Full spectrum digitalconsultancy and services

June 2015

grexie

BACKGROUNDWe at Grexie believe that to get value from a product in today’s technology dominated market you need to work across a broad range of disci-plines in an integrated way. Whether you have an existing product that needs enhancements or you have an idea that needs help with conceptu-alization, our holistic approach is there to help you realize value in the most effective and timely way.

We bring all these aspects together into a mod-ular set of service offerings that can be used in a pick-and-mix way to suit the needs of any specif-ic client. By offering you a one-stop-shop for all your technology needs we save you the risk and cost of integrating piece parts from multiple con-tractors and vendors. We bring state-of-the-art craftsmanship to each service offering to opti-mize the quality of the parts as well as the whole.

We work with our clients for the long-term and are passionate about your success.

SERVICES IN DETAILThe Agile process is at the heart of everything we do, providing flexible and iterative path-ways through the sequencing of service mod-ules. Each service module has an important part to play.

Conception – turning ideas and commer-cial statements into a formal technical needs statement called a Blueprint.

Design – further ratifying the Blueprint into UI wireframes and mockups, representing these ideas back to stakeholders at every stage.

Architecture – once a broad picture has been established for the product being cre-ated we design a fit for purpose technology architecture.

Creation – a mature development process borne out of Agile which makes best use of the interconnection between the developers and product experts.

Digital Presence – full branding established in the design phase is realized in a solid digi-tal presence for the customer.

Commerce – we offer expertise in pay-ments: how best to monetise the product as well as technical integration into payments and e-commerce systems.

Analysis – feedback from the sensors em-bedded in the product lead to useful insights aimed at further enhancing the product of-fering or generation of new unique ideas. Thus the cycle begins again

Conception

Design

Architecture

CreationDigital Presence

Commerce

Analysis

01 // CONCEPTIONAll great products start with an idea. We can help formulate your thinking, guiding it into the creation of marketable ideas. Usually we conduct a workshop to gather ideas and pro-vide insight back to the group into possibility statements.

Uniquely, we take input from the other ser-vice modules including design and develop-ment to realize novel new approaches that may not be apparent during conception. As an initial iteration, a Proof of Concept helps to ground ideas and provide ini-tial feasibility.

What we offer is an iterative pro-cess that doesn’t stop when the next phase gets underway. Likewise, it is important to note that our Agile devel-opment process wel-comes changing ide-as from conception right through to analysis.

02 // DESIGNAt Grexie we believe that getting visibility of your ideas on a screen or other device as ear-ly as possible is key to innovation and later quality of execution. We work hard to present you with an embodiment of your concept in visual form and with a high degree of finish so you can truly understand what your concept will mean in reality. To do this we use the best graphic design and illustration tools applying skills we have honed over many years. The result is a highly polished and visual demon-stration of your ideas.

Wireframes allow us to visualize User Inter-face flows that are consistent and focus on high User Experience. Often we talk about in-creasing conversion rates, the art of building flows that have a higher probability of captur-ing a user’s attention and engagement. Finally we use Adobe Illustrator to create mock-ups in order to provide pixel-perfect designs that capture the essence of the innovation.

The UI screens should fit within a common branding for the product and your business, and we always establish whether there is a good fit for your current branding – looking to enhance your branding where appropriate.

03 // ARCHITECTUREThis is the point in the iterative model where creativity in the conceptualization of your product meets engineering excellence. Like-wise, cognizance of innovation opportunities in this module feed back into the conception and design modules to further enhance the final product offering.

In our experience Architecture is an essential step in any technical project, that makes the difference between a well-engineered prod-uct and a technology shambles. Implemen-tations that jump this step inevitably end up with unreliable bug-ridden and inflexible out-comes.

We use our own experience and that of the industry at large to craft the overall shape and structure of the product, as it will be em-

bodied in technology and in your business processes. The outcome contributes to the Blueprint and embodies the best practice thinking in IT Systems Engineering.

By whiteboarding solutions at a high level to find the best shape for the system, we can draw out all of the essential engineering com-ponents for the system, their relationships and find the places where additions and changes must be made to optimize the bal-ance between performance, availability, scal-ability and cost of implementation and oper-ation.

Once the shape is understood, we then test our design by stepping through the architec-ture using transactions and messages. This allows us to understand how it will operate in practice and to further iterate its shape. Only after this work is satisfactorily completed and

seen to embody the concept from the Blue-print and design module do we proceed to implement in code. Of course, it may be that when we look at this more detailed engineer-ing viewpoint of your concept we will find new opportunities to add value to the concept it-self (new functions, new ways of doing things) or sometimes we will find that aspects of the concept may benefit from change to match cost or timescale requirements. The interplay between the two is fully iterative.

04 // CREATIONWe believe at Grexie that it is vital that devel-opment does not operate within a blinkered silo driven only by completion to initial spec-ification. Instead our developers continually bear in mind what the overall project is trying to achieve and iterate both innovation and practicality back into reconsideration of the earlier stages where that’s appropriate and needed.

So for example it may be that a developer will hit upon a much more cost-effective way of achieving something than has been specified from concept through to architecture. They will then investigate and feed that discovery back to the team so that the concept and ar-chitecture can be adjusted to take advantage of it.

All our developers are required to invest time every month in researching latest develop-ments and thinking in their chosen areas of specialization to make sure that our work with clients is always informed by the latest developments in technology engineering. We take our collective years of experience to craft what we produce. The technology industry is rapidly evolving and will do for many years.

You may be interested to know that our en-couragement of innovation goes further than paid client work. Developers that have ideas that would be beneficial to the development community at large are encouraged to share them through the open source movement or through commercialization. A separate prod-uct catalog is available that describes the products Grexie offers that have been real-ized in this way.

05 // DIGITAL PRESENCEFor a cutting edge product there is no point in having a dated website.

Because technology moves so fast, your digital presence needs to be iterated to keep its ap-pearance contemporary. You cannot afford an expensive design shop every time you need to update your website. Nor can you afford the timescales or delay required at each of those points.

At Grexie we recognize those pressures on to-day’s businesses. We offer a service that has three characteristics:

Contemporary designs covering web and social aspects of digital presence;

It utilizes the same pixel perfect design skills that we use in our other services to deliver highly professional outputs;

It delivers on this rapidly and affordably so that you really can keep on changing these designs as the nature of “contem-porary” changes with market fashions and technology capability.

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06 // COMMERCEWe believe ease-of-use, trust and safety are vi-tally important to customers, who are readily lost on the web if they are not satisfied. Our experience says that where many businesses lose revenue is at the final stage of customer web interaction as a result of the poor quality of the shopping experience.

Accordingly, we have developed an in-depth specialism in payment systems. We offer a comprehensive service in the design of the user experience related to shopping carts and management of the user journey through the site.

We are aware of and use the latest techniques and software services and build these into op-timal designs that represent trust, safety and ease-of-use for consumers and businesses who want to buy your product

07 // ANALYSISAt Grexie we believe that your customers in-teractions with your product are a huge and valuable source of information that enable you to gain a 360º view of your customer effectively in real time. Although the largest organizations have for some time been using that source of information, most small businesses have not seized the opportunity. We believe that the technology now enables all businesses to par-ticipate, to the benefit of their own businesses and also their customers through creation of better products.

Tracking behavior using analytics dashboards, monitoring conversion rates and validating marketing campaigns all form activities in this service module.

For more information and to arrange a free consultation where we can better understand your needs and the needs of your project please get in touch.

Web http://grexie.com

Email hello@grexie.com

Phone +44 7803 503 804

Grexie Limited ∙ South Court ∙ Sharston Road ∙ Manchester ∙ M22 4BBRegistered in England and Wales 07306293