Andersen Inc.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

We produce learning material and software for digital learning in a specific niche. I am the CEO.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Andersen?

In our country, qualified software development resources are short. We needed qualified and reliable resources in order to meet our goals.

What were your goals for this project?

Continuous software development based on specifications by our product management and product design team.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

Professional key account- and project managers, good value for money and most importantly absolutely reliable!

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

continuous software development for multiple features in an ERP system, online booking solution as well as digital learning platform.

What was the team composition?

Team team changed over time, depending on the needs. We very much appreciated the flexibility in staffing qualified resources to the project. The project manager never changed, which was very important to us. There were 3-4 people on our side, and 3-4 people on Andersens side.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any information that demonstrates the impact that this project has had on your business?

The project is still going on, but thanks to Andersen's resources we can react quickly to customer needs and recommendations, which helps us to win clients and keep them satisfied.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

Project management was very professional and reliable.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Reliable and "tangible". We very much appreciated having a reliable partner, who delivers on time and has open communication.

Are there any areas for improvement?

improve English language skills of some developers.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

The TUI Group is the largest leisure, travel and tourism company in the world. I am Technical Lead in the Digital Sales Platforms department of the German subsidiary “TUI Deutschland”.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Andersen?

We hired an Andersen team to develop several Microfrontends, administration tools and middleware services for our sales platform.

What were your goals for this project?

The goal was to hire a reliable near-shore team to take over peripheral tasks, allowing the internal teams to focus more on the core functionality of the platform.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

Besides cost, our main requirements were:

1. We wanted a vendor who would be able to staff skilled developers in different technologies on short notice.
2. They were expected to integrate with our highly agile workflow.
3. We prefered near-shoring to reduce timezone-offsets.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

We started the cooperation with the development of one internal service and a small team. As our general way of work is agile, we had only a “lightweight” kick-off, and then had the team work on user stories from our backlog, moderated by our own Product Owner. With time, we gave the team additional products to develop, using the same mode of collaboration.

What was the team composition?

Over the entire time of the engagement, we had two to five developers on the team, depending on the requirements at a given time. On top of that, without additional cost, Andersen provided a project manager as well as several supporters in the background for QA and documentation.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any information that demonstrates the impact that this project has had on your business?

As we outsourced several peripheral projects to Andersen, we could put a lot more focus on the core platform functionality. This resulted in more speed, faster delivery and more features. This may not sound impressive, but to our customers (and our top management) it was significant.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

The project management was one of the greatest experiences with Andersen, on several levels. First, they assigned a highly-skilled PM to the project who was able to understand business requirements, manage the team and drive the implementation.

But what was even greater: As we iteratively established a highly agile way of work, the PM stepped back from an active, „push-style“ management into a more lateral role where she acted rather as team manager and Agile Coach. She even took a Scrum Master training and was able to fill exactly the role which we want to see in such a setup. We also appreciate that this transition was backed by the Andersen management.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

There are several aspects make Andersen the right choice in hindsight. The project managment and communication, in general, were outstanding. PM and devs were always very responsive, we knew what everyone was working on and how their progress was.

At the same time, the Andersen team worked in a very self-reliant way, and we knew that our products were in good hands. Another thing which I personally find astonishing is that Andersen has code reviewers and testers in the background, and writes a lot of documentation, without additional cost.

Are there any areas for improvement?

In general, we are very satisfied with Andersen, and we would definitely hire them again in the future. Of course, we all had to learn a few things over the course of our collaboration.

Luckily, all parties were open for that. Maybe Andersen could train their developers a bit more in things like agile practice, communication skills, solution-oriented thinking etc. … this would allow agile projects to benefit from these skills from the beginning.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CTO of Alchemia. We provide tools to help manage booking data to the travel industry.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Andersen?

We needed developers to help us link to a global distribution system (GDS) that manages airfares, bookings, etc.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Andersen is working to integrate our platform into the GDS system using Java.

What is the team composition?

There was mainly one developer, but for the past few months, there have been two.

How did you come to work with Andersen?

Our IT manager had contacted the team previously and put me in touch with them for this project. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We began working together in October 2019, and our engagement ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

I’m impressed by the fact that the developers are not only smart but also professional. They are technically able to do the job. The team is always able to deliver, which has to do with the culture of Andersen as a company.

How did Andersen perform from a project management standpoint?

They are goal-driven and deliver quality work on time. It was easy to incorporate them into our project management because they’re predictable. We communicate via Skype, and we also use Bitbucket to discuss code.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They have a support structure to help you find your strengths and provide additional input and assistance. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, I have no suggestions.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

If you’re only using their developers, make sure the other aspects, such as DevOps and analysis, are professional. They need to match so you get the most out of your investment.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the head of software development for the parent company of multiple financial services businesses in the Balkan region, including Albania, Macedonia, and Bosnia. Each of these businesses has its own software that needs to be maintained and developed further. We’ve collaborated with Andersen on one of these projects.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Andersen?

We have a fully functional outsourced IT development team at Andersen, including developers, QA, and administration.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We’re using PHP developers from Andersen. They’re responsible for one of our projects in its entirety. They’re not providing any other services. As of now, they’re just a full-service software development provider.

What is the team composition?

We started with a team of five people, but we’ve grown to 11.

How did you come to work with Andersen?

We found them through another company from Latvia who had experience working with Andersen.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent between €400,000–€500,000 ($438,000–$550,000 USD) so far.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Andersen in September or October 2018, and it’s ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We don’t work with them on a project basis. Basically, the Andersen team is working for us fulltime. They have no other responsibilities; we consider them employees, and they participate in our daily routines. We’ve grown the team and continued to work with them, so we’re satisfied.

How did Andersen perform from a project management standpoint?

They’re precise in meeting deadlines, and they have high-quality internal mechanisms for controlling and managing their employees. They’re also professional and quick to react when the team needs a change, update, or evaluation. Their internal procedures are on a satisfactory level to me.

What did you find most impressive about them?

As a client, the thing I like the most about them is that they’re very quick to react when I need a particular resource, either a new specialist or a replacement. They can provide different types of specialists relatively quickly because they have a large pool of resources to choose from.

Are there any areas they could improve?

There’s nothing specific that comes to mind. Everything is on the level.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

It depends on the type of project and team. If they need to integrate Andersen into their own team, I’d suggest that the client conduct personnel interviews themselves. In that case, don’t only ask them to find specialists, but also perform interviews and see if the individual resources will be a good fit for their team or not. That’s one of the things we did, and it worked out pretty well. Other than that, I don’t have anything particular. It’s the same as working with any other outsourced company.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

B.Well Swiss is a Swiss located distributor and developer of medical equipment. We help people take care and protect the health. I am the head of promotion, Internet solutions and marketing.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Andersen?

We hired Andersen to develop a large multilingual platform for B.Well Swiss and its partners.

What were your goals for this project?

The task was to get a multilingual platform with the possibility of multi-profile administration. This platform should have individual solutions in the field of graphic design, site navigation and administration.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

A decision was made following a tender of more than 10 other companies. This makes us feel that Andersen is the partner we need, able to take responsibility and find the right solutions.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

Andersen provided software development, graphic design and site layout, project management and testing.

What was the team composition?

The team consisted of PM, software developer, HTML coder, technical consultant, system administrator

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any information that demonstrates the impact that this project has had on your business?

We are completely satisfied with the result!

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

We worked with a flow and a agile process that provided the necessary time management and process clarity for everyone

What did you find most impressive about this company?

It's great that people at Anderson are always taking responsibility. This is very important for the success of the project.

Are there any areas for improvement?

It would be great to be able to get technical support from Andersen for more than a warranty period

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

We develop educational (web)applications for a broad range of customers (schools, business and healthcare). These tools are used by students, business and healthcare professionals. We have approx. 30 employees. I am the Product Manager of these educational apps.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Andersen?

We had to drastically improve existing apps (use latest technologies) and development new applications.

What were your goals for this project?

Over the last few years our customers demands changed and we needed to improve (and broaden) our application portfolio with different type of apps to meet their demands.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

We needed a reliable partner with good credentials. Communication and reachability were very important, because this was a major problem with our previous vendor. Based on the first few meetings and the 'testcase' that was development, we decided to choose Andersen.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

• Improve and development educational webapplications
• making sure they were based on the latest technologies
• Further improve the architecture to fully utilize the .NET and Azure functionalities.

What was the team composition?

We have one developer, Vita, who has been working on our projects fulltime. After a few weeks, in which we needed to get to know each other a little better, she has proven to be a great team member. Beside her coding and projectresults, Vita also showed that she was able to think along during our brainstormsessions and figuring out the best matching solutions for our projects.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any information that demonstrates the impact that this project has had on your business?

We have implemented a number of major improvements in almost all of our applications. With the help of Andersen we were able to fully development a new software architecture in which all our applications are currently running as they are being used by all our customers (12000+ users).

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

We are developing Agile / Scrum with 2 week sprints. Sometimes with updates on the live environment every week.

We have Skype contact with Vita, our developer, every day. We discuss the order of items on a daily basis and Vita has always been very flexible working on high priority issues (blockers) when they occur.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

What we're most happy about is the quick and easy way in which we're able to contact our developer. She's also a very flexible planner. We can quickly change our 'directions' based on high priority issues.

Further more we have seen a real growth in skills and knowledge of Vita, telling us that she's willing to invest in further improving herself and our project development.

Are there any areas for improvement?

As mentioned Vita has already improved much during our project. She tries to think ahead and think about linked functionalities between apps and the possible consequences when changing them.

The only thing that she could improve a little more is asking more information before starting on a task so that everything is 100% clear.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a product owner at FTI, a travel company. We sell travel packages in Germany and other parts of Europe, including The Netherlands, France, Austria, and Switzerland. We also operate hotels, most of which are in Greece and North Africa, and provide rental cars and campers. We’re a large company of about 2,600 people. We have offices in Berlin, Switzerland, Egypt, and so on. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Andersen?

We have our own developers in Berlin, but we were selling a lot of products and, therefore, we had a lot of portals. We weren’t able to do everything internally. We needed to outsource some of our product development.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We started a test phase with them with my product for selling travel packages and offers to our customers. The idea was to rebuild the site completely, but unfortunately, the project wasn’t approved from the business side.

Andersen supported daily business tasks and helped us launch a new product for football camps. On the backend, most of the development was on TYPO3, which is a well-known German CMS. I don’t know what they used on the frontend, but we looked at Vue.js and Node.js. Andersen used what was there from the old site. I think there was a lot done using PHP. We have our own UI/UX department, but Andersen did provide some design services.

What is the team composition?

We started the collaboration with one developer and ultimately worked with three developers, one QA tester, and a project manager. 

How did you come to work with Andersen?

Our head of IT did some research. I don’t know how he found Andersen, but he decided to go with them in the end.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Andersen in August 2018, and we finished around November 2019.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Our product is really special and only available for a small target group. I don’t think it would be fair to measure Andersen’s work through any metrics from this site. Their work was very good and necessary. The site wasn’t as successful as we’d thought it would be, but it had nothing to do with the quality of their work.

How did Andersen perform from a project management standpoint?

Andersen stuck to the schedule and budget, and they were always helpful in creating timelines and project goals. They worked really fast; I think we released the product in three and a half to four months.

They had some great ideas and very good knowledge of project management. We had a lot of meetings and workshops together. I visited them in Minsk, and they came to our Berlin department. Everything was well-defined on the project management side. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

I would work with them again, but we have more devs in Berlin now. I’d always recommend them, and I know that my colleague plans to engage Andersen for help on a mobile app. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

Everything was good.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

Andersen’s team was spread out between Ukraine and Saint Petersburg, and I was in Germany. It was sometimes hard to find the perfect time slot for everyone. The time difference is something that people looking to work with them should be aware of.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m one of the owners of Spackle. We’ve developed software within the commercial tenant improvements industry to solve the pain of ordering service work.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Andersen?

We hired Andersen to help us code for our commercial tenant improvements platform. They provide project management services and service work procural.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Using wireframes, Andersen developed proprietary software for us. It’s all original coding using Heroku, GitHub, Ruby on Rails, React, and React Native.

What is the team composition?

We worked with Nikita (Software Developer, Andersen) and Arthur (Supervisor, Andersen).

How did you come to work with Andersen?

We found them on Clutch. After interviewing five or six companies, Andersen seemed like the best fit.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve invested approximately $30,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our partnership began in August 2019, and it’s ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

It’s still too early for any metrics. However, my lead developer is happy with Andersen’s quality of work. There are no issues there.

How did Andersen perform from a project management standpoint?

They’ve been good with scheduling, communication, and meeting deadlines. I do struggle with the time difference between us and Ukraine though. Personally, I only have a couple of hours of overlap with them. I’m not very happy about that and find it to be a little challenging.

They do overlap with my lead developer who's in South America though. So, we make it work.

What did you find most impressive about them?
Andersen has really great customer service. They spend a lot of time reaching out to me and making sure I’m happy. They’ve made a couple of suggestions, hoping to get more velocity out of our in-house developer. However, that’d require that he give up a little bit of control, which he’s not willing to do at this point.

I’ve been so pleased with their team that I recommended them to a partner of mine. He has now hired three people from Andersen. They’re very legit, and their customer service is excellent.

Are there any areas they could improve?

At this point, no. It’s too early to fault them on anything. My learning curve is still on the upswing.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

The company is engaged in insurance of various types. My position was - the head of the development department

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects / services did your company hire Andersen?

Type of service - outsourcing, developers were taken to implement projects of it web solutions.

What were your goals for this project?

Implementation of projects it web solutions.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

As a result of the tender procedure, the tender committee selected them.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

Projects related to the release of insurance products to the market. Allowing to arrange insurance for the client of our company.

What was the team composition?

The existing team took two developers from the vendor. The team included: analysts, developers, testers, business representatives from our company.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any information that demonstrates the impact that this project has had on your business?

The product that was developed as part of the 2019 projects was successfully launched. There is no more accurate information.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

The project knows all the team members and their responsibilities and responsibilities are distributed. At Andersen, only developers are involved. Developers are given the tasks of business analytics. The project has a project manager and a resource manager who are responsible for managing the project and monitor its effectiveness. Project management is quite effective.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Everything is at a sufficient level. There are no obvious moments.

Are there any areas for improvement?

Since only 2 developers were taken, there was no experience in seeing areas for improvement. I would like to note the work with junior developers in terms of improving software and hard skills to a good middle. This has always been and is for us an important area and a requirement for vendors.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Transporeon is the European market leader for e-logistics. We use cloud-based software solutions to network manufacturers and retailers with their logistics service providers.

Our TRANSPOREON, TICONTRACT and MERCAREON platforms optimise transport logistics and the communication between industry, retailers, carriers, drivers and consignees. Our products are used to fully optimise economic and ecological aspects.

Currently I'm holding the position of 'Director Software Development' to which the areas core software development, enterprise integration development, quality management and user experience belong.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Andersen?

At the beginning we were searching for a reliable and long-term partner to increase the man power of our test automation QA teams. As these experiences were very good we chose Andersen additionally also for enhancing the man power of our core development teams.

What were your goals for this project?

One of the teams in which Andersen was established significantly was the development of a new UI toolkit. Goal was to develop one from scratch, based on a new design system created by our UX team.

The new UI toolkit should comply fully with a new frontend macro architecture. Tech-usability, i. e. speed to develop new UIs with the toolkit should be very high.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

We had been working with several partners in the past. Andersen contacted us and first contact was a visit in our office. We examined Andersen in detail and compared everything against other existing and potential vendors.

After that we chose Andersen for a relative small project at the beginning. After the positive experiences we then ramped-up significantly.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

Andersen provides us very skilled software developers in a variety of technologies, e. g. Java, Angular, C#. Through this we were able to increase our existing teams.

What was the team composition?

As of now we are in the ramp-up phase. Currently 10 software developers from Andersen are involved. This will increase within the next ~ 3 months to 20.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any information that demonstrates the impact that this project has had on your business?

Together with Andersen we were able to significantly increase the automation ratio for our core software modules. The development of our own UI toolkit became a very stable and reusable foundation.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

The Andersen developers were fully integrated into our dev teams - except 3rd level support. Tools used were Jira, Git, Skype for business, Confluence. English skills were very good. Time difference from Germany to Belarus / Ukraine / Russia is with -2 hours in an acceptable range.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

The project management on vendor side was extremely good. Proactive, regular, and open communication were established from the beginning.

Are there any areas for improvement?

The overall cooperation was very good. The only thing that could be a bit better is the flexibility in terms of ramp up such that developers belonging to one team would start together instead of now and then another one.