What do you need and how can we achieve it?
We’ll support and guide you to get the most out of technology in your business and operations. Our expertise spans four main areas. Below is a guide and exploration of our services and how we work towards them.
Our Services
- Do you have a complex technical sales process?
- Do you manage a team of engineers?
- Are you managing your business on spreadsheets?
If any of these apply to you, our new CRM and operations management system might be for you. It will take your projects all the way from lead to scheduling to invoicing.
- Are your website needs more complex than a simple brochure site or shop?
- Do you need to build a customer portal or intranet?
- Do you have an existing Drupal website?
If your needs are more complex than a simple brochure site, a site built on Drupal, arguably the best open source platform for complex websites, is probably for you.
We also have an off-the-shelf Drupal offering for sports clubs, including a members’ area at an affordable price.
Are you looking to build an app as an extra revenue stream, or as a new business venture?
We have developed our own framework for building apps. Specifically designed for data- and content-heavy uses, it allows us to be very competitive in our offerings.
And, we have already built subscription-based content apps, and things like takeaway ordering, so we always have a good starting point.
There are plenty of good software products for managing your business if your needs are quite standard. But what if they aren’t? Often we work with clients who are stumped with how to find a better way to managing complex data on spreadsheets. Where Nuvola adds value is to take one of our standard systems as a starting point, and bespoke it to our clients’ needs. This gives you the best combination of an off-the-shelf product and something designed specifically for your business, at a cost designed for smaller companies as well.
Working with us
In the following we set out how we as a software development company work. This is from initial conversation through to project end. This is so that you can better understand the processes and procedures we follow. This will in turn enable us to collaborate more effectively on your project.
At Nuvola we manage our projects in an agile way.
So what is agile? Agile is a way of working which enables us to work iteratively (known as sprints). This means that after each iteration we deliver a working piece of software for you to test which by the end of the process will equate to the full specification. Much like the image below!
Why do we work in this way?
Because it allows us to deliver at each point in the process and then based on your feedback adjust the project to deliver a better product on the next iteration. This means that you get to test the product at each stage of development and feedback problems and changes enabling us to adjust course as needed. This means that at the end of the last iteration you will have your all singing all dancing product.
Onboarding sequence
Initial Call and Discussion
When you use our booking link to book an initial ‘discovery call’ with us, we’ll send you a questionnaire to complete. This is a Google Form that helps us to understand your needs better and will make our initial call a lot more effective. You don’t have to fill this in, but it will help us understand you better if you do!
Our discovery call is a focussed video call where we talk about you and get to understand what you’re trying to achieve with your project. We talk about the high level requirements you need and what your current and future priorities are. Then we’ll show you some examples of our work and talk about how we might build what you need.
At the end of this, we’ll be able to produce a high level proposal. This will include a fixed price for the short scoping exercise to come, and an estimated price range for the project itself.
Project Scope
If you’re broadly happy with our proposal, the next stage is to scope out the project. The aim is to provide a functional specification which gives you clarity on what should be delivered. This enables us to give a fixed price for the rest of the project. This specification has real value (because you could use it to brief any supplier) and takes a significant amount of effort, therefore is delivered at a fixed price.
For most projects (there is also a ‘mini-scope’ for small projects which takes half the time), we’ll have a 2 hour workshop with you, either in person or by video call, depending on location. We drill down into detail on the requirements you’ve already outlined in the discovery process and challenge your and our assumptions. We’ll also talk about prioritisation – what is the ‘minimum viable product’ (MVP) that would allow us to deliver value as quickly as possible. We’ll then take our workshop notes and produce a set of screen flows which detail the specification, and a finalised proposal including pricing for the project and any phasing.
Development
Once our fixed price proposal is accepted and the contract is signed, we’ll start with the initial setup tasks for the project. There are some technical aspects to this (installing the development server), but also project management tasks. We use the Asana project management tool extensively, and for most projects we’ll create a project board, which we’ll give you access to so you can see how we’re progressing. This will include milestones and development tasks. We’ll then have a kick off meeting to show you how it works and explain how we plan to involve you in the process.
Our philosophy is that the more our clients get to see the system as it’s built, the easier it will be to test, release, and to use. This is because on the one hand we can get feedback early on and incorporate it into the system, and on the other you get familiar with the software before you actually have to use it. We do need and expect you to be able to make time to test though, but that time investment will bring rewards when the system is launched.
Post Launch
Once the system is live, our involvement doesn’t stop there. The monthly fee you pay covers use of our intellectual property, keeping the system running and any bug fixes within the original scope of work. But in general, we’ll look to have a review meeting a few weeks after release, to see how things are going. If there are any major concerns or barriers to adoption, we’ll work with you to see how they can be resolved.
If the project had been planned in phases, this will be your chance to review whether those phase 2 requirements are still the same – often a bit of use will make some things lower priority and throw up some other things that the software could solve. By this stage, we expect you’ll already be seeing the return on your investment.
Some our client relationships have lasted between 10 and 15 years. These companies see the value that our solutions deliver to their businesses and are repeatedly investing in new features to deliver yet more value. We look forward to you joining them!
Our expectations
In order for the project to progress as expected we require you to make time for the testing and feedback as and when required. It is an essential part of the process and we will not be able to complete the project without this. If you do not have capacity for this we can arrange for a contractor to complete this at your expense.
What you can expect
You can expect us to be professional in all of our dealings with your project. We will schedule sufficient time for the project and provide a forum for feedback. Should we encounter unanticipated problems we will inform you at our earliest convenience.
Communication
Once a project kicks off we will communicate with you primarily via our projects email address. This is so that all of the team are kept in the loop and this mitigates holidays etc. We will also use an asana project board where you will be able to see each of the stages of development. We are a paperless office and all documents will be provided electronically to you. We will provide you with access to a shared google drive folder for the duration of the project.