Appstrax Technology

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the co-founder and COO of Wahy, a digital portal with a vision to inspire leaders of tomorrow in the GCC. We curate inspirational talks and workshops for schools by bringing inspirational business leaders, founders and entrepreneurs to share their stories, knowledge and perspective with students in a structured format that promotes heightened engagement and impactful learning. I am responsible for the day to day operations of the company and ensuring client satisfaction.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Appstrax Technology?

Appstrax built and designed our website by creating a portal for schools to connect with inspirational speakers online.

What were your goals for this project?

The goal is to create a seamless experience for our schools to connect and organize inspirational talks for their students in the United Arab Emirates.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

We know the founder very well and have seen previous work on website development.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

Appstrax created an end-to-end website for us that allowed schools to sign up on our website and select speakers that are best suited for their interest. Speakers also have a log in page where they can keep track on the number of events they've hosted and spoke at in schools

What was the team composition?

We had one main point of contact who we spoke to and managed the end to end development for us. We prefer it this way as we'll know who to go to when things need to get done and who understands the entire experience and communication since day 1.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

This was a major achievement for us as it was the core of what our business does and how it functions. Our end goal is to digitize the streamline the process for organizing events for schools and sourcing speakers. This platform gives us the credentials and capability to reach a mass number of schools and speakers at once.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

It was arranged through weekly calls with our main point of contact. We also used Balsamiq to better express how we want our website to look like and function then had weekly calls to check the status of deliverables and action points.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Their professionalism and the fact that they care to understand our business and vision and find a seamless way to deliver that in a platform.

Are there any areas for improvement?

Expectation of timeline could of been expressed from the start. This was our first time working with developers and we were not sure on the amount of time it took to complete to the project and launch the website.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the founder of a startup.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Appstrax Technology?

I wanted to pivot away from being employed and went to Appstrax to build a proof of concept that I could take to investors.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Appstrax developed a mobile app for ordering drinks while at a bar. The idea was to make it scalable, allowing bars to add as many drinks and menus as they wanted. There would be a consumer-side app for bar-goers, and a bar manager app, where they could create happy hours, update drink availabilities, and so on.
 
I’m technically proficient, but I was reliant on Appstrax pretty much end to end. I contributed a bit to the design, but they still helped out a lot with that. They did everything from development to databases, deployment, and handing me the final source code. We developed it as a hybrid app for Android and iOS using Ionic.
 
What is the team composition?

I worked with 5–6 people from Appstrax. There was a lot of frontend work, and it could come down to two people sometimes. Mikael (Director and Co-Founder) was my main contact.
 
How did you come to work with Appstrax Technology?

I’d met Mikael a couple of years before the collaboration. He had a very good reputation as a developer, and I kept him in mind.
 
I moved to Cape Town in mid-2016 and was doing a coding bootcamp. Appstrax was one of the companies providing internships as part of the bootcamp. Because of that, they’d end up coming to the workshops sometimes, and we were able to meet a lot of companies in the tech space. Some of those had their own products, and Appstrax was one of the companies providing software development for clients. That was where I met them, and it was easy to access them through the network of internship providers.
 
How much have you invested with them?

The total cost was a bit short of $30,000.
 
What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Appstrax in late-2018 or early-2019. Version one came out after 3–4 months, and the final version came after about five and a half months.
 
We wrapped the project up because I got what I wanted out of it. I wanted a demo that I could shop around to investors, and I was quite happy with it. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

One big metric for me was getting something that I could show to investors. I didn’t want to give them just a screenshot mockup; I wanted them to actually interact with the app, even if it just had dummy content. I got a bit more than that, actually. In the time it took to line up a couple of meetings with investors, which took a bit more than I’d planned, we actually got to a point where I could test the product with a friend who’s a bar manager. That was way more than I’d planned. 
 
How did Appstrax Technology perform from a project management standpoint?

It went quite well. Software development can be quite complicated, but there were no major missed deadlines. There were some issues from my side: I was a bit picky, and I wasn’t satisfied with the initial design, and we lost a bit of time going back and forth on it. However, they came back around and did it. It was very good overall.
 
One of the things that mattered the most to me was how the backend looked. Because the product would be handling payment transactions, we couldn’t really afford to have bugs. If the app had a button that was the wrong color, that’s fine as long as it doesn’t take away the user’s money or send their credit card information out in a spreadsheet to the world. Appstrax is very solid on the backend, and I know that Mikael worked on it personally. The deployment was really smooth on both app stores. 
 
I was on our Slack channel for most of the time, but we also used WhatsApp and phone calls for communication. We would have an occasional meeting now and then, but I wasn’t popping into their office every day.
 
What did you find most impressive about them?

Their flexibility is a big distinguishing factor. I’ve worked with a couple of other developers, and I felt that Appstrax really maintained that startup ethos. Unlike other developers I’ve worked with, Appstrax was quite flexible in swapping out one feature for another without changing the contract. That was very nice. We’re sometimes racing against time when launching a product like that, and I didn’t want to spend three weeks going through one contract clause just to get this thing going. 
 
Are there any areas they could improve?

They had a couple of junior designers or designers that weren’t ready, but they improved on my designs, and I think they have a proper designer working with them now.
 
Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

With any vendor, it’s important to have a very clear idea of what you want. Present mood boards for designs, frameworks, or squiggles on a piece of paper of what you want the product to look like. You have to really know what you want; otherwise, there will be a lot of misunderstandings and back and forth. Luckily, this didn’t happen too much, unless I was clueless about something. The designers and developers can only do so much.