Project Description
The Growth Company, an award-winning social enterprise based in Manchester, were looking to improve the way mentors and mentees were matched within their leadership mentoring platform iMentor. Bridgeall was tasked to modernise and reengineer the bespoke platform to deliver more accurate matches and create a better user experience.
“We engaged Bridgeall to help us refine and improve our iMentor product; both the front-end UI and the back-end algorithm. They have been brilliant in providing support and knowledge to complement our internal development team and their expertise has been instrumental in translating the brief and delivering the required improvements. As a partner they are great to work with, really flexible with how they support, and this has allowed us to get the best results with the right resources.” – Claire Howard, Lead Project Manager
About The Growth Co
The Growth Company is a UK-wide not-for-profit economic development agency that seeks to generate inclusive growth in the country’s economy by creating jobs and improving lives. It offers a wealth of services that support growth among individuals, businesses, cities and regions.
Challenges facing The Growth Company
The Growth Company’s existing leadership mentoring platform iMentor, was designed to bring SME leaders (mentees) with an experienced professional (mentor) to help them through challenges and grow their business.
The solution was developed by an external supplier and the team wanted to modernise the solution as it wasn’t up to standard. The processes were slow, disjointed and as a result produced low quality matches. The user interface also required modernisation to deliver a better user experience.
The project was split across two phases over the period of 7 months and the Bridgeall team was tasked to rebuild key components of the iMentor system.
Phase 1
As we mentioned previously, this solution was developed by an external supplier, therefore we had to work with the team to undo some of the previous work and rebuild the foundations to put the team in good stead going forward. The first phase involved re-engineering the process to enable mentors and mentees to be matched up correctly.
By using the latest Microsoft technologies our team rewrote key components of the iMentor solution from the ground-up putting a focus on making the solution a digital service and eliminating the need to rely on other third-party systems.
Phase 2
The second phase consisted of further enhancing the system. During this phase we worked on a full UX design process to create a highly usable product, ensuring the completion of tasks was as easy as possible. This included everything from developing new screens to introducing bulk matching which allowed the system to match more than one mentor and mentee at a time. We also built a configurable and flexible mentor and mentee matching algorithm. Both phases were carried out using the Agile scrum methodology.
Since rebuilding the iMentor system, The Growth Company was able to realise the following tangible benefits across the organisation.
- The team now has a best-in-class mentoring system that they can use for both internal and external programmes as well as commercial sale to other organisations.
- The system is configurable to suit the needs of different organisations.
- Users benefit from an optimal experience when using the new system and can complete tasks quickly and with ease.
Application development projects with Bridgeall
We help organisations modernise their applications using Microsoft technologies. Our development team have experience working on every size and type of application. From creating requirements to developing a technology strategy for your application we provide a full range of services. If you’re looking for help with your applications our team can help.
