Convergint and Feature Upvote

We talked to Bethany Taylor, business architect at Convergint.

Can you tell us a bit about your company and the work you do?

Convergint is the largest systems integrator in the world. We do installations of access control, video surveillance and complex security systems specific to a certain vertical. We also do high tech security for big clients like the US government, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, all the major players in the game.

I’m a business architect, responsible for planning and leading a variety of business and financial projects to ensure that the company’s technology platforms effectively support operational and strategic initiatives.

How are you using Feature Upvote?

We’ve got a number of internal tools that we’ve developed to support our business. We use Feature Upvote to crowdsource feedback on these. Our colleagues can make a suggestion and others can upvote it. What changes would they like to see to our internal platforms? What things do they feel are a high priority?

Feature Upvote is a way to get feedback from end users as a way of evolving our product.

The ability to collect internal feedback is fantastic, particularly being able to say ‘here’s an idea’ and give everyone the opportunity to vote for it, collaborate on it and watch that conversation grow over time. That’s a huge benefit of a tool like Feature Upvote, rather than just a request feedback option that goes into a private queue.

I really like the ability to give colleagues an outlet for their ideas and a way to record them and then ultimately have colleagues contribute. It works very well for us.

Feature Upvote is also ‘low maintenance’ both from an administrative perspective and for an end user. If I’m in there I know what to do. It isn’t confusing.

In terms of how Feature Upvote fits into our processes, we use Feature Upvote together with project management software Wrike.

If anything new is added to Feature Upvote we reach out to the person who made the suggestion, and people who made comments, to get a better idea of what they are looking for. We have a follow up conversation and that starts our enhancement review and prioritisation process.

So the idea is logged in Wrike and then we take it through a workflow where its rounded out in terms of scope of work, assessment of labour/resource needs and then we prioritise it with stakeholders and it gets a place on the roadmap if it’s necessary.

If you could give other customers one piece of advice on collecting feedback, what would it be?

What has really helped us is placing a direct link to Feature Upvote inside our applications. So you’re in the environment you’re providing feedback on. You’re right there when something happens. You can just click in the upper right hand corner and quickly document your idea in Feature Upvote. While you’re there you can also look at other suggestions, or add comments.

Having that connection between what you want feedback on and being able to quickly give feedback is huge. You give people instant gratification.

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