Axelerant

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the CAO of an education company 

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

We are an educational non-profit that researches how students learn and trains educators on how to apply that research to practice.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

• Our goal was to create a platform that allows the community to interact and share information about Universal Design for Learning.
• Our goal was to create a platform that allows users to obtain micro-credentials.

SOLUTION

How did you find Axelerant?

Referral

Why did you select Axelerant over others?

• Pricing fit our budget
• Good value for cost
• Referred to me

How many teammates from Axelerant were assigned to this project?

1 Employee

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

Axelerant's team created and maintained a platform for my organization to grant micro-credentials and use as a community hub. They worked closely with our staff to understand how the platform would be used, add updates and make changes as the project evolved, and problem-solve technical issues.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The creation and smooth running of the platform demonstrated the success of Axelerant's work.

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

Axelerant was extremely attentive and always on time. The responded immediately to any email communication we sent and met with us on a bi-weekly basis to review work that had been done, share upcoming goals, and get input from my team.

What was your primary form of communication with Axelerant?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

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

The sincere attention and dedication we received made working with Axelerant a fantastic experience. Their team was always very friendly and responsive, and they clearly care deeply about the work they do.

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

N/A

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the CEO of OpenScholar

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Research collaboration SaaS software

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

• Provide agile engineering help to our onshore team
• Complete specific development tasks
• Support R&D and ongoing platform maintenance

SOLUTION

How did you find Axelerant?

Referral

Why did you select Axelerant over others?

• High ratings
• Good value for cost
• Company values aligned

How many teammates from Axelerant were assigned to this project?

6-10 Employees

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

Axelerant has offshore developers who are Drupal front end and back end specialists who augment our onshore dev team in our bi weekly sprint cycles to release new software code, fix bugs and maintain existing code and troubleshoot a complex code base.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Axelerant has been involved in all of our software development since 2019. I view them as part of our development team. They contribute to all of our product success.

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

Yes, on time and they always work to get us the most talented resources whose skills align with our current project

What was your primary form of communication with Axelerant?

• In-Person Meeting
• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

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

They're a hardworking group. The culture clearly trickles down from the top and aligns well with ours. We all work remotely and we communicate a lot and work long hours and are focused on quality outcomes and making our customer happy. Ankar runs the business with a long term view of both customers and employees. He’s an excellent leader and Axelerant is an excellent partner to us.

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

No

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Product Owner - web of University of East London

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Teaches higher education and awards degrees and higher degrees

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

• Manage and enhance website
• Improve site stability
• Undertake and instill agile working practises

SOLUTION

How did you find Axelerant?

Knew of them already

Why did you select Axelerant over others?

• Pricing fits our budget
• Great culture fit
• friendly staff

How many teammates from Axelerant were assigned to this project?

6-10 Employees

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

We initially engaged Axelerant to support with post site launch stability and immediate teething problems. They quickly got to grips with the code base and helped set up processes to structure development work (agile). This initial phase lasted about 6-8 months whilst we went out to tender to appoint a permanent company. 

They achieved a great deal in the first phase by delivering some key requirements: fixing a large number of front end bugs, creating the next set of enhancements for improving the user experience that were not part of the MVP and upgrading the next version of Drupal. Axelerant then one the tender and we moved into phase two. 

Within this phase they fixed a large number of accessibility issues (so we comply with the law) improved web security and delivering a new homepage with a +20% click through rate and speeding up page load and a large number of technical SEO fixes moving us from a "poor" rating to a "good" rating in Google. Progress has been consistent, and Axelerant have added considerable value.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

• Moving from "poor" to "good" SEO ratings in Google
• Fixing a large number of accessibility issues meaning our site can be used by those with extra needs and we comply with the law 
• The site is more secure and stable
• +20% click through rate on the homepage 
• Better conversion rate of students

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

Axelerant have: 

• Operated within agile working practises and stuck to them (SCRUM)
• Also been flexible and responsive 
• Gone above and beyond on a regular bass and often respond out of hours
• Their can-do approach was exemplary.

What was your primary form of communication with Axelerant?

Virtual Meeting

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

• The friendliness of the staff 
• The availability and effort put in to "getting it right" 
• Being open and knowledgeable

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

Regression issues are a area of focus and improvement and they acknowledge this and have a plan to address it

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the technology director of Proctor + Stevenson, a marketing agency.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Axelerant?

We build Drupal websites for clients and needed to be able to extend our team based on the projects we were working on. We needed Axelerant to provide staff augmentation.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We provided Axelerant with a statement of work and a product backlog. We then worked with Axelerant to continue to define and agree on a solution for a particular project from the backlog. We’ve done multiple projects with them. 

What is the team composition?

We work with different people depending on the project. 

How did you come to work with Axelerant?

I researched several companies and chose Axelerant because of their Drupal expertise. They were recommended by a colleague. 

How much have you invested with them?

The collaboration costs $200,000/year. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in August 2019, and the collaboration is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Collaborating with Axelerant has helped us to deliver projects very competitively. Their team is reliable and has great expertise. They’ve helped us to deliver a much better service to our clients. It's a good partnership. They're as invested in us as we are in them. 

How did Axelerant perform from a project management standpoint?

We manage the project on our side. We’ve had some issues with late delivery with some resources but they respond very proactively and positively. They made the necessary changes based on our feedback. Their communication is really good. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

We’re impressed with Axelerant’s Drupal expertise. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, they do the job we ask them to do. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Make sure the instruction and communication is as clear as possible. 

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

We are a seed-stage startup, and I'm the CTO and co-founder.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Axelerant, and what were your goals?

We were trying to expand our developing capacity, so we reached out to Axelerant in early April for an urgent project that needs to be done by end of April.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

We understood that it's very aggressive, but Axelerant is recommended through our investor so we trusted their promise that they can deliver everything by end of April.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and technologies used.

Axelerant is responsible for completing the entire Hubspot integration project, including frontend and backend development.

How many people from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

We worked with:

• 1 PM 
• 1QA
• 1 backend
• 3 frontend eng

How did you come to work with Axelerant?

We understood that it's very aggressive, but Axelerant is recommended by our investor so we trusted their promise that they can deliver everything by end of April.

How much have you invested with them?

We worked together from 4/4-6/9, and I met with the PM almost every day, and with the team at least once a week.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

project is not delivered on time and with bugs. 

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timeliness.

I have daily sync with their PM, and demo every week in the beginning and more often in the later stage. We use slack to communicate.

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

Their backend engineer is very responsible, and he's the one who finishes his thing on time. Although the outcome is still not ideal in the end, Axelerant did try to find ways to fix the situation, like giving us extra discounts (not charging us after 5/23) and keeping finding new front-end engineers to help.

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

Since it's an aggressive project, we agreed to reserve 2 weeks buffer, so our contract explicitly said that the final UAT acceptance is on 5/12. Result? We finally launched it on 6/15, with 2 of our in-house engineers spending almost a month wrapping things off, and rewriting some code because it's not working as expected or up to the spec.

Here are some details that I want to highlight: 

1. The expected final UAT acceptance date is 5/12, but the final hand-off day is 6/9, and the project still has parts that our in-house engineers need to spend time to fix, for example, UI details, edge cases handling, etc. 

2. As a frontend-heavy project, our designer spent a lot of time on the details but one of their engineer doesn't pay too much attention to it. After our team took back the project, we need to fix some UI/UX bugs that were not being taken care of, for example, spacing, and fonts used. 

3. There's one engineer who didn't show up in the scheduled meeting multiple times. He sometimes would later tell us he's sick, sometimes there's just no explanation. This was when he was delayed in his progress, so we were all eager to see what his progress was.

4. Code quality is not the best. This part I'll put as last because this is more subjective. Our engineer spent 1 month after taking over the project to make it match our standard. Maybe because it's a very aggressive project, they have to put up things that are not in the most standard way, which is an inevitable tradeoff.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CTO of Fast Interactive, a digital strategy agency.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Axelerant?

Axelerant provides staff augmentation services as needed for Drupal-based web development projects. Specifically, they help us deliver on a few accounts.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

The team handles break/fix requests for some of our customers. They do new feature development for websites in addition to other larger projects. We use very few—almost no—web development technologies other than Drupal.

What is the team composition?

In total, we’ve worked with eight to 12 different developers on various projects. Recently, we’ve worked with two or three developers at any given time on a project-by-project basis.

How did you come to work with Axelerant?

I met them at a conference and started talking about various projects. As the relationship evolved, we stacked them on some of our projects. We developed a symbiotic relationship and formalized the partnership.

How much have you invested with them?

We spend between $50,000–$100,000 per year.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in 2014 and the partnership is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Axelerant’s resources have expanded our ability to deliver; with the augmentation, we sell one or two more projects per year. Quality has improved over time and we can now expect more from them.

How did Axelerant perform from a project management standpoint?

We used to have communication challenges, but we’ve since resolved them. We use Jira, Slack, and Atlassian.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Nothing stands out. As expected, Axelerant stays on top of our requests and provides valuable support.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No. Currently, we’re focused on growing our accounts to scale Axelerant’s services.

What advice do you have for clients with similar needs to yours?

Whenever I endorse Axelerant during a reference check, I advise potential clients to implement a strong communication setup to manage the time difference effectively.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the VP of Technology of Configero

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Headquartered at the Salesforce Tower Atlanta, Configero is uniquely positioned to deliver implementation, integration, and customization services and solutions that align with the Salesforce mission of innovation and customer success.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

• Staffing
• Scalable Growth
• Special Development Projects

SOLUTION

How did you find Axelerant?

• Online Search
• Referral

Why did you select Axelerant over others?

• High ratings
• Pricing fit our budget
• Good value for cost
• Company values aligned

How many teammates from Axelerant were assigned to this project?

6-10 Employees

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

• Staff augmentation for Salesforce development and support team. 
• Agile Development process 
• Automated CI/CD with the Salesforce platform 
• Custom Salesforce.com functionality 
• Python API development 
• Development 
• Support

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

• Renewed contracts 
• Positive customer feedback 
• Quick escalation resolutions

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

• Great management. 
• Quick escalation resolutions. 
• Quick resourcing turnaround times. 
• Flexible in cost adjustments. 
• Frequent communication.

What was your primary form of communication with Axelerant?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

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

Personal touch and very accommodating. They understand the value of partnership and share a common growth goal.

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

Not so far.