Andersen Inc.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

OurCnC company was established in 2015. From the very beginning, the main concept of a product was to create a platform for peer-to-peer car sharing. After OurCnC started cooperating with Europcar in 2016, the new concept of white-label platform for a car rental was created. For now, the main strategy of OurCnC is to sell IPR (intellectual property rights) for its platform for the customer’s company and make all other functions outsourced. I am President of the Company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Andersen?

In the last years, a lot of car rental or car-sharing services created special apps to provide car renting via smartphone. I came to Andersen for creating the same solution - a good app for renting cars which many companies could use. It should have been a clear system that can be customized according to the special requirements of every company. It should be flexible and well-organized, with a very small time of implementation, so the company-customer only needs to create a design template to get a working product.

What were your goals for this project?

Create the most convenient platform for International Car-Rental companies. Application and Management Panel

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

Andersen team was fully involved in the development process to create a Mobile App for IOS and Android and a web Management panel system. We started everything from scratch 3,5 years ago and all this time the company has been providing all the specialists needed to create documentation and design, manage the development process, create a product and test its quality. We have very strong communication during all these years and the team is always very flexible and well-organized.

Describe the project in detail.

React Native application and management panel From scratch to end. We outsourced all the development work. SRS was based for Car-rental companies needs.

What was the team composition?

This project was started with the team partially from Andersen and partially from Finnish freelancers. But during the project’s growth I found out that Andersen’s team is really effective and we came to the full team from Andersen. Currently, it is 2 developers full-time, QA, BA, and PM are part-time. We suppose to continue work with this team for a long time.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

With Andersen, we created a new well-working product that OurCnC will base marketing politics on. We paired up with a big car rental company for developing and piloting this product and got great reviews. Now we are planning to go to the market with the result of this project and get more customers.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Andersen provided very talented project managers, they keep up to approved development plan, so all functionality is made on time, create clear reports and have very good communication skills and fluent English. We use Jira as a tracking system, Skype and Slack as tools for communication with the team. All processes are well-organized and performed correctly.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

The team is always on time and dedicated to the project. They help to improve the product.

Are there any areas for improvement?

No, everything is great.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

We are a B2B SaaS company operating in translation management field providing customers with an automated translatiob management software.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Andersen?

One of the services we offer our customers is a command-line tool (CLI tool) that enables easy access to our API. The objective of Andersen was to develop a new version of the CLI tool from scatch.

What were your goals for this project?

The new developed CLI tool had to support all endpoints of our API. It had to be implemented using Golang and be inline with the modern CLI tool command syntax.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

We chose Andersen over several competing companies. They have approached us at Linkedin initially.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

They have developed a Golang SDK that can be used in any Golang project (by developers requiring to integrate Lokalise with their own software). Once the SDK was completed, Anderesen have develolped a CLI tool, which is based on the SDK.

What was the team composition?

There were three people we were interacting with – sales rep, project manager and the developer.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The work has been delivered on time according to the specification we have agreed on before. Our customers got the CLI tool and SDK right on time. The time component was essential in our case, as the new CLI tool release is strictly tied to our product roadmap.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

The communication was great, most of which was in Slack besides a few initial intro calls. There was a task list implemented in the time tracking tool and Github issues page.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

The task was very specific. They understood exactly what we needed and the result has met our expectations in full.

Are there any areas for improvement?

Some minor issues were found in the delivered product, however those were corrected very fast and in a very professional level.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Luno is a crypto exchange that’s mostly distributed throughout the world. Our engineering and operations team is based in Cape Town and our head office is in London.

Our platform is for people that want to buy cryptocurrencies in a safe, secure manner. We are a custodial exchange that takes away a lot of the complexity that comes with interacting with currencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Andersen?

We have a relatively new and open-sourced architecture, and our backend language is Go. Globally, the popularity of Go far exceeds the number of engineers who actually have experience with it. We hired Andersen because they had a good bench of Go resources that we needed on the backend engineering side. The second consideration was that, equally, on the Android side, finding engineers with Kotlin experience was harder than expected. Andersen was again able to solve this problem for our team.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We’d had 1­–2 months of interaction before they gave us engineers. At the time of engagement, we had a few people on our Android and backend teams. The vision of the architecture, the direction of the product, and features build-out were on our side. Bringing Andersen on was initially about ramping up an ongoing project.

Their team first needed to understand our architecture. Initially, our engagement was spent on getting their engineers to know our environment and making sure they understand the crypto space, beyond just engineering specs. Since there aren’t many crypto exchanges around, our rules of operation aren’t widely known.

We found that engineers started running their own projects quickly, taking complete ownership of developing bank integrations and payment aggregators.

On the Android side, the engineers spent their time rewriting our app in Kotlin. They became a significant contributor to our platform team.

What is the team composition?

We started with two people. At the moment, we’re working with six engineers. On top of that, I’ve been in touch with the account manager and someone on the technical side. I believe 1–2 others came and went along the way. At one point, they tried providing a project manager to assist with coordination during the initial ramp-up phase. They handle the account management, while we are focused on the project management coordination.

How did you come to work with Andersen?

In December 2017, Bitcoin’s price was driving our customer numbers at a rapid pace, and we needed contingency in our engineering capacity. The markets were going wild, and we were preparing for a massive capacity increase. I went on LinkedIn and researched the Go experience. Andersen came out on top.

As far as LinkedIn statistics go, they had the most engineers. I interacted with several organizations capable of providing competent engineers. Out of all the organizations, Andersen sent the most CVs, and could actually prove their skillset. After researching more, we went with Andersen because they delivered on what they promised.

How much have you invested with them?

Andersen has a “risk-free” model, by which we were given a few engineers to test out for a few weeks. We knew from the start that we would need 4–6 months’ worth, and jumped into a fairly economic hourly rate of $32. This depending on their seniority. All other costs for travel were on our side, which we decided to incur to get the team to our offices for initial onboarding.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them around two years ago.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Andersen is currently our only contingent supplier. They’ve taken on very big projects, moving quickly. Despite having engineers in different countries, communication has been great. We run an agile framework, measuring it by cadence or velocity, but their biggest asset to me is that they take ownership of projects and communicate directly with some of our third-party integrators. 

How did Andersen perform from a project management standpoint?

Since we’ve insourced them into our existing team, we manage them. Running in Agile, we’ve integrated all six of Andersen’s engineers into our teams. We treat them as our own.

What did you find most impressive about them?

When it comes to general communication, the team at Andersen is extremely professional. Through meetings with their account managers where we discuss issues and concerns, I’ve gotten the impression that they invest in their engineers's personal development.

I have 22 years of engineering experience, and, in the early days, I did work with a lot of teams in India. A lot of the companies had an associate system with strong career paths. The deliverables were done with the utmost professionalism.

Andersen works very similarly to that model. They treat their engineers like associates. Since they’re a large organization, I imagine that they’re at the point where this is the only way that they can scale. On day one, we started with two people, and have grown within the last year.

Whenever I need to add another member, the speed at which they source their bench is pretty remarkable. Andersen maintains a constant flow of engineers that are ready and willing to jump into work for a company. It can be tough to find quality Android engineers around the globe. They have a good contact pool of expert engineers because they moved quickly when I asked for seniors.

Are there any areas they could improve?

While we predominantly use Slack, we do have videoconferencing. Sometimes there is a language barrier during face-to-face communication, but there have been no issues with written correspondence through Slack.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

I’d advise starting small by bringing the team on-site for one or two months to help them understand the culture. They have to feel like they’re part of the team, so there needs to be great one-to-one oversight. We’ve recently promoted one of their people to team lead and have gotten our culture embedded in their office now. They even do a lot of onboarding themselves.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am a Co-founder at Belkins. We are a trusted B2B lead generation and appointment-scheduling agency, with a presence in over 30 countries. We offer a comprehensive range of sales and business development processes including company research, B2B outreach programs, and lead qualification.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Andersen?

Since we are a sales agency, obviously we don't have much technical experience in the field. Instead of hiring and maintaining in-house engineering team we found Andersen to help us to develop a CRM solution for our SDR team to manage a load of manual work that usually agencies like us have.

What were your goals for this project?

We needed a solution which was plug-and-play as well as have someone from the vendor's team to run the maintenance. Also, since CRM wasn't our care business competency we had an allocated budget which we can not exceed.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

We were approached by Andersen sales team, after which we set up a f2f meeting and after a workshop with their project management team, we decided to pull the trigger.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

Andersen team is our strategic partner for any internal development. They helped us to select the best technology stack. We now use koa, * apollo *, * graphql *, * typedi *, * pg *, * Vue.js *. Afterward, we worked with their product manager and design team and engineers for 2 creating a prototype and MVP. After the first version of the product was released we spent another 2 months to finalize all the features and launched a version 2.0 which we are currently using without having any major issues.

What was the team composition?

The project team was about 5 people: product manager, UI/UX designer, backend and frontend developers a QA tester.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We tried other development teams before moving in with Andersen and they failed, all of them were reactively developing the platform instead of proactively running the developing. With Andersen, we had a great experience so far. I think they have superior technical knowledge as well as a good communication style. By the way, their engineers are advanced English speaker, so we had no issues of understanding one other.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

We used Jira, GitHub, Slack. We also were involved in daily/weekly standups and were provided with a 24/7 overview of current development springs and completed tasks.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

While doing due diligence I saw that Andersen had 1000 engineers, so I was kind of concerned that I wouldn't get that level of attention comparing to their large clients. However, they were very involved into understanding the project and users. The gave the best technology and development advice that I could ever expect from the development partner.

Are there any areas for improvement?

Everything was great.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We are an Internet of things sensor manufacturer and have developed an embedded electronic device, as well as the cloud software our sensors communicate with.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Andersen?

We started developing a web application a long time ago, which is where Andersen came in. We needed skilled resources for further developing the app.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Andersen provided PHP Laravel development for our app and have refactored its entire frontend over the last year. They have also developed Ionic applications which take data from our database.

What is the team dynamic?

There were two engineers working on our end, and Andersen provided a full-stack developer. We later added another developer, bringing the total to two. There is also a dedicated person for testing the code, a visual designer, and a project manager on their side. We have a five-person team on their side.

How did you come to work with Andersen?

They found us during a local exhibition while looking for new customers.

How much have you invested with them?

Up to this point, the cost of their work has been around $250,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started development on the web application in 2012, and Andersen was brought in in 2015. We had a working application when we started the engagement, but it’s been refactored since then, and further developed.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

There have been quite a few API integrations with other third-party platforms. I’ve heard from many places that Andersen is doing good work, usually from partners in the U.S. and Japan. They respect the skills of the Andersen team.

How did Andersen perform from a project management standpoint?

The communication has been very good. Having a consistent team and dedicated resources on the project has been an advantage. They are skilled and have a very good work ethic and morale. We get replies even on weekends.

We’ve been developing the product with our own cash flow and reinvesting profits, so, from a cost perspective, it’s been a good return on investment.

We use Skype and Telegram for communication, along with JIRA.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I’ve appreciated the responsiveness of the team and their management. They take good care of customers.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the head of testing for 3D4Medical, and we develop anatomy based reference software. It allows users to tap on a 3D model and it explains specific structures of the body. Our apps are available on iOS, Android, Mac, and Windows 10.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Anderson.

We have our own in-house development team, as well as software testers, but we were in a situation where we didn't have the staff for a major update for one of our apps. We decided to outsource the testing portion for one of our apps.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We gave them the code to one of our health and fitness apps, iMuscle. The app was already in production and on the marketplace. We had a certain set of criteria that we wanted them to test for, which we gave them. They developed the test plan and then implemented it.

They’re mostly specialized in software development, so this was something that wasn't part of their repertoire. It's something that they developed specifically for us as a small project.

What is the team dynamic?

I worked with one project manager, and two different testers.

How did you come to work with Anderson?

Our CEO, John Moore, had previously had a conversation with someone with Anderson and was impressed by them. It was likely the founder of the company. We decided to take a chance and outsource the testing of one of our apps for the first time and then chose them. We’re a small company, but have grown quite fast and we’d like to work with other small organizations to help them get started – that was another factor in the decision.

How much have you invested with them?

About $3,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in November 2015, and the engagement is finished. It wasn’t a very long project, and testing lasted about two months.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We released the product without any major issues, which is a successful release for us. There were no major crashes. It was exactly right.

How did Anderson perform from a project management standpoint?

They has a tool for communication, it was most likely Jira. They brought me in separately into the tool and I was able to track their progress with that. We also had weekly Skype calls to discuss their progress thus far.

They were very good at communicating with us on what the process looked like on their end. This includes where they were with the project, what milestones they had hit, and when I could expect the project to be completed.

It was our first time outsourcing a project, so we were a bit nervous and required a lot of communication from them. I asked them to report back weekly, which they did. There were no problems with language or time barriers, they made themselves available to us when we needed them at all times.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their eagerness and their ability to communicate really well with us. I know that they're geographically far away, and they’re very aware of what’s required in order for them to be successful. They do that well.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

We told them the price that we were willing to pay for the project, and they were eager to make it work with us. They’re a small company and they really want to show what they can do, so be honest about your budget.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We’re a company that provides a copyright solution to higher education. We’ve got customers in four countries. We make it easy for academic staff in universities to use copyright materials legally.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Andersen?

We find it hard to locate good, reliable developers in Australia that are not super expensive. We have a complicated knowledge domain. Even if you’re a talented programmer, you have to come up to speed on everything else about copyright. We have a lot of startup companies and tech companies that are gobbling up all the local talent, and it was difficult for us to find people who are qualified, skilled, and reasonably priced.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They worked a lot on integration with library catalog systems. We gave them discreet pieces of work. Our product will interrogate external systems for copyright permissions and for licenses or subscriptions for material. When they were working for us, they were doing that work.

They were using Ruby on Rails and a suite of tools that we use for our continuous testing and integration. The core work itself was development in full stack Ruby on Rails.

What is the team dynamic?

We had a couple of different team members. The first member didn’t get things the way we needed him to. One of the things we liked about Andersen was that when we voiced our opinion about this member, they were quick to swap him out and bring in someone who was a pleasure to work with. We’ve had two developers from Andersen and both of them were OK, but one of them was an extraordinary benefit for us and we’re happy Andersen helped facilitate that.

How did you come to work with Andersen?

They contacted me on LinkedIn. On LinkedIn, I’m aggressively petitioned by people that represent South Indian or other technological companies that compete with Andersen. I’m used to being assailed. The timing was good. We needed some people and weren’t having much fruit in terms of our search for people otherwise. It was my decision, and I said I think we should give these guys a shot.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent $5,000 per month.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in 2015. Software is never finished. We were struggling to find consistent work at the end of our project with Andersen that we could give them. We decided because it was inconsistent that we can’t have people turned on and turned off. We have control for the time being.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

I don’t have any statistics or metrics. While we were focusing on some of the heavy lifting, they carved off some portions of work that allowed us to do things more efficiently and deliver to more customers. They did a lot of library integrations so we’ve had greater ability, when we’re talking to a university, to tell them we support that library system.

One of the pieces of work that they worked on with us was the Ex Libris Primo integration which is just a patron-facing library system made by Ex Libris. A lot of potential customers and people we’re bidding for work use that system. It’s very helpful for us.

How did Andersen perform from a project management standpoint?

It was good. They had a couple people who were involved, Roman and Vitaliy. They were responsive, curious, and checked in regularly. They sat in on all the early meetings we had with their staff which was good. They wanted things to work and they worked well with us. We had Slack accounts set up for them. We had regular chats either in Slack audio or Skype early on. With the management team, we use Skype.

We have a standup meeting each day and we ended up having two standup meetings. That was just par for the course because we had one in the morning and one in the afternoon when Andersen’s staff was starting. Roman’s English was excellent. Our development team worked closely with each other and I did not find it as easy as speaking directly with a native English speaker. I’m not sure it really impacted our project. We noticed it. It was raised a couple times, but the second member that we collaborated with, Eugene, worked really well.

What did you find most impressive about them?

For us, it’s unique because we haven’t worked with anyone else and we tend to rebuff all advances. I like Roman. I trusted that if we had a problem, I could tell him and he’d sort it out. It was a positive experience. They showed considerable interest in making sure everything was smooth. They came to forecast upcoming work and resources, and when there was a new resource on their end, they would make it available to us. They’re proactive in that way.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I’ve worked with people in other countries and time zones for many years - I think it’s hard. You don’t want to be working all kinds of crazy odd hours just because the people you’re working with are. I think that would be an area they could potentially work on. But it’s not good for anyone to be out of sync with their location. Maybe something to do with time zones would have made it easier for us, but it’s an unreasonable request.

Do you have any advice for potential clients?

Be clear about what you need them to do. I’ve had a couple people call us to ask about Andersen. I tell them we didn’t have them to do everything. We didn’t have them do all the development work for our product, and I would never do that with anyone who I didn’t have some kind of direct contact with. Andersen worked well for us in portioning off specific, explicit parts of work and having that delivered. That is a smart move in my opinion.

We were able to give them responsibility for specific things. It’s lots of mini projects that get cohesively brought into our code tree. That means our risk is low. When we’re working with people on the other side of the world, we don’t necessarily know what they’re up to all of the time. My advice has nothing to do with Andersen or is a negative. Just be clear about what you want them to do. I would suggest having someone who can ease the developer into your knowledge domain. That’s even important for a product owner that’s a developer.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We are a service company for the biggest telecom operator in Russia, Rostelecom. Our company has various teams, and I lead the projects, what can be translated as interactive television for Rostelecom. It’s about 112 people and we develop interactive service for multiple platforms: mobile, smart TVs, and a lot of things. We provide the video part of the platform and mobile applications.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Andersen?

Andersen is our outsourced partner for host direction of our projects. When we need a lot of developers for a fixed time, we call Andersen. Our model to work with Andersen is outsourcing. We provide the requirements for positions and they give us some people.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They worked on the Android and the iOS app. It is a complex app for paid TV and the VoD catalog. It’s a lot of films, serials, animations, and a huge amount of channels. They provided full stack for supporting the UX/UI elements, core app data, and full stack developers. We did the design in-house.

What is the team dynamic?

For Android, they provided us six developers and for iOS, three. The development process is ours. We have team leads. We have senior leads, so we can connect any professional developers on the fly. Almost all the time it’s easy. But in the last two years, we got two developers which we needed to reject two weeks after the start of the project.

How did you come to work with Andersen?

They are a huge company for our size. You need to review and check the quality of developers every week, every quarter. Overall, the status is good. They’re a good company. It’s normal for us to use this outsourcing model. The biggest factor is the price.

How much have you invested with them?

They are a mid-range price. They are in line with the market in Russia.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started on the mobile application in February 2017. It’s not finished. We are almost finished with the Android TV app.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

That’s restricted information because it’s our client’s app. It’s the biggest app in Russia. Our new app that we’re developing now has gotten good feedback from our client. It’s not launched yet, so we don’t have feedback from users.

How did Andersen perform from a project management standpoint?

We worked in 2-week sprints. We got projects in-house and our model is outsourcing only the developers. We didn’t use project managers. We were talking weekly and got status reports every month. There were day activities by task, from time to time. I am the project manager of a number of projects, so I work only on the big tasks.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They are flexible. That’s important for us. We needed a certain amount of developers and we needed a company that could be flexible. Andersen is very good in this case. They can find unique developers for our tasks. I don’t know how they do it, but it works. We made the requirements, waited a few weeks, and got good developers from Israel, Belarus, Ukraine, Russia, and the United States. It’s a good staff.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Perfection is ideal, and we need to go there. I think they could be more open about the project and about their hiring process. Sometimes we don’t understand where people come from, and there are a few problems. The Ukrainian guys don’t like the Russians right now, so sometimes it gives problems in our project. It’s not about development; it’s about the politics and other matters.

Do you have any advice for potential clients?

Check the developers’ style of coding and their professional work. Always manage clearly.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I work as a delivery manager in product development.  Our company is a global leader in information, analytics, and solutions for the major industries and markets that drive economies worldwide. Our company partners with clients in business, finance, and government to help them see the big picture with unrivaled insights that lead to well-informed, confident decisions. IHS Markit serves more than 50,000 key customers in over 140 countries, including 80 percent of the Fortune Global 500.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Andersen?

It was decided to rapidly expand our cross-functional teams and to expand functionality for some projects significantly. Andersen helped us with that.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We’ve developed several projects in cooperation with Andersen’s team.

On the first pilot project, I worked with a small team that consisted of three developers and one SQA engineer. All the management activity of the project was on my side and I had worked with the team directly. Currently, about ten developers and three SQA engineers are working on developing another big project together with our employees. It’s cloud-based application with modern technology stack.

How did you come to work with Andersen?

About three years ago we started to look for a vendor in Belarus that could help us with our projects. My good friend provided me the contact information for people at Andersen. We had positive references from companies that had worked with them before. After additional comparison to other local vendors, we’ve chosen Andersen to be our partner in work on the pilot project.

How much have you invested with them?

It’s more than $1,000,000 a year.

What is the status of this engagement?

The first project was started in 2014 and lasted about six months. We continue working with them and we have extended our collaboration.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The professional level, code quality and variants of proposed solutions allow us to involve some guys into architecture design.

We are using Agile methodology in our development process and the role of Scrum Master is assigned to persons from Andersen in two teams.

How did Andersen perform from a project management standpoint?

All management activities are made by me and I have direct communication with developers and QA engineers using different channels, such as Slack, WebEx, Skype, email, and phone.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Based on our work together over these years, I can say that I am impressed by Andersen’s flexibility in communication with clients. They really try to find appropriate solutions for all of our requests.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I would like to slightly speed-up closing positions of senior level and improve the precision of evaluation marks of candidates.

What tips or recommendations could you share that might increase the likelihood of success with Andersen?

To manage the activity of the project by yourself.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I own a consulting company. I offer my services as an experienced product development professional. I have worked in a series of startup companies creating a series of products. I’m employing myself only. I also do programming, software design, product design, and various types of testing.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Andersen?

At the moment, I’m consulting to companies and helping them to create software products. I have a scheme and a way to create a software product for companies who have an idea but they don’t have anybody to implement it for them. I’ve been working together with Andersen Labs and employ them as the programmers and developers of the products. I set up product development cases and then I have employed professional companies in Eastern Europe to realize things.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They’ve helped me with two projects so far. The first was in one startup which I was also part of as an investor- an Android tablet application. The other is now an ongoing project for clients.

We used a really scalable technology: Ionic and Angular, sponsored by Google mostly. It’s a well-known and used technology. Andersen has been able to work with this leading edge technology. The ongoing project includes work on the backend and frontend.

We’re using Amazon Web Services cloud backend basically to create an interface to a relational database system. We have pretty much the latest stack in use for the cloud. Andersen is working both on the application and the service side of this project. We have a team of five to six programmers and some additional vendors.

How did you come to work with Andersen?

I had experiences with companies like this prior to Andersen. I had ended up with certain difficulties with my regular partner in Europe. It happened at the right time when pretty active sales people from Andersen contacted me and I decided to give them a try. They had a good initial offer. In my previous startup, we were just beginning the programming work and we had a good opportunity with low risk to experiment with another partner. It started well and it continued well. I was really happy with them and they proved to be much better than the previous partner I was working with. I’ve been working with them ever since. I have other guys I work with, but Andersen has been a really good partner for me.

How much have you invested with Andersen?

The first project was 150,000 Euros [approx. USD 163,300] altogether. Andersen’s part was probably 65,000 Euros [approx. USD 70,800]. At the moment, we’re looking at a similar budget for the current project - maybe slightly bigger. Andersen’s part is about half of the whole cost.

What is the status of this engagement?

It is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

The sales really didn’t take up so well for the first application created. It was a B2B [business-to-business] proposition and we had a really good test for the thing, but in the end, we were not able to sell.

The other thing is still under the radar. It’s sort of a B2B car sharing service. It’s like AirBnB for cars. People who own cars can make money with their cars. We are having a pilot starting in one to two months in Finland first and then planning deployment in Europe early next year.

How did Andersen Labs perform from a project management standpoint?

I didn’t buy from them any project management service but mostly developers. I got some technical support from the developers. I think it’s a good thing that they have engineers who supervise the guys there. I used to chat with the manager there and express my thoughts and ideas for areas where the guys needed more support.

What did you find most impressive about Andersen?

The word professional is something that comes to mind. They seriously want to be really good and improve themselves. They take care of their people because they understand that improvement takes place through these people, so they respect them. That’s one really good thing. That also shows the ambition level of the developers. They are professionals and that’s what I like in them. They write really clear code. It’s very well readable.

Are there any areas Andersen could improve?

The spoken English language is one thing especially with the developers but also with the management. If you think you can rely on this, then think twice. I really used a lot of written communication over chats - Slack and devices like that. Written English is good for everybody there, but spoken can be really difficult to understand. They also don’t indicate that they don’t understand, which can lead to bigger problems.