Web Development for Corel Corporation
- Custom Software Development Web Development
- $1,000,000 to $9,999,999
- Jan. 2018 - Apr. 2021
- Quality
- 5.0
- Schedule
- 4.0
- Cost
- 5.0
- Willing to Refer
- 5.0
"The longer Techstack worked with us, the better they got over time."
- Other industries
- Ottawa, Ontario
- 501-1,000 Employees
- Phone Interview
- Verified
Techstack Ltd developed several web services for Corel’s desktop apps. They built a driver update utility for Windows, managed the engineering output for ClearSlide, and worked extensively in many projects.
Techstack Ltd kept the uptime and the customers happy. The team was highly competent, proactive, and efficient, excelling for their technical and thought leadership. They followed the client’s project management, meeting constantly and communicating through Microsoft Teams.
A Clutch analyst personally interviewed this client over the phone. Below is an edited transcript.
BACKGROUND
Introduce your business and what you do there.
Corel is a large software company that owns a number of significant software brands. They have a lot of different companies under the Corel umbrella, such as Paralells, WinZip, CorelDraw, and MindManager. I was the VP of engineering for CorelDraw, MindManager, ClearSlide, and WinZip.
OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE
What challenge were you trying to address with Techstack Ltd?
We needed to develop web services for a number of desktop applications. Historically, Corel hasn’t been an expert on the web development side of the business; it has been mainly focused on desktop software. When we started to look into ways to increase resources for web development, we found Techstack. We hired them to build web Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), web data storage, and some web products as well.
SOLUTION
What was the scope of their involvement?
Corel worked with Techstack quite extensively for lots of different teams. For example, one of the applications I was managing was a driver update utility for Windows, and Techstack actually sourced the drivers themselves. We built a bunch of different scrapers that could go online, find drivers, and download them. Then, the app would also pass the driver to unpack it, determine its contents, populate a database with all of the stored information, and then recreate and save the package so that the desktop app could check for any new driver versions available on our database. Finally, it would send those packages down to the client and update the drivers on the desktop.
We worked with them on different marketing technologies. We built scripts for Google Ads and dashboards for our marketing teams. For the dashboard, our team would put everything into Google Docs or Office 365, and Techstack would introduce information from different sources, use APIs, and then publish that data on the dashboard so that we didn't have to go and manually extract information in different places.
We also did migration work from on-premise to AWS servers, and we were developing automated QA for our online mind mapping application.
When we initially started working with Techstack, we were doing a lot of .NET development with them because the driver database and the packages were handled with .NET. Towards the end of my time with Corel, we were doing a lot of Java development with ClearSlide, as well as other frontend technologies.
Additionally, we were doing some Structured Query Language (SQL), Personal Software Process (PSP), and mobile development, which used C#. From their recommendation, we decided to move from MySQL to Redshift in order to change label storing and retrieve data.
However, Techstack wasn’t always given the opportunity to recommend the technologies we’d use because Corel had some legacy codes, so they had to inherit what we were using. We had a hybrid approach where they actually built things from the ground up, and then we had other times where they had to deal with what we had.
What is the team composition?
I worked with the three founders: Ivan (CEO), Artem (COO), and Aleksey (CTO). I had pretty good relationships with each of them, but Ivan was my main point of contact. We had about five project managers, 10–12 QAs, and 50–60 engineers. The number of people that we worked with increased significantly over a five-year period.
How did you come to work with Techstack Ltd?
I’ve known the founder of Techstack for about 12 years. I first met Ivan when I was working with another group in Ukraine and he was an individual developer. When we met, I really liked him in a personal and professional manner. When he first started Techstack, I kept in touch with him, although we didn’t engage in any immediate work.
When the opportunity presented itself, we started working directly through Techstack, and it kind of grew from there. We initially had a few developers working with him on the driver database, and then as I had new projects added to my responsibilities, I went to Ivan to extend the team and hire more people.
How much have you invested with them?
We spent about $3,000,000.
What is the status of this engagement?
ClearSlide was our most recent and significant project; we started working on it in January 2018, and we finished in April 2021.
RESULTS & FEEDBACK
What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?
With ClearSlide, uptime was crucial because it was really important that the product worked, was fully available to our customer, and kept a service-level agreement. Techstack was able to keep our uptime and our customers happy, and we were able to make sure that our product was always functioning and working for our customers. Actually, the longer Techstack worked with us, the better they got over time.
Furthermore, ClearSlide was successfully sold last year. Corel acquired it first, then Techstack took over the full engineering output, and then it was sold to another company.
How did Techstack Ltd perform from a project management standpoint?
We didn’t rely on Techstack for project management; we did most of it. However, they communicated around deadlines pretty well. They were proactive and told us when something wouldn’t likely go as planned, like if there were any unforeseen technical challenges. They were good at telling us what to expect, how they were doing, and ultimately delivering the work.
For communication, we used Microsoft Teams. We did individual team meetings and weekly leadership team updates. Sometimes we would also do project- or product-specific status calls around planning and estimating. We would follow a typical agile process and do sprint planning, standups, and retrospectives with the team members involved with that process. I would also do more long-term strategic planning with them as well.
What did you find most impressive about them?
I liked working with Techstack because I trusted the founders. There’s a lot of outsourced development companies, and they’ve got good senior leadership, but the original founders are often detached from the company. Whereas with Techstack, the founders are still driving the company and hiring the staff. To me, that says a lot about how the company will perform in the future and how I can trust that they’ll solve my problems.
As far as the engineers, I always had really competent people working with me. The whole team of 50 developers was really great people. Techstack did a good job at finding talent and recruiting them.
Additionally, we found that their recommendations were quite good. If they suggested that we had to stick with an existing technology because the migration wasn’t worth the effort, that generally was a good recommendation.
Are there any areas they could improve?
When they were smaller, it was very easy to communicate across the company. As they’ve grown, communication has become an area that they need to work on and improve. They need to communicate better with the many clients that they have now.
Do you have any advice for potential customers?
Engage them as early as possible and lean on their technical, strategic, and architectural expertise. If you just want to define every individual task and its execution, Techstack may not be the company you need. However, one of the best things about them is their technical and thought leadership. Thus, if you’re going to work with Techstack, involve them in your story creation or architectural planning, because that’s one of their strengths.
RATINGS
-
Quality
5.0Service & Deliverables
-
Schedule
4.0On time / deadlines
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Cost
5.0Value / within estimates
-
Willing to Refer
5.0NPS
