Generating over $80 million in new sales for solar firm

Gallery

Client Review

Background

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I was the SVP of operations and IT for a company that was an owner and operator of residential solar installations. Instead of paying upfront for solar panels, homeowners would only pay their electric bill, while our company handled the installation and sold power to clients.

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Opportunity / Challenge

What challenge were you trying to address with Praxent?

We were building new platforms from scratch and were looking for a nimble and talented team that could work with us. We got in touch with Praxent’s team and found a good synergy of personalities.

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Solution

What was the scope of their involvement?

Praxent worked with us in bringing our vision to life. They developed the business-critical quoting engine used by our dealers, salespeople, and customers. It’s a self-service application for generating quotes.

One of the key elements we put forth when we started the company was to shorten the sales cycle and empower agents to self-quote by entering a few pieces of information that would produce a binding quote which didn’t require additional signoff by our layers of management. This is what Praxent has built for us.

We created an MVP [minimum viable product] and got it out to market. We continued to add enhancements and features to it, adjusting the tool to newer sales models, different security hierarchies, and so on. We went out with the MVP on purpose, given that we needed speed to market in order to obtain real feedback. Praxent worked with us through my entire stay with the company, and possibly later on.

I worked closely with 3–4 members of their team, but I know that there were more backend developers doing additional work. Tim Hamilton [Founder, Praxent] acted as my project lead and I also worked directly with a tech lead.

How did you come to work with Praxent?

I believe that we found them through a referral. I don’t know if we considered other companies.

How much have you invested with them?

The cost of their work was between $500,000–$750,000 during my involvement.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Praxent in December 2010. The project continued for the next 18 months, at which point I left the company, in early 2012. I believe that the relationship continued.

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Results & Feedback

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement? 

Our company was successful and this tool was a critical element of that success. It was the main tool with which we drew sales. The best indicator of Praxent’s efficiency is that we were 20% under budget for the deployment.

How did Praxent perform from a project management standpoint?

We developed all our systems under the budget and under the timeline. This was a huge win for us. Communication was done through email, phone, and in-person.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The level of sheer intellect shown in their way of thinking about problems added tremendous value and saved us time. Praxent thought through all issues ahead of time before letting us run into them. Beyond this, there was a lot of dedication to the customer.

Never was there a time when I couldn’t get a hold of someone when I needed them. They had a desire to look at the bigger picture, and not just nuanced details. This is how I think about problems and how I like to run a company. There is a lot of commonality here, which I very much appreciate. This willingness to engage at this level is not necessarily common for consulting and development firms. Most want to take requirements and execute versus really helping us question them.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They were growing at the time, but I left the company 3 years ago, so I’m not sure how Praxent has changed since then.