The Coat Rack Process

Consultation, Planning & Analysis, and Design

•  Build products your organization loves

Organizations come to us when their prototypes or initial development projects don't really work, won't scale, or aren't trusted by their staff members. We help them navigate the many technical decisions an organization needs to make to come out the other end confident with, and excited by, their products.

•  Plan and budget your technical projects effectively

We assist with yearly budgeting and planning efforts, board presentations, and technical product roadmap creation. We manage yearly technical budgets for our clients on a regular basis.

•  Custom versus product?

We help organizations decide whether a SaaS product fits their needs or they require custom web application development. Our analysts look at your issues and needs holistically before recommending the best paths forward for you.

•  Assess technology vendors and SaaS solutions

We help organizations assess the technology vendors and SaaS based solutions they need. Examples include vetting AMS systems, CRM platforms, and hosting vendors. We also help write RFPs for technology vendors and solutions. 

•  Generate momentum and excitement

Turning around underperforming web applications sometimes has a lot to do with scoping and timing. Are there upgrades that can be performed right now that will address some bigger problems quickly? Can we generate some momentum and excitement that can be leveraged into larger, more time-consuming solutions? How your organization feels about its technology products matters.

•  Hit the budgets!

Our clients don't receive surprise invoices or sub-par work for the money they pay. We understand how to assess, prioritize, and scope projects, monitor them closely, and ensure that deliverables are on track. We encourage open lines of communication throughout the process, ensuring any issues are addressed collaboratively.

Coding and Implementation

•  Custom web applications

We take your products from design and white boarding through implementation, execution, and deployment. We take existing projects that just aren't scaling or performing the way you need them to and harden them for real users and the real world. Our custom web developers are experts with today's open source, state-of-the-art web application development frameworks and tools. Our teams follow Agile programming methodologies.

•  Pleasurable and accessible user experiences 

Customers need to love working with your software and we pride ourselves on our mobile-first, extraordinarily user-friendly implementations. Some of our clients also ask for fully accessible products; we can do that too. 

•  Data integrations

Data properly analyzed in a timely basis provides insights for organizations as they look to make informed decisions and retain competitive advantages in the marketplace. We help organizations harness the power of the data they may have available to them and conduct analyses of that data using cloud data warehouses, tight data integrations with reporting and CRM systems, and business process refining that allows data to flow smoothly from one process to the next. 

•  API Integrations

We expand organizational integration capabilities with API’s. Some recent examples include integrating with eCommerce payment gateways Stripe and PayPal, CRM systems like SalesForce, financial data transfer networks like Plaid, and custom site search engines like Site Search 360.

•  Implement Single Sign On Solutions

We help organizations provide single sign on capabilities to their members with OAuth2 and Open ID Connect solutions.

•  Clean up, move, and manage DNS records 

We recently helped a client clean up and move their messy DNS records from a sub-par registrar to a world-class vendor. For another client we programmatically manage and upgrade DNS records for thousands of their customers.

•  Integrate seamlessly with your mission-oriented team

We integrate seamlessly with your team. We deeply understand what it's like to work with mission-oriented organizations and individuals.  We understand how to help you use technology to further your business goals and needs, within your budget and size constraints.

Testing, Deployment, and Maintenance

•  Select and manage hosting providers and solutions

Whether it's optimizing SaaS hosting vendors like Heroku or Engine Yard or working with dedicated hosting solutions at Rackspace or AWS, we have our clients covered. We set up continuous integration tools and pipelines that work seamlessly with our clients' product processes.

•  Optimize deployment and continuous integration tools

We help clients manage their codebases with today's repository management systems, optimize their deployment processes and pipelines, and implement continuous integration tools.

•  Testing

Unlike many teams, we build test cycles directly into our development cycles. We work with both automated and manual testing suites, ensure unit and integration tests are up to date, and integrate them with deployment and continuous integration tools.

•  Maintain and grow your products and services

Online products require constant maintenance. Your requirements and business needs change as you grow with your customers. Software packages get old and need to be updated. Security requirements are constantly evolving. We help organizations come up with understandable, realistic upgrade and maintenance plans. We aren’t a company that builds something and runs, leaving you with an un-maintainable mess!