BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I work as a senior category manager at a software marketplace. We sell enterprise software as a part of a larger enterprise store or digital channel. My responsibilities include developing go-to markets for the top third-party products sold through our company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenges were you trying to address with ThirdEye Data?

We hired ThirdEye Data to develop our latest customer-ready solution. As part of the go-to-market process, we produce content for various stages of the customer journey. We wanted to build a solution that provides users with opportunities to gain experience implementing solutions via our marketplace. Our solution teaches clients in similar situations how to migrate to the cloud, implement devices, and use machine learning to create what we term a “real data pipeline.”

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

A critical part of our workflow involves combining multiple marketplace solutions. For our engagement with ThirdEye Data, we used a storage solution from SoftNet and a TIBCO Spotfire analytical R server. To locate movement between on-premises and cloud, the team used AppUnity. Our open-source product is MySQL, and data is warehoused in the cloud via Amazon Redshift. The team used a Kony mobile application development product and secured the entire solution with Trend Micro Deep Security.

Rather than the programming languages in use, we focused on integrating multiple solutions and connecting the dots. Instead of using a single product for each discrete task, we used a combination of tools to build a real data pipeline. This task aimed to enable the organization to act upon external factors like public data sets, in this case. ThirdEye Data was also responsible for coordinating our combined solutions with different providers.

What is the team composition?

I’ve interacted directly with ThirdEye Data’s executive leadership. Early on in the cycle, a dedicated project manager became our main point of contact. They assigned us at least two developers and a documentation and manual writing specialist.

How did you come to work with ThirdEye Data?

I’d worked with ThirdEye data previously while I was with a different company. One of my employees there had found them during that time. Although I’d held a different position there, it had still been related to product management.

For this project, we hoped to expand areas of our business that we’d already been working on. My background is focused on big data. When the time came to produce this new solution, ThirdEye immediately came to mind. I hired them to partner with my current company.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent around $100,000–$200,000 on ThirdEye Data’s services.

What is the status of this engagement?

This project ran between July–December 2016. Building the entire solution took approximately 5-6 months.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We’re just starting the campaigns ThirdEye Data helped us build products for this month, so I don’t have metrics to share yet. Our internal company stakeholders have expressed interest in extending this solution to other categories. Users who have tried it so far are happy with how it works. The architects who’ve reviewed it affirmed that it provided many useful details and had been created at the right level.

Essentially, our new product has become a call-to-action for a few of our campaigns at specific customer interaction stages. At this point, we’ve published the solution ThirdEye Data helped us build on our website and presented it at an annual conference. I tried to embed our new product into existing portals that promote comparable solutions, but it’s so sophisticated that those systems couldn’t accommodate it. Instead, I created independent placeholders that could adequately map to previous work we’d done. We’re currently planning additional delivery mechanisms.

How did ThirdEye Data perform from a project management standpoint?

I was impressed by how well the team communicated with us throughout our engagement. They offered a notable level of availability, as well. The team is very agile and rapidly formulated useful ideas. Whenever we made requests, they quickly internalized our feedback to provide the best workable solution. We’ve had a good experience working with ThirdEye Data.

What did you find most impressive about them?

ThirdEye Data has demonstrably learned a great deal throughout their tenure as a development agency. They’ve has aggregated a substantial knowledge base from their numerous past projects. I most appreciated their expertise pertinent to building real data pipelines and creating chatbots. They’ve deftly narrowed their focus to certain technology spaces. In line with my preferences, they’d already completed comparable projects, rather this being their first endeavor of its kind.

ThirdEye Data’s high-level technical experience is a key differentiator from comparable agencies. Furthermore, this factor was also a critical reason I couldn’t have hired any other vendor. Had I done so, I would’ve had to validate that said team had successfully completed multiple client implementations. It was easy to affirm ThirdEye Data’s value proposition for our company in terms of solutions and documentation.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Since I had a very open dialogue with ThirdEye Data, I felt comfortable requesting a more complex technical writing approach. Their solution was fantastic and their documentation was thorough, but I had specific marketing goals in mind that required improved content.

Per my recommendation, they hired external technical writers to revamp that material. This observation is most relevant for future clients who plan to use ThirdEye Data’s assets for technical marketing content. It may not be required for a standard technical implementation.

Related Blogs:

• Should your company be open to open sourcing its software?
• The 4 Roles Your Chief Data Officer Must Play
• AI for Businesses Sake – How ThirdEye Data plans to do it