Apiko

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I work for Canary Office, heading the whole organization. It's a small startup at this point.

We do a few things, including invoicing. We enable small contractors and small shops to run their businesses without having to worry about generating invoices. We also gather reviews for our clients into one place so that our clients can see all of their online reputation review rankings. When there are negative reviews or any issues that their customers are noting about them online, they see it in one place and react to it quickly.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with JSSolutions?

We were trying to create an app that would take all of those reviews and centralize them so that our client can see their online reputation.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

JSSolutions provided the full development and testing for the application. The created a service-side for the solution that would gather the reviews into the central location. Then, they created a client-side which would interact with the server to pull data for a specific client and place it on their phone.

We decided to outsource the work to JSSolutions because of timing. They had the experience, the software, and the technology. The whole project flowed faster with them doing it instead of me doing it myself. I provided a complete set of requirements for them to follow which outlined all of the features I wanted.

From a high-level, we were looking to enable a user to set up links to their social media profiles through the app. They would put in the URL of the profile, and the app would pull all of the reviews from those pages. The app would then show all reviews and the user would be notified quickly of negative reviews.

JSSolutions used React Native for the development, and there were 3–4 team members working on the project. The composition of that team was consistent.

How did you come to work with JSSolutions?

I had a friend that knew them. I did consider an outsourced team, but the team I was considering was already working somewhere else full-time. I chose JSSolutions for timing reasons.

How much have you invested with them?

We have spent between $10,000 and $50,000 on the project.

What is the status of this engagement?

The project began in March of this year. It took about three months for the first beta version to come out. Now, we're in beta, so we're working through some of the bugs and things like that.

The engagement is ongoing, but the deliverables we agreed to have been met. However, as with any software project we have the maintenance. I think we're going to be engaged for the long run, either way.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Not yet, because we're in beta mode. It's not fully released. It's released, but just a few people know about it. Not everybody.

How did JSSolutions perform from a project management standpoint?

They did very well. I was able to work with their lead in terms of requirements and things I wanted, and they were able to give them to the team to develop.

What did you find most impressive about them?

For the most part, they're responsive. They follow through with their commitments. Those are the two things that come to the top of my mind.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I can't think of anything right now.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the managing director of a web consulting agency in Melbourne, Australia. I have a few internal projects that I manage and I do development work for clients.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with JSSolutions?

We had an MVP for a product idea, and we’ve used JSSolutions for a number of other projects. They’re the developers we go to when we have an interesting concept that needs work. I’ve also used other developers for myself and my clients.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They exclusively handle app development for us on the Media JS platform. They are very strategic thinkers. My lead developer really excels at thinking through business problems. Often, people who write code have little connection to the problem. I’ll come up with an idea of what I want to solve along with some mockups. My lead developer will change them and come back with suggestions. I appreciate that. The guy who runs JSSolutions is great at sharing ideas. I’ve worked with 8 developers over the years, 2 of whom work for me full-time. I’ve only worked with them on JavaScript projects.

How did you come to work with JSSolutions?

We hired them through Upwork. We slowly brought more work to them because they did well with smaller projects.

How much have you invested with JSSolutions?

We’ve spent $150,000 over the course of our relationship.

What is the status of this engagement?

They’ve been my primary developer for the past year and a half. They’re a core part of my business, and I continue to work with them.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

I do a lot of consulting, and they help me map the process. I juggle multiple clients, but app development is more of a side interest compared to my consulting business. I don’t have any metrics. The quality of their deliverables is very high. The lead developer will often come up with ideas to make things work better and faster. With remote development firms, you often pay by the hour, and they often want to inflate the hours. I don’t get that feeling with JSSolutions. I feel like they try to save time.

How did JSSolutions perform from a project management standpoint?

I am in daily contact with them through Trello. They’re among the best I’ve worked with. They’ve very organized.

What did you find most impressive about JSSolutions?

The communication is great. I’ve never waited for more than an hour for a response.

Are there any areas JSSolutions could improve?

No, I wouldn’t have stayed with them for this long if something was wrong. 

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

FindEd is a startup EdTech company in the UK.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with JSSolutions?

We commissioned JSSolutions to build an MVP application to test a teacher to school matching concept.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

JS Solutions delivered a Meteor based application, hosted on Galaxy.  The application used AWS for email. JSSolutions developed the backend of our solution. They did not build the frontend, do any design of the frontend, or any design of the functionality of the application. The application is a web app and therefore platform independent.

How did you come to work with JSSolutions?

I found JSSolutions while searching online for development companies located in Ukraine and Russia who specialized in the technology that I wanted to use. I had already decided that I wanted to use Meteor as a framework for the application, so I found that they were specalists in that area and therefore considered them.

What is the status of this engagement?

We began working with JSSolutions in October 2016 and the project was completed in March 2017.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

No, there are no direct reviews online or any feedback that could be attributed directly to the portion of work that JSSolutions did. They were the enablers of a pre-defined vision and design.

How did JSSolutions perform from a project management standpoint?

The project was completed on time and on budget. The project sponsor was very happy with the resulting application.

What did you find most impressive about JSSolutions?

They were professional and easy to worth with, polite, accommodating, and able to ramp up the team when required for a short period of time. Billing was easy, timesheets were well managed, and it was an all around easy process working with them.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We're a startup software-as-a-service company that has developed a system for continuous improvement and compliance management. I am a co-founder of the company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with JSSolutions?

We needed to find a software house that could develop our software to our specifications for a competitive price. Even though we were building a minimum viable product, it needed to be high quality, and those two requirements usually conflict with each other.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

JSSolutions developed our solution using the MeteorJS stack, which is becoming a well-known technology with developers building our kind of application. It allows for applications to be developed faster than would otherwise be possible.

How did you come to work with JSSolutions?

Companies in Eastern Europe or Asia are more likely to be lower priced. We looked for an offshore software development house that could work in a rapid manner. We eventually landed on JSSolutions through the MeteorJS community site.

How much have you invested with JSSolutions?

The cost of JSSolutions' work has been approximately $40,000. The original contract was for $17,000 but was increased because of various enhancements and scope creep.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with JSSolutions at the end of April 2016. The site was launched in December 2016 and has been operational since that time.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We've gone through a rigorous testing process that generated a couple of hundred bugs, issues, and enhancement requests. JSSolutions worked through those in a methodical way, and we crunched them down to only a few issues at the end, achieving high-quality software. We've had a couple of customers using the platform since its launch. They've been very happy with it and found it reliable. Our experience has been good from a quality and reliability standpoint.

How did JSSolutions perform from a project management standpoint?

It has been difficult to communicate requirements at times with a few bounces between our teams before everything is nailed down. Offshore development makes this process difficult at times.

JSSolutions assigned a very good project manager for the duration of our work. He was very conscientious, took a lot of time to understand requirements, and followed through well at his end, making sure that the software was implemented properly.

What did you find most impressive about JSSolutions?

JSSolutions has a lot of expertise in the MeteorJS software stack. There were no situations of the team needing to learn a part of the language. Project management was better than expected as well.

Are there any areas JSSolutions could improve?

JSSolutions had a higher cost than we expected, given that our initial quote was for a fixed-price contract. One technical decision was taken early on to reduce the cost of development. It involved using a particular user interface framework called Blaise. We eventually chose ReactJS and needed to rewrite about half of the interface, splitting the cost for this between JSSolutions and ourselves.

BACKGROUND

LeanLanes is an innovative concept targeting Product Managers and Product Marketing Managers working on complex customer experiences.

I'm the founder of the organization and am responsible for business development and vision.

The solution is being used to develop growth and provide initial evidence for Round A venture capital investment.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

The goal was to achieve as much value from the product whilst ensuring quality in order to deliver a proof of concept into the market. JSSolutions delivered a beta version for us, so we have been able to obtain excellent feedback, and now we are progressing to a second iteration of the product for commercial release.

SOLUTION

We chose a Meteor service provider because Meteor is quick and uses a standard underlying language: Javascript.

We did a 1 week test with 2 providers. I reviewed the quality of work, professionalism of the team, and ability to support our needs.

Product management took place in Berlin. JSSolutions provided a lead architect also excellent in business, conceptual understanding, and UX. This ensured an easy 2-way exchange of ideas, getting to the features and adding the greatest value quickly.

The project lasted 7 weeks.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

We were able to test the minimum viable product with 30 product managers. The feedback was extensive and helped us move towards a product that delivers the right value. In the next product iteration we can focus on building only the parts of the product that really add the greatest value.

The scope wasn't well defined, as we worked Agile. However, what was special about JSSolutions was their ability to identify ways to express user stories in lightning quick timeframes. Their ability to understand the problem, translate it into a meaningful solution, and build it in hours was exceptional.

BACKGROUND

We are a startup located in Amsterdam. Being a software development company, we are trying to develop solutions for automation of business processes. Currently, we are aiming at small to mid-size businesses, offering them a means to model the processes themselves, using our pay by use platform. In this way, the costs to start working with our cloud platform are absolutely zero.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

As a startup we have relatively little development capacity. Finding and hiring qualified developers is a complicated and delicate process. The challenge is to keep our development up to speed without creating too much overhead in hiring too many (not properly qualified) developers.

SOLUTION

We found JSSolutions through the internet on a software services market place. They stated to be familiar with Meteor, our primary development platform. After some initial calls, we decided to give it a try. The scope was not very well determined by then. We just enrolled some task descriptions for developing functionality. We had the idea from the beginning to work with JSSolutions on a continuous base, as long as they performed as desired of course.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

In general, we are pretty happy with JSSolutions. Being a startup, we did not have a clear idea on how to properly outsource effectively. This resulted in shipping complex tasks that were too big. JSSolutions tried the best they could to understand the scope of these tasks, but without day to day communication it was hard to get the results we needed.

To improve the efficiency, we decided to ship smaller tasks. JSSolutions also offered to assign a primary contact person to communicate with. This is working very nice.

So far, JSSolutions is thinking along to improve the collaboration and results.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Founder of a hospitality & leisure company 

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

We build software to help restaurants and event venues increase revenue.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Apiko to accomplish?

• Build a web app based on my mvp

SOLUTION

How did you find Apiko?

I worked with them at another company

Why did you select Apiko over others?

• Great culture fit
• Good value for cost

How many teammates from Apiko were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

A customized form webapp that allowed me to scale my customer base

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

Support 100+ customers with a performant and highly customizable form.

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

They delivered on time and were great thought partners. They understood the spirit of the ask and flagged gaps in my plans rather than just execute what I tell them.

What was your primary form of communication with Apiko?

Virtual Meeting

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

Responsive management. I could email the founder, and he would respond immediately. Their engineers are also very talented and versatile. 

Are there any areas for improvement or something Apiko could have done differently?

None at the moment

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Owner of Livhop

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

We are an educational activities company. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Apiko to accomplish?

• Create a mobile application
• Launch application on Google Play and Apple Store
• Create website

SOLUTION

How did you find Apiko?

• Online Search
• Other

Why did you select Apiko over others?

• Company values aligned
• Other

How many teammates from Apiko were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

The project is an activities calendar for kids age 1-5 years old, primarily used by the caregiver. Personalised weekly activities are generated based on a series of questions. The Main deliverables was the application, all backend for the application, launching on Google Play and Apple Store, website for the application. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

We had weekly meetings and deliverables were showcased in the meetings

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

They communicated very effectively, always available to answer questions and were quick to respond

What was your primary form of communication with Apiko?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

The company was very knowledgeable, the owner was very hands on and they were very good with communicating

Are there any areas for improvement or something Apiko could have done differently?

No. 

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

 I am the ceo of an information technology company 

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

medical software

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Apiko to accomplish?

• add new features to existing project
• re-design web and mobile app

SOLUTION

How did you find Apiko?

Online Search

Why did you select Apiko over others?

just got good vibes

How many teammates from Apiko were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

We have a number of codebases and a mobile application. Tech stack is React, React Native, Node. They are not simple apps by any means - lots of graphs, charts, pdf generation. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

code quality, speed, developers using initiative, asthetics

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

I like talking to the management at Apiko, they are decent guys and we have a good relationship. I found them to be effieient, and if i had a request, they respond quickly. 

I am overall happy with my decision to use them - and i continue to do so.

What was your primary form of communication with Apiko?

Virtual Meeting

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

good communication

Are there any areas for improvement or something Apiko could have done differently?

Not really