Cledar

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

FamiCord, (fka PBKM) is Europe’s leading cord blood bank, operating for two decades. FamiCord has stored over half a million cord blood and tissue units for customers from all over Europe. I’m the CEO of the company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

• Comprehensive custom build CRM solution to manage clients/patients data with additional modules for laboratory storage management, billing and integration with accounting. The system was developed to replace a legacy software to enable continuous growth of our company
• Cryogenic lab monitoring system, which integrated with temperature probes and recorders of various vendors and existing alarm systems

SOLUTION

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

At the time of selection Cledar was a small software house, new in the market, but the deciding factor was the prior experience of its founders in large scale and complex projects at CERN.

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

• Requirements analysis
• Planning and scheduling
• Architecture design and choice of technologies: Python, Oracle DB, Java
• Software coding
• Data migration planning and scripting
• Parallel deployment testing

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

• Project manager
• 1 Software Architect
• 1 Application Developer
• 3 DB Engineer
• 1

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The outcome met all the expectations. Both applications developed by Cledar were successfully deployed in a production environment. The hardest part of the process, namely the migration of data from a legacy system and the switch to the new system went smoothly without any major issues. Software developed by Cledar was instrumental in getting AABB accreditation.

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

• Organized with well-defined roles
• Disciplined
• Excellent communication with relevant departments (IT, Customer Service, Finance)
• On-time delivery with smooth communication of schedule changes

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

Ability to work in highly disciplined way and thus achieving significant business value with optimal use of work force and resources making the whole process cost effective.

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

At the time of our cooperation the company was new on the market so the team was relatively small, however by their high discipline and creativity they managed to meet all the expectations.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

The goal of ZAX is to collect digital footprints of individuals and make them profitable for users. Everyone has numerous records of history in payment applications, fidelity cards, online retail shops, online purchases, banks, insurance companies, transportation apps etc. For the time being, the data originators (users of a variety of services) make not much personal use of this data. Instead, data is almost exclusively used by service providers. We try to change this situation and make data useful and profitable for their originators who, due to GDPR regulations, are/should be in fact in control of these records.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

The challenge was to design the data feeds from numerous data sources, store and structure the data, and make them available for augmentation. Finally, the developed algorithms should draw conclusions about financial situation and stability of the individual, and, finally, the creditworthiness.

SOLUTION

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

Cledar was recommended to us by our business partners. In fact we immediately found them exceptional in comparison to other software houses. Cledar demonstrated experience and knowledge of data structuring, processing and analytics.

There are numerous software houses on the market but very few have the experience and attention to details that Cledar demonstrated. This is largely supported by CERN experience of the founders.

They used to develop big data infrastructure and data analytics algorithms for the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Geneva. This experience is a game changer in big data and analytics. Cledar had outstanding experience in Comprehensive Data Infrastructures.

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

They first organized a couple of working sessions to understand the possible data sources, possibility of data augmentation and the business objectives of the project. In the first phase they focused on data loaders and ETL algorithms. The data was stored in a semi-structured form in an Elasticsearch based platform.

During the second phase they developed data merging algorithms which combined individual data records on given user, originating from various services, to form a coherent description on an individual. In this phase also data augmentation was developed, that enriched personal data with publiclically available information.

Finally, Cledar developed a number of AI/ML based evaluation algorithms to assess the financial condition and credit worthiness of the user. Cledar's team also developed a web and a mobile app for us (React).

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

On average 5 people. There were 2 senior developers, 1 front-end developer, 1 data scientist, 1 AI/ML engineer, project manager part time. There were also contributors from System Architect, DevOps and Security expert.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The team performed very well, on schedule. The intermediate results were presented to numerous key players in the financial, insurance and real estate sector who expressed their interest in participation in the project.

Cledar's work brought about initial infrastructure allowing for further business development. The relations and mutual interests currently are being transformed to commercial projects and further project funding is being secured.

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

We communicated via Teams. The development was supported with Jira, Confluence, GitLab, Swagger. We had 3 weeks long sprints. However, in the exploratory phase they were open to work more closely and have shorter, even 1-week-long iterations.

They met deadlines very well. In the vary rare cases of some unexpected challenges, they warned us ahead of time, so that there was time to react and reschedule priorities.

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

Experience and focus on Comprehensive Data Infrastructures. This gave them the ability to think ahead and provide valuable insights for project steering.

Also their scientific background was impressive and very helpful. They really understand data and AI from the very foundation including the advanced mathematical aspects.

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

It’s worth to engage Cledar at the early stage of the project, when there is still a lot of freedom to define the architecture, the data structures and generally speaking to validate the objectives.

These guys have highly valuable experience and can bring lots of relevant input that can transform the project, make it more profitable and cost effective.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Founder

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

We are seeking to build a health tech platform that is consumer facing. The platform allows consumers to search for health services and products using a robust database and sophisticated filtering system.

SOLUTION

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

We used the following factors when deciding on a vendor:

1. Reputation
2. Experience in Data Services
3. Value & Affordability

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

Key Deliverables Included:

1. Design & UX
2. Planning & Scheduling
3. Software Coding
4. Server Architecture
5. Data Architecture & Data Processing
6. Operations and Management

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

• Project Manager - 2
• Front End - 2
• Back End - 2
• Full Stack - 1
• Data Services - 3
• Operations - 1

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The outcome has been excellent. The team has met my expectations.

• Platform is live and running
• Platform is stable
• Continuous improvement & new features being added

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

Management Style has been characterized as:

• Organized
• Disciplined
• Carefully scheduled
• On-time delivery

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

They show great discipline in sprint planning and delivery. Contributions from team for new features and improvements are impressive.

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

The company has had challenges sourcing new talent due to the competitive nature of the hiring market

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the CEO of AI/ML US based company

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

We wanted to theorize and develop an AI/ML platform to measure and predict socio-economic scenarios

SOLUTION

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

Personal referral and deciding factors were specific knowledge from team.

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

Developing an learning machine and algorithm that measure multiples socio economic metrics and detect interactions

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

more than 10 full stack dev

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Good results and quick response

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

They are agile with constant communication using internal tools.

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

Capability to adapt and be flexible. Great self problem-solving capabilities

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

Always will but good feedback intake