Jitterbit Vinyl Reviews

We have a ton of little applications that we run across the whole entire organization that help various departments get things done better. In some cases we might have been using things in spreadsheets or manually typing up emails, and we've been using a lot of VINYL applications to help eliminate those.

We host it on-prem right now. It has the ability for us to access the databases that we need to access, so it has been a good solution for us on-prem.

We've had a great ability to get proofs of concepts up very quickly, within a couple of hours. From there, we just embellish and enhance them until they get to a more robust state. It's been nice and quick to get some proofs of concept out of the door, to get user feedback on them, and to keep iterating until we get something that's really useful for the team. One example would be a business travel tracker. We developed an application that lets our employees have the ability to put in a trip request and have the hotel, airfare, and trains all specified and figured out.

The breadth of the solution’s data integration abilities through its data source connectors and API integrations has been really great. There are so many different plugins that they've created. We use SQL quite a bit, XML, JSON, and REST APIs. They keep adding different functionality and we keep taking advantage of it as we can. The more functionality that is available to us, the more we're able to be creative with our solutions. When Zudy announces a new feature, we usually keep an eye out to see if it will help spark the creative juices. There are so many problems for business that we already know about, and we're always looking for another solution to help us develop an application and get some great functionality to our customer, quicker.

Overall, it's helped out tremendously with certain departments. We have been able to turn manual processes, where we were working with spreadsheets or working manually with emails, into workflows. We're saving a lot of hours by doing that. Although I haven't run any calculations on the hours saved, it's definitely in the hundreds.

It allows us to have a ton of different interactions between the various data sources and databases, and it simplifies things for us tremendously.

We're always trying to develop the functionality and get it to the customer as soon as possible. We have a process in place where we look at requirements of the application, and then we say, "Right, this is going to be a good fit for Zudy," and we'll jump in and start coding. In those instances, we know that it's going to be the quicker product and the way to get things turned around faster.

The feature that I find most valuable with Zudy VINYL is how flexible it is. There are so many ways that you can connect data to it and there are so many features that are out-of-the-box that make the product very flexible and easy and easy to work with.

It's got a great user interface which makes it a nice looking product that our employees are able to engage with quickly.

It's a pretty robust product. I'm always impressed when they come out with new functionality. But it might help if they put out different types that would provide different ways to view the data. I'd like to see more on that.

We've been using Zudy VINYL for about four years at Collette.

I haven't noticed any issues with it. It seems to be a very solid product. I don't see it going down ever. I don't hear complaints of that from anybody. It's been a very stable product for us.

We haven't had issues with the scalability. It's scalable when we need it. Everything is done behind the scenes in the database. If you have multiple servers, they talk to them and it just works.

We have approximately 200 people using it across our organization. Employees across the organization using it have various roles and have access to certain applications. We have a business travel tracker, for example, that lets employees submit travel requests. We have tour managers, have product developers, product buyers, transportation coordinators. There are a whole bunch of different roles out there that are using the product.

It's fairly embedded into our culture right now. I would put it up there with a couple of our main systems. We have our own ERP, a CRM system and in addition to that we have a whole bunch of applications that are hosted in VINYL. Those are the primary application pools that we use.

There are so many Zudy features out there that I haven't had a chance to explore. I'm really excited to try out the new form builders and the mobile functionality. Those are at the top of my list.

Zudy technical support has always been great. They are very quick to get back to us when we have questions, whether it's answering questions, helping out and assisting, or jumping on a session if we need to. They've always been great with us.

We did not have a previous no-code solution.

We came to the realization that we needed a solution like Zudy because I was on a call and someone was proposing Zudy for something completely different. My ears perked up. I said, "I can use this for a lot of other places within the company, not just the one particular application that you guys are looking at it for. We ended up having a phone call with a few key members over at Zudy and were able to bang out a proof of concept for something I thought would be pretty hard to implement through our own coding practices. They knocked it out of the park.

We didn't really have to do a setup. The vendor came in and they did the install for us. It probably took about an hour. It wasn't very complicated. We just had to provide them with a Windows Server.

We really didn't need an implementation strategy. We set up a development server and then a production server, which was pretty close to a mirror of the development server. That way there is a way to take applications that you develop on the development server and promote them to the production environment. Once we had that path set, nice and clear, that was all it really took.

On our end it involved one or two members from the network operations team.

There really hasn't been too much maintenance going on with it. It's more like a set-it-and-forget-it. The Zudy team pretty much takes care of the maintenance for us when it's time for maintenance, but the application never crashes. It's up and running when we need it.

We used two different vendors. Zudy itself has their own Professional Services and we use another company called Zen. They have some developers who are familiar with the product, and they're very comfortable in using it as well.

We are able to turn around some applications very quickly.

The pricing and licensing of Zudy are fair. We have an annual subscription that we pay. The subscription gets us the maintenance that we need and the support that we need. They've always been great with us.

There is an additional cost if you use their Professional Services.

We looked at a couple of no-code-only options. The big one that we looked at was the Microsoft offering called Microsoft Flow.

One of the things we really enjoy about the VINYL offering is that it's on-prem. That really works with the way our company is architected.

I would definitely recommend you check it out. It's been a game changer at Collette. It's been really great to work with, and we're very happy with it.

The biggest lesson I've learned from using Zudy VINYL is that anything that you throw at it, anything that you dream up, they can probably work with it and get some kind of application going out there. They've got so many ties and tie-ins, so many different plugins, and a really knowledgeable technical support staff.

To develop an application within Zudy, it's a pretty quick process. We usually tend to design what the data fields are going to look like, what it's going to look like at the database level, and then design forms around that. That's the general process. We figure out what the functionality is going to be behind the scenes, or perhaps when you're interacting with it what the form will look like. We usually have some data that will trigger a grid and that can select other things. There's also the ability to send emails out from there and trigger workflows.

In terms of the ease of use of the solution for non-developers, I can't say that we have business users coming in and creating applications. That's typically not how we work. But we do have other people within IT who are not developers who have made applications. They've had pretty good success with it. Business units will sometimes say they need to look at data in a certain way, and they can build their own application. It's something that's pretty easy to pick up on once you get an understanding of how the framework works.

Interestingly enough, I don't really consider the code, or in this case that it's no-code, when I'm picking a solution. I'm more focused on delivering functionality for my team as soon as possible. In a lot of cases, VINYL has been able to help out with that particular functionality. And when the product is complete, it always gives us a professional looking and intuitive interface.

We're currently on VINYL 2.7 and we're looking forward to upgrading to version 3.0. The updated UI and UX in 3.0 looks nice and clean. It looks like it's really easy to use. There are definitely some differences in it, but it doesn't look like there is anything that would be too difficult to to learn.

I watched a demo of 3.0 and it looked like it was really simple to get things going with creating new forms. They've got a brand new form builder. Some process that might have taken a few hours can be done in a few minutes now. That's going to be really important when we're trying to make a quick proof of concept.

Also, Zudy continues to improve the solution's features. I love and look forward to their product updates. There's always some type of functionality that I can take advantage of. One of the things I'm really looking forward to implementing in version 3.0 is the mobile functionality. We have a mobile workforce and they would appreciate it if we could get some responsive sites into applications. The constant improvement and development speaks of the company and the product very well. I love the fact that they're constantly investing into their product and making it better. They're going to continue to grow their users and continue to grow offerings. That is going to be good for everybody. It's nice to see a company that is continuing to make their products better.

For authentication purposes, we reach out to Azure ID. We authenticate out there on Microsoft's cloud. It comes back and then we handle the permissions within a VINYL-based security system.

Overall, I would give Zudy VINYL a solid 10 out of 10. The application has been really great. The team itself has been really great, and we're able to get stuff out for our customers very quickly.

What we do is provide client management systems assistance to HUD-approved, non-profit housing counseling agencies across the country. The use case for Zudy is that we have HUD-approved, non-profit housing counseling agencies that have to report the work that they do, to HUD, in specific formats. In other words, the services that an individual in a community comes to a HUD-approved, housing counseling agency for, are reported out to HUD on a quarterly basis. That's [includes] everything from someone who needs assistance with purchasing a home, to rental services, to seeking shelter, mortgage modification, or homelessness assistance. All of that information is captured, per certain guidelines, and reported out to HUD. HUD takes that information and reports that to Congress on a regular basis. In return, Congress allocates funding to these HUD-approved agencies based on the information that they received from our client management system, mPact Pro.

Our system is hosted on the cloud and supported on the backend with Zudy through Amazon Web Services. 

We're in a digital age now, so we're just taking advantage of that more frequently now, with respect to how information is captured. We have been able to take a lot of organizations that were using paper, to being paperless. We're just leveraging all of the abilities that we have found to be easier to do inside of Zudy.

An example of a custom application we have developed with the solution are dashboards that we are working on where certain KPIs are going to be displayed, disseminated, and captured by the end-user at the touch of a button. When it comes to being able to report out the impact or the work that's being done, it's easier now for the end-user to get the information that they need, disseminate that information, and deliver that information to those that need it. If we didn't have Zudy, this development would have been doable, but it was easier [with Zudy]. It was easier to lay out the designing and planning because of their process.

The data integration features streamlined things. I saved hours and manpower in getting things done. What we've been able to deliver, on behalf of the end-user, non-profit housing counseling agencies, actually replaces a person. It allows that person to be able to focus on other things, in terms of automation. At the push of a button now, or by clicking on a certain feature, items that were on an outside platform are now automatically transferred in real time into our platform by just answering a question "yes" or "no."

The ease of use is an 8.5 or nine out of 10. It's "night and day" for our end-user, when we compare it with our old platform which was great, but clunky. Now, we have taken all the guesswork out of, "What am I supposed to do next?" You don't even have to ask a question. Where they had to follow instructions in the old platform, they basically click on the button that addresses the question that they have to ask to be able to perform a certain function in the system.

Zudy does a great job of continuing to improve features and communicate those feature improvements throughout. There has not been a week that has gone by where I have not read about, or gotten an email about, or not been able to get access to one of the improvements. It's not only through the normal communications, but also just the dialogue I've had back and forth with the account managers and the design team that had been working on projects for us. We started out with one product build, an application, and we've added two more, with two more to come. It's extremely important to continue to improve the product because of what our current environment [is]. The shoreline has changed in terms of how anybody, any organization, is going to be doing work. They're going to need to take advantage of technology and using less paper but getting more data, because that data is what is going to deliver the results that are going to be needed to be able to continue to do this work.

An example of an improvement that they've made to it recently is the ability to capture information of what, in the industry we call an "intake." A lot of organizations may still use paper, and I keep referring back to that, but now we've automated that process to the point where the end-user can deliver an access portal for the individual client to be able to get introduced to the agency, provide documentation, and for the aides to be able to follow up with the individual, based on information that they provided. That's now been streamlined. Before, this process may have taken days or weeks to get to the point of being able to deliver a solution to the clients that they serve. Now we can do it in a day.

Another example of how they've improved the process for us is in the key performance measures or reporting modules that we've requested to be built. The individual agencies can pull the reports and data at their level without having to request it through us.

Time to market definitely has [de]creased. For example, today we got off a call where we were going over some things that we needed to have delivered. By the time we wrapped up the call, they said, "We'll be able to deliver something to you. Because today we're approaching a holiday, on Monday we're going to be able to look at it, to be able to push it to market."

Zudy has increased development speed. What would take us months to be able to complete, we're getting done in a matter of weeks. I have a number of projects that we were working on that I thought that we'd [only] be able to get completed by next year. We've already completed them and we're still in the year 2020.

All of Zudy's features are valuable. In terms of the user interface, we have come upon solutions that make workflow easier with efficiencies in making things, from a process standpoint, easier for the agencies to utilize. We've taken all the guesswork out of the process for them.

In comparison to our previous platform, the speed of development of custom applications using Zudy is light years faster. We were able to deliver the first solution in less than three months. It would be a little bit less if you take out the unknowns, which I've found to be my best friend in terms of things occurring that we didn't know were happening. But even with that, it has been light years. By comparison, what took us a year-and-a-half to do on our previous platform, we did in three months with Zudy.

The low-code level of work that we can do on our own, once things are handed off to us, and the interaction that we've had throughout, with the account managers and the architectural design individuals—they have made a process that should be automated [a] friendly [process].

In terms of data migration and data connectors, they actually built a data transition table. I think it was through a platform called Magellan, that was customized for us to be able to take data out of the old platform, stage it into a staging area, and then move it into the new platform that was built on the Zudy VINYL platform. It was seamless from my standpoint, but I'm not the one who wrote the code or pushed the data in and out of the old platform into the new platform. But they made what was going to be what I called "Godzilla," in terms of it being a monumental monster of a project, easy, with the solution that they deliver.

Upload time of documents that needed to be uploaded was a request that we were having an issue with. That issue got resolved in [near] real time, within probably 30 minutes.

We got introduced to Zudy in March of this year, or about eight months ago.

It has been extremely stable; no issues whatsoever, thus far.

Zudy's scalability is one of the things that sold me. We wanted to make sure that we could deliver a product that could grow as we grew, and as the industry grows, and as changes occured. We have no issues whatsoever. 

We do have plans for increasing the usage in the future. We're working on an additional product in a project that we want to be able to roll out in the next couple of months. We're feeling really good about that.

We have over 100 organizations. Before we started with Zudy we had 65 and we're [at] 115 and counting right now. Because of what we've rolled out through Zudy, we have almost doubled in size.

We've not had any issues with tech support. We've not had any challenges to go to tech support. But, as promised, if we did have issues, they would follow up.

We get communication with the design group that we've been working with, daily, to give us a heads-up if we may encounter a problem with the process. But no issues whatsoever, thus far.

A feature that we asked for was the ability to add a document upload feature and it was done in less than a day, actually within a couple of hours. Some reporting views needed to be changed. I gave that request verbally, via a phone call. While I was on the phone they asked me to refresh my screen and it was done.

There are two-and-a-half people that we are in constant communication with. And that's mainly because of additional features and additional projects that we keep adding to the process.

Our previous platform had a development team and an agreement along with that. To make any changes or enhancements, we had to go through that process. So there is nothing to compare [Zudy] to. That was part of why we wanted to look at other options and, fortunately, we found Zudy.

The setup of the initial [deployment] was extremely straightforward. Everything that they said they did, they actually exceeded.

Getting access to it, once we agreed and signed off on the dotted line, was within an hour. Then we started working on some training that we needed to do to get familiar with the platform. That was delivered that same day. We wanted to make sure on our end that we understood what we were getting ourselves into. As a team and staff we completed our training to get familiar with the Zudy platform. Within 48 or 72 hours we were done with what we needed and we started building out platforms and applications.

I can't say the developers had an issue with any development challenges. 

My staff is small. There were three of us involved in the deployment. We're a team of three but we act like a team of 30 now, because of what we have access to.

Our return on investment has been huge. Once we switched from the old platform over to Zudy, we had an increase of organizations to now [have] over 115. That's about 55 organizations that came to us as a result of the platform switch. And in terms of demo requests, we used to get about one or two demo requests a month. Now we're getting about two to four demo requests a week.

Pricing and licensing are on par with or better than what we were looking at and what we had. That was also one of the key factors for making the decision. We cut our costs in half by going over to the Zudy platform.

There are no additional costs in terms of their standard licensing fees, but we have asked for and signed up for support services. So [when there are] some questions that we can't answer until we get more and more knowledge about the system, we have a support structure there so that we can get questions asked and answered, or time to have things built or augmented.

We just did an internet search of some products that were on other platforms and what they came along with. What jumped out to us was we had the ability to own everything that we built, of course with the support and help from Zudy. 

Without mentioning what those other platforms were, some of them are very prominent, that you hear about in the media every day. Although they were comparable, we found that we can do the same thing with the Zudy platform and the team, and they proved us right.

My advice would be to do your research. Compare what development and the timeline looks like on the big players, the other platforms that are out there which are all great. And ask yourself if it's going to be comparable and can the Zudy platform actually speak to the same things that the big boys do.

We've gotten no complaints about the functionality, given that it's a “no code” solution. We've gotten great feedback about how our new system looks and how much less stress [there has been] during our current environment—meaning everything that is going on with the pandemic and organizations being forced to work remotely. The timing was good for us to have run across Zudy, to help deliver what we believe the rest of the industry and probably most industries are going to be going to: offering a paperless solution to deliver or conduct your job.

I wouldn't say it's the biggest lesson that I've learned from Zudy, but I really appreciate understanding known-unknowns and what the unknown-unknowns are. In other words: how we approach a problem now versus how we dealt with problems from the old platform. Now, if there's an issue, we know that there is a solution that can be delivered, in short order. In the past, it was hit and miss: We've got this problem; we don't know how long it's going to take to fix it. But we do know now that if we run into problems on this platform, there's a solution that's going to be delivered. In most cases, the end-user doesn't even know that it's an issue.

The user interface and user experience are greatly improved. I haven't really heard any complaints from our end-users, but they are loving what they're seeing.

I'm really pleased with all of the deliverables and the work so far. There's always room for improvement with any organization, but I like the communication. I like the follow up. I like the constant checking in with me, and the team, on if we're moving in the right direction or if we need to make pivots or changes. And the fact that I can send an email or pick up the phone or send a communication through Slack and get instant communication [means] there is no guesswork. I don't have a complaint. I'm satisfied with everything thus far.

I would rate Zudy at nine out of 10 because of the ease of use, the customer service, making me feel like I'm a partner who is valued, and appreciating the feedback that we receive from them.

We started out doing prototyping and moved that to a demonstration application. Now, we are moving into a trial version that we hope will convert over into our running application.

It works well online and on my mobile. It is storing data in our Cloud Datastore, as well as theirs.

We are on the most current VINYL release.

We are a startup, and this product will not be for internal consumption. This is going to be a product for sale that we're building. It solves an industry problem today where there is no management of data, and it's just spreadsheets emailed around. So far, people in the industry who have seen what we are doing like what they see.

The team is its most valuable feature. The people I work with are great. They can get the stuff done that I want done usually faster than I expect.

The product is super fast at getting things done. 

I had expected a portal that can be secure and handle data ingestion and visualization. It hits all those points and that is what it's doing.

There are some acknowledged technical limitations. I was looking to do some metadata manipulation, which is very atypical. Zudy said that they will work on building me a workaround. If there is a weakness, that would be it. However, they seem to acknowledge it and are finding a workaround for me. While it may not be in VINYL, they are doing an external program to shore up the weakness.

We started using it the week before Thanksgiving 2019. So, we have been using it for about four months.

I have been given concrete examples of how the solution scales, but I'm not really worried about it right now.

We don't have any users at the moment. We have people preparing to become trial users.

I have never had to grab technical support outside of the developers

I did not previously use another solution.

The initial setup was very straightforward. They keep me aware of anything complex, but I do not have to expend any energy to deal with it.

They got a good demonstration application done for me in two months. This allowed me to get funding so I could survive as a business. The application was good enough to get customers interested. I like to say, "I would be working at Walmart if they hadn't been successful."

Today, everything is in the Zudy space. We will then migrate it over into our cloud space, which they are capable of doing. We will keep them as our prototype vendor; whenever we are working on new things, they will do that for us. Some of the actual running systems, we will probably keep it on VINYL until we run into something that we can't do.

I'm not doing the programming (or no-coding), but I'm managing the features with their architects. All the development is being done by the Zudy team. I am working on getting some developers who can augment that team, but we haven't added that yet.

I have seen ROI. The biggest benefits are:

• The speed
• The team's ability to budget
• The team's ability to stay within budget and get things done.
• We are able to experiment, and usually you can't afford to experiment much.

Compared to if I used traditional methods, such as hiring developers and setting up systems, VINYL is costing me less than half of what it would normally cost.

I did look at all of the rapid development options, like Zoho. I liked my interface with the business team at Zudy well enough that I didn't look at anybody else because they seem to know what they are doing.

This is a platform which should be considered seriously for rapid prototyping. If you want to build it yourself, at least use them to do the early testing. I would also recommend to consider them for your long-term production platform use. For data management and data visualization, this product is hard to beat. Feature-wise, I haven't run into anything that we just can't do. It accesses our external systems and processes, using them very well.

For what they have given me, the product is a 10 (out of 10).

We use it for progressive apps, especially when workflows of the past, again, paper trail, can be replaced with electronic, which is what mine has done.

VINYL has improved the way our organization functions with our paper trail. What I mean by that is that one of our process workflows was all paper-based. VINYL was taken and replaced the paper trail with an electronic trail throughout, with audits, which we didn't have before. It's made things seamless and it's more efficient, and there's an audit trail where it wasn't there before.

Has it increased my productivity? Yes, when I'm allowed to actually code in VINYL. But when I'm not in VINYL then it doesn't, obviously, and not everything can be switched to VINYL. We have to have buy-in from upper and lower management, whoever the users are.

We definitely have used the solution to bring more than one data set together. We have an IT dashboard checking system that brings together DNS, DHCP, WINS, SUS, Alertus. There are about fifteen different data sets that come together on one visual to see whether people have something installed on their PCs or not. It gives our help desk visibility across a person's PC as to what they're missing or what they have.

As a programmer, I came from a programming world, so it was hard for me to use the tool because it was very foreign to a programmer, but it's very dynamic. So if I build one panel, it can go across to the different tools, phone, iPad, computer, and I don't have to worry about redesigning it for each platform.

Only because consultants can see places to use the tool where we're blind to that because we've just done it that way in the past. I don't know if I'm explaining myself right, but when they come in they can see a need for it, or a use case for it, that we would have never picked. So the consultants have provided places where the tool can benefit us that we would have never thought of.

What additional features would I like to see is easy: drag and drop UI interface. That what you see is what you get. Right now it's very dependent on having an imagination to understand. If I put a control on a page, what it's going to look like at the end result. I would much rather have, I drag it in place and then I do the backend stuff. I would like to see it before I have to build it.

Three years.

I like the stability of VINYL because I can see them always increasing, changing, making it better. I've worked with it for three years now and what it used to be in the first year to what it is now is a world of difference. They've taken our suggestions, as users, and moved the platform in the right direction, fixing those problems and making it better. As long as they keep doing that, I see a long life for the product.

VINYL definitely has the capability to be scalable in the fact that it can be a reporting tool or an ETL tool or just bringing of datasets together tool. So, scalable across different solutions.

Since we have two of the consultants on site, anytime I have a question, they're right there and if they don't know the answer, they go right onto the forums and reach back to the home company and get the answer for me. So, it's been outstanding.

The VINYL consultants are outstanding because they can bring a visual into our organization from the outside and see things like I said, we can't see. We're blind to it and then they're able to let us know, subtly, that we need to change, and change to a better app platform, which is VINYL, to get the work done more efficiently, more effectively.

The initial setup I came into my first week with the organization, so it was already ongoing. I'm not sure I'm a good perspective on that. It seemed scattered, but it may be our organization and not theirs, and it could just be the data.

We weren't sold on VINYL in the beginning. It was brought in, it was used for something, a proof of concept, but it wasn't really utilized to its full potential.

I went to the TechEd conference last year and I saw what it could do by seeing all the other customers and that's when we really started adapting it. I came back to the office and I said, "I see you use cases that I never would have seen if I hadn't seen the other solutions in place." So, I think the TechEd is our turning point where we started really utilizing it.

I guess I would say "be open to it." And, if you're a programmer, don't look at it with a programmer's mind. If you're a business person or business analyst, you're going to be able to understand how the tool works. Programmers, coders have a pre-set understanding of how to code, and this is not how to code. This is how to build an APP. So you have to go into it with an open mind.

On a scale of one to ten, I'd probably rate it at an eight. It is a young product and still growing. I see it growing the right way. As long as they, the VINYL staff and developers, keep up with changes of the technology and the times, I see it growing to be better than eight, but right now, eight because of some of the limitations it has.

We use VINYL as a solution to eliminating management reports that are paper-based. We've automated all of those paper reports to be electronic web-based and on mobile applications.

The product has improved our organization's function through all of our management reports that we do monthly are now online, on mobile applications, and ready to be reviewed by executives weeks before they previously would have been available.

The solutions helped us identify where we have bad data within our organization and bringing that to the forefront so we can fix the root cause of issues that are happening. We use the solution to develop progressive apps as we are consistently iterating on what's already been developed and adding new capabilities and functionality to the apps that we're having developed.

One of the most valuable features of the solution is how rapid we can implement it, going from a design to an operational concept in a very short period of time.

We've been relying on Zudy from a consultant basis to do all of our development, and it's been fairly positive. I'd like to see the next release of VINYL have more user interface solutions to it, so that it could be a more user-friendly product on the front end for the customers that are utilizing the tool. We didn't have a solution to help automate all of our reporting in the past which identified the need to make sure that we could tap into our data sources and automate all of our reporting, which is exactly why we needed the tool.

The Zudy VINYL platform is consistent. We haven't had any issues with it going out of service or functionality where it should have been available and it hasn't been. It's stable.

I think that there are concerns with the scalability of the VINYL platform, in making sure that it is secure and being able to be utilized for long periods of time without consistent maintenance.

Zudy's technical support has been spot on. Every time we've needed them, they've been able to deliver what we're looking for.

If I were to give advice to somebody researching a solution such as VINYL, I would tell them to make sure that they understand all of the ins and outs, especially on the front end in what the user sees to make sure that VINYL has the capabilities they're looking for from a front end and customer facing perspective. To ensure that it has visuals, its ease of use, its ability to click through and be mobile at the same time as web-based. 

On a scale of one to ten, I would rate Zudy VINYL about a seven. I'm not too familiar with it yet to give it a more solid rating. 

We're able to develop things quickly, but at the same time there's been a lot of issues across multiple pages where it should have been fixed once, and it's fixed on certain pages, but not all as we're going through the development process.

Our company works with medical devices. We sell and service imaging equipment to hospitals and clinics in the territories we serve. NXC's primary use case for Zudy VINYL was to provide a mobile field service management application that our current ERP provider could not provide to us.

VINYL has improved the way that our company functions. Primarily, the first impact was user satisfaction. The majority of our employees at NXC imaging are not in the office. They're out in the field covering the territories that we serve so prior to VINYL, they had to log in or they had to find Wi-Fi, then log into a VPN. Then they had to connect to a terminal server. Then they had to open up Microsoft Dynamics AX and then navigate to their schedule. What VINYL has given us is the ability to serve up all of that information on their phone, so now they're free to do their jobs. They're pretty happy.

VINYL has given us the ability to really improve the speed with which we deploy releases and respond to the good ideas that our people have.

Another thing that this application has allowed us to do is to bring value to the business very quickly. The benefits or the impact on the IT organization is a big morale builder or booster for us. The real benefit is that our IT organization now has the confidence to say yes to requests as opposed to no or have significant delays. The team is motivated to field requests, work on improvements and rollout changes. It's very easy to roll out a change. It takes a couple of minutes depending on the app that we're we're talking about. It's pretty easy to keep my team going in the right direction.

Prior to VINYL, we were working within a Tier 2 application that took a very long time for us to change. It's very, very expensive. Our burn rate for making changes in VINYL is about a tenth of what it was in the other platform and we can do it in a tenth of the time.

Comparing where we've been to where we are now in terms of the technical platform, it's incredibly easy to make changes, and it's incredibly easy to approve. From being able to deliver value to their business from a user perspective, it's really cool as an IT leader to be able to say yes to requests and deliver them in a timely fashion, as opposed to saying no, or coming up with reasons to delay or to give them a long term "it depends" answer.

The most valuable features of Zudy VINYL are the abilities for us to rapidly develop applications, deploy them easily, and then make adjustments as we realize the things that we forgot to put in the first release or the second release. We've done eight releases in eleven months for our field management solution.

The features that I'd like to see in VINYL next would be the ability to have more control over or have a rule-based control over column headings and column labels. Depending on what we're trying to display to a user, we can put in rules to change things around, make it easier for that.

The other thing would be a more sophisticated workflow engine. I'm an ex-Nintex user, and having a more graphical user interface to be able to build complex workflows would be really good.

The stability of VINYL is pretty amazing. It just works.

The scalability of VINYL is what I'm counting on. The licensing model is amazing for us, to be able to do as many apps as we can for the cost that we're paying and not have to worry about the per-user cost going up. We are planning on replacing our entire ERP platform with VINYL apps, building the things that we need that we can't buy off the shelf.

The tech support at Zudy is top notch. They are a bunch of talented people who are very responsive and we've not had any significant business interruption since going live with our first app last year.

I knew that we had to make a change in our ERP platform. I was brought in to NXC Imaging to evaluate what was going on with their ERP solution. They were having all kinds of issues with their Microsoft Dynamics AX solution. It took me about two months to understand what had happened, and I immediately recognized that we needed to go down a different path.

We needed to change our strategy of staying with a Tier 1 or Tier 2 platform. What we do is unique and there isn't software that we can buy. I knew that we needed to invest in a no- code, or low-code application development platform that would give us rapid development capabilities. I've had experience with other platforms in the past, so it was a pretty easy decision for me to go after getting board approval to make this happen.

Installing and getting Zudy up and running was very easy from an infrastructure point of view. What was unique about us is that we were their first Dynamics AX integration. They had not done AX before, so it took them about three days to figure out the business connectors and the data model, and from there we were rolling.

The team that we used, and are using, to build our apps is Zudy. They've been a great group to work with; very talented, very flexible, very responsive, and they're just a good group of guys.

VINYL has affected our user productivity in many ways. The most measurable is the amount of time that our field engineers were spending feeding our old ERP system data. I can guess that every FE, and we've got more than fifty in our company, has got an extra hour of their day back not having to deal with the connectivity and all the different transactions that they're doing. The ability to interface with the apps on their phone has made their lives significantly better.

Another thing from an IT perspective, what VINYL has given us is the ability to reestablish confidence in our user base. Our people recognize the difference in VINYL versus before VINYL, and they really, really like the VINYL experience better than anything else they've had in the past.

The VINYL platform with the Zudy development team has allowed us to be significantly more responsive to the business as they come up with ideas or we needed to make process changes. Business process changes are evolving all the time, new markets, new technologies. I would say that the speed of the improvement in iterations is tenfold. We can do things 10 times faster in VINYL than we could in Dynamics AX at a tenth of the cost. Fixes that would take our old service provider weeks and months to do, can take five minutes.

The value for us with VINYL is that we've got one fee that we're paying per year and we can deploy and build as many apps and bring in as many users as we need. It's a big change from the Microsoft Dynamics AX model, where we have per-user fees, and in order for us to provide or to get access for our users, internal or external, it's a per-user fee. The value proposition is incredible. What they're giving us for functionality and the ability to do the things that we need to do, they're exceeding my expectations.

Our decision criteria were really based on opportunity and timelines, so I didn't have a lot of other people on our shortlist. OutSystems was one that I had had experience within the past, but their platform didn't really fit what we needed to do. I had some relationships with some folks at Zudy and the speed of trust happened; it didn't take us very long.

We were at the TechEd last year as a prospect. It was about a month after that we signed up, and eleven weeks later they delivered a proof of concept that our current ERP solution provider couldn't do in three years.

If I knew of anybody that was out considering an investment in a low-code or a no-code development platform, I would encourage them to call me and let's have a conversation about how VINYL has changed my ability to lead at IT and it's changed NXC Imaging's ability to run their business.

On a scale from one to ten, I think Zudy VINYL is a nine. It's not quite a ten because it doesn't do everything and it can't write itself, but we've been able to do more things in the last eleven months to make our company run better than previous organizations and teams and applications did in the previous four years.

Our primary use case involves transitioning work that has traditionally been done on spreadsheets. We've used VINYL to connect different systems — especially pulling data from multiple places. Our primary system, as well as just some worksheets that are out there, we were able to pull that all in and view statistics about different things from different places all in one nice view.

An excellent example of the way Zudy VINYL has improved our business is that we can now report on the actual cost of moving a load. We didn't have all that data because it was in too many different places so that we couldn't do a good report without a lot of manual effort. Now it's straightforward. We get a simple report, and this is how much it costs to move this load. And then from that, we can determine profitability. We can now report quickly on the cost of loads. Pulling in costs, for example, such as doing the cost to get a permit if it's an oversized load. We now can roll that in with the rest of the cost of paying the driver and the fuel and whatnot.  

VINYL has improved our ability to deploy apps quickly. If you're talking about some of the things that used to take weeks to accomplish, we can now do them in days. The projects that would take months, now we're looking at weeks.

VINYL has spawned a whole new section of our IT business. It hasn't really focused it, but it's created new ones. Whereas we wouldn't have been attacking these problems before, we now are because we now have a tool we can use to fix things.

There are two most valuable features: one is the ability to pull data from a bunch of different places and put them together. The second is the speed at which you can get a new app developed. Instead of waiting months for this new app to come out, if you have an internal team putting it together, you can roll it out in weeks. I've even seen days. It's incredible how fast you can make changes.

Some new features I'd like to see is visibility into running jobs so that we can see what the status is, or that it's not stuck in its process and doing its thing, or how much longer it's going to take. I'd also like to see a native calendar function so we can put calendars into our apps with maybe even recurring tasks or appointments and that sort of thing. We'd also like to see multi-select lists. The users being able to pick multiple things to filter on and get a list and be able to export that list.

The solution's very stable. We haven't had any major hiccups, downtime or outages with it. We've thrown some things at it. If you get a circular job that's kind of stuck in itself you might have a problem, but that's more the fault of the developer as opposed to the platform.

We're about a year into using the solution. The scalability isn't something we've pushed. We're tipping our toe in the water right now but it's meeting our needs for sure. As much as we've needed to, it's scaled up to it. We can make the solution as big as we want to make it. We're not constrained by a per-user licensing cost or any of those other restrictions as I mentioned.

Tech support has been great for this company. Any problems we've had, we've gotten prompt responses. Tech support for it is top notch. We got some help from Zudy regarding building our first app. They mostly built the first app, and it was rock solid. I guess that's the way they like to do it so we learned some things.

Before VINYL, we didn't have a solution to do these kinds of things, so we were just doing everything manually on paper and Excel.

The primary symptom that made us realize we needed something was that a lot of folks were doing their work in Excel, and we had data in all different places. One person had a spreadsheet here; another person was using a Google Doc. It was just all over the place. When the data's there, you can't get to it, and you can't report on it. It was pretty evident to us that we needed to do something and let's bring this data into one central place.

We chose VINYL because of the subscription model. It was easier to get into as opposed to a big purchase. The competing products didn't have as many features. They offered a complete software package that was already configured, and then you would customize it. Whereas with VINYL, you can take baby steps to get to where you want to go. Do a little piece at a time. Take one issue, take one problem, fix that, and then as it gradually grows into a full solution, rather than trying to fit this huge solution in all at once.

The initial setup was not that complicated. It was basically no more complicated than setting up any web app would be. I wouldn't say it was any more or less than what you would expect.

The licensing costs we pay are, around $5,000 a month. That's every quarter. We've been doing it for about a year now, and the prices have remained steady. We feel it's a reasonable cost for what we're getting because it's unlimited users. It's as big as you want to make it, you're not constrained by a per-user licensing cost or any of those other restrictions, so that's going to stifle your development.

VINYL has increased user satisfaction. We're bringing the users and getting them involved in the development process. We're making fewer mistakes in the process, and we're also getting them excited about it because they can see what's happening and they have their input. It's the features they want, not what IT thinks they want. They get more excited about it.

Our iterations are faster. With VINYL you're talking days or weeks potentially.

Another piece of advice I would give to a colleague researching for a software solution is, if you're looking for something that doesn't require a specialized programming language and you want something that you can develop quickly in, and you want something that's going to pull data from a bunch of different places, I think VINYL's a good option.

I would rate VINYL a nine. Not a 10, because nobody's perfect, but it's going to be huge for us.

We actually have several significant use cases for VINYL. We replaced a few Legacy systems with Zudy and their platform, VINYL, and built from scratch a made to measure system for custom made garments designed in our stores and manufactured by our facilities.

We built an alteration platform that allows us to have customers purchase garments off the rack and then record all of the alterations needed to get the perfect fit, and again, perform those duties elsewhere.

Finally, we use VINYL to develop progressive apps by introducing new functions for our stores and giving them things that they didn't realize they needed. This really saves time and effort on their side so they can focus on what they really should be doing.

VINYL has improved the way our company does business by streamlining and standardizing the processes that are critical for producing garments and altering them, getting all of our stores on the same page with the right processes and the right options that are available to really perform for the customer. 

With the solution improving our satisfaction and adoption of associates in our stores, they have then been able to focus on the customer more, and in turn, improve and increase customer satisfaction and focus on that customer in the store.

VINYL has really helped us speed up application development at a reasonable cost. Previously and with a lot of traditional models, you're talking twelve, sixteen months before you really see the results of all the work that goes in beforehand. With VINYL and working with Zudy, we're able to really go to market with a viable product in a matter of a few months.

Iteratively from there, it's weeks to months before we have new versions instead of another six months or another twelve months for another version. So, it has absolutely sped up things by multiple factors there.

VINYL has benefited our business in a big way and we are very capable of focusing on the customer's needs when using it. One of the benefits for the store associates themselves and working with made to measure was allowing them to have multiple pathways to enter an order for a customer.

Some associates might perform their duty with a customer in one method, but something we recently implemented was more of a customer wishlist function. Whatever fabrics they're interested in, we can set those aside for them in the system. Whether they want to develop a shirt or a suit or a sport coat now, or come back in six months, those are still on their wish list along with the products that they might have selected for that fabric.

Previously you had to start from front to back every step of the way without much flexibility until we said, "we need a more flexible way". Now they have multiple pathways to enter an order, which gives them the strength or the flexibility they need to not have the customer waiting around while they're clicking in a system.

One of the most valuable features of VINYL is its flexibility. We've been able to change direction if needed, once we've learned lessons when we finally started using parts of the product. That flexibility and speed to get to market is really a strength, combined with its ability to connect to other data sources.

It doesn't need to house much data. It's really, really strong in connecting to your other systems or third parties that you might subscribe to and pull it all into one place where you can use it.

The VINYL platform is very stable. We've had minimal issues, and whenever we do, we're able to fix them relatively easily.

VINYL is very scalable, as well. We've started off using VINYL in pilot stores in the Northeast of the United States and expanded to the full U.S. and Canada. Since then, we've actually incorporated users in the Asia/Pacific market, Europe, and we're going to be expanding to China and India as well.

VINYL's tech support and Zudy's tech support is top notch. Whenever we've had any of the issues that I mentioned before, they react quickly and completely to find a solution and work with you to get it done. They understand the urgency. If something isn't the way it should be, getting it solved is their top priority.

We knew that we needed to invest in a different solution that was more flexible and scalable. We've used VINYL to replace several Legacy systems. Previously we had individual Legacy systems for Made To Measure, which was homegrown, and not flexible.

We had a different company we worked with for an implementation of an alteration system, which again, was not scalable, and did not grow with us as a company. It's those reasons that really helped point us in a direction to think longer term, and have a flexible solution that will grow with us as our business grows.

The initial setup was relatively straightforward and Zudy helped us scale how large of a system we should have, what type of license would be appropriate, and really ensure that it would grow with us without having to completely re-engineer our setup.

Our licensing costs are approximately 100K annually, and from my perspective, that really is quite the value with the flexibility and what we're getting from the product.

From my perspective at Brooks Brothers, VINYL has had pretty much every function or feature that we've needed. I'm interested to see what they do manage to incorporate on top of that because I'm sure we'll find a use for it.

The VINYL Solution has helped increase productivity at Brooks Brothers. We've been able to standardize our processes in the stores and in our factories with a made to measure solution and alterations. In doing so, we've allowed the business to not worry about those and to focus on growing sales.

This solution has increased our rate of iterations for deploying new releases from six months or twelve months down to two months or six weeks. So, quite the increase of frequency where we're able to deliver new features to the stores.

If researching VINYL versus other similar solutions, I would try to keep in mind really what their strengths are and compare them to each other. From my perspective, the strength of VINYL is clear with its flexibility and its ease of use, ease of development, and that's not to be understated. You can really deliver powerful apps in way less time than other solutions I've seen.

On a scale of one to ten, I would rate VINYL probably an eight or a nine, simply because of the flexibility and the power that it has in bringing data to one source, and then reacting to it and building an app you need with those data points.