Map Your Success: A Free Technical Solution Awaits You

In fact, about fifteen years ago, I saw firsthand how a simple map can literally impact the world economy.

My tiny software company, MCF Technology Solutions (MCFTech), had a breakout opportunity with Walmart. They needed a solution built fast, to replace an aging system for managing store construction projects in the U.S. They were interested in using the low-code platform we specialized in, Quickbase, and wanted us to quote their project.

It sounded big and complex. They told us they had spent four years and millions of dollars customizing an enterprise project management tool, which their end users rejected. Now they were stuck with an ancient system and pressure from management to get the job done before the end of the next quarter, in just over 4 months.

Just understanding their requirements seemed overwhelming, so we proposed an intensive 3-day Discovery engagement, onsite in Bentonville.

Fortunately, we’d been fine tuning our Discovery process since launching MCFTech about 18-months prior, and had developed an exercise, which captured requirements into a Solution Map. We focused on visually illustrating the data model, user interfaces and processes needed to support business use cases.

Based on our Solution Map, the team at Walmart felt certain we understood their requirements and gave us the job. We spent most of our time working in an IT war-room alongside the Walmart resources assigned to the project, drawing inspiration from the Solution Map we had printed in large format and hung on the wall.

We delivered on time, the end users loved it. The Walmart team even invited us to a crawdad feed to celebrate. Not long after, the Executive Vice President of International Real Estate asked to meet with us. He told us that he had $50 billion each year he needed to invest in new stores globally and had no idea from his current tools where to focus. We showed him how our system could be extended to manage the complete real estate pipeline, from site identification to store opening. By visualizing the pipeline with durations and fallout rates they could understand the funnel requirements to meet their targets.

Walmart decided to move forward with our proposal and we used the same Solution Map to design an extended solution that could be customized for different regions globally while still driving a standardized process for project pipeline reporting.

Over the next 5 we deployed the system to Walmart Real Estate operations in China, Mexico, LATAM, Chile, South Africa and India, helping them hit 5000 stores internationally along the way. My best guess is that our Solution Map could be connected to more than $1 trillion dollars in sales and counting.

The reason I’m sharing this story is because I’ve decided to offer this same expertise as a way to showcase our capabilities at Tango. We’re a small team of software engineering and product experts, mostly in Mexico. Think Silicon Valley agency skills, only better and cheaper because we’re Nearshore.

Right now, we’re offering a Free Technical Exploration and Solution Map, with a goal of doing about ten by the end of the year. It’s a way to get expert analysis and solution design for a software engineering or digital project challenge, that includes an investigation into the risks as well as a visualization of the requirements.

Do you have a big idea or technical problem you need solved? Or, know someone who does?

Please, let me know if you’d like to explore this opportunity.