Arello Mobile

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We are a Swiss software development company offering services to a variety of different clients, both consultation and actual coding. We have a focus on backend mobile app development, but we cover other things. We work with a network of freelancers, as well as with agencies in Switzerland, Germany, Belarus and Russia. The company was founded in 2009, and obtained limited status in 2010 or 2011. We have a variety of clients, from NGOs to banks, and small startups to big companies. I am in charge of business development and project leadership.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Arello Mobile?

When we started the company, mobile development was not as big as it is now, and it was not as easy to find reliable partners. Arello Mobile was one of the first companies to show that they had some experience and had already worked on several projects in the early stages of the app microcosm. They have become our longest-lasting partner.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

In the early stages, we had a big Swiss bank as a client, and we knew that Arello Mobile would have enough people with the right knowledge for coding the app, and to deal with all the security and design requirements. Arello Mobile assigned a team of 15 people to it.

Following this, Arello Mobile has worked with us on an augmented reality gaming experience for a client. The app involved collecting pandas across Switzerland. The more users collected, the more points they got. They could win prizes and different rewards through those points. Arello was closely involved in the whole project. An augmented reality software was not as easy to build then as it is now, without all the tools at hand. We currently have libraries available, which didn’t exist at the time, but Arello Mobile was able to do it.

We put together a small demo, for the augmented reality app, in order to see if it was possible. There was a lot of conceptual work involved, beyond just development. The main challenge was to develop everything in time. I knew that even though it was something new, they would be able to handle it.

We had another project involving image recognition for a specific task. Arello Mobile was able to do that too and they assigned a research and development team which created a proof-of-concept.

How did you come to work with Arello Mobile?

I don’t remember how we got in in touch with them, but Arello Mobile was the most convincing option out of the multiple agencies we contacted. From then on, we have worked project-by-project.

How much have you invested with Arello Mobile?

The cost of the augmented reality project was around $30,000. The budget changed over time, and I don’t remember exactly what it was.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started the augmented reality project with Arello Mobile in April 2011. It lasted until November of that year. There was a follow-up project made in 2015.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The app was quite successful, in terms of public perception. It was a good project for us.

How did Arello Mobile perform from a project management standpoint?

At the time, we weren’t used to working as a creative agency. Arello Mobile was a big help for us, and they were proactive in suggesting what approach we could have. This has been true in general, and it’s something I’ve valued about them, over time.

We have used multiple tools over time, depending on the methodology of the project, with Skype being the base communication channel. Some tools were focused on Kanban, like Slack, but we have also had project managers and developers coming on-site for some projects, like the one we had for the bank. We have the mobile numbers of some Arello Mobile members, so I can even WhatsApp them, even though I try to avoid it. They’re open, and have all the necessary internal tools for documentation and bug-tracking.

What did you find most impressive about Arello Mobile?

Some of the companies we’ve worked with were unwilling to adapt to changes, but Arello Mobile was client-oriented by comparison. Over our 6-7-year collaboration, I’ve continued to work with the same people from the beginning. The fluctuation has been low, which indicated to me that Arello Mobile has tried to maintain a relaxed culture. This flexible approach was also visible towards the client.

Are there any areas Arello Mobile could improve?

There’ve always been things which we could have done differently. Putting more weight on the conceptual part, and having as much documentation as possible would be welcomed. Some projects were started with insufficient information for development, and Arello Mobile warned us that it could be difficult. If we request a creative workflow for submitting forms, they can do it, even though it may not be what we or the client imagined. I would focus more on providing as detailed information as possible.

We have recently had a call about making an application mockup. We can do this together with Arello Mobile. We normally take raw information and turn it into more specific things with their project management and developers for technical input. Earlier, we just wanted to get something done, but sometimes that led to some problems.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the Managing Director of Futura Digital, which is a small agency.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Arello Mobile?

We wanted to increase our capacity to deliver technically challenging projects.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Arello Mobile has worked on a full range of app projects, including games, calculators, and PDA cookbooks. Some of these projects were white-label solutions, which we can’t talk about. Arello has also developed small- and medium-sized enterprise apps. These were designed for businesses that want to turn paper-based systems into an electronic format to streamline processes.

We would specify most of the requirements at the beginning of a project. Arello typically handles native apps, but we’re now looking at using the Ionic Framework and other cross-platform tools. We work with iOS, Android, Django, and web services.

They also assist us with project management, helping estimate the development timeline and work hours. Our process is fully transparent. Arello’s people deal directly with our customers because we trust their skills and expertise.

How did you come to work with Arello Mobile?

I used to have an app company that published children’s educational apps. We experimented with working with a lot of teams before we finally found Arello.

How much have you invested with Arello Mobile?

We’ve spent $200,000–$500,000 over the course of our relationship.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in January 2009. I’ve had a close working relationship with them ever since.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

All of the apps have done very well, and half of them have been featured in the Apple Store. Many of the apps have been reviewed and featured in “best of” lists. Some of the apps have millions of downloads.

How did Arello Mobile perform from a project management standpoint?

They do well in terms of project management. They are very responsive, and we would get replies within the day. They’re always available for a Skype chat. Occasionally, language is a small concern, but it’s not a major issue.

What did you find most impressive about Arello Mobile?

I am impressed with the quality of their work and attention to detail. They have the foresight to see problems before they come up.

Are there any areas Arello Mobile could improve?

No, nothing I can think of.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I work for an international development organization, where I am responsible for a program for the publication of open financial data. As a part of this program, there are a number of platforms and apps which we’ve developed and maintained. Arello is our main vendor for our web and mobile products.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Arello Mobile?

We were originally looking for someone to develop an iOS app to make our financial group as transparent as possible, by making everything around our loans, grants, credits and activities available on a smartphone.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Arello started with native Android and iOS development, after which we continued collaborating on maintenance of those 2 apps. We had a pilot version developed by another company, but the real design started with Arello. More recently, we’ve developed a web application with analytics based on open data.

The app is 100% data-driven, completely based on the data we publish. It has a map featuring all the projects supported by the organization worldwide. For each, the financials and other information are represented on that map. Users can see nearby projects using GPS, and there are push notifications for specific projects or countries. Users can subscribe to updates for a portfolio of countries or projects, and see notifications during significant changes to a project, or when a new project is approved or started in a particular location.

How did you come to work with Arello Mobile?

We didn’t have mobile expertise within the organization, so we started a request-for-information process, calling on many companies to provide details on the services they could provide, in terms of development, library environment, and so on. Out of this large RFI, we selected 5-6 groups which were invited to the RFP, including Arello.

How much have you invested with Arello Mobile?

The budget for the initial release was around $10,000, for a smaller, mostly static app. The pilot version had a cost of $30,000 to $40,000, after which we’ve kept iterating every year, with the same budget or even more. The total cost over the last 5 years has been above $100,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We got in touch with Arello in late-2012, and the project started in 2013. They still provide maintenance, refactoring and small updates every year for that app, but we’ve also worked on apps for 2 other units within the organization, as well as a new web platform. The backend part of our app is being managed by our own staff, in collaboration with Arello.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Our app is a niche product, so we haven’t seen a lot of downloads. It’s the second most popular app within our organization, with 60,000 downloads across iOS and Android.

We always had positive feedback for it, because it contributed to our effort of being more transparent and bringing data to everyone, through Android, iOS and the web. The fact that we were putting all our numbers in an easy-to-consume format with a map, attracted a lot of attention.

For the second release, we asked Arello to redesign our interface. Before this, the design had been mostly created by our local team. Arello’s redesign became a benchmark for all the other apps we’ve developed in terms of its clean interface and the visuals. Our guidelines were set after their work was completed.

How did Arello Mobile perform from a project management standpoint?

I appreciated the quality, timeliness and flexibility provided by their team. These have been key for all our projects, and I’m happy with Arello’s project manager overall.

I don’t know what the size of their team was. We communicated using different tools for different projects over the 5-year collaboration, mostly email and regular phone calls. For large engagements, we also setup weekly in-person meetings.

What did you find most impressive about Arello Mobile?

The quality of the design and the stability, reliability, and performance of the software, are all very good.

In every software development project, I’ve cared about the quality of the work and the flexibility around changing requirements and features without a major problem or a massive investment. Arello has always designed our backend and frontend in a flexible way.

Are there any areas Arello Mobile could improve?

The only part which could be improved is the reporting of our spending on the administrative side. Having timely invoices every quarter or every month, and managing the proposal in a way which adheres to our numerous rules and processes. If Arello wants to work with large organizations like ours, they should improve and structure their processes more around the administrative piece. I’m very happy with overall project management, though.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We are a small startup company consisting of 12 team members. We launched our social mobile app 5 months ago on the Apple Store. It provides users with the ability to choose between 2 fashion outfits, and it’s been very successful. Thousands of people have downloaded the app and are having fun with it.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Arello Mobile?

We had another mobile app developer in charge of the frontend of the iPhone app. It literally took us more than a year to finally get some kind of prototype going. Even though this wasn’t the first time I’d built an iPhone app, I was flabbergasted by the slow progress. At one point, we stopped the relationship and looked for another mobile app developer.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Arello Mobile handled everything from implementing the design to architecting the mobile app and developing it while providing quality assurance.

The architecture is 3-tiered; it has an Amazon Web Services backend with an API that is exposed to different data and content consumers (including apps). We’re providing the first set of these types of consumers. There is an Apple iPhone app, an iMessage app, and a notifications app, but there could potentially be a developer community building its own apps on top of this type of data, content, and logic exposure through our API.

The backend has very thin architecture and the API is wonderful, rock-solid, modern, secure, and scalable. It was developed by one particular backend team.

Chat features are in the works, but everything we can see exposed on the mobile app was provided by Arello. This includes taking pictures, personalizing content, editing it, making it available to the entire user base and their friends (which we call buddies), creating private posts and curating the newsfeed, and making sure no spammers can get into the community.

We have used Arello Mobile for marketing and strategy as well. They have a creative team that has come up with questions around the direction of our app after its development. They really care about the quality of work.

The size of our team fluctuates depending on where we are in the process. At any given moment, I would say that we have 3 team members on average. It could go up to 6–7, or down to 1–2 right after a release, when all we have to do is gather new user feedback.

How did you come to work with Arello Mobile?

One of my friends knew of Arello. We were quite unhappy with the previous mobile app developer, so we had some conversations with Arello’s team and hit it off. They really care, and even before there was any revenue to be gained, Arello extended tremendous efforts in trying to understand our challenges and what we were trying to accomplish, getting to know us and coming up with an initial set of ideas. Within a month, this led us to cancel our previous contract and go full-force with Arello.

How much have you invested with Arello Mobile?

The cost of their work has been around $70,000. My rule of thumb is that we have to expect to spend around $100,000 per mobile platform, no matter if the work is done in the US, Ireland, or Russia. We’re below this mark, so their value is good.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Arello Mobile around a year ago, in June or July 2016. The app has been live for 5 months.

Our future plans are long and deep; we could possibly have Android and desktop applications, as well as anything else that would work for exposing this type of content, including Amazon Echo. The app in the App Store is what I would call version 1 out of 10 possible versions we could release. The collaboration with Arello will be ongoing for quite some time; there is still a lot of work to be done.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We started with an initial beta team of 500 users. Arello was talking about outside services and even brought in their friends and family to test the app. Of those 500 beta users, a significant portion came from Arello’s efforts, which we didn’t pay for. They simply did it because they cared.

Since then, we have gotten 100 downloads per day in the first month, to 200 per day in the second month, and currently to around 500 downloads per day. The numbers keep on growing day by day and month over month. We have reached several tens of thousands of users.

Overall, we are delighted. The app is easy to use, fun, and extremely fast, which was one of our requirements. We wanted to be one of the fastest apps on the App Store, which would be key for keeping users happy and engaged without having to wait seconds for one of their uploads to finally find its way into the newsfeed.

How did Arello Mobile perform from a project management standpoint?

Arello has the ability to set our expectations correctly and deliver on them — sometimes even exceed them. Often, when working with remote app developers, we will hear that a task will be done after which it will disappear into a black hole. What is ultimately delivered is under the expectations.

Not everything goes right in this type of process since we can’t tell the future when we’re innovating. Strong project management is crucial, as well as the ability to say that something is not working, why it isn’t working, and what are the options for fixing it. Arello has literally given us updates and statuses day by day. They’ve done a fabulous job with the most critical component of this effort.

Arello Mobile assigned us two main points of contact, Aleksandra and Kasia, who have outstanding interpersonal and communication skills. They are very intelligent and a joy to work with, not only because we almost immediately hear back from them. Their exceptional organizational skills allow them to prioritize our requests well, and enable us to plan ahead

We had regular, almost daily stand up calls. We also had weekly updates and more frequent ones during crunch times. Arello also had team members come to us in person to sit down and make us understand certain things, as well as understand what our wishes were. It was a mix of best practices.

Arello explained why certain tasks would take longer than we initially anticipated, and we mutually worked out if we should move them into the backlog or delay the release by 1–2 days.

What did you find most impressive about Arello Mobile?

Project management was one part, but outside of what was written on paper, I appreciated the caring about our app’s success and our satisfaction. This was a unique point about Arello, and it was clear when comparing them to our previous partner that their developers are more senior than the average outsourced mobile application development company.

Are there any areas Arello Mobile could improve?

We’ve only been exposed to the CEO of Arello once. It would be nice to see him more often, but it really doesn’t matter in the end. The app is functioning better than we thought, and we have a very mature team.