mdtest

I've used them at three different companies to try to get some design input when time was short. That's about all I would use them for. We usually had to hire a professional to polish their designs or just start over. But the idea works pretty much the way you'd expect something to work that (a) pays very little to the producers and (b) is geared to generate as many "products" as possible in a short time frame. You spend a lot of time dealing with several designers who all submit basically the same 3 ideas with a dozen variations - in other words you have 99 problems to solve instead of iterating over a small set of ideas to a single design the way you would with a professional designer who works with you to understand your specific needs. They have worked OK when the scope was extremely narrow, but in general a professional designer you work with over time, who comes to know your needs, will probably be cost/time effective.

Strengths: It is easy to set up a design project and send out the requests, and overall the web site is easy to use. They (the folks behind 99 designs, not the designers) were responsive. The web site is somewhat useful when you really just need some pixels and you don't want to do it yourself. If you have something very specific in mind, and don't care about explaining it to ten different people, and you don't have high expectations and you don't mind getting cookie cutter art and designs and your entire project budget is in the low $100s then maybe this is your solution.

Needs to improve: Based on mistakes I have made: Don't use for core branding. These designers don't have time (or much interest) in understanding your business and creating an "identity" for you. Don't use for "rebranding" anything either. We got a dozen useless logos. Don't use for UI design or UX. They don't have time (or knowledge) to understand your product and your users. Don't expect 99designs to take up "a lot less time" - you have to explain everything clearly, then most designers won't bother reading your requirements and will each ask questions you already answered, and you will need to iterate through rounds with multiple designers.

I've worked with Brian Alcorn at Studio Sungo for over twelve years. He has been on projects with me from two weeks long to two years. He was doing UX/UI/Human Factors work for some of the biggest startups in the Bay Area before most people knew what that was. His expertise is solving very complex UX issues, but not by drawing lots of boxes and circles (although he does that too). He has done many types of research for my projects, helped devise strategies and developed foundational things like taxonomies and information architecture. Brian used his background as a journalist to really dig in to understand every detail and to get inside the users' heads. I sat in on some of his user experience testing labs and learned more about our product from a couple of hours of his guided questions than we had in months of product "design".

Strengths: Brian (and his partner) are the kind of people who are becoming very rare: professionals who are plain honest but sharp and focused one hundred percent on quality. They don't promise quick results from a big bag of UX tricks. They do promise to understand a product or project down to it's marrow. And what they delivered always blew the doors off any quick fixes. Not to say they are slow, Brian has worked with me in an agile process, breaking pieces off and working in short sprints. He is fully capable of delivering much more content and design product than most teams can digest so he schedules delivery and checks in on the team progress regularly to see when they can handle more.

Needs to improve: Studio Sungo doesn't have a graphic design service. While they will manage the design process, including sourcing designers, they're not a one-stop shop. Their expertise is focused further upstream to make sure we don't waste a lot of money designing the wrong thing.

I used SAS software for data analysis on very large data sets for academic and legal statistical analysis. SAS as a product works extremely well in these cases.

As a review of the company, I'll say they were extremely responsive and knowledgable. If the 10,000 page binders of documentation were not clear we could quickly get a real "SAS-head" on the phone who knew the page number by heart and provide an explanation for just about anything. Their statistical experts helped us shape our custom analyses. And they helped us extend SAS in various ways with our own custom code.

Strengths: Powerful product, great customer service. SAS is practically it's own research institute so they have world-class experts in many fields.

Needs to improve: Unbelievably expensive to get the kind of support we were getting. But if your business depends on expertise, support from SAS is a good deal.

I used Paychex for seven years when I ran a consulting firm. They prepared payroll and payroll taxes and handled things like 1099s for us. They also brokered our health insurance, handled some issues with an unemployment claim, etc. Even though we were small (six people) we had a personal account rep assigned to us that handled our needs and answered our questions. Since I was a new business owner it was great to have a direct line to someone who could answer questions, and they were usually responsive.

Strengths: The price is higher than new services like Zenpayroll (now Gusto) but the personalized service is great if you have never had to deal with issues like payroll and benefits, taxes and different ways of compensating employees. The personal touch was great for handling things like hourly going to w2, adjusting compensation, and changing benefits. Also, even though they were more expensive, the personal service really paid off when it turned out a previous CPA had screwed up big time and PayChex helped us straighten that out (when the IRS came calling).

Needs to improve: Relatively expensive and a little 'old fashioned', at least when I last used them four years ago. Not everything is self-service, sometimes you need to call and ask for things like updates and certain reports.