A.Y. Technologies

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the founder and CEO of an enterprise software company that services the financial sector. We build a wide variety of tools that allow banks, insurance companies, credit unions, and other financial institutions to provide more digital capabilities to their customers. We offer fraud detection, data analytics, and predictive model tools.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with A.Y. Technologies.

We had seen an increase in traction with many of our significant customers and found ourselves with a real gap in resources. We were building up our teams but felt we needed to move quicker to fulfill our immediate technical challenges on the engineering side.

We were struggling to increase our headcount at a fast enough rate and wanted to bring in a team to augment the staff, as we have many deliverables that are very time sensitive. We wanted someone who really understood our business model, priorities, and fits culturally with what we’re trying to do.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They provide development for a number of web and mobile offerings. Part of our services build on a number of image recognition technologies, so facial recognition algorithms, text detection, and fraud detection. It’s a fairly specific and niche skill set, so it takes time for us to build-up the talent in-house because we have to find people who really understand this particular set of technologies and the problem we're trying to solve. With the help of A.Y. Technologies, we’re able to carve out this out as a specific capability or microservice, where we have them build, test, and then integrate within our broader offerings.

What is the team dynamic?

It’s typically around three people. I communicate with a combination of developers and our project manager. One of the unique benefits of working with them was that we got direct interaction with the individual developers that are writing the code, but at the same time, there was a project manager who was accountable. It was a healthy balance.

How did you come to work with A.Y. Technologies?

They host a number of technology meet-ups. We met the group and started a relationship, and really respected them as top leaders in a technical capacity. When we came up with this particular gap, we were quick to call them and see if we could work together to solve the problem.

How much have you invested with them?

Just below $50,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in September 2017, and the project was finished in the last month. We don’t have a new project at this time, but will likely work with them again in the future.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

While the services they’ve built have been incorporated into our broader product offering, it hasn’t been released live yet – however, we're very happy with it. We haven't worked with many outsourced companies because of the nature of our products and the expected time expediency. But they made a relentless effort to try to understand our business and our customers.

They went beyond the scope. They didn't just build some code, test the code, and then ship it. They were constantly trying to understand the end solutions for the customer, and really focusing on solving the problem rather than merely executing code. It’s a rare quality amongst third-party developers or consultancy shops. They felt much more like an extension of our in-house team rather than an outsource group.

How did A.Y. Technologies perform from a project management standpoint?

They did very well. We try to treat them like an extension of our own team and consider them another one of our engineering teams. We integrated them into Slack, which we use for communication internally, and set up a specific channel for them. We also included them in GitLab for code repository and sprint tracking.

They were generally good at sticking to our budget. There was some miscommunication sometimes a few days before a deadline, and I think both sides could have done a better job of communicating hard deadlines. Overall, they were usually on pace with completing the scope of the project.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They pride themselves on being an extension of your team, rather than an outsourced team. They take the time to understand your challenges and what your business is trying to achieve, rather than just the scope and requirements needed to execute the job. They were always willing to go the extra mile.

Are there any areas they could improve?

More clarity and focus with deadlines. It requires more communication when the deadlines aren’t crystal clear, and if we communicated those earlier on it might have helped. The fundamental reason why we brought them in was to help us to alleviate resource constraints and time-sensitive work. A bit more focus there would be good.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the owner of Sorat Wheels & Tires, a wheel and tire retail business. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with A.Y. Technologies?

Our website wasn't working very well. I had a lot of ideas for a new website, and the last people I dealt with, for whatever reason, weren’t willing to execute what I wanted. In the end, we got a product that didn’t meet our needs. I knew I had to start over and spend more money to change the site completely. I reached out to A.Y. Technologies and eventually started working with them.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

When a customer visits our website, they enter their vehicle information, which takes them to a third-party database that we pay for that gives information (about 5 or 6 parameters). We grab those parameters, go into our database, and search for them using different formulas that either I or the industry generates. The customer receives the results.

A.Y. Technologies provided everything for our e-commerce website, and they built it from scratch. At first, they tried to fix the original site, but there was a lot of cluttered coding. We use Magento, which is a ready-to-go system, but we had to do a lot of custom work because Magento did not have the solutions we needed. However, it also didn’t allow much custom coding.

At the end of our project with our former developer, we found out that he’d decided to write code into the pages. A.Y. Technology had to take that out and make the pages modular, as we could not upgrade the old website the way it was coded. We were stuck with the original Magento version that we were using; to upgrade it, we had to recode everything. If it was modular, we could do an upgrade in 2 hours. While we were working on the website, there was a complete change from Magento 1.7 to 2.0. That took extra time because we had to fix a whole bunch of stuff.

Basically, I would tell A.Y. Technologies what I wanted to accomplish, and they would find a way to do it. Other companies I spoke with would stress their limitations with Magento. I think A.Y. Technologies wrote everything in React and integrated with Magento later. That worked well for us because let us do the custom coding we wanted. Now, when A.Y. Technologies upgrades something for us, it takes 2–3 hours instead of 6 months.

A.Y. Technologies also managed our SEO for a while, and we were getting good results from that. I had to stop, though, because we changed the whole website. I realized that on the old website, we were basically spending the money to direct customers to the platform, but the website wasn’t able to answer their questions. We kept getting phone calls from people saying they had problems using the website. Our business is intensive, and we don’t sell regular products. We need to use a lot of databases to make sure that certain wheels will fit a certain car, for example. So, I stopped the SEO until we fixed the new website, and then we start going back to it. Before, A.Y. Technologies did some SEO for us, as well as blogging. They have other ideas that we’re going to tackle now that the website is ready to go and we’re entering our winter season.

How did you come to work with A.Y. Technologies?

I dealt with 2 other companies before working with A.Y. Technologies, and I had horrible experiences with both. I found A.Y. Technologies through my brother, who knew the owner. The other firms told me that my goals weren’t possible, but A.Y. Technologies told us they’d find a way that was cost-effective. It’s been nice to work with them.

How much have you invested with A.Y. Technologies?

I think we spent about $100,000 in 2016. I don’t know the exact amount. Lately, we’ve been running about $11,000–$12,000 a month, so we’ve probably spent $70,000 so far in 2017.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with A.Y. Technology about 5 years ago. They’ve been working with us on a full-time basis since the beginning of 2016 because we wanted to revamp the whole website. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We went from having absolutely no online sales to at least $20,000–$30,000 in online revenue per month, and the website just went up 2 months ago. It’s very user-friendly, which I appreciate because we spent a lot of time on it. I basically told A.Y. Technologies what to do, and they did it; I know how this kind of website has to work. I will either copy or improve on a competitor’s website. Good or bad, the results are on me, but I think we’ve done a pretty good job.

How did A.Y. Technologies perform from a project management standpoint?

A.Y. Technologies performs well from a project management standpoint. In fact, I sometimes think they’re overdoing it a bit. Our project manager writes down everything we talk about and uses software to keep track of projects. During a meeting, he’ll take notes and even delegate the work right away. It makes me want to keep working with them. I can see that they’re not just taking my money and giving me reports afterward; I know about everything they’re working on.

We meet in person and regularly. I sometimes talk to their team 10 times a day. I text and email our project manager, and they also run our email server. If we have any problems, I send a text, and 2 minutes later, it’s fixed. Right before we went live, we were working until 11 p.m., and they’d fix issues for me right away. They’re very accessible.

What did you find most impressive about A.Y. Technologies?

A.Y. Technologies will find a way to do whatever we need. They research each question and get back to us. I like that, especially because I have dealt with other people and spent a lot of money on websites that were nothing like this. I have probably paid A.Y. Technology 10 times more than I paid anybody else, but I've been happy throughout the process.

Are there any areas A.Y. Technologies could improve?

Because of the scope of the work, I never asked how much it was going to cost me. I just didn't want to put limitations on their problem-solving. I knew that what I wanted wasn't something that everybody could deliver. So, I actually don't know how they’d handle a set budget. That’s the only thing I could say. Other than that, I've been happy with them. 

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the owner of a gaming startup in Vancouver.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with A.Y. Technologies?

The purpose of my app is to help reduce staff turnover. I’m trying to develop it for iOS and Android. Initially, I needed more clarification on exactly how to do that, so I was looking for someone to help me with the entire development process.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

A.Y. Technologies facilitated a roadmap workshop. The first week was about breaking down the whole process and what I was trying to develop. The second week of the roadmap workshop involved putting everything back together and making a game plan. There were 2 resources assigned to this project. They didn't do any development, but I did get a low fidelity, clickable prototype.

How did you come to work with A.Y. Technologies?

I came to know about Amin [Director of Technology, A.Y. Technologies] through referrals in my network. I tried to contact another company, but they never got back to me. When I did contact Amin, we were able to set up a meeting. He was very clear.

How much have you invested with A.Y. Technologies?

I paid $8,000 for their roadmap workshop.

What is the status of this engagement?

I worked with them in early April.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

They provided a lot of clarity about what I wanted to do and the possibilities for my app. However, it's kind of hard to give feedback on the solution that they provided for me. After doing the roadmap workshop, the prototype hasn’t been touched, so there's not really much to comment on.

How did A.Y. Technologies perform from a project management standpoint?

They were very responsive. We usually communicated either through email or over the phone. The roadmap workshop was done in person, so we met a few times a week during those 2 weeks.

What did you find most impressive about A.Y. Technologies?

I was impressed by their attention to detail and ability to take my concept and turn it into something realistic. That being said, I don't have any other companies to compare them to.

Are there any areas A.Y. Technologies could improve?

Not at this time. We just had that 2-week workshop, so I don't really know exactly what they do aside from that.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Working in partnership with the world’s largest manufacturer of playgrounds, we have built a suite of games aimed at getting kids and parents more active outdoors.  One of the key components of our product revolves around AR Tags which work as key game interactions for our players. We often refer to our system as a kind of Pokemon Go for playgrounds, but with a larger aim of getting kids physically active.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with A.Y. Technologies?

We currently have a series of 8 games on the iOS and Android app stores. We wanted to build an app that could serve as a handy portal for all of those games without requiring kids and parents to scour the App Store. Another more critical goal was allowing parents to track their kids’ physical activity within our games. Each one of our games contains an activity profile that can infer how much moderate-to-vigorous physical activity a child is getting during gameplay. The app A.Y. was building was intended to track this activity across each of our games for individual kids.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

A.Y. Technologies developed our app for iOS and Android. Most of the app’s general design had already been completed on our side and the specs we handed to A.Y. were about 85% finalized. We did work with one of their UX Designers to take it the rest of the way in accounting for specific user cases, flow adjustments, cosmetics etc.

The app functions as a central hub for our games, allowing for the parental tracking of game activity and access to a map which lets parents find playgrounds near them. But one of the more difficult features we needed implemented was the bundling of one of our games (developed in Unity) with the app (developed in React Native). We needed this embedded game to answer the use case scenario of having a user downloading the parental app without any prior games installed. In order to prevent user fall-off, we need to ensure that a parental app user had a game to play right away.

How did you come to work with A.Y. Technologies?

A.Y. Technologies was highly recommended to us by our acting CTO at the time of project initiation.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started the pre-production phase with A.Y. Technologies in the summer of 2016. The work commenced in November and we’ve had an ongoing collaboration with A.Y Technologies since.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

In terms of the general features required such as activity feeds and maps etc., A.Y. had a relatively straightforward task, but the integration of one of our games with the app was a much larger risk item for them—especially with the timeline we were proposing. They committed eagerly to this task though and the Android version was completed within the confines of the deadline and was live in stores on time. 

The iOS version of the app, however, was not completed in time either by the original deadline or the more modest deadline proposed. This version is now launched, but the risk-laden ‘integration’ aspect of the project reared its head here.

How did A.Y. Technologies perform from a project management standpoint?

The lines of communication were mostly clear, and for a project of this type, clear communication was quite necessary. Merging our technology with theirs necessitated direct lines of feedback both ways. That said, there were points where we felt that embedding their team with ours (or vice versa) for certain stretches of time would have benefitted both parties and helped us push through a fair amount of problem-solving and resource access issues. We would look at doing this down the line given the entwined relationship between our games and the app itself.

What did you find most impressive about A.Y. Technologies?

We appreciated their willingness to tackle the game integration challenge with as much vigor as they did. It was a big, unknown task to be performed in a short timeframe and we valued their eagerness in taking on this challenge.  Their excitement around our product was also much appreciated. Production-wise, they proved out their abilities on the Android side admirably.

Are there any areas A.Y. Technologies could improve?

There have been some occasional communication breakdowns between our respective team members with regard to resource management, design feedback, in-house testing and feature priorities. Some of this stems from the fact that we were marrying game technology from our side with app/db technology on theirs, which was already a fairly unorthodox starting point.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Rockstart Media is an independent music connection service. I am the president and co-founder of the company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with A.Y. Technologies?

We needed to provide a platform for our underground musician clients.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

A.Y. Technologies is developing our platform from the ground up. We're using frontend elements. The backend database is a PHP server. A.Y. Technologies put together a scrum workshop which helped us understand what our scope would be.

How did you come to work with A.Y. Technologies?

I had done some work with A.Y. Technologies in a different capacity. They were one of the first companies I thought of when it came time to put together this project, based on my experience.

Other firms we consulted proposed pre-packaged technologies, but we wanted a solution built from scratch.

How much have you invested with A.Y. Technologies?

Our run rate is in the range of $20,000 per month. The initial fact-finding stage had a cost of $10,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We officially began working with A.Y. Technologies at the beginning of 2016. The concept stage ended in late-2015. The work is ongoing, and we plan on continuing with A.Y. Technologies. We have a closed-beta version of the product which will launch tomorrow. Our development plans with A.Y. Technologies will encompass at least most 2017.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

After our scrum workshop, we came up with an 8-month development plan. We're very happy with the progress. 

How did A.Y. Technologies perform from a project management standpoint?

A.Y. Technologies has fantastic project management. We meet with them a number of times per week, going over our status and where we need to go. A.Y. Technologies is candid in detailing the usage of resources. Everything from development to UI/UX [user interface/user experience] design and troubleshooting is taken care of within our plan.

What did you find most impressive about A.Y. Technologies?

Based on my previous experience with other developers during other iterations, A.Y. Technologies' team stands out through their genuine interest in the finished product. Beyond being just a transaction, their investment comes from a personal standpoint.

Are there any areas A.Y. Technologies could improve?

No, A.Y. Technologies is doing a fantastic job. We've had a chat about increasing the number of sit-downs we'll be having before the New Year, but we're on-track at the moment.