Diatom Enterprises

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the CTO of Education Advanced

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Development and sales of Educational Technology software for public schools.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Diatom Enterprises to accomplish?

• Development of additional features
• Integration of multiple acquired technologies
• Architectural documentation

SOLUTION

How did you find Diatom Enterprises?

Airbaltic Magazine

Why did you select Diatom Enterprises over others?

• Close to my geographic location
• Pricing fit our budget
• Great culture fit
• Good value for cost

How many teammates from Diatom Enterprises were assigned to this project?

15+

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

Scope of Work Over the course of nearly two years, Diatom served as a key development partner supporting our EdTech platform. Their team engaged across the full software development lifecycle, from solution architecture and documentation through development, integration, and quality assurance. They worked closely with our internal stakeholders to translate business needs into technical solutions, ensuring alignment with our strategic objectives and long-term roadmap. 

The scope of their work included:

Feature Development: Designing, developing, and implementing new platform features to enhance usability, improve performance, and expand functionality for end users.

Technology Integration: Supporting the integration of multiple acquired technologies into our core platform, creating a unified experience and reducing system complexity.

Architecture & Documentation: Producing architectural documentation to guide future development, maintain system integrity, and support knowledge transfer.

Quality Assurance & Testing: Conducting structured QA processes, including manual and automated testing, to ensure software stability and reliability.

Ongoing Collaboration & Support: Participating in regular planning sessions, providing technical consultation, and adapting to evolving requirements throughout the engagement. 

Deliverables; Throughout the partnership, Diatom delivered a broad range of tangible outputs, including: 

Fully developed and deployed platform features aligned with our product roadmap. 

Integrated systems from multiple acquisitions, presented as a single cohesive product offering. 

Comprehensive architectural documentation outlining system design, dependencies, and scalability considerations.

 Test plans, test cases, and QA reports validating software quality and minimizing defects. 

Continuous improvements and optimizations based on user feedback and performance monitoring.  

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

• Unified Product Offering: Multiple acquired technologies were successfully integrated into one cohesive platform, reducing fragmentation and presenting a single, streamlined solution to our customers.
• Expanded Functionality: New features delivered by Diatom improved the user experience and helped us address a wider range of customer needs.
• Improved Reliability: Through their QA processes, we saw a significant reduction in bugs and production issues, leading to higher platform stability and customer satisfaction.
• Operational Efficiency: Architectural documentation and structured processes established by Diatom improved internal knowledge transfer and reduced onboarding time for new team members.
• Business Impact: Their contributions enabled us to scale our EdTech offering more effectively, supporting growth in adoption and positioning the platform for future expansion. 

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

Diatom’s project management was highly professional and well-structured. We worked together using Confluence and Jira within an Agile framework, which made progress transparent and easy to follow. They consistently delivered items on time and adapted quickly when our priorities shifted. The team was responsive to our needs, proactive in raising potential issues, and collaborative in finding solutions. Their ability to balance structure with flexibility helped ensure that we stayed aligned and productive throughout the nearly two-year engagement.

What was your primary form of communication with Diatom Enterprises?

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

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

What stood out most about Diatom was their ability to combine flexibility with professionalism. They adapted easily as our requirements evolved, maintained clear and consistent communication, and provided thorough documentation that gave us confidence in the long-term maintainability of the platform. Their team brought strong technical skill sets across multiple areas, and their pricing made it possible for us to sustain a high-quality partnership over nearly two years.

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

On rare occasions, we had differing opinions with senior team members around certain architectural or design decisions, though these were always resolved through discussion. Additionally, while the developers’ technical skills were excellent, a few team members occasionally struggled with English communication. Neither of these points had a major impact on the success of the project, and overall, Diatom remained a highly reliable and effective partner.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Escher Group's unique software platform powers the world’s first and last-mile deliveries, helping Posts connect nearly 1 billion consumers with global eCommerce networks. My role as COO is to ensure Escher is delivering high-quality software to our clients that delivers the quickest value.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

Escher partnered with Diatom to for assistance with software development, quality assurance, and technical solution architecture for several of our key client projects. Our goals were to augment our current staff with added expertise to help manage the inflow of work for both client projects and product development.

SOLUTION

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

Technology expertise, ability to provide resources quickly, cost.

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

Multiple projects for configuration and customization of Escher's solutions. C#.Net full stack; across multiple platforms such as Windows and Android.

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

We have had over 20 consultants working with us form Diatom raging from Software Developer, Quality Assurance Engineer, Solution Architect, Support Engineer and Project Manager.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Diatom has provided quality software development services. resources have quickly adapted to the Escher solution and technology to deliver value on projects.

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

Excellent Project Management skills put Diatom a step above some of the other global partners we reviewed.

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

The personalized attention and prioritization of our needs are impressive. We have developed great relationships with the Diatom leadership team.

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

Escher is committed to ongoing improvements to our quality practices. As part of that initiative, we have asked Diatom to help us keep quality a focus for all work.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

We are an artificial intelligence tech company that provides advertising services to brands.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

Our managed services require complex user interfaces and we were looking to bring on a company that could help build the tools and enhance existing features. We required a medium sized team who could pivot quickly and manage sprints in a seamless manner.

SOLUTION

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

We were recommended to Diatom from an employee who had worked with them in the past. After interviewing the leaders we knew that they would be the right fit.

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

After providing requirements for the initial project Diatom was able to put together milestones and timelines. All of the designs were high resolution mockups in Figma. Once the initial design was completed the Diatom engineers built out the interface on schedule.

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

We worked with a project manager, one designer and four front-end engineers.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

No, except that all of the stakeholders were extremely pleased with the outcome.

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

We had bi-weekly stand-ups and design sessions that included questions on business logic or general direction of the project. Diatom was able to integrate into our Slack and we used JIRA kanban boards to track work. All work was submitted into GitHub and everyone on the team provided feedback on code reviews.

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

Diatom has always been professional and all of the work done is of the highest quality. All team members spoke english and it was very easy to communicate with everyone. Diatom will always ask for more work and I feel comfortable that they are pushing themselves everyday.

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

It is sometimes difficult to work with a company that is in another timezone but with proper communication this can be easily overcome.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

We link people between the UK and mainland Europe. We help customers to get inpired and discover cities in France, Belgium, the nederlands and in the UK. We transport from city centre to city centre with the only under water train in the world.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Diatom Enterprises?

Diatom helped in the development of our booking path. They were quick and effective to raise the conversion rate of the booking funnel by implementing new functionality very quickly. After this success we also used Diatom for bespoke development such as developing the app that runs our depot and significantly improve the efficiency of the train maintenance actvities.

What were your goals for this project?

The goals where first and foremost to increase conversion rates to increase revenue. We also wanted to increase functionality around presenting inspiring content earlier in the bookign funnel to push more people down the booking funnel. Diatom with their pragmatic and test and learn approach helped us a lot.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

Diatom have been a partner who I worked with before moving to my current company. They have delviered high quality software consistently for a long period of time. They are real professionals with very high level developers, architects etc... They are constantly trying their best to accomodate and they are flexible in accomodating our changing requirements.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

They can do staff augmentation to increase the capability of existing agile teams. They can also take away a project and deliver it by themselves with minimal supervision. This gives a high level of flexibility in the model we apply and we can adapt their service to what is best suited for any particular project.

What was the team composition?

In total we had about 10 Diatom developers either on a specific project or to augment existing agile teams. Mostly senior developers but also cooridnation/management roles.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any information that demonstrates the impact that this project has had on your business?

The conversion rate has increased very significantly generating several millions in revenue. The major improvements where on the payment / checkout pages. The gaim in efficiency for the depot app where very significant and allowed us to save operational costs.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

Project management was very efficitive. It was not over the top as you usually get from other vendors who have to manage expectations and communcaition carefully. The management layer is here to bring transparency.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Adaptability, higly skilled staff, professionalism. Everyone in the Diatom staff is very technical and this allows open and honest conversations without having to jump through the sales and marketing messaging hoops.

Are there any areas for improvement?

I had to think to find one. May be price. Diatom is not the cheapest offshare company but the you pay for what you get. And with Diatom you get very high quality.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Ocean Reef Club is a 2,500-acre private club community with membership by invitation only. The club has a hospital, airport, hotel, marina, three golf courses, two banks, and over 50 retail and food outlets and many more amenities.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Diatom Enterprises?

We developed an all encompassing accounting, point of sale, inventory, procurement and membership management system to run the city.

What were your goals for this project?

We replaced over 20 software systems and incorporated them in to a single system while enhancing our IT service and accounting deliveries to our members.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

I performed an exhaustive search and executed two RFP’s. Diatom won the business during the second RFP process and we never looked back.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

Diatom performed advanced system design and programming.

What was the team composition?

Diatom supplied a programming director, two team leads, two UI programmers, eight to ten full stack developers and two QA personnel. They also helped us hire and run our own programming employees.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any information that demonstrates the impact that this project has had on your business?

We are live on the system and we delivered everything on time and on budget. The club is finally able to keep up with the offerings of more advanced resorts who do not have the restrictions that club's deal with.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

Project management was shared between Diatom and our club. We utilized tools to help us collaborate.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Diatom is more than a group of programmers. They are a team who knows how to collaborate to understand and deliver the goal. Diatom took the time to learn our business and understand our needs. They learned very complex requirements and continuously delivered a superior product. There has been nothing that they could not do. I have worked with Diatom for 6 years on this project and I look forward to continuing my relationship with the team.

Are there any areas for improvement?

None. They were able to deliver on all of our requirements (even the ones that were extreme). Their service delivery is impressive!

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the senior lead software engineer at ScaleFactor Inc., managing four of our teams. We do accounting software for our clients, including automated bookkeeping, expense transactions, and classification.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Diatom Enterprises?

We needed to supplement our current dev team quickly and with quality developers.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They were working alongside our in-house developers, almost like part of the team. Each of the developers we were given work primarily in our Ruby on Rails, Ember.js, and JavaScript framework.

As part of the Diatom Enterprises process, I was able to select all of the engineers. They sent us resumes beforehand, and then we got to interview each of the applicants. Ultimately, we were able to choose who we wanted to move forward with. 

What is the team composition?

We worked with three of their engineers during our collaboration. 

How did you come to work with Diatom Enterprises?

Our VP of engineering worked with them in the past and had a great experience, keeping up with their connection over the years. He recommended that we look at them, so we reached out and were happy with the quality of resumes we were seeing. While doing independent interviews, we were also impressed and able to select them as our provider. 

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent about $250,000–$500,000 to date. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We started collaborating in October 2018, and the work is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We use sprint point attainment to determine whether their team is able to get a certain chunk of work done within a given time period. They’ve performed very well, even against our own in-house team. We’ve been tacking test coverage as well, and they’re very strong in that area too. 

How did Diatom Enterprises perform from a project management standpoint?

Because they’ve integrated fully into our team, I interact with the lead of whichever team they’re working on. However, all feedback on their developers has been very positive. Most of the contractors are located in Europe, but they’re online for all of our standups and meetings.

Given the timezone difference between us, they’ve been very accommodating, even jumping on late in their day to work through problems. We communicate primarily through Slack, Jira, and Zoom video, and they’re always available to jump on a call with us. They really do feel like part of our team. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

They took the time to understand the use case instead of just churning through tickets. Past partners had the tendency to require you to be very explicit with the work we hand off to them, but they have no problem taking a step back to look at problems more broadly. They’ve been able to offer suggestions that have improved our collaboration.  

Are there any areas they could improve?

Nothing specific jumps to mind. We’ve been very happy with our experience working with them. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Make sure you’re connected with them every day, even if it’s just a 15–20-minute standup. That way, they’re set up for success when they come into work each day.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am a digital workflow engineer with the office of Dr. Marc Lemchen, and we are an orthodontics office.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Diatom Enterprises?

We had just purchased a Pepper humanoid robot and wanted a specific experience geared towards orthodontics, so we hired them to build that application for us.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They helped us create and check a robotic check-in process that allows patients to ask questions and access educational materials as well. It’s a human-looking robot with a face and a tablet on its chest, so you can walk up to it and check in by entering your birth date.

The most complex aspect of the application was the ability for the robot to answer questions that the patients have, for which we had to input a lot of practice-specific information and the Diatom Enterprises team had to build out the robot’s word and voice recognition. They also included the ability to display videos to help the robot explain various issues to the client.

What is the team composition?

There were about 5–6 people from their team working on the project.

How did you come to work with Diatom Enterprises?

We contacted them after seeing a couple of their videos on their website while we were doing research for developers with robotic application experience. Diatom Enterprises had actually worked for another company on the exact same model of robot, so we decided to engage with them.

How much have you invested with them?

I didn’t handle the financial aspect of the project, but I believe it was in the $25,000–$30,000 range.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from February–October 2017.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

I would say that the impact of this change has been tremendous because we are one of the first doctor’s offices to have a robot that can not only check patients in but have a conversation with them or show them videos at a moment’s notice. Throughout the project, they delivered functional and reliable code and were always on time and within budget.

The program has not only improved our customer satisfaction, but it has allowed us to expand our SEO, because every time someone came into the practice, they would take a video or picture of it and hashtag us, increasing our presence on a wide range of social media feeds.

How did Diatom Enterprises perform from a project management standpoint?

One of the things we like most about them is that they are very proactive. They would call us if there were any snags or questions related to our progress. They also had a weekly meeting established to provide us with updates and a virtual timeline that we could access online to see were at any given moment.

There were a couple of things that didn’t go as planned right away, but they were able to easily change them and get them functioning the way we wanted to. Communication with them was one of the best aspects of the project because they were always willing to address any issues we raised with them right away.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their ability to communicate, hit all of our milestones on time, and deliver within budget is a combination that is extremely difficult to find in a development partner.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Unless they wanted to move their office to our time zone, I don’t think there’s anything they could do to make their process even better.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Keep in mind that even though they aren’t the least expensive agency out there, you will get what you pay for in the form of really excellent work at the end of the day.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the director of a small market research startup.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Diatom Enterprises?

We were facing a lack of engagement with market research respondents. There weren’t a lot of tools available in the marketplace that could help us make the experience of participating in market research more fun and engaging.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They basically took our dream and made it a reality, building it from the ground up. They helped a little bit with ideas, but most of the concepts were ours and we relied on their ability and knowledge for the coding of the actual product.

We created a cloud-based cross-platform software client on web, iOS and Android called Cliizii, It allows users to interact with various multimedia, presenters, and one another in real-time, and basically functions like a live whiteboard where people can view and edit content and message other users.

Their team took over where our previous developers had failed, but they basically started from the bottom in terms of establishing the right foundation. They did a lot of experimentation to determine the right coding languages and went with a combination of AngularJS and Node. Then they took our existing wireframes and were able to work that into the design.

What is the team composition?

Our main point of contact was Gleb (Project Manager, Diatom Enterprises).

How did you come to work with Diatom Enterprises?

We had already started the development of the project with other companies that had failed to deliver, so I was shopping around for other teams and they were the only ones who were willing to pick up where our last developer left off.

How much have you invested with them?

Our total investment at this point is around $200,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We first engaged with them in February 2014, and our relationship is still ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

I have a bit of a hard time quantifying their impact on our business because we are entering a completely new marketplace. How successfully they completed our objectives has little to do with how successful our venture is able to become.

From a quality perspective, I have never seen any reason to doubt the standards of their work. Their team is extremely highly educated and hard-working, and their attention to detail is among the best I’ve ever seen.

It’s very reassuring to deal with someone that highly skilled because you really don’t have to worry about the functionality of the product they’re going to provide. With previous companies, I might spend a day debugging and testing every time they gave us an update, and with Diatom Enterprises I’ve never experienced anything delivered that didn’t work properly.

How did Diatom Enterprises perform from a project management standpoint?

We did struggle a little bit with project management, but I put a lot of the blame for those difficulties on myself rather than on their team. We definitely ran over schedule and budget, but it was simply a matter of experimentation being something that you can’t predict. It’s very rare that you come up with a new idea and it snaps together on the first go.

In terms of their ability to follow instructions, things actually worked out very well. Because of the time difference, we had our whole day to lay out a pile of things for them to work on, and then at the beginning of their day, they could work through it turn around a pile of results or questions for me to work on the next morning. It was a very effective back and forth.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They have also been extremely open and communicative the whole way through our engagement. Even their CEO would take the time to listen to me, which I really appreciated. One of the main reasons we’ve stuck with them is that they go out of the way to demonstrate respect and commitment to your company in the way that they go about the work.

Are there any areas they could improve?

One way I think most software companies could benefit is by focusing more on the learning curve that working with a software company presents to regular business owners like me. If I had known what I know now before going in, I would definitely have had a second project manager just to work with me on managing tasks and priorities from our side of the engagement.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I think it’s just important to be very, very clear on exactly what you want and think about the project. They are very good at building scope documents, so the more you give them on that end of the project the more smoothly the rest of the project is going to go.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

We are using the advantages of today's digital world, to create the best solutions for the maritime industry. I'm the chief technology officer of the company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Diatom Enterprises?

Building solutions for the maritime industry requires us to develop applications that can run independently from the world wide web. Diatom Enterprises is helping us with there development capacity and knowledge to design, build and fine tune our solution.

What were your goals for this project?

The solution needs to be able to run without a constant internet connection. It needs to be able to keep the onshore management informed about the decisions and workflows onboard.

And in case of emergencies the solution also needs to be able to run on the connected devices without a constant connection to the server.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

As a start-up we are were looking for a company that can deliver high quality code to a reasonable price. The good communication skills of the developers and the hands on attitude from Diatom Enterprises made them a reliable partner.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

The project is managed agile. We take care of defining the business needs and together with Diatom Enterprises we define the requirements to fulfill these needs. After we define the sprint goals and priorities Diatom Enterprises takes care of implementing the features.

What was the team composition?

We have a core team of 2 -3 developers plus a project manager. Depending on the deadlines and requirements Diatom Enterprises is very flexible in scaling up the team with the right persons.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any information that demonstrates the impact that this project has had on your business?

At the time of writing our solution is not published yet. We have however overwhelmingly positive feedback from partners and interested clients that we provided with a demo instance.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

The project management is communicating problems quickly and directly. This enables us to quickly react on emerging problems and together find a good solution to solve and prevent the type of problem in the future.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

It is a pleasure to work together with Diatom Enterprises since their employees are well-trained and hands-on. And the communication does not get stuck in bureaucracy.

Are there any areas for improvement?

At the time of writing we are very happy with the value Diatom Enterprises provides to us and see no area of improvement.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

We develop and sell logistic solutions for industries and trade companies in order for customer profitability to increase. We offer, via our broad sector expertise, a wide range of transportation solutions. Our staff is qualified and committed, and will always give our customer’s needs priority. We develop our own IT solutions which support and improve the business.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Diatom Enterprises ?

Develop our ERP system

What were your goals for this project?

Get an advanced, efficient business system that creates great benefits for our customers.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

Found it by a Google search in early 2011. Had several Skype meetings and it clicked. Have worked with them since then.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

They have developed backend, frontend both Windows application and web application.

What was the team composition?

Over the years we have had different sizes of team. From one person up to almost 10 people working on the same project.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any information that demonstrates the impact that this project has had on your business?

We have grown our business from a turnover of 200 MSEK to 350 MSEK.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

Daily scrum meetings during the project and several meetings before we start a project.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Their ability to understand our business and facilitate its growth is very impressive.

Are there any areas for improvement?

No.