CASE STUDY

Polar.me

A company that provides native advertising services on various sites.

Solution

An exclusive platform for premium publishers to grow their direct-sold digital branded content revenue

Industry

Internet & Direct Marketing Retail

Outcome

During close cooperation, Computools's engineers stayed on the same page with the client that allowed to fully meet the necessary requirements. The result of this project was a ready-made platform that allows publishers, agencies and brands to create, execute and optimize a variety of digital advertising products including native, social, video and stories formats. The new platform helps the client to increase revenue and expand the customer base, and makes it easy to offer innovative digital advertising products.

Several key options we solved:

  • Implemented a convenient management system.
  • Added various publisher's tools.
  • Implemented features to reach several publisher's channels at once.

+87%
Throughput, Users
+71%
Average Order
+63%
Increasing Productivity
+69%
Increasing Revenue
-56%
Reducing Costs
61%
Business Process Automation

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

Our client offers the publishers exclusive business model: he has no competing media business and is completely aligned to the customer's premium, direct-sold business. It is the only technology solutions provider focused on scaling the distribution of branded content across channels and growing views. Founded back in 2008, the company is constantly developing, using modern technologies to predict and create the most successful model of brand promotion through the most used platforms and gadgets.

Their main goal was to design an exclusive platform for premium publishers to grow their direct-sold digital branded content revenue. To implement this task, the company needed the help of third-party developers. A team of professional and skilled developers of Computools complemented the internal IT department of the client and worked in close cooperation with their managers. This made it possible to solve emerging issues in a timely manner and correct tasks.

Tight schedule

The necessity to solve small problems throughout the project

Implementing multiple solutions at the same time

High demand for the provided services

Extensive customer base

Ready plan and vision of the final product

Fast communication with the client

Communication Framework

Computools
Business Analyst
Project Manager
Business Development Manager
Team Lead
Polar.me
Business Analyst
Team Lead
Communication

At the beginning of work on the project, a convenient and thoughtful communication system is created. This ensures constant communication of all participants, distribution of tasks and quick resolution of necessary issues. In this project, Skype was used to conduct video meetings, Slack for internal communication of the team, and email to exchange information.

Such a communicative framework was very effective and allow to maintain the productivity of the entire team throughout the work.

Business Process Mapping

01
CONSULTING

Before proceeding with the selection of the optimal solution for implementing the project tasks, a thorough analysis is carried out, thanks to which the main goals and objectives of all interested parties are identified. The company's engineers also analyze the market and competitors, identify possible risks, obstacles and pitfalls. Using this information, a further plan is compiled.

02
DESIGN

At the design stage, a high-level project architecture is created, ready-made or existing solutions for such tasks are studied. Next, an interactive prototype is created to study the functional features of the future product, the introduction of additional options and the convenience of those already implemented are discussed.

03
ENGINEERING

To work on the project, the necessary experts are highlighted: a project manager, analysts, developers. After the intro-meeting, all tasks are distributed. The entire development process is conducted according to the chosen methodology and the created specification. As a rule, the Agile approach is used, which allows conducting constant tests and code reviews, improving the quality of the finished product. In the end, a series of necessary tests are carried out for additional verification.

Digital Platform & Technology

Since there was an accurate vision of the final product, the technology stack was determined in advance and proposed by the client. Our developers have used the most optimal solutions within their extensive skills and knowledge of these technologies.

Computools
Team Lead
Polar.me
Team Lead
Project Coordinator
Communication
Python

Python is a high-level, interpreted and general-purpose dynamic programming language that focuses on code readability. Python by nature has a very simple syntax. Having a smaller code requires less space, less time, and is well appreciated by coders, as the rework or correction also takes lesser time. The ability to develop applications and software quickly makes it suitable for startups, small, medium and big enterprises.

React

React is a simple and powerful UI library. React’s most important advances are the emphasis on components, one-way data flow, the Virtual DOM, JSX, and architecture that extends beyond HTML. React’s simplicity lies in that it makes it easy to declare user-interfaces in self-contained independent components. It hides its complex rendering engine implementation and exposes a simple component API.

MySQL

MySQL is extremely powerful, secure, and scalable. And because of its small size and speed, it is the ideal database solution for Web sites. MySQL is an Open Source, high performance, feature-rich relational database management software, that can be used in various environments. It's feature rich and doesn't need too many knowledge to use at the same time. What is more, most of the tasks can be done in the command line.

Specification

Specially developed specification complements the project roadmap, allows to take into account all the details and requirements of the project, as it includes all the specialities.

Goal: to build an exclusive platform for premium publishers to grow their direct-sold digital branded content revenue.

For this purpose, we needed to complete several tasks.

Stages of tasks:
1. Development of a road map, dividing the development process into parts.
2. Definition of terms for each stage.
3. Implementation of the first series of solutions.
4. Testing and troubleshooting.
5. Implementation of developed elements of the platform.
8. Platform testing, troubleshooting.
9. Providing customer support for the platform.


Timely execution of tasks assigned to our team ensured that the entire platform would work properly.

COMPUTOOLS TEAM

We always carefully conduct the choice of developers for the team. Studied the client’s tasks and the skills of our developers, we selected the most experienced experts in the necessary fields of knowledge. This allowed us to guarantee successful cooperation on the project.

Business Analyst
Mikhail Shvaikovsky
Project Manager
Aleksandr Novikov
Team Lead
Oleg Svet
Business Development Manager
Artem Babura
Quality Assurance Engineer
Gleb Kovalenko
Computools’s Engineers

BACKSTAGE

We always strive to use the skills of our employees to the maximum, increasing their effectiveness as specialists and team members. For this, we hold meetings where everyone can offer their idea, express an opinion or get the necessary advice.

Dev meetings
Developer meetings are another way to improve skills and share experiences. Cooperating with different teams and on different projects, our developers acquire the necessary knowledge and hone their skills.
Team Brainstorming
Brainstorming is one of the key tools for identifying ideas and solutions for a project. At such sessions, each participant can voice their ideas and take part in the discussion of the ideas of others. So we stimulate the creativity of our employees and give them the opportunity to fully develop.
Feedback
At the end of the project, we try to get feedback from both the customer and our developers. This allows us to further improve the efficiency of the whole team, choosing new ways of cooperation or organization of work.

Internal Communication Flow

Close cooperation with the internal IT department of the client allows receiving answers quickly, contact with colleagues and exchange ideas. However, for this, it is necessary to properly organize a communicative system that would allow all participants to be aware of what is happening on the project and made it possible to quickly contact the necessary participant. On this project, Skype was used for video calls and working chats, Slack as a corporate messenger for the whole team, and Email for data exchange. The distribution of tasks and control over their completion was carried out in Jira.

Project Management Methodology

The main idea of Kanban is workflow visualization. It consists of creating a physical panel (Kanban board) on which you can visually mark progress. A kanban board may be shared by multiple teams or individuals. That is why it is perfect for the work of dedicated teams and close collaborations with in-house IT Departments.

Kanban is built on three ideas: visualization of the workflow; limiting the amount of the work in progress for the sake of efficiency; the tasks from the backlog go strictly one after another. Kanban is about pulling work rather than pushing it onto development teams. In fact, one of the core principles of the method is to limit the amount of work in progress. Team members don’t start working on new tasks until they’ve finished what they’re working on. Kanban practices emphasize the speed and efficiency of the development workflow to build and deliver value as fast as possible.

Mapping software development workflow helps team get an overview of who is working on what and, most importantly, why. Work gets visible to all involved stakeholders, collaboration and communication increase instantly.

PROJECT TIMELINE

1 week
2 weeks
12 months
1
CONSULT
Defining goals
  • Identifying project goals and tasks
Analysis & Exploration
  • Researching and analyzing the existing and ready-made solutions
  • Defining main restrictions and providing solutions for them
  • Identifying the main risks
2
DESIGN
High-Level Architecture
  • Selecting basic architectural patterns and tools
  • Forming an application stack, work processes with VCS
  • Forming the main development guidelines
Interactive prototypes & Specification
  • Development of an interactive prototype
  • Choosing Project Management Methodology
Build Development Process
  • Calculating the number of project teams
  • Configuring the technological processes and interactions between roles.
3
ENGINEER
Build The Team
  • Making the initial scope based on the specification and estimate, calculating the optimal number of specialists for each role
  • Adding executors to the team's core
  • Conducting an intro meeting
Development
  • Development of a road map, dividing the development process into parts
  • Implementation of the first series of solutions
  • Implementation of developed elements of the platform
Testing & Stabilization
  • Developing a testing plan
  • UI & Unit testing
  • Applying improvements
  • Code stabilization/refactoring, increasing system stability, reducing the probability of bug emergency

Engineering

The development process was almost uninterrupted. Testing was carried out after making major changes to the project. At each stage, the team performed the tasks defined in the specification and roadmap. Final testing was carried out only after making all changes and debugging the platform.

CODE SAMPLE

Scan QR code to find code sample

Or use link below

https://github.com/computools/python-examples

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