UpTop

I'm the director of client systems at JAMS, an arbitration and mediation company. We manage arbitrations for companies and provide an end-to-end service including judges, mediators, or arbitrators to manage cases.

They were helping us create a client portal that allowed our client to access the case information.

The biggest challenge was accommodating three different sets of clientele: arbitrators or mediators, attorneys, and paralegals or legal assistants. The portal had to be designed for usage by the three different parties.

I worked with the director of program management and the director of UX. He had an associate who reported to him. I was very fortunate to have one of the directors actively involved.

My CIO did some research and selected three design companies. I reviewed each of them and had a conversation with them about our needs with the client portal environment.

We spent between $50,000 to $100,000. The project manager role took up quite a bit of our spend.

Everything really happened in 2019. I joined JAMS in April 2019, and we signed the contract with them by the end of summer 2019. We had our first kickoff focus group with different key people from the three user groups in October, November, and December. They designed the platform following those meetings.

We officially launched in August 2020 and now have close to 2,000 users. That number is quite significant for that short period of time. The bulk of our users are actual attorneys who are logging in to use it, which was our goal. The old timesheet design had very little usage, and that has since gone up significantly with mediators in terms of the volume of timesheets entered. In September 2020, we were way over 50% usage.

They were excellent. I was fortunate to have a UX director involved in the design— he was on top of everything. The team remained the same throughout the entire project, which was very important to me. They were a flexible team that met deadlines on time or early. Additionally, they were very responsive in terms of making changes or adjustments when we reached out.

They really took the time to understand the industry. It didn’t matter that they had created client portals before, this was the first time they worked within legal profession, and they approached the project with curiosity. They came up to speed extremely quickly to understand this industry and design the portal would require.

No, not really. I would have liked more updates along the way, but it all worked out. Once we got to the development phase, they started offering more regular updates.

My major requirement was that I had the same team dedicated to the project from beginning to end. They were able to make that work for me. That is really the key thing when working with anyone; you want some consistency.

I am the senior director of marketing at SAP Concur where I support a small SMB market.

We hired UpTop to help us architect a future business model. The solution would be a thriving and connected global community of SMBs.

It was a high-level task. We engaged with UpTop to help us architect and design the solution. They also served as an extension of our team.

We worked with Craig (Senior Director of Business Development, UpTop). We also worked three other members from their team.

My colleague had previously worked with Craig, and that proven experience was one of our deciding factors. I met with another company, but they were not nearly as proactive as UpTop. The UpTop team was very engaged, and they asked smart questions.

I believe we spent around $250,000.

This project went from August 2018–April 2019.

UpTop was absolutely crucial, they allowed us to create the site and sell it. For example, we were working with an internal corporate digital team who wanted everything homegrown. Through the trust that UpTop built, they won over the digital corporation team because that internal team realized that working with UpTop would help the project move along successfully.

I think they were outstanding. They were really strong with communication, setting expectations, and meeting crazy deadlines. We have a tendency to let things stall here internally, and they really help to keep things on track.

Their speed and innovation were impressive, and they were very intuitive. We sat down and talked through the vision and idea, and they just seemed to grasp it. Even though some challenges felt really big, there was a high level of confidence that if anyone could figure it out, it would be UpTop.

I think the communication they had was really strong. However, I think they were maybe a little frustrated with the project manager that we brought in (who is great, too). I think a takeaway for both of them was to sit down early on. Anytime there were issues, they made sure to escalate it to us to make sure that we were aware of it. They were great partners and really willing to bend over backward.

Future customers should be very clear with their vision and what they want. Being able to articulate what the end goal is really important. Invest a little time upfront. In the beginning, we had a couple of all-day workshops to give information upfront so UpTop could take off after that. If you are looking for a trusted, innovative partner that turns things around really quickly, I would recommend UpTop.

I am a senior business program manager for Microsoft. I work for an inside sales division of the Commercial Growth Organization. Our centralized, global organization is digitally transforming the way we sell to and build relationships with our base of medium-sized customers by moving the technology stack to the cloud.

When I came on board over two years ago, we were starting a sales organization from scratch. As Microsoft launched a new sales model, we hired over 2,000 sales reps over an 18-month period. My objective was to help our sales team have successful client engagements. To effectively support customers, all the new hires needed to understand our robust range of solutions from Office 365 to Dynamics, Azure, and all our cloud services.

UpTop gave us the tools to onboard new sales reps and help them excel at and love their jobs. First, we sent them our business challenge; as we rapidly expanded our team, we had between 300–700 new hires across our seven sales centers each month. Our globally centralized sales organization had the benefits of a central operations arm and budget, but the other locations did not. Rather than creating custom solutions for each center, we needed one that could work at scale.

At any given time, we've worked with at least 5–6 people from UpTop. As many as 12–15 resources have worked with us during heavy quarters. We can expand and contract the team based on work coming through the pipeline. They manage everything behind the scenes, which makes it easy to work together.

I heard about UpTop through word of mouth from a consulting firm that we’d used for strategy and change management. My boss at the time had also heard of them.

We’ve been working together since 2016.

Our most important metrics for success are usage and feedback. UpTop delivered a product that has generated excellent seller feedback and increased consumption numbers. We meet with the leadership team monthly or quarterly to review the product, roadmap, and metrics. Qualitatively, they’ve noted we are delivering the right content and value by helping the sales team perform better and drive more effective customer conversations. At a 90% consumption rate, DISH currently has the highest number of any enablement tool at our company. We feel proud of the work we’ve done.

UpTop embodies the spirit of collaborative partnership and understands what it means to walk alongside the customer in their journey. We have a constant feedback loop running that includes widgets in the digital experience, roundtables, chats, and weekly meetings with our sellers.

Microsoft is a fast-paced company with a high-intensity culture, so we are demanding clients. We set the bar very high, and UpTop continually impressed me with their quick ability to land value. We threw tons of work at them with tight timelines. Our high expectations for design innovation, user experience, quality, and uniqueness were difficult attributes to attain, yet they always found a way to deliver.

For any business, it’s critical never to lose sight of the importance of operational rigor. Every couple of months we had to pause project management to make sure it was staying sound. Otherwise, things would get into a state of chaos quickly. Rushing and making extensive demands often comes with a trade-off. Accountability for maintaining processes and procedures keeps us all sane.

An experience as positive as ours stems from building a strong foundation for a working relationship. This step is critical when engaging any firm for a full-scale partnership and solution.

Quorum Review IRB is an independent board that reviews research studies prior to them entering the clinical trial phases. We monitor these studies throughout their lifetime to make sure they meet ethical standards and that participants are being protected. I’m senior manager of client services. I’m responsible for the end-to-end client experience, ensuring the accuracy and timeliness of those documents.

We wanted to revamp our portal, which is our clients’ electronic experience with Quorum. We were looking for a firm that could give us the level of expertise that our IT group didn’t have at the time.

We’ve collaborated to revamp the look and feel of the portal, but not the functionality. They’ve provided us with screenshots and wireframes, but they have not done any development work for us. Since we worked with a different team last year, there is a lot of rework required.

I was included in the meetings as the subject matter expert responsible for educating UpTop on what we do. At times, I was confused about who was responsible for what because I’m not an IT project manager. All of our meetings involved the complete group who was working on the project, but it was difficult for me to see who had ownership for what. There were people who made sure the project moved forward while others provided design ideas. There were some people leading the exploration phase.

I didn’t hire them. As a key stakeholder, I was brought in after they were hired.

I’m not part of the budgeting so I don’t know.

We started working with them in August 2016. The project was put on hold by Quorum and we didn’t pick it up again until March 2017. From then on, it was consistent for six weeks. I had many meetings with them over that time. The project is not done yet.

UpTop delivered what they were supposed to deliver, but it hasn’t been implemented yet so I can’t give any results. I think the project is supposed to be done by the end of this year, but I think it’s being pushed back again by Quorum.

They are all very competent and communicate their expectations very well. They take the time to understand what we do, which is what took the most time at the beginning of the project. Unfortunately, our project manager in Quorum isn’t very helpful. UpTop does the best they could without much support from our project manager. They have a lot of deliverables.

I really like their work and who they are. Even though there were different people in our meetings, they all knew what their roles were and didn’t try to go outside those roles. Everything felt very mature, respectful, and professional.

It won’t be fair for me to say because we don’t have a great project manager on our side.