unicrew

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m an executive at a SaaS company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Artelogic?

We needed help with custom software development.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Artelogic works with us and takes care of all of our software development needs. Their scope includes gathering feature requirements, developing software pieces, providing maintenance, fixing bugs, liaising with clients, and providing support. Our technology stack includes generic languages and frameworks such as C# and .NET. However, we also use other complex technologies called actor-based frameworks and event sourcing.

What is the team composition?

We’ve worked with Artelogic’s CTO.

How did you come to work with Artelogic?

We hired Artelogic after doing a series of interviews with various companies we found on Clutch. During the interview process, we met Artelogic’s CTO, and he impressed us. He and his team stood above the other companies we interviewed due to their breadth of talent and eagerness to wanting to develop a relationship with us.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent between $120,000–$150,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in January 2022, and our engagement is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

What we do is incredibly niche, and our service isn’t consumer-focused enough to provide standard results such as customer base growth. However, from a technical perspective, actor-based frameworks and event sourcing aren’t widely adopted areas of expertise yet. Still, Artelogic has been able to learn them very quickly and effectively.

Moreover, they’ve been able to stabilize our whole application and rapidly iterate on the existing code base to get it to a much better state than it was 12 months ago. We’ve made far better progress than we were two years ago with a different team. In consequence, our users are incredibly happy with our product, and we couldn’t be happier with the results.

How did Artelogic perform from a project management standpoint?

Artelogic’s ability to work within our deadlines is perfect; I can’t fault them in that regard at all. Additionally, they’re very responsive, answering well outside of business hours. For certain situations that require support, it’s wonderful to count on Artelogic’s responsiveness. For example, one of their resources has been working with us for seven months straight — he’s not taking any leave until one piece of work is delivered.

We use Microsoft Teams to communicate, where we have internal channels. We also have daily video calls through Microsoft Teams as scrum meetings. Additionally, we’ve provided Artelogic’s resources with their own email addresses from our company’s domain. Their English level is very good, so they provide direct support to our clients on our behalf, which is perfect.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Artelogic’s skill set is fantastic, and their work ethic is exceptional.

Are there any areas they could improve?

There’s nothing Artelogic could improve on — they’re flawless and readily available, and the quality of their work is exceptional.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Don’t bother interviewing anyone else; just hire Artelogic.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Triathlon Ireland is the Governing Body for the sport of Triathlon in Ireland. We manage memberships, events, races, training and various media content via our website. My role was a project executive to facilitate requirements from Triathlon Ireland.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

Our website had become quite outdated and maintenance with our previous provider had become expensive and slow. Artelogic was brought onboard to take over the maintenance of our website, redevelop existing modules to up-to-date formats and also allow us to develop new modules of our website to improve our offering to our members

SOLUTION

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

We went to tender online and following a review of the providers, their portfolio and pricing we chose Artelogic

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

Artelogic have carried out a huge amount of scope across our website including but not limited to development of a new membership platform, development of a new finance module, building out our backend capabilities and moving our website host to a more suitable option for our traffic demands and also shifting platform to WordPress site to allow enhanced in-house control of content. v

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

We liaise primarily with a project manager from Artelogic who then coordinates the developers and quality assurance team. This facilitated an easily managed chain of communication and also ensured we were provided information in an understandable manor via the project manager rather than jargon from multiple developers.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Our website’s overall functionality has been improved both in frontend possibilities and user experience as well as backend aspects of website management and financial monitoring. These are not easily qualitfiable but there has been a net gain in available staff hours for alternative projects as a result of improved website abilities reducing workload.

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

The primary communication platform I’ve used with Artelogic is Slack for day-to-day communication, we also utilised Trello for providing and managing scope and development with invoicing being issuued via email. All responses were very efficient and language was never a barrier.

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

Response time and customer service. Very quick response to all queries and whenever there was an issue caused by our older modules Artelogic were extremely rapid in offering support and deploying fixes even in out of office instances

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

I have never been found wanting with Artelogic, their team and service level is brilliant.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the managing director of Bitergo GmbH. We develop software for warehousing & logistics. Warehouse Star is a cloud based warehouse management system for e-commerce, retail and industry.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

We launched a new web page www.warehouse-star.com for promoting test accounts to new customers. The goal was to realize a high conversion, i.e. number of test accounts created, and to offer the best user experience possible.

SOLUTION

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

We were contacted by Artelogic sales manager Dima. The sales process was very professional and straight forward. So we decided to start a pilot implementation which absolutely met our expectations. After that we decided to start a cooperation.

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

Our web designer delivered a style guide and UX concept upfront. Artelogic first implemented angular components strictly according to her requirements. After that we asked Artelogic to implement whole user frontends and do the backend integration via REST. And to support us with technical SEO .

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

We worked with one project manager and one developer full time.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

After launching the site we saw a rapid increase of test accounts ordered by potential customers. Now the site provides a steady source of sales leads.

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

The project management was agile according to SCRUM with very short dailies between the dev team members and once a week between project managers. We used our tool chain including git, JIRA SCRUM board and confluence.

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

We liked their professional processes. They worked with highly skilled developers. No need for 100% bulletproof specifications. Very sympathetic and fruitful cooperation.

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

We'd like to get support for backend programming as well.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO of an online waiver and forms organization that supports the health and wellness industry.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Artelogic?

We needed a full-time partner to provide development, testing, and project management for one of our products that’s under continuous development.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They provide software development and delivery services, as well as testing facilities, project management, and security solutions. Artelogic’s team looks after our software development and testing environment 24/7.

What is the team composition?

We work with three people on a full-time basis: two developers and one QA engineer. There’s also access to specialized resources for specific functions.  

How did you come to work with Artelogic?

We began working with them 8–9 years ago when the software development firm I was using was disbanded. I looked for a new company on a freelancer platform and they responded to my posting. After an interview process, they assigned an engineer and we went from there.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent close to $1 million with them at this point.

What is the status of this engagement?

We’ve been working together since January 2014.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

They’ve been helping us grow our platform together since the beginning, from a couple hundred companies to around 2,000. Artelogic has been front and center in this process.

As our customer base has grown, they’ve ensured that the platform is capable of taking on our growth and maintaining security compliance. Those regulations have changed over the years and Artelogic has updated them.

How did Artelogic perform from a project management standpoint?

I give them requirements from our customers and then they figure out the best approach to implement them using their project management people. This system has worked very well for us.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The level of dedication their team shows to our project is outstanding. Other firms that we’ve worked with have been distracted by side projects, whereas Artelogic has assigned full-time team members to work on our mission.

Are there any areas they could improve?

The way they operate with us right now is exactly how we would expect them to. Over the years, we’ve gotten to know each other’s companies very well, and because of that, we can work within each other’s constraints very well.

There’s nothing much they could do to improve things at this point.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Absolutely work with Artelogic. Get to know the people that you’re working with and make sure that they fully engage with your organization so that they can be both part of the project and part of the outcome. They’ll do well for you.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CTO and shareholder at an IT services company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Artelogic?

We needed a tool where customers could use a review pipeline and upload content. Overall, we wanted a review and design application for our business.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Artelogic did web app development for us. They helped us develop and formulate the idea that we had in mind. In terms of technologies, they used Laravel and Next.js. 

What is the team composition?

We worked with around six members of their team, including a salesperson, a project manager, a QA specialist, and three developers.

How did you come to work with Artelogic?

They reached out to us via email. When it was time to seek their help, we reached out to them and decided to give them our project as a test for their services.

How much have you invested in them?

We spent around €14,000 (approximately $15,200 USD) with them.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from June–December 2021.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The quality of their coding was outstanding to our standards. Overall, their work was key for us.

How did Artelogic perform from a project management standpoint?

They always stuck to their tools and processes. They also were very flexible in adapting to our business and communicative; we used Slack and Jira, and we also had biweekly meetings where they announced what they were going to do and how. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

They were dedicated to solving our problems as a customer; their team was collaborative, listened to us, and fully engaged in our space to commit to the project.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They could assign more project management capabilities to increase their efficiency.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Be precise with what you want and think aloud about your needs so they can help you to achieve your expectations.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO of a software development company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Artelogic?

We had to add huge product databases to our products, but these databases could only be filled by datasheets manually typed by some of our internal operators. We wanted to automatize this process to be able to add more data at the same time. The procedure followed a different programming language than our products, so we couldn’t challenge our internal developers with this. We needed to outsource this work.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We’ve addressed some automatization topics with Artelogic. Initially, we had the idea, and they did all the research. We didn’t deliver too much information up front; I think they had a similar project in the past, so they already had some knowledge of the specific component we needed. They did the development from scratch and even found some ways to use it better and improve the recognition rate of the documents.

The backend is in C#, and they’ve used the microservice of AWS, which seems to be helpful for this particular process. We didn’t have the chance to deep dive into AWS services in the past. Therefore, we needed someone with experience in AWS, and Artelogic had the knowledge. This has been the core of the automatization project we started almost two years ago.

At the moment, we’re using it as an internal tool. It’s a web application that does data recognition — it sorts the data in the database table and then presents the first results to the operator. Artelogic has also done some UI so the operator can release the data or correct it before releasing it. With this process, we can save time and have high accuracy. Also, it’s a SaaS learning process, so the operator can update some of the algorithms by detecting the data. Consequently, the algorithm constantly improves the recognition rate.

On the other hand, the UX design was first done roughly through the developer. We first needed a proof of concept to ensure that everything was working. When we saw that we had some advantages with this new component, we decided to optimize the UI and UX with a UI/UX designer who improved the application. Currently, we’re in the fourth or fifth iteration of this project, as we always want to extend the system and make it more usable to increase the UX.

What is the team composition?

We initially had three people involved in the project. The core developer changed to a new person, and the project leader changed twice. In total, we’ve worked with six people from Artelogic. We initially worked with the CEO, who then handed over the project to a lead who has since left the company. Now, we have another main contact.

How did you come to work with Artelogic?

We get regular emails from agencies around the world. Their salesperson sent us an email at the right time, as we’d identified this feature request within our company and didn’t have anyone able to develop in AWS. We decided to have a call with Artelogic where he presented the company, and the presentation was great. It was on a very professional level, and we felt it was worth trying them out. It only took two weeks until we started the project, and everything was very smooth and professional.

How much have you invested in them?

We’ve spent around €50,000 (approximately $54,000 USD).

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in September 2020, and the project is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Our goal was to semi-automatize an internal process and reach twice the speed we had before, since it was previously manual. Two people typing data into the database went about 5,000 new data sets per month. With this component, we’re reaching twice the amount of data sets per month. Therefore, we can use our people for different product types and have more accurate data simultaneously, which is a great benefit. Overall, we’re very happy with our collaboration.

How did Artelogic perform from a project management standpoint?

As this was a scientific, internal project at the beginning, we didn’t know if we’d be able to reach the goal, so we didn’t have tight timelines. We still don’t have specific timelines. However, we’re happy with the timelines, communication, and accountability.

Internally, we use standard Microsoft Office products. We also use backtracking tools to check feature requests and maintenance tasks. With Artelogic, we use Jira and Confluence for project management.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their knowledge of different technologies is astounding. We can raise any technical issue with them and find someone within their team to work with that specific technology. It’s pretty impressive because we’re trying to focus on a few technologies internally, so we don’t have various types of technology within the company. Artelogic’s team can handle some exotic technologies, which has been a great benefit for us.

Are there any areas they could improve?

We’ve had conversations with them about what we can do better to have fewer obstacles during the project, and they’re flexible enough. For example, we initially had stand-up meetings every day, but that was too often for us as only a few of us were here in Munich. For a different project, we needed more business analytics at the beginning, so they created a BA position for this project so we could discuss what wasn’t running 100% optimally.

In general, they’re open to any kind of discussions or optimizations. I don’t have any improvement wishes because everything has run quite smoothly.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

It depends on who you are talking to at Artelogic. Some people are more results-oriented. For example, one person contributed a lot to the project’s basic idea; due to his contribution, we reached a different level than we initially thought. Also, there are people within their team that try to solve the to-do list and finish the tasks, but they don’t contribute to optimizing things in the project. That’s why we suggested a BA position — it has allowed us to discuss more complex projects in detail without involving the development team directly.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

We provide booking solutions to businesses operating in leisure, hospitality and entertainment. I am CEO.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

We had a legacy system built over a number of years and needed a company to completely refactor the code as well as develop a number of new features.

SOLUTION

How did you select Artelogic and what were the deciding factors?

We interviewed a number of providers, Artelogic really understood our requirements and had an experienced team to help. It was therefore a no brainer to go with Artelogic.

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

It was decided to use laravel as a framework as our legacy system wasn't built on a framework. Initially they had to review, audit and understand the current system. Then break it down into a number of different modules and sub tasks before commencing the project.

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

We currently have the below: One Lead Developer, One Backend Developer, Two Front End Developers, One Mobile Developer, One QA Tester, One Project Manager

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Our platform has been refactored to Laravel ensuring the code base is more stable, easier to maintain and easier to add new features.

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

Project management has been great. Using a remote team it's always a concern initially but it has never been a problem. Regular stand ups, status calls, sprint planning and reviews ensure the project runs smoothly.

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

Their professionalism and quality of work have stood out in the partnership. We have had the code audited by a 3rd party who was extremely complimentary of the work.

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

I don't have any suggestions here, we have been extremely happy with the project and will continue to use them.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the co-founder and CEO of a commodity trading company. We have less than five employees.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Artelogic?

We didn’t have an internal IT team, so we needed support in building our first platform.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Artelogic designed and developed our web platform. For the project's first stage, they built an internal CRM system, which took them 3–4 months to complete. Then, they developed a marketplace for our platform, which was more complicated and took them around nine months to complete — that was the project's second stage.

Initially, we had a discovery phase to define the scope and decide which technologies to use. After that, we jumped into the development phase. We tested different parts of the platform on a monthly basis, and once we approved certain deliverables, we moved on to the next phase and built on top of the approved parts until completing the project.

What is the team composition?

During the discovery phase, we worked with their COO and CTO. Once we defined the scope, we worked daily with their project manager. Artelogic’s development team was composed of 14 people, including backend and frontend software developers and QA specialists.

How did you come to work with Artelogic?

We contacted different companies, including companies I had worked with in the past and new companies we found online. My other co-founder knew that there was talent in Ukraine, so he found and contacted Artelogic for an initial discussion.

Ultimately, we contacted five different companies and evaluated their proposals. For our evaluation, we looked at their overall competence, proposed methodology, cost, and the estimated timeline for completing the project. Artelogic had the highest score across all these deciding factors.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent around $150,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in September 2020, and the project was completed by September 2021. The original project was divided into three different phases. Although the first two stages were completed, the third stage was put on hold by us due to some budget relocation issues.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Our overall experience working with Artelogic was very good.

How did Artelogic perform from a project management standpoint?

I was very satisfied with Artelogic’s project management. They were very good at organizing all the different parts of the project, and our communication was easy; they were always available and proactive. Towards the end of the project, they went the extra mile and worked longer than expected without charging for the extra time, showing a lot of commitment.

We used JIRA for project management. The project manager took care of all the backlog and progress tracking for the entire project, and I was granted access to check the status. We also used Slack to communicate with the team, and the documentation was kept in Atlassian and BitBucket.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The variety of resources that Artelogic has was impressive. Our project required several different skill sets, and parts of our platform used blockchain technologies. Still, they were able to use an expert that they had in-house to tackle that part of the project even though this resource wasn’t on the team they assigned initially. Otherwise, we would’ve had to look for external help. Artelogic showed the same strength during the UI/UX design phase. They engaged with a specialized company in order to support us on that aspect for two weeks.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Towards the end of the project, the project manager left to pursue another career opportunity. Thus, for the last two weeks, we had another project manager who wasn’t fluent in English, so we had some communication challenges. Ultimately, it wasn’t a big problem because most of the work was already completed. Still, it would have been good if their entire team had the same English proficiency.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Discuss with their team the different skill sets that you need for your project and interview each team member before starting the project. If you start the project with a team and are unhappy with one member, you will spend extra time onboarding another resource. We initially spent time ensuring that each team member had the right profile, and Artelogic was very accommodating with this request.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We’re a web application that manufacturers and wholesale distributors subscribe to provide information to their sales reps and B2B customer base. It’s also used for warranty claim processing, order entry, sales reporting, etc.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Artelogic?

Up until a year and a half ago, I handled all the development and support of our application myself and I needed help. I brought in Artelogic, and it was one of the best business decisions I’ve ever made.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We have subscribers who ask us for custom modifications, so I put together quotes for the subscribers, and they accept or reject them. If they want to proceed, I put together a detailed specification for Artelogic, who does the development work and testing.

If we need enhancements that aren’t customer requests, Artelogic handles those as well. They act as an outsourced IT department. They’re our development team and programmers. They do more than that though, maintaining the system itself. Additionally, they migrated our applications from an old hosting solution to the Azure platform. We use a Microsoft Stack, including C# SQL servers, ASP.NET.

What is the team composition?

I work with Alex (CTO) and Diana (programmer). They’re both very smart, proactive, and conscientious. I can’t speak highly enough of either of them.

How did you come to work with Artelogic?

I found them on Clutch and then interviewed several options.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent around $90,000 with them.

What is the status of this engagement?

We’ve been working together since October 2020.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

I don’t have any specific metrics, as the purpose of the relationship was to take the development off of me and put it on someone else — bringing someone else in to have them learn the system. They’ve met this primary objective.

I’m satisfied, and people love the work that we deliver through Artelogic. I’m impressed with their quality, as well as Artelogic’s honesty and brilliance, honestly. They’re very bright.

Rather than simply following instructions, they put in the time to understand the underlying objective or goal of the project. If I’ve forgotten to put something in the specification, or if some aspect of it doesn’t make sense, then they’ll inquire about it or make a suggestion to improve the deliverable.

How did Artelogic perform from a project management standpoint?

I do a lot of the project management myself as a technical person. We provide them with the delivery date we gave to our subscriber and they excel at meeting that. They will also communicate if a certain date isn’t possible, thought that hasn’t happened yet. They’re great at managing my expectations.

We use Jira and Slack for messaging, as well as a tool for source code management and storage. One of the companies I considered used their own proprietary tools, but I wanted to use industry standard tools. Artelogic fit that bill.

We have a daily status meeting over Google Meet. They’re ahead of me, so we meet in their evening time in Ukraine. The accommodations they’ve made for US time have been great.

What did you find most impressive about them?

One of the main reasons I chose them was that Alex was involved in the interview process. I didn’t just speak with the sales resources; Alex was there in every interview. Artelogic really wanted to understand what I was looking for and what our code base looked like. Alex scheduled a time for him specifically to see my code so that he could understand how it was structured. The other companies didn’t do that; they were focused on making a sell, rather than helping me. Everything Artelogic has done since that moment has reinforced that their goal is to meet my goals and objectives.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Our only rough patch was when we went to renew the contract and someone else got involved in the negotiation. It didn’t go smoothly; there were going to be some changes that were too drastic for me. I talked to Alex ab out those things and he addressed my concerns, resolving the issues in a fair manner.

Artelogic didn’t do a great job of managing expectations in this area, but that is the only aspect of our work that has been less than outstanding.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

They’re the ones who taught me how to get the most out of the engagement. They set out the standard for daily meetings. My advice would be to follow their advice. If something isn’t working, then talk to them. They’re very open to ideas and suggestions.