Riptide - SACU Salesforce Project Proposal
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Transcript of Riptide - SACU Salesforce Project Proposal
San Antonio Credit Union
Member Correspondence Solution
Prepared by: Mohsen Abdoun
7/28/2015
We thank you for the opportunity to present this new proposal for professional services and we
look forward to assisting with the technology development needs of San Antonio Credit Union.
Since 1995, Riptide has built a reputation of uncompromising quality and superior results,
developing and deploying large-scale enterprise systems. We absolutely stand by our products
and services 100% and will go to great lengths to ensure your complete satisfaction with our
work. More than 90% of our customer relationships extend over a five-year period, ensuring the
complete and total success of our clients’ initiatives.
Riptide is an American employee-owned company, employing only U.S. citizens, and using no
offshore outsourcing. We provide our customers with a superlative level of service. We’ll help you
maximize your investment in technology.
If you have any questions or would like further assistance with your project, we are at your
service. We look forward to building a strong relationship with you and your organization and we
are ready to begin work on your project right away.
The information contained within this proposal is accurate and will remain valid through 8-14-
2015.
Most sincerely,
Zenon Rawley
Managing Director
Thad Horning 407-595-3175
Senior Vice President of Professional Services
Page 3
Table of Contents Executive Summary ........................................................................................... 4
Riptide's Project Plan ........................................................................................ 5
5 Steps to Success .................................................................................................................... 5
Business Process Review (BPR) ............................................................................................... 5
System Integration Technical Assessment ................................................................................ 6
Solution Blueprint ....................................................................................................................... 6
Agile Project Implementation ..................................................................................................... 7
Engagement Management ......................................................................................................... 9
Application Customization .......................................................................................................... 9
Data Import .............................................................................................................................. 10
System Validation .................................................................................................................... 10
Reports and Dashboards ......................................................................................................... 10
Custom Training Program ........................................................................................................ 10
Post-Implementation Support ......................................................................... 12
Salesforce Support .................................................................................................................. 12
Admin Support ......................................................................................................................... 12
High Level Plan ............................................................................................... 13
Statement of Qualifications ............................................................................. 14
Overview & History .................................................................................................................. 14
Principals of Firm ..................................................................................................................... 15
Location .................................................................................................................................... 15
Vendor Qualification form ........................................................................................................ 16
References ........................................................................................................ 17
Client Satisfaction ............................................................................................ 25
Price Proposal .................................................................................................. 26
Executive Summary San Antonio Credit Union is looking to explore integration opportunities with Salesforce.
Riptide believes that any successful project requires a thorough Business Process Review
(BPR). This process involves analyzing and documenting all existing business processes,
workflows and requirements as it relates to CRM system. This will be completed for the SACU.
Following the BPR, we will perform a detailed solution architecture and design, of how the
Salesforce CRM system will be designed and developed during the implementation phase. The
final solution document will contain the “blueprint” details and approach for the project, providing
all deliverables, level of effort (LOE) estimations and timelines.
Page 5
Riptide’s Project Plan
Our proven process helps Riptide guarantee a successful project outcome. During the course of
the project, we will be employing a five-step process, wherein the entire scope of the project—
from preliminary planning to post-project support—will take place. Our experience has shown that
keeping our clients and project stakeholders "in the loop" is the most efficient way to run a
project, which is why we have adopted an ‘agile’ project management methodology.
What this means for you is:
Complete awareness of your project’s status at all times
Increased input and ability to make changes mid-stream
Faster overall delivery of your project
Business Process Review (BPR)
Riptide’s Business Process Review (BPR) is a structured approach to identifying and
understanding the critical processes in your business workflow and outlining the ways in which to
improve them. Once the BPR is concluded, the Riptide team will detail the success factors you’ll
need to get the optimum performance from Salesforce, which includes a full project plan and For
SACU, Riptide expects to conduct a BPR for SACU as previously discussed, in order to evaluate
their unique processes. From those BPRs we will develop a solution blueprint.
What to Expect at Your BPR
Every company’s BPR is unique according to its specific goals and needs, but generally
speaking, the BPR session lasts about two to six weeks and includes the following discussion
points:
Executive Alignment: Q & A session facilitated by the Riptide team to understand your
overall business and that specific initiatives of your project.
o Series of group sessions based on availability of key executives to ensure clear direction and alignment of the business objectives and outcomes to be supported by Salesforce.
End to end business and sales process design
Technical Evaluation:
o This includes a SACU guided review of the full functionality of Salesforce followed by an in-depth analysis by the SACU team of the current functionality of SF as well as other systems that may need to integrate with SF.
Review of standard functionality
Review of internal terms and acronyms
Review of documents provided and requested, as necessary
Protocols for use of Salesforce data, as well as specific information to be tracked
Discussion regarding existing data
Discussion regarding security
The BPR is a performance philosophy that aims to achieve quantum improvements by rethinking
and redesigning the way business processes are carried out. After the BPR, our recommended
solution will take into account your desired functionality, usability and adoption, data sources and
quality, key metrics you need to track and measure, reporting, access of dashboards, and
ultimate long-term goals of your organization.
Solution Blueprint
Riptide’s Solution Blueprint is very similar to an architect's blueprint. When you contract an
architect to design a home for your family, you want a knowledgeable professional who can lay
out every last detail of your home to ensure not only lasting safety and durability, but also a
comfortable and beautiful living space you can be happy with for years to come. The same is true
for your Salesforce implementation and customization.
Your Custom Solution Blueprint
Building on the analogy of the custom home, we know that the requirements for your home would
likely differ greatly from those of your neighbor's. Some may want three bedrooms and a pool,
while others may need five bedrooms and a 3-car garage. So at Riptide, we created the Solution
Blueprint—wherein we examine your business and its unique requirements and develop a plan,
or blueprint, customized to suit your business needs.
Page 7
The Solution Blueprint is comprised of ideas and suggestions we feel would most benefit your
company, but ultimately, you, our customer, make the final decision. Take as much from the
Blueprint as you want, or pick à la carte—it's your choice!
The Solution Blueprint gives you control over your project and allows us to implement the solution
you envisioned. With our Solution Blueprint, you receive:
Transparency – Complete insight into your project is always available
Reliability – You'll get a team of experts who are certified
Elegance – We design architect-simple solutions that lay the foundation for future growth
Recommendations – We create solutions to improve your business processes based on
industry best practices, and our own vast experience
Options – Choose the options for your project, whether you want the whole package or
just bits and pieces
Usability – Turn your Salesforce into a well-oiled machine where information is easy to
find, add, and send—and with fewer clicks
Centralization – We can help you discover how Salesforce can be utilized as your one-
stop-shop for all your business needs
Agile Project Implementation
Once the planning for your project is finalized through the BPR and Solution Blueprint. Riptide
can begin the actual implementation and development of your Salesforce project. To give you a
little background about the way we conduct all of our Salesforce projects, we would like to
introduce you to Riptide's Agile Development Method.
Agile Implementation Is Good for Business
When we first started implementing Salesforce systems for clients, we found that many clients
often didn’t remember everything they originally wanted in their project once it was complete, and
thus had no real way of measuring its success. So we began implementing an agile methodology
for project development, and almost immediately, our clients indicated higher satisfaction results
and greater project success. But we didn't stop there. We kept improving our strategies, honed
our project management capabilities, and ultimately came away with a proven method of project
development that has helped hundreds of our clients feel completely satisfied with the end results
of their project.
Riptide's Agile Implementation enables us to keep things simple, gives us the opportunity to test
often, and allows us to get feedback from our clients frequently. And more important, our method
gives our clients the flexibility to add to or change the scope of the project at any time without
losing focus on the bigger mission—that of actually completing your Salesforce project on time
and within budget.
How You Benefit from the Agile Implementation
Measurable Objectives – Your Salesforce project comes complete with a set of
measurable objectives—set by you during your BPR process—that we will use as
guidelines when developing your project to ensure all your success criteria are met.
Increased Communication – Active user involvement is crucial to a job well done, and
that's why we're here—to deliver a top-quality Salesforce project to your company—and
your input is key during that process. Any questions, concerns, and even changes are
welcomed. The sooner we know, the sooner we can fix it, and the happier you'll be when
the project is finished.
Incremental Releases – Instead of delivering your project in one giant lump in the
typically problematic one-and-done scenario, we have discovered that smaller, more
granular pieces are easier to manage. With incremental deliveries, you get the
opportunity to modify the project as it grows, ensuring each piece of the puzzle fits
perfectly with your organization.
Ongoing User Testing – Throughout the lifecycle of your project, you will be able to test,
and retest your project as many times as you like, making certain that your project is
working exactly as you want it to right down to the very last click.
Invaluable Project Resources – From the start, you are given a team of resources to
help you during the life of your project including a Project Manager, a Salesforce
Consultant, and a Software Developer—each highly trained and ready to assist in any
way they can to make the development process go as smoothly as possible.
Detailed Work Schedule – We will provide you a detailed schedule consisting of project
timelines and deliverables so you know when to expect each item.
Helpful Recommendations – Not only do you receive a thorough set of options in your
Solution Blueprint outlining the features your project will need to be completed, you will
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also receive a list of valuable recommendations that can help your business run more
efficiently.
Flexibility – Being able to roll with the punches is imperative to the success of any
project, and at Riptide, we are experts in our field—meaning that no matter what new
obstacle we may be faced with, we can overcome it and move on to the next hurdle—no
questions asked. Agility is flexibility, and we perform for you.
Engagement Management
Your project will be assigned to an Engagement Manager who will act as the primary liaison
between SACU and Riptide. The Engagement Manager will coordinate, schedule and oversee
the services for which you have contracted. This will assure a smooth, prompt and successful
project implementation. The Engagement Manager will communicate the status of each project
step, budget and overall timeline, as well as maintain a list of outstanding project tasks. If
appropriate, the Engagement Manager will communicate items for management attention and the
status of key milestones. The Engagement Manager will also provide guidance to address
change management issues and user acceptance, as well as maintaining an ongoing channel of
communication between you and Riptide.
Application Customization
Based on the BPR, Riptide will build out the system to meet your requirements. Riptide will work
with SACU to customize the following areas:
Role Hierarchy
Sharing Model
User Setup
Creation of custom database objects
Please note that coded features can be very complex, require testing, and take a great deal of
time to customize.
Data Import Riptide will work with you to define a plan for importing existing data from your company’s
databases. The data import plan will include Riptide providing a data templates (Excel or CSV
format) for SACU to use for providing data to us. SACU will be responsible for acquiring its data,
and then consolidating, normalizing, cleaning, de-duplicating and formatting the data to comply
with system requirements so that it can be imported by Riptide.
System Validation
Riptide will conduct a system demonstration meeting with you to ensure that the application is
customized to your satisfaction. Revisions will be made immediately to address any new or
changing needs. Validation meetings are also an opportunity to display the new system to users
not involved in the planning process. This step can help with change management by providing
this group with the opportunity to see the new solution and provide feedback prior to rollout.
Reports and Dashboards
While your solution may include many pre-defined reports, custom reports tailored to your needs
will be built and made easily identifiable to your users. As part of the report generation and
dashboard creation process, we will consult with you on the definition of report requirements.
Once reporting requirements are finalized, we will review your configuration to assure that it is
configured to collect the inputs to generate the desired reports, after which Reports and a
Dashboard will be created.
Custom Training Program
Riptide is committed to ensuring your success with Salesforce in all aspects, including custom
training. We have experienced, authorized Salesforce trainers that are extremely proficient in
both technical and end-user training. No matter what the subject or the audience; we will develop
a training program that fits your needs. Our sessions are custom-tailored to your specific
Salesforce instance so you receive a training course that will benefit you immediately.
Page 11
In order to provide you with the highest quality training, Riptide will:
Assess the training requirements and any specific needs of your organization.
Assess the current design and functionality of your Salesforce instance to ensure the
training is aligned with your organizational procedures and business model.
Develop a custom course that addresses your training needs and that is designed for
your current Salesforce implementation.
Riptide will assess the training requirements and any specific needs for your organization, as well
as the current design and functionality of your solution, to ensure the training is aligned with your
organizational procedures and business model. In addition, we will develop a custom course that
addresses your training needs and that is designed for your current implementation.
Post Implementation Support Salesforce Support
Our solution will provide an intuitive, easy-to-use application, and most users will see its dynamic
functionality and understand the benefits of adopting the powerful new system right away. In
addition, most organizations also have a few team members who may need a little extra help
learning the tools and functional aspects of the program. But the fact is, universal adoption by
everyone is imperative to the success of your project. Riptide will ensure that your entire team
utilizes the application effectively.
Riptide is committed to providing you with a Salesforce implementation or solution that will benefit
your company for years down the line. However, in order for that to happen, your Admins and
Users must first learn how to use the program. Training is important, but even the finest
instructive programs don't always anticipate every question or problem your team may have once
they begin using the application. So we recommend taking advantage of the first 90 days after
your Salesforce project is completed by purchasing optional support blocks for your team to help
them have a richer Salesforce experience.
Admin Support
While Riptide does provide top-notch Admin training, there is simply a lot to learn. We often find
that extra support hours can be beneficial to our clients when a newly-trained Admin needs to do
things like:
Create complex Reports and Dashboards
Navigate various Record types
Set up multiple Email Campaigns with HTML templates
Develop new custom Applications
Add formula fields to Standard and Custom Objects
And much, much more
Page 13
High Level Plan This work order / proposal is for the solution design of rolling out a new Salesforce deployment to
replace the current instance in order to define the proper architectural and solution design to
accommodate all business users both current and new groups. The primary outcome is to
develop a clear statement for what needs to be done to ensure Salesforce will enable a more
efficient and effective execution of the go to market strategy and is properly designed to allow
easy scalability and support.
This outcome will focus on the following key areas:
Discovery and Design: Go-to-market Plan, Supporting Goals, Objectives, Metrics and
processes
Executive and Business Alignment – a clear understanding of the business objectives and
visibility necessary for the executive team to execute the go to market strategy
End-to-end Business and Sales Process Design – this will look at all relevant processes that
need to be executed through Salesforce, create process flow diagrams and use to design
Salesforce architecture and determine integration points to external databases as necessary
Technical Evaluation – an in depth evaluation of the current Salesforce implementation to
understand best practices and what data potentially needs to be moved to the new Salesforce
instance
Recommended Solution Design – a detailed description of the requirements from a technical
design and implementation to execute the business strategy
At the end of this phase, San Antonio Credit Union will be able to make a decision as to what will
and will not be done to Salesforce (From Management Reports and Functionality to Integration
needs).
Implementation – upon acceptance of the Solution Design phase one of the SF Reboot
implementation will begin following the strategy and kickoff meeting with key personnel/and or
business owners.
Support – following UTA go live an onsite resource will be available for support cases. This
resource will continue throughout the duration of the SF Reboot project and be available for
SACU software engineering needs.
Statement of Qualifications Company History:
Riptide Software Inc. is a Florida C corporation (EIN No. 59-3341930), fully reporting since 1995.
All corporate records are filed and available for verification with SunBiz.org at
http://search.sunbiz.org/Inquiry/CorporationSearch/SearchResultDetail/EntityName/domp-
p95000070673-4bf10096-544f-4b71-9de5-5465a2e09065/riptide%20software/Page1, and is a
top-tier provider of cloud and mobile applications, enterprise system integration, and custom
software development.
Today Riptide technology partners include the world’s leading cloud platforms, such as
Salesforce, Amazon Web Services, MuleSoft, Twilio and Google. Our clients can be found in all
industry verticals, including hospitality and travel, high tech, manufacturing, and medical on a
national and global scale. They include Fortune 500 companies, small businesses, and the
Department of Defense.
Riptide has been assessed a CMMI Level 4 rating, and operates out of a secret-cleared facility
which has been certified every year since 2007 by the U.S. Department of Defense in support of
our military cleared activities. Nearly 75% of Riptide’s staff hold active secret or higher clearance
level.
1995 – Riptide was established as an enterprise level custom software development
company
2001 – Recognized by Deloitte & Touché as a Top 50 Fastest Growing Technology
Companies in North America.
2003 – Third straight year recognized by Deloitte & Touché as a Top 50, Fastest Growing
Technology Companies in North America.
2005 – Won Military Training Technology Top 100 companies
2007 – Won Silver Award from Horizon Interactive Awards
2007 – Became a Salesforce Certified Consulting Partner
2008 – Riptide won 1st place Response Award at Dreamforce
2010 – Won the Military’s Common Army Ranges and Target Systems (CARTS) and
Urban Operations Training System (UOTS) contracts.
2010 – 100 employees strong, headquartered in Orlando FL, focused on Cloud
Solutions, Consulting, and Development Services
2011 – Won the CACCTUS (Combined Arms Command & Control Trainer Upgrade
System) contract for the U.S. Marine Corps to develop a seamless combination of
simulation, 2D and 3D visuals, interfaced C4I, synthetic terrain, and review capabilities.
Contract valued at more than $45 million over the next 5 years.
Page 15
2011 – Won the RDS (Range Data System) contract for the U.S. Army to provide a
complete system including radio hardware and software to provide the command, control
and information infrastructure.
2012 – Riptide recognized as a certified member of the Green Business Bureau, we are
committed to maintaining environmentally responsible business practices.
2014 – Riptide was awarded CMMI (Capability Maturity Model Integration) Level 4, based
on a standard CMMI-based Appraisal Method for Process Improvement (SCAMPI)
covering the Orlando, FL facility.
The principals of our firm are:
Philip Loeffel – President / CEO
Barry Clinger – Executive Vice President / CTO
Kent Banks – Director of Engineering / COO
Maria Tess Martin – Director of Finance / CFO
Riptide is headquartered in Orlando near the University of Central Florida campus.
Financial Information:
University of Central Florida Main Campus
Riptide Software, Inc. 200 E. Palm Valley Dr. Ste.
2000, Oviedo FL 32765
Financial Information
Page 17
References Marriott Vacations Worldwide Enterprise Systems
Riptide provides enterprise software systems, support and other technical services to Marriott,
supporting the Marriott Vacation Club, Ritz-Carlton Club, Grand Residence Club and Marriott
Vacation Club—Asia Pacific brands. Riptide's domain expertise in revenue management,
enterprise reservation systems and the hospitality industry continues to provide essential value to
Marriott for over a decade.
Riptide has provided solutions to track price and pace, improve revenue management, and track
property inventory that improve the bottom line for Marriott’s Vacation Club properties. Riptide’s
custom software development included reservation, concierge, and inventory management
systems all integrated to existing legacy systems.
Leveraging our enterprise architecture expertise, Riptide has provided SOA and ESB middleware
solutions, tying together complex back-end system integrations through standards-based web
services, with special attention to data integrity and system scalability and maintainability. Using
our UI/UX and web application development expertise,
Riptide has also developed large scale, branded, easy-to-use, customer-facing web sites with
rich functionality for capabilities including reservations, concierge services, rewards program
management, loan servicing, annual fees servicing, and profile management. Riptide provided
Admin Web Portals streamlining Customer Service's access to these functions and other
business critical functionality in global call centers with computer telephony integration (CTI). In
support of Marriott Vacations Worldwide's global sales centers, Riptide has developed web-
based sales tools for kiosks, desktops, tablets and other mobile devices, including native IOS
applications for iPads and iPhones, as well as responsive design for web applications used
across all devices and platforms.
Following mature software development processes and leveraging best practices has allowed our
systems to stand the test of time, many of which are still used and continue to be supported by
Riptide today.
Starwood Vacation Ownership Enterprise Reservation & Inventory
Management System
Riptide was engaged by Starwood to build a next generation reservation and inventory
management system for their vacation ownership properties. These enterprise systems
contained a web-based portal, which was developed for internal customer service
representatives and property concierge resources. The systems were designed within a service-
oriented architecture (SOA) and contained many enterprise integrations to systems such as
property management, customer loyalty, and points. The enterprise system integrations were
achieved utilizing web service technologies such as SOAP and REST. The systems contained
many complex workflows and approval processes, which had to be carefully orchestrated with
other enterprise services to ensure data and transactional integrity. In addition to the complex
enterprise architecture, Riptide focused heavily on the overall UI/UX making the application
usability very intuitive, delivered high user adoption and acceptance of these next generation
enterprise systems.
Major Car Rental Company Rate Management & Analytics System
Riptide was contracted by a major car rental company to build a rate management and analytics
system, which aggregates and analyzes industry pricing data to keep the company positioned
highly competitively across all major markets. This enterprise system was developed with
ultimate scalability in mind upon a distributed cloud-based architecture. The elastic nature of the
cloud infrastructure allows the company to scale with computational resources, data aggregation,
and analytical processing during seasonal peak usage. The system has distributed service
oriented architecture (SOA) utilizing RESTful web service and messaging technologies. This
Enterprise Rate Management system runs data aggregation jobs within a map/reduce compute
grid with data feed integrations to online travel agencies (OTA) and GDS to aggregate all pricing
information. The system uses rule-based logic, which is applied to the large aggregate dataset,
including data retrieved from the reservation and inventory management system, to determine
competitive pricing analysis. The rate management then provides the revenue manager with
recommendations for pricing adjustments, which can be accepted or changed, then activated
with a "single click" to publish the new rates out to all online channels (OTA), GDS and other
internal enterprise systems. Riptide also focused heavily on the overall UI/UX, making the
application usability very easy with a goal of high user adoption and acceptance of this new next
generation system.
Page 19
Point Blank Body Armor Salesforce Sales Implementation
Riptide was contracted by a leader in high performance protective technologies to help
implement a business solution. Point Blank needed to be more effective, increase efficiency and
transparency, achieve higher user adoption, and create high scalability for the firm’s Salesforce
Sales application. Point Blank’s systems lacked visibility into the daily activity of sales reps.
Tracking was done manually in spreadsheets and disparate departments lacked communication.
The firm had no defined sales process, preventing accurate forecasting and prohibiting
management from recognizing what the sales team was doing. Riptide architected a simple,
user-friendly system, including an opportunity management pipeline, which walked users through
a series of steps to track their progress. We also built APEX triggers and VF pages to reduce
manual labor and make it easy to adapt. As a result, Point Blank now has the ability to manage
its sales activities with an automated Salesforce Sales application which promotes and enhances
communication. Its ease of use gives it a high adoption rate, walking reps through the sales
cycle. Managers can now easily track their sales team activities leveraging reports and
dashboards.
Marketplace Homes Salesforce Sales Implementation
Marketplace Homes is a growing firm that sells new houses and rents out clients’ old residences.
They contacted Riptide to help migrate them off a legacy Salesforce system into Salesforce
Sales solution. They wanted increased visibility into their properties, easy transitions from team to
team, and a scalable Salesforce solution. The primary challenge was the outdated CRM software
they were using, which lacked visibility into the overall business picture and failed to provide the
detail required to make decisions. Object relationships were not created correctly, reporting was
disorganized, and the system was slow. Many processes were manual, performed outside the
Salesforce system, and there was no communication among teams. Riptide architected a
solution to meet their business needs. We created different processes across objects, utilizing
Record Types and page Layouts, and created the proper relationships across objects to meet
reporting requirements. We implemented opportunity management, which housed all related
records and quick links to records that they often created from the Opportunity record. In addition,
we used APEX triggers and VF Pages. Marketplace Homes can now easily view its overall
business picture. They have reports and dashboards to help with decision making. All processes
are inside Salesforce Sales and everyone in the company is able to communicate. Customer
satisfaction has increased because employees were able to look up records that get valid
information to solve issues.
kCura Salesforce Consulting, Development & Integration
Riptide has partnered with kCura for over 5 years in order to provide business process
automation, which ensures the smooth operation of various customer service avenues such as
monthly billing, knowledge base, ideas, community portal and more.
Utilizing Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), enterprise-scale messaging systems, Mule ESB,
and standards-based web services, Riptide developed a data aggregation system responsible for
aggregating large volumes of data from various installations of a kCura-owned software system
into Salesforce.com. The system processes millions of records per day in a highly efficient
manner, often importing hundreds of thousands of records into Salesforce.com in mere minutes.
kCura emails CSV files to the Riptide-developed integration middleware. The message-driven
middleware parses the CSV files, transforms the data into a Salesforce.com-useable format,
performs additional business logic to derive values, and uploads the records to Salesforce.com in
a high-volume, distributed ETL process.
In addition, Riptide also has developed significant customizations within kCura's Unlimited Edition
Salesforce.com org supporting over 500 full user licenses and over 3000 customer
portal/community licenses. Custom invoicing software utilizing Batch Apex to generate over 100
invoices per month and processing millions of financial datapoints was developed to support
kCura's finance department. Additional VisualForce components provide a PDF of the invoice to
be sent to customers, launching points to generate single invoices for an account and more.
At a customer facing level, Riptide worked closely with kCura to launch Communities during the
Communities Pilot for internal review. As soon as Communities became generally available,
Riptide worked with kCura to launch Communities with Ideas, Knowledge, and Chatter Answers
for over 3000 customer users worldwide. The kCura Community includes significant
customizations including a customized UI for Ideas, Google Maps integration, a custom training
tracker, support ticket management, and custom dashboards. Riptide has also developed Apex
triggers to support business process automation including automating support center quality
assurance auditing.
Page 21
VIPWink A New Mobile Media Distribution System
First Level Entertainment distributes entertainment applications through wireless carriers, carrier
distribution channels and Internet portals, with an eye on the eventual addition of retail locations.
They engaged Riptide to create a profitable new social media application that allows celebrities,
sports figures and brands to reach their followers with exclusive premium content not available in
regular mass social media streams. This new application would provide its users a way to
monetize
social media while building brand loyalty by providing followers/subscribers with exclusive, get-it-
first content not available through Twitter, Facebook or other “normal” channels. There have been
many unsuccessful attempts to monetize social media, with most using some form of advertising
structure. VIP Wink’s approach was to address the desire for celebrities and brands to generate
revenue directly from social media, but also to provide value to subscribers in a way reward
the patronage of their most loyal and dedicated supporters. Most social media outlets are one-
way vehicles to push information out with minimal opportunity to gauge interest or capture
feedback.
Riptide considered ways to enable these “VIPs” to interact bi-directionally and utilize the loyalty,
and providing a modern-day “fan club.” Leveraging Amazon Web Services, Riptide developed a
completely scalable system to handle the interaction between celebrities/brands and their
followers, which includes the management of rich media such as pictures, videos, text,
hyperlinks, and hashtags. A subscription system links the solution to the Apple Store and Google
Play Store. The solution was designed with interfaces for iOS and Android devices, and works
equally well on mobile or desktop browsers, allowing “followers” to choose their preferred method
of interaction.
Our modern, fully automated allows First Level Entertainment to offer “VIP Wink,” a premium
social media service that enables celebrities and brands to reach their target audiences and build
brand loyalty. These users are able to provide their followers with exclusive content, give
advance notice to these preferred consumers before news is widely distributed to the public, and
market their products with special targeted promotions. VIP Wink drives revenue to both First
Level Entertainment and its users, while providing value to the followers who subscribe. When
users market directly their social media outreach.
Unity Gateway Nightclub Management System
Nightclub owners approached Riptide looking for a single solution to several of their business-
related issues. These issues begin at the door, where they were looking for a solution to the
manual, error-prone system of checking IDs to ensure patrons are of legal drinking age, thus
protecting the club from liability risks. In addition, club owners wanted a powerful tool for
collecting customer data demographics and generating detailed analytics; tracking customer
loyalty; providing vehicles for targeted marketing and campaign management; giving clients a
mobile venue for making table reservations; and creating POS integration with their database.
This single solution would help club owners manage their businesses, increase existing revenue
streams and potentially grow additional methods of income.
The nightclub industry needed a modern turnkey solution that is mobile, cloud-based, scalable,
and combines all of the features needed to empower business owners to properly manage their
properties. It was vital to create an automated system that would quickly and accurately IDs, with
a single solution to handle driver’s licenses from disparate states to accommodate out-of-town
guests. It needed online/offline mode, and it had to work quickly enough to ensure a club owner’s
door traffic would flow quickly. Riptide was also tasked with adding the data collection component
to the solution, allowing club owners to determine male/female ratios in real time and to offer
customer-specific promotions, like birthday specials. The solution had to collect data from POS to
track client trends and allow for targeted marketing through email, SMS and MMS, allowing club
owners to send clients text message and email blasts and attach virtual fliers to these
communications. It also had to have a mobile customer facing component, allowing them to
reserve tables from anywhere.
Riptide developed a multi-tenant, schema-based SaaS solution which allowed numerous clubs to
onboard but still have their data isolated from others. The main interface for ID validation were
IOS devices with attached scanners. The user interface incorporated a verification screen to give
customer data feedback, providing fields based on age, gender, spender ratings, guest check
average and other criteria. Riptide utilized Mule ESB to provide a stateless API, which could be
horizontally scaled using any servlet container on a cloud-based solution. The design’s flexibility
allowed us to create marketing components for targeting clients via email, SMS/ MMS and social
media. Riptide’s experience with Twilio was invaluable, allowing us to host SMS and MMS
platforms for marketing purposes. We also leveraged Amazon Web Services (AWS) for email
marketing channels, marketing wizards, and scalability under extreme conditions.
We designed a fully automated club marketing and management system that allows club owners
to plan and react to their clientele in real time. The Unity Gateway app not only limits club owners’
liability risk by eliminating errors with manual ID checks, but also provides these businesses the
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data they need to directly market to their clients, as well as detailed customer demographics and
analytics. Club owners using the Unity Gateway app can capture client data, create customized
reports, offer targeted marketing based on real-time customer analytics, track customer loyalty,
send marketing communications directly to their patrons, increase the rate of their doorway flow,
and increase their top line revenues. This single total management solution allows club owners to
drive more customers to their clubs and incentivize repeat business.
Deepstacks University Web & Mobile Custom Learning Management System
Deepstacks University was born at the World Poker Tour at the Mirage in Las Vegas. During
breaks, its founders often discussed the lack of quality poker education. They quickly realized
there was a market for poker training very similar to other online training and online video-based
instruction programs.
Mere lectures did a poor job of preparing people to handle real world situations. Based on their
experience, the founders believed situational training would be a more effective approach. In
situational training people are put in a series of situations, forced to react, and then critiqued on
their responses. Based upon this insight, Deepstacks Poker Training began holding live events in
multiple cities, eventually recruiting famous poker player Mike “The Mouth” Matusow as their lead
trainer.
Deepstacks was ready to address a broader audience, by moving its poker training online. While
traditional online poker training consisted of watching online videos, lecture-style, Deepstacks
wanted to transform the industry by delivering their new way of learning poker online. This
training program was called Deepstacks University. There was only one problem: while
Deepstacks had built strong competencies around poker instruction and contracted with many of
the top names in the world of poker, they lacked any sort of IT or software engineering support
infrastructure.
Deepstacks approached Riptide, a leading provider of cloud and mobile technology solutions,
consulting, professional services, and development, and proposed this revolutionary online poker
training system. They wanted to take the industry by storm with a custom Learning Management
System (LMS) that provided an interactive experience to their users from the web browser and
mobile devices. Riptide had previously built a similar system for the US Army, it was an ideal
candidate to build Deepstacks University. To achieve the vision for Deepstacks University, a
whole new business would have to be built. Deepstacks did not want to be in the business of
installing and maintaining server or software infrastructure. Therefore, Riptide advised the
company to leverage a fully cloud-based architecture so that Deepstacks could focus on what
they knew best—poker. With the cloud, an entire Internet business could be built without a single
technical person on staff.
A specific cloud architecture and deployment model was chosen as the best choice for the needs
of Deepstacks University. There would be four elements to the solution. The first would be the
underlying infrastructure upon which the application would be built. This would be provided by
Amazon Web Services (AWS), an infrastructure as a service provider. The second would be the
state-of-the-art interactive multimedia instruction (IMI) learning management system (LMS)
custom developed by Riptide. Third, Salesforce would be used as the back-office system
containing all customer information.
Finally, the users need to be able to access all of the training content "on the go”, so a
companion mobile app was developed. The initial released app was a iOS based targeting
iDevices (iPhone, iPod & iPad devices) to keep all of the learners engaged. Riptide chose to
leverage the latest in rapid application development (RAD) technologies and selected
the Groovy & Grails technology stack. The technology decision was based off of Riptide's deep
internal knowledge of the Java platform, which could maximize the potential for code reuse. The
core application was designed from the start to be deployed on Amazon Web Services
(AWS).This would allow global scalability and service delivery to customers worldwide. Therefore,
the next step was to focus on the Amazon cloud infrastructure and integrations for handling the
distribution of rich multimedia content. The LMS system needed to have strong content delivery
capabilities, therefore Amazon S3 provided a storage repository for the Amazon CloudFront
content delivery network (CDN), which was used to ensure fast multimedia delivery across the
globe.
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References: Client Satisfaction Anthony Zybak (Salesforce & IT Manager) —
"We have been using Riptide for over 5 years now to do development work for us and
have been extremely happy with the services they provide. They have a wide range of
development expertise from being able to build simple triggers to automate processes to
design expertise for helping with page styling to being able to recommend and
implement cost saving alternatives for when you need to do workflow outside of
Salesforce. We are very heavy users of Salesforce and have built a lot of customizations
within it. We wouldn't be able to run our business as efficiently as we do without the
work they have provided for us."
Kath Matthews (VP) —
“We had a fantastic experience working with Riptide to integrate our system —
BriefingEdge — with Salesforce. The Riptide team was sensitive to our level of
experience with Salesforce, guiding us to the absolute best solution, which resulted in a
managed package that was easy to install into our Salesforce system. The Riptide
development process was very effective both in terms of offering options where
appropriate and communicating with us through weekly reviews. The constant two-way
communication ensured that any questions that arose during development were quickly
addressed. I would definitely recommend the Riptide team for their knowledge,
professionalism, communication skills and bringing in our project ahead of schedule and
within our budget!"
Ron Leventhal (Founder/CEO) —
"Riptide's creativity, problem solving and technical experience were essential in bringing
our vision for Deepstacks University to life. The team has years of expertise in cloud
computing technologies specifically around Salesforce development & integration, Rapid
Web Application Development, Amazon Web Services and Mule ESB, which were
invaluable cloud services when delivering and scaling our online business. I have worked
with many technology companies over the years but Riptide is first class company with
top talent. We continue to work with the team today and Riptide will be our preferred
technology partner for years to come."
Pricing Proposal
Estimated Costs by Project Phase & Time Line
Project Resource Roles:
Multiple project resources will be required for this project. However, resource allocation levels for
all phases will be determined at a later time. We anticipate a mixture of partial and dedicated
allocation across multiple resource roles. Riptide uses a Matrix delivery model. We estimate that
the project team of two (2) resources will take 8 – 12 weeks (availability of SACU employees will
play a significant role in project time-lines).
Discovery & Design:
Riptide estimates that the Discovery & Design Process will take 80 to 120 NTE 160 man-hours.
To accomplish this for SACU, we estimate a total cost between $10,000 and $15,000 NTE
$20,000
Salesforce Implementation and AppExchange Solution Evaluation Implementation:
Riptide estimates that the solution design will require 200 to 450 NTE 550 man-hours. We
estimate the cost between $25,000 and $56,250 NTE $68,750.
Custom Integration Estimate:
Riptide will be able to narrow down this estimate after conducting the BPR until then a broad
range is required due to unknowns of selected systems. Integration could take 150 to 750 NTE
1000 man-hours. We estimate the cost between $18,750 and $93,750 NTE $125,000. This
estimate will be finalized through the Solution Design process.
*All activities and outcomes listed above have overlap dependencies and will be executed
concurrently as process and best practices dictate.