Denologix

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the president and CEO of See Me Hire Me, world's first fully integrated video based Human Resource Solution. We have simplified the process of evaluating and hiring candidates online using video, messenger and integrated email. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Denologix?

The pace of technology advancement is clearly visible to all of us. The impact it has on all of our personal lives and careers is also quite evident to all of us, however, not all of us are aware of the effort, time and cost to an organization of keeping up with the dynamic nature of business trends and peoples’ needs.

Our goal was to provide a platform to enable long term relationships between organizations with their immediate and evolving needs and candidates that may want to explore the opportunities immediately or cultivate the relationship for a future possible opportunity.

The platforms available in the market place were focused on superficial matching of opportunity with candidates as quickly as possible without a 360 view of the opportunity or the candidate’s skills and needs.

What were your goals for this project?

We wanted a system to enable long-term relationship management between the hiring organization and the candidates. The process should be simple to adapt, streamlined to avoid delays and errors, and intuitive for a large community of users. Our objective was to make the process of maintaining a long-term relationship between the hiring organization and the candidates, as simple as possible for all parties by automating the process and taking responsibilities of the technology and complexity that powers this platform.

SOLUTION

How did you select Denologix?

We evaluated several technology providers to fulfil our specific needs and only Denologix was able to demonstrate that they have the technical depth and breadth of knowledge and experience necessary to take-on this challenging task and deliver it successfully.

In addition, Denologix was the only organization in line with our philosophy and strategy of building a long-term relationship instead of a short-term supply and demand transaction.

Describe the project in detail.

In order to get a 360-degree view of the client’s requirements and candidates skills, our application had to have an advanced and easy to use interface that is powered by advanced data management and analytical capabilities.

Denologix worked closely with our team to understand our specific and evolving requirements, and came up with advanced technological solutions incrementally using an agile and flexible approach. The organizations have the ability to store and dynamically enhance the organizational profiles, position requirements and keep track of the relative success of each hiring process.

The position requirements are supplemented with dynamic questions and answers to dig deep and find out about the soft skills that are often not captured by resumes and cover letters. The tele-communication advancements also allow hiring of remote workers if they happen to be the best fit.

The Denologix team helped us create online streaming capabilities to meet with candidates online, review video profiles and stay in touch via messaging services.

As impressive as the addition of these online capabilities are for our application, what sets our solution apart is that all these technologies are integrated with the candidate profile, hiring position organizational needs and overall organizational profile.

This creates a strong chain of understanding and trust between the organization and the candidate.

What was the team composition?

Denologix assigned a full-time liaison and project manager dedicated to our project. He was in-turn supported by 5 consultants with specific specializations in front-end GUI developments, database management, analytics and back-end algorithmic logic development. Denologix team supported our team of experienced and dedicated subject matter experts, analysts, quality assurance and quality control professionals.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We are extremely pleased with the outcome of this project. Given the scope of this project, Denologix not only met but exceeded our expectations for achieving the desired leading-edge functionality in a relatively short-time and within our budget.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Denologix maintained the same liaison and project manager throughout the life of the project. Our team met with him on a weekly basis and they stayed in touch throughout the project to have immediate visibility and clarity of any issues. Denologix used a very customized spread-sheet to keep track of issues and requirements.

Denologix also provided a separate environment within their own secure infrastructure for our team to test and get the system ready for promotion to the production environment.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Denologix’ philosophy of investing in their clients coupled with their take on the client’s success as their own sets them apart from other companies in our experience. Everyone uses the long-term relationship as a tagline but Denologix demonstrated strong commitment towards this goal.

We don’t have any specific suggestion for recommendation for area of improvement, but we would like them to maintain their philosophy of building long-term relationships and commitment to investment in leading-edge technologies so that they can continue to lead the way.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the director of IT at a clinical research company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Denologix?

We were looking for assistance with deploying a SAS server on premise. Previously, we had been using the workstation version and were looking for some help moving up to the server platform.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

This project was for the implementation of SAS Office Analytics Server to support multiple concurrent users based on requirements set in our industry’s regulations. We wanted to have a fully validated implementation of the server platform to replace the workstation software we were using.

There was a whole lot of documentation that accompanied that because of our regulatory requirements. Denologix completed that documentation around system validation and did some of the technical setups as well.

The requirements and industry regulations for pharmaceutical related systems are quite complicated. Denologix helped with writing test cases and creating a validation plan, and at the end, they provided the validation summary.

What is the team composition?

We didn’t have a consistent project manager assigned due to health issues. We know it wasn’t their fault, though.

How did you come to work with Denologix?

They were recommended by SaaS Canada and were local to us. Since we had a short timeline, we felt that having a local partner just a couple of hours away would be easier to work with.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent between $50,000-$100,000 CAD (approximately $37,823–$75,646 USD).

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in 2018 and the collaboration lasted six months.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Their technical know-how was very helpful in speeding up the implementation. The server increases the collaboration, reduces licensing costs, and allows for more consistent workflows.

How did Denologix perform from a project management standpoint?

They were out of their comfort zone on this. The documentation that we requested was so far out of their normal requirements that it was really a learning experience for them. They took a fair bit of assistance from us, but they were able to complete it. They definitely could’ve done better with communication, but part of that was due to some staff turnover.

What did you find most impressive about them?

There’s not a lot of people in Canada that are doing what they’re specialized in. They certainly have some very large, well-recognized Canadian clients, which gives them some credibility.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I suggest that they add more staff. Denologix should have dedicated technical writers to assist with some of these projects. When there’s a situation like ours that’s very technical and demands highly specialized resources, they should really be spending their time doing the technical things and not so much on documentation.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Make sure that the statement of work is very well crafted and that both parties really understand what the capabilities and deliverables are.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the VP of IT at a Canadian investment company. In my role, I’m responsible for client reporting and data management.
 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Denologix?

Our company needed professional consulting to build and test proof of concept for a new data architecture and migration to the cloud.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Denologix worked with our business from project inception to implementation. They created a data lake from the legacy data store. The team handled the migration to cloud using a variety of AWS tools. It uses a relational database service (RDS). 

Through a web service called Elastic MapReduce (EMR), it processes data using a Hadoop open- source framework. It transforms operational data using Talend and stores it in the data lake for advanced business analytics, machine learning, and artificial intelligence.

What is the team composition? 

We worked with a lead developer and two business analysts from Denologix.

How did you come to work with Denologix?

Having worked with Denologix before, I knew they had the necessary expertise for this project. I considered other companies, but most were more expensive and too rigid in their consulting structure.  

How much have you invested with them?

We spent between $100,000–$200,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked with Denologix for two months this year, from April-June 2018.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Denologix’s work will have a transformational impact on our company. They tested the new architecture with multiple datasets. Based on the results, it seems incredibly efficient. We are now doing some internal work before we roll out architecture on a larger scale. 

How did Denologix perform from a project management standpoint?

Denologix sent us weekly timesheets with information from the analysts and lead developer. The documentation was consistently detailed and thorough. The owner of Denologix, was involved in our project, and I could contact him when needed. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

Denologix wasn’t “salesy” and never tried to run up their hours to increase the cost.  I appreciated their honesty and admired their expertise. I would definitely consider working with them for related projects in the future

Are there any areas they could improve?

I wanted Denologix to get my team more involved in understanding the development. They offered some training and education, so they partially accommodated my request. Overall, I’m pleased with their work.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

My current title at Prognos is managing consultant, but in practice I am the head of support services for all analytic pricing solutions for our company. We offer consulting services and analytic solutions in retail. During the project with Denologix, I was the team lead of implementation services for pricing.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Denologix?

For this particular project, we were partnering with SAS to provide certain services to our client. Our expertise is in analytics and mathematical solutions to business problems, so most of our employees are mathematicians or computer scientists. At the time we did not have any internal expertise in cloud-hosted services, however, as part of this contract revenue optimization, we needed someone who was familiar with everything concerning use of the cloud. They also needed to have knowledge of security constraints for multi-server infrastructure. We lacked that SAS administration capability, and that is what we sought in Denologix.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

First, the team led by Ahmad Damra [Senior Architect, Denologix Inc.] installed revenue optimization for us on the Amazon Cloud. Second, they configured user administration for us on the cloud, and implemented a client-directed security protocol. All of the infrastructure related to security dictated by the client was mandatory for our contractual needs. Third, they built custom solutions for quality assessment infrastructure, so that the data copies to and from the servers. Finally, they developed a web-based application to facilitate us using all of the above on an ongoing basis. In other words, they created a frontend for all of their scripts in order to allow non-programmers to easily execute their tasks within this system.

What is the team composition?

Ahmad was our project lead. Later on during the work process, he transferred his knowledge to a Prognos consultant.

How did you come to work with Denologix?

I had worked with Ahmad previously on a project very similar to this one. Additionally, both my company and Denologix are SAS partners, which made the collaboration more straightforward.

How much have you invested with them?

We invested approximately US$75,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

The work was completed between September 2015 and May 2016.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Unfortunately, I cannot make a quantitative assessment of their work’s benefit for our client, other than to say that they created a very supportable tool that we will use in an ongoing basis to build a profitable model for our clients.

How did Denologix perform from a project management standpoint?

Similar to our company, Denologix’s employees are made up of subject matter experts in a very niche field. They did not need to be directed on their day-to-day task load, and they often gave us guidance on best practices. For the most part, they are very self-motivated. They did the work that was asked of them, but they also contributed in a way that utilized their own prior knowledge and experience to help finesse our procedures regarding this project. We communicated primarily through email and phone calls.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their subject matter expertise distinguishes them from other companies with whom we have worked in the past. There is a relatively small community of people who work in revenue optimization as partners for SAS, and an even smaller group of people who do that very well. Denologix is among that latter group, and Ahmad is an expert at what he does. Denologix is a very good partner, and they always build something that can be supported on an ongoing basis. It was a pretty flexible and easy-to-navigate process with our consultant.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

When you are dealing with big, out-of-the-box solutions, it is important to have people who know the subject very well, but who also understand it very broadly and know precisely what the tool is supposed to be doing for the business to drive revenue. Make sure that you are engaging a partner who can do all of the above for you and your company.