UpTop

I am the Sr. Director of Project Management of a software company

A leading cloud-based platform that automates and integrates travel, expense, and invoice management to provide organizations with real-time visibility and control over employee-initiated spending.

Referral

2-5 Employees

We have had multiple engagements with Uptop:

UpTop was a strategic partner every step of the way. They intuitively understood the complexity of our challenges and how simply providing solutions would not necessarily result in adoption of the recommendations. They listened carefully and made recommendations that could be adopted and implemented, with significant business impact.

They were exceptionally reliable and punctual; despite delays from our side, they remained flexible and collaborative in adjusting the schedule.

Uptop is a pragmatic strategic partner with a unique ability to navigate competing opinions and deliver outcomes that drive tangible business impact.

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I am the Product Manager of Archbright

Archbright is the go-to resource for Pacific Northwest employers. At our core, we offer easy access to expert HR, safety, and legal advice through an affordable annual membership. Our focus is helping companies elevate workplace performance.

Redesign of online member resource tool

2-5 Employees

UpTop exceeded our expectations with the redesign of our online resource tool for our members. This was no small task, as the tool includes a wide array of components that needed integration. Our primary goals were to improve accessibility and usability while creating an intuitive, engaging experience for our members—and UpTop delivered for us. Their team demonstrated their understanding our unique needs and tackled the complexities of the project with a thoughtful and collaborative approach. The result is a user-friendly platform that has already enhanced member engagement and satisfaction. We are delighted with the outcome and highly recommend UpTop for their professionalism, creativity, and dedication to delivering high-quality solutions.

An accessible and user-friendly platform.

They were timely, professional, creative, and dedicated.

Their team demonstrated their understanding of our unique needs and tackled the complexities of the project with a thoughtful and collaborative approach.

UpTop was wonderful to work with.

I’m a product manager at a company that provides a ticketing platform. We provide tools for teams, venues, and professional resellers to manage their inventory, control their distribution, and use data to empower decision-making.

We needed help with frontend development to migrate and enhance one of our products. We were operating in two different products and wanted to centralize them into one, and we didn't have any frontend developers on staff.

We work with two teams from UpTop based on the project we're working on: a mobile app team and a web app team. Each team consists of 5–6 team members.

My boss found UpTop on a ratings site, although I'm unsure which one. He chose UpTop because of their ratings, and he was also drawn to the team because he could go to their office in Seattle since he lived in Washington State.

We started working with UpTop in September 2022, and the engagement is ongoing.

UpTop has helped us unify our platform, and many of our competitors don't have a unified platform like ours. We've launched our own pricing tool and brought it into our product, which has separated our company from others in the space. This unified platform is super convenient and helpful for users because they can price large amounts of inventory at once. If a user has thousands of tournaments, they can match prices on their own level.

Christine (UX Designer) has been helpful with the mobile app, and Michael (Director of UX) has helped with the UI design perspective. They both did a great job interviewing people and getting their feedback to incorporate it into the design and styling. Kyle (Senior Project Manager) and Craig (Head of Business) keep us on track. Lastly, I want to highlight a contracted project manager who is no longer with the team.

UpTop feels like an extension of our company rather than a contractor. Our relationship has progressed to the point where we view them as peers. Their code is heavily embedded with ours, and we communicate constantly via Slack. We feel like we're working with our team rather than a contractor. UpTop is invested in what we’re doing, and they’re genuinely curious about the work they’ve done and how it’s perceived.

The project manager leaving was a big bummer; although he left for personal reasons, and I understand it, he was very helpful. Improving the team's stability on that side would be nice, but overall, the engagement has been amazing, and we don't have many complaints.

Keep the lines of communication open because this is what has benefitted us. We have a shared Slack channel and shared documents where we’re always sending ideas to each other. UpTop is always quick to respond, so you get out of your project what you put into it. Don't be shy about giving feedback to the team because they'll listen and give additional design alternatives or come up with a solution to the issue.

I’m the VP of product for a SaaS company in the real estate industry.

We hired UpTop to create a mobile app that complements our web app for filing forms and real estate management.

Our team had the designs for the app, and the UpTop team handled their development. They focused on building out the app. Then, we transitioned the product back to our team after completing its initial version. We put some final touches on it and ultimately launched it. The app was compatible with iOS devices.

We worked with 4–5 teammates from UpTop, including Craig (Head of Business). An engineering lead worked with the program manager. We also interfaced with a frontend engineer and backend engineer.

We interviewed a shortlist of six vendors about their capabilities, cost, and references. UpTop was one of those companies, and we chose them because of their flexibility. The team meshed well with our culture and operation style. They developed apps in much the same way as we did.

Our engagement lasted from May–October 2022.

UpTop did a great job. This is why we’re planning to hire them again to do the Android version of the app.

They had a strong project manager who kept everyone aware of the pace we were going and what deliverables were needed from our end. They helped us keep everyone on track.

I was impressed with UpTop’s strength, flexibility, and willingness to adapt.

The engagement started roughly in the beginning. We were figuring out how to have two teammates work together on the project. To their credit, UpTop had a meeting with us to align what the setup would look like, and everything became better. Everyone was finally on the same page.

Be clear about your expectations, roles, and responsibilities. Being structured will make your engagement with UpTop highly successful. The team itself is structured — they care about what you’re asking them to do, the outcomes you want to achieve, and the product you want to create. Moreover, continue working with them as one team. Don’t treat them like an outsourced company. Be truly collaborative.

I’m the director of visual marketing for a digital intelligence company that provides analytics, SEO, website optimization, and more. We have several web properties under our name.

Back in 2018, we’d focused mostly on re-platforming our website, so a lot of things ended up getting shoehorned into a few designs. What we really wanted to do this time around was evolve the look and feel of the site to improve how customers interacted with us. That’s why we reached out to UpTop.

UpTop helped us evolve our website’s UX/UI designs to be more user-friendly. One of the main tasks involved creating a set of personas, looking at how our customers wanted to interact with us. We got that data from another vendor, and UpTop incorporated it into their designs.

There were three people who worked with us on a regular basis: Craig (Senior Director of Business Development), Michael (Director of UX), Deborah (UX Designer), and Jon (Director of Program Management).

My boss at the time had used UpTop in two of his previous roles, so that’s how I got their name. We then did discovery meetings to tell them about what we were trying to do and get their input. After meeting with a couple of other vendors, we decided to move forward with UpTop based on the work they’d done previously.

It was somewhere around $350,000.

The project lasted from January–September 2020.

I don’t have any quantitative metrics to compare, but it’s important to note how much our team universally accepted UpTop’s work. In the past five years, there was often a difference of opinion about how our pages should be created. However, we didn’t see any notable rejection for the new designs. People were willing to implement them.

It was fabulous because they knew what we were working on. So, if I threw something different at them, they’d remind us of our progress status and help us reprioritize.

Again, it’s the attention to detail that each individual brought. I was impressed by how well they could explain why they chose to do something a certain way, the multiple formats that they provided, and their understanding of the project plan.

They delivered the designs through an internal SharePoint site, but it would’ve been nice to have a client-facing tool that would allow them to better organize content. Other than that, I don’t think I would’ve changed the process.