founders and developers. Lack of satisfaction, clear communication, and poor quality work led to the founders discontinuing the association with previous developers.
The founders were now looking for someone to pick up where the previous developers had left and mend the existing code.
Solution
The founders were now searching for consistent and reliable developers who had experience in handling complex projects. Their search ended when one of their business development managers came across Maruti Techlabs on Clutch and suggested our name to the team.
After a couple of meetings, we started the engagement with a pilot task. Right from the get-go, Maruti Techlabs' developers corrected the inconsistencies present in the system. The founders were pleased with the output on the pilot task, post which they locked in Maruti Techlabs as their product development partner.
As we had inherited incomplete code and a half-baked product from the client, it became crucial to research and map further steps of action to work through the technical debt. Here's how we went about the process:
○ We carried out an end-to-end discovery workshop with the stakeholders.
○ It spanned two weeks, depending on where the client was with their code and how much the system was built.
○ This workshop enabled us to deeply analyze the existing tech stack, workflows, code organization, architecture, backlog, and more.
○ The workshop's output was a blueprint that enabled both teams to map out a detailed short-term roadmap of 90 days, coupled with a roadmap of 180 days for the long term
Our client, Buzzz Media, is a SaaS company focused on the media management space. Buzzz Media provides a platform to media and ad agencies for end-to-end management of media spend and budgets across various platforms such as TV, newspapers, magazines, online channels, and more.
Disclaimer: The name Buzzz Media is a placeholder as there is an NDA signed between both parties.
Your product idea.
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& seamless execution.
What Challenges did Maruti Techlabs Overcome & Solve?
After the 2-week workshop, Maruti Techlabs' team faced & overcame the following challenges in the inherited codebase:
○ The entities were linked wrongly by the previous developers in some screens that we corrected.
○ There was an absence of consistency in the system, be it in user messages or the order of buttons.
○ The code was not as per industry benchmark and best practices.
○ The database was not normalized.
○ On every save, entire related records would get deleted and had to be inserted again.
○ There was no proper error handling & the backend errors were displayed to a user in the same manner.
○ There were many issues/bugs within the existing functionality.
○ No proper documentation was available.
○ The database was previously designed to have no option to perform 'update' functionality, which made it harder to maintain the history.
○ In the database, there were many records nested under one another. It led to repeated insertion and deletion of records again and again, even for the tiniest of changes.
The first order of things for Maruti Techlabs was to work on achieving code consistency and code reusability.
"Maruti Techlabs' developers ask a lot of questions while at the same time providing guidance on how to resolve issues. Our collaboration feels like a partnership, and it works really well."
- CEO, Buzzz Media.
Communication & Collaboration
Maruti Techlabs team communicated with the client regularly, which helped streamline expectations and the next steps. It ensured zero gaps in expectations and that our team and Buzzz Media were always on the same page.
We used JIRA extensively for task creation, sprint management, backlog grooming, and roadmap tracking. We used Google Calendar to mark the deliverables and held two weekly sync meetings on Skype to brief on the development progress. We used Slack for day-to-day communication.
Technology Stack
Result
✔️We resolved the previous issues, developed various features, and integrated third-party tools.
✔️Buzzz Media now has a secure database that is accessible from all domains.
✔️We changed Buzzz Media's commission from yearly to monthly for each user's product advertisement flow plan, ensuring timely payment.
✔️The drop-off percentage decreased by 50%
✔️We saved time, resources & increased maintainability by writing reusable code & normalizing the database.
✔️Our developers helped Buzzz Media go live with the product's first version in 12 weeks by structuring things out.
✔️We shaped the final product by helping them find product-market fit via iterative user feedback.
The partnership between Buzzz Media and Maruti Techlabs has been nothing short of phenomenal. Recently, Buzzz Media secured Series A funding, and we, at Maruti Techlabs, are delighted to be a part of their exciting journey. We look forward to scaling the product and expanding it to a larger user base over 2022.
Our Development Process
We follow Agile, Lean, & DevOps best practices to create a superior prototype that brings your users’ ideas to fruition through collaboration & rapid execution. Our top priority is quick reaction time & accessibility.
We really want to be your extended team, so apart from the regular meetings, you can be sure that each of our team members is one phone call, email, or message away.
How We Work?
Requirement Analysis
By getting a clear understanding of client requirements, we identify key objectives & make informed assumptions about the final product. Our team defines priorities & sets requirement parameters that facilitate the UI design for the next stage.
UI & System Design
Here, ideation and conceptualization help define all the inputs and tools required for the development. Interactive mockups and wireframes help achieve this and build a stable system design for the initial prototype.
Development
Based on the plan of action, our expert engineers get to work to quickly dole out a prototype and implement the feedback received on the system design to increase the product's usability before it moves on to the testing phase.
Testing
Real performance and quality improvements happen at this stage through several iterative testing rounds that involve bug fixes, code improvements, feature testing, and much more. Once a stable version is prepared, it is presented to the client for approval.
Deployment
After much refining of the code, the prototype is ready to be deployed once again in the user environment for functionality feedback and user response. This feedback is vital to make final improvements to the code and use it for the final product.
Why choose Maruti Techlabs?
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Maruti Techlabs is an agile-powered digital product development company and your guide on the digital transformation journey. We are a team of passionate, purpose-led individuals that obsess over creating innovative solutions to address our clients’ challenges and deliver unparalleled value.
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