Pollenizer’s ability to access in-house expertise to service a broad range of client demands was evident in our work with consumer comparison website Getprice. It also made it the prime and only contender vying for the work.

Getprice CEO Chris Hitchen explains why it is important having specific skill areas available for hire within one company.

“You don’t want to have too many consultants or suppliers to whom you have to explain your business model,” he says. “You are also opening up your business and sharing very confidential information so limiting that to one supplier where you can get a range of expertise was pretty important for us.”

He maintains the web presents a variety of challenges and there aren’t that many businesses around who can consult at the level Pollenizer does.

There are plenty of people who have good processes and good analytical skills that can take you through various problems and get you to an outcome, but there aren’t that many consultancies that live and breathe online as Pollenizer does.

Managing Rapid Growth

Pollenizer’s first brief was to find a better framework for Getprice’s development processes. “We were growing very quickly, with a lot of projects and we needed a really tight framework around managing those projects,” Hitchen explains. IT infrastructure assessments flowed from there, asking the question: Do we have the vehicle that can carry us to where we want to get to, in terms of hardware, software and bandwidth and is our development process optimal?

The second area of expertise focused on the marketing and the consumer proposition and asked: Are we doing enough to meet consumer needs and how can we better engage consumers on Getprice?

Pollenizer also engages with the clients it works with. “Because they are coming in, typically not just for an hour or two but for days at a time, often over several months, they are very engaged and often have skin in the game as well,” Hitchen says. “They also bring an international perspective and part of that is an international network, which would be important for many businesses.”

Getprice is a comparison shopping engine which aggregates pricing information from more than 600 retailers in Australia and also provides information about service levels for different retailers, covering warranties, delivery time and charges, and product and service reviews. This service is available via an iPhone application, as well as online.

Getprice is all about helping someone to make the last few decisions about where they want to buy a product. Shopping anyone?