Overview
Penny AI drives sales and reduces churn for sales organizations in over 60 countries. They know their users sell more when supported by relevant and timely education, but Penny AI needed a mobile-first platform that scaled for all their enterprise customers.
In five months (1 month sooner than expected) Codingscape built Penny AI a new learning and onboarding app based on micro-modules that was mobile-first and fully functional on desktops. Instead of trying to support their enterprise clients on different versions of the sales enablement app, Penny AI now has an app they can deliver to every enterprise customer with the same features.
Codingscape completed the work with the equivalent cost of 3 FTEs and worked in tandem with 3-4 Penny employees for a weekly call between 1-2 hours each (Weds and Fri).
We delivered their new app one month early and 25.5% under the expected cost.
Here’s how it happened.
Problem
Penny AI delivers a social sales enablement platform to enterprises worldwide – they raised a $27 million Series B round in July 2022. Their AI-powered tools support direct sales, drive revenue growth, and give sales teams the data and insights necessary to sell more.
Penny AI’s platform supports hundreds of thousands of sellers in over 60 countries and 25 languages – but their main sales enablement app had diverging versions and different code bases.
They needed a sales enablement app that would work across different versions, meet partner implementation requirements, and could be quickly updated with new features across all customers.
These were Penny AI's main goals:
- Create one mobile-first app with a central code base for all enterprise customers
- Make learning easier and more approachable with bite-sized learning modules
- Seamless integration from learning to next action
- Provide insights to sales teams that help them double down on potential and reach consultants who are likely to churn – before they do
Penny AI had already engaged an external team to build its mobile-first learning and onboarding platform and was let down by the contractors they hired. They still needed senior-level product and software engineering resources and had a short delivery timeline, but they weren’t sure they could trust another consultancy.
They decided to trust Codingscape for our expertise, speed, quality of software development, and consistent communication.
Solution
We recommended a 6-month engagement to launch nine user-facing learning and onboarding modules for Penny’s users via mobile and desktop MVPs. Clear communication and accountability were at the top of our list to realign Penny AI’s expectations and mindset after a previous attempt to work with contractors went badly.
Codingscape assembled an agile development team with a senior front end software engineer and a senior backend software engineer. We also provided a senior Agile product manager and introduced new project management processes – including the MoSCoW method, to prioritize features that provide the best ROI.
We got to work immediately scoping the user stories and product roadmap. Our goal was to launch their MVP so Penny AI could start collecting data from their learning modules and onboarding actions.
In 5 months, we completed Penny AI’s objectives, and they had a learning and onboarding app all their enterprise customers could use to increase revenue.
Penny AI engagement outcomes:
- Mobile-first learning app delivered one month early and under budget
- Created a knowledge base and a single source of truth for code
- Nine modules with core Penny AI Curriculum delivered by integrating it into the existing app (Thrive)
- Enable, test, and validate clean feature-flagging to carefully manage the delivery of core micro-modules to specific clients/environments
- Enterprise Client x Penny branded curriculum editor and advanced measurement
- Realigned client expectations & mindset after their last failed attempt to work with contractors
Codingscape value added outside software development
While we built their new sales enablement app and created a single source of truth codebase for their app, the Codingscape team delivered a lot more value outside the SOW.
- Codingscape introduced new product and project management processes and communication channels:
- Product Roadmap and Project Prioritization: MoSCoW method to prioritize features that provide the best ROI.
- Created a product launch checklist.
- Introduced teams to different ways to hold meetings via Slack.
- Helped product onboarding to JIRA and taught best practices: Including reporting bugs and writing effective tickets.
- Sat in on multiple calls with Penny’s executive team to better understand how the Sales team will demo and pitch L+O features to new/existing Penny clients.
- Provided business recommendations vs solely technical assistance.
- Creatively solved technical problems deemed out of scope, such as reporting dashboards.
- We documented more than was required or asked and often created documentation when we couldn’t find any on the client side.
YOU MAY NEED TO KNOW
Engagement Details
Team Composition
- Account manager
- Product manager
- Project manager
- Senior back end software engineer
- Senior front end engineer
Duration
- Proposed: 6 months
- Completed: 5 months
Project Stats
- Delivered MVP 1 month early
- 25.5% less cost than estimated
- Completed work with the equivalent cost of 3 FTEs
Product & Project Management
- Codingscape introduced new product and project management processes and communication channels:
- Product Roadmap and Project Prioritization: MoSCoW method to prioritize features that provide the best ROI.
- Created a product launch checklist.
- Introduced teams to different ways to hold meetings via Slack.
- Helped product onboarding to JIRA and taught best practices: Including reporting bugs and writing effective tickets.
- Sat in on multiple calls with Penny’s executive team to better understand how the Sales team will demo and pitch L+O features to new/existing Penny clients.
- Provided business recommendations vs solely technical assistance.
- Creatively solved technical problems deemed out of scope, such as reporting dashboards.
- We documented more than was required or asked and often created documentation when we couldn’t find any on the client side.
Client Feedback
“Why I love Codingscape:
Senior and expert consultants save money, reduce waste, AND inspire teams to think big, deliver fast, and continue to grow.
I have worked on several software projects, but my Codingscape projects rank highest in time to market, delivering a fully functional MVP with only three months of dev effort with delivery success that resulted in no bugs that blocked the user experience or compromised user value.
This is attributed not only to Codingscape's skilled engineers, but to the clear and continuous communication, facilitation, problem-solving, and documentation.
Our team's happiness score was the highest of all teams and projects. Every team member LOVED the collaboration and was inspired by new, strategic, and systems thinking that only comes from expertise, and 50% of our team members advanced in their own professional trajectory as a result of the mentorship, growth, and inspiration experienced.
The upfront cost for highly skilled, seasoned, and professional talent saves money, time, and frustration in the long run. The added bonus, EVERYONE evolves into a better version of themselves.”
- Lauren Mason Carris, VP of Product at Penny AI
Sources
Technologies
Back end
- PostgreSQL
- Python 3.x
- Django 3.7 (later upgraded to 3.10)
- Typescript
Front end
- Angular x.x
- Storybook (components)
- RX.js (state management)
- Ionic Framework for mobile app
- Unified JS / HAST (HTML Syntax Tree)
- Typescript
Deployment and Hosting
- Github
- AWS
Project Management
- Airtable
- Jira/Trello/Linear
- Slack Connect
- Zoom/Meet
- Google Docs/Sheets