AB Solutions

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We are an American IT company who provide a wide range of IT services worldwide. I am the regional manager for the operation in Bulgaria.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with AB Solutions?

We wanted to keep a core team in-house, but when we get more projects than we can deliver, we use subcontractors.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They were supporting us in a number of different internal and external projects. They participated in an internal platform that we built for our U.S. office, and a lot of other small application projects as well.

Most recently, they supported us on a project for PricewaterhouseCoopers [PwC] in the UK. We built a platform to provide information, processes, and procedures for accounting to small to medium startups when they are registering in the UK. The project was scheduled for six months, but we only had three months to build it. We urgently needed their help and they helped us deliver on time. They were constantly involved in the process and we had daily calls and communication.

What is the team dynamic? 

There were three people working on the platform. Alex Babat [Founder] was our main point of contact, but our team would also talk to the developers when it was needed.

How did you come to work with AB Solutions?

Some of our employees used to work with Alex.  

How much have you invested with them?

We spent around 7,000 Euros [$8.275]. We have different rates for short-term and long-term projects. Prior to every project, Alex gives us an estimate of how long the project will take.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started the project in October 2015. There were a couple of phases. The first one was completed in January 2016, and the next in May 2016.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

The end client was very happy with what was delivered. Overall, we aim for high quality, and we’ve had no complaints from any external clients. We’ve been satisfied with what they delivered for us and our clients.

How did AB Solutions perform from a project management standpoint?

The communication is easy and they respond very quickly if there are any issues. They are flexible in terms of working hours. They were available even though many calls were not during the regular working hours in Bulgaria. 

We’ve been using Jira for some of the projects. We communicated mainly by Skype, WebEx, and Jira and, when needed, Alex was available to come talk to us.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They are very flexible and customer oriented. They’re very easy to work with and they quickly respond to requests from our side.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Not that I can think of. I’ve been happy with our relationship so far.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the founder and CEO of ATME Group. We offer custom enterprise solutions to telecom companies.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with AB Solutions?

We’re a very small company and didn’t have enough developers at the time in order to deliver a project to one of our clients.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

AB Solutions helped me come up with a prototype to present to our clients, where I was acting as consultant. Once it was approved, they helped us deliver the entire project. Since then, I’ve worked with them on many projects, both large and small.

The largest project we worked on was for building a billing system from scratch. I worked with a client to define the requirements and then I translated those requirements to AB Solutions. It was a large enterprise system with a UI [user interface] for accessing it and a few backend processes as well.

Both the system and UI were developed in Java and Spring Security. They used the Apache Tomcat application server to launch the product and a framework called Magen, which is also based on Java, for the UI. On the database side, we used PostgreSQL.

What is the team dynamic?

AB Solutions gave me a list of candidates and from there I selected a project manager, a development team, and a tester.

How did you come to work with AB Solutions?

I was looking for someone to prototype a small application, so I posted an ad on Elance and their founder, Alex Botov, responded as a candidate. Without even starting the conversation, he gave me his resume and a prototype of what I was asking for, which was really impressive. I started working on a small project with him and little by little, we got into large projects.

I worked with a couple of other companies before—mostly from India— and didn’t get good quality and dedication from them. AB Solutions is really dedicated and the quality is great.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent around $350,000 over the course of our relationship.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started the largest project in October 2011 and it took three years to complete. Our work with them is ongoing, though.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

As a small business owner, my team has to be very flexible. I can’t go out and hire developers and lay them off six months later, so for me, contract work is the key. AB Solutions has the flexibility to assign the resources that I need when I need them. This also makes sense for us from a price perspective, as we don’t have to deal with expanding our office, health insurance, and other challenges in California.

With them, I can just hire the number of people I need. This allows us to do several projects at the same time, and scale down when we don’t have any projects at all. That’s the reason we use them.

We have four large clients using the billing product and they have hundreds of thousands of users. We also have smaller clients, and overall, they’re all very happy with the system. It’s still performing well and we keep updating it as we grow. We handle millions and millions of transactions a day with it and haven’t had problems with its performance.

How did AB Solutions perform from a project management standpoint?

We communicate via phone, Skype, and email. We follow an Agile development structure and had a few iterations during the large project. At the end of it, we got so good that we had deliverables every three weeks.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I’ve been in their office a couple of times and I’ve met with the founder and developers, so I have a relationship with them. I feel like they’re an extension of my team and they give me what I need. I’ve been relying solely on them for outsourcing. They even offer availability in different time zones in case a client needs that.

Their quality sets them apart and when they commit to something, they deliver. With other vendors that I’ve worked with, I’ve felt that their commitment was vague and inconsistent. Also, AB Solutions is very knowledgeable when it comes to technology.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

RMM Consult Group is a consulting agency. We provide development services to big clients in Belgium, western Europe, etc. I’m the managing director of the company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with AB Solutions?

It was our first time outsourcing. It was a challenge because they’re a remote team. We didn’t know if they would be able to do it, but they were able to meet the requirements.

I needed them to develop part of the content management system on WordPress.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We needed help with the proof of concept. Financed by the European Union, these projects were building the website and the content management system. They needed to build the content management system there because they need to update their information quite often. We had a lot of meetings, a lot of design steps, and different kinds of custom graphics. Then from this website, we moved to another for the neurological science developers.

What is the team dynamic?

There was one designer, one project manager, two developers, one tester, and maybe more in the background. It wasn’t too big, but because it was urgent, they put more people on it sometimes.

How did you come to work with AB Solutions?

I had a bad experience with a Chinese and an Indian company. I found other companies in Bulgaria, Europe, Russia, and Poland. The Russians were overloaded with work so they were not able to respond to me at all. The Polish guys didn’t have the right competencies. AB Solutions came with the right time, price, and expertise to do the job for us. It was a long process.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent between $10,000 and $12,000. That’s why we worked with them because they were inexpensive and provided good work.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started in May 2015, and the project ended in May 2016.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

The people were satisfied. My client has a website and all the people from this type of organization can see the interesting things they’re doing at this neurological business. They did quite well.

How did AB Solutions perform from a project management standpoint?

They’re very easygoing people. They’re always on time and the quality was good. I didn’t hear any complaints from my team or the client. We communicated via Skype, and they were pretty responsive.

What did you find most impressive about them?

For this particular job, they were experts. When you get an expert and the price is right, you found the right person.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No.