Digiteum

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the COO of an IT services company 

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

We help the modern enterprise automate complex document processing

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

• UX/UI Design
• Custom Software Development

SOLUTION

How did you find Digiteum?

Online Search

Why did you select Digiteum over others?

Company values aligned

How many teammates from Digiteum were assigned to this project?

1 Employee

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

We engaged the team at Digiteum for the design of the UI/UX and the development of several applications.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

• Improved User Engagement: Enhanced UI/UX led to a noticeable increase in user interaction and time spent on the platform.
• Faster Development Cycle: The application development process was completed within the planned timeline, allowing us to launch the new features or products on schedule.

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

Their project management was efficient, and they consistently delivered items on time. We had no issues with the team members involved in the development process—they were responsive to our needs and always addressed any questions or concerns promptly. Their ability to stay on schedule and maintain clear communication helped ensure a smooth collaboration.

What was your primary form of communication with Digiteum?

Virtual Meeting

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

What impressed us most about this company was their ability to meet deadlines consistently and their transparency in communication. They kept us informed at every stage of the project, providing regular updates and addressing any concerns promptly. Digiteum's reliability and openness made the collaboration smooth and efficient.

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

Nothing

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the technology director for Native Design; I look after the technology team. We do physical, industrial, and digital design, as well as development and prototyping. We work with many global clients in various sectors, including automotive, audio, food and drink, consumer electronics, med tech, and lab tech.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Digiteum?

We were working with one of our prominent clients. They needed a new website product, so we had to develop a prototype with a fun customer experience. However, it was too much work for us.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Digiteum provided resources to help us build the prototype. We initially signed a framework working agreement to define how it would work. Since we were developing an embargoed product, we had a lot of NDAs. Afterward, we briefed them and provided them with designs.

We worked with an agile program, building designs along the way and feeding them through to develop the product. Digiteum built the pages; we particularly used React for the project.

What is the team composition?

We had one developer and an account manager.

How did you come to work with Digiteum?

I found them on Clutch.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked with them from March–June 2022.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The engagement was great; it gave us the ability to scale up. It was great to do an initial piece of work with Digiteum and get some trust in place. Moreover, the quality of the work met our expectations.

How did Digiteum perform from a project management standpoint?

They delivered the work on time, but we managed the project. We talked every day and reviewed the tasks every week.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I spoke to their senior technology people on a few occasions; they were very knowledgeable. I trusted them to get advice and do good work. I certainly hope to work together again; they’re our first-choice supplier for international development work.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They got a new account manager who is more proactive, which is a step in the right direction. They also should collaborate more closely with design companies like us.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I recommend having a good conversation with your account manager so you can understand what you want and build the relationship. Talking to their senior technology people is also helpful because they have a lot of experience.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the CEO of an it services company 

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

OneRep is a fully automated privacy platform that removes unauthorized personal information from the internet helping customers reduce their sensitive data exposure and make their lives safer.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

• Extend front-end team

SOLUTION

How did you find Digiteum?

Network

Why did you select Digiteum over others?

• Great culture fit
• Good value for cost
• Company values aligned

How many teammates from Digiteum were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

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

We were looking for skilled front-end engineers to develop a responsive interface for our website. Digiteum analyzed our goals and technical requirements and found the right resources for the job. Their engineers became an integral part of our team and fit seamlessly into our agile process and project management. 

They made a major contribution to the successful delivery of the website, working on interface development, custom features, integration with the backend, and debugging, ensuring stable and error-free performance.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Teaming up with Digiteum helped us meet the deadline without cutting corners or exceeding our budget. The website was delivered as expected, and we are very happy with the result.

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

They are responsive, organized, and easy to work with. Their engineers were comfortable working in an agile environment and meeting tight deadlines. We set up a convenient communication framework adapted to our needs and had a dedicated account manager on their end to manage any questions or requests we had throughout our engagement.

What was your primary form of communication with Digiteum?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

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

Digiteum was very flexible throughout the project, and able to adapt to changing scope and requirements. The team was committed and honest, working hard to achieve our goals and deliver a high-quality product on time.

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

Nothing I can think of at the moment. We are satisfied with the result of our collaboration.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the VP of Engineering of Lodgify

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Lodgify is an innovative all-in-one solution that simplifies vacation rental marketing. It allows both owners and property managers to create their own mobile-friendly website with a “Book Now” button, manage reservations and calendars efficiently, and instantly synchronize property information with listings on external portals.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

• Screen proficient senior .NET engineers
• Scale up our backend teams on demand

SOLUTION

How did you find Digiteum?

They reached out to us

Why did you select Digiteum over others?

Company values aligned

How many teammates from Digiteum were assigned to this project?

6-10 Employees

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

Our company was in search of a reliable partner to expand our backend teams and manage the increasing workload. Our work environment is highly agile and we have experienced senior engineers in our teams. Therefore, it was crucial for the potential partner to meet specific requirements and expectations, including both technical and interpersonal skills. 

Digiteum developed a good understanding of what we were looking for and adapted to our recruiting cycle to screen and hire engineers effectively. This saved us time and effort, and we could bring in experienced and skilled talent much quicker.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Over the years, working with Digiteum has helped us immensely in scaling our development resources while ensuring high-quality deliveries. Their engineers seamlessly integrated with our teams and contributed in various areas such as support for third-party integrations, development of new features, and migration to microservices. 

Lodgify has made significant progress in recent years. We are constantly improving our software by enhancing its core and adding useful features and integrations. From a business perspective, we have expanded our channel portfolio and partnerships. Lodgify has been recognized as a preferred software partner by major OTAs, such as Airbnb and Booking.com, and we have been featured twice in the 100 Hottest European Startups by Wired magazine.

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

Digiteum has been proactive and responsive to our needs and has shown maximum flexibility in helping us find the right talent that meets our technical requirements and fits our company culture.

What was your primary form of communication with Digiteum?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

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

Digiteum impressed us with a highly personalized approach to our requirements and process. They put in extra effort to understand what we are looking for in candidates, consistently providing us with competent engineers over the years. They have a positive can-do attitude and are easy to work with, making a great fit for long-term collaboration.

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

We had a good experience with this company.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Member of the management board of an information technology company

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

We're an international software development company focused on the development of enterprise-level solutions and advanced web applications.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

• iOS application development
• Hardware integration

SOLUTION

How did you find Digiteum?

Referral

Why did you select Digiteum over others?

Referred to me

How many teammates from Digiteum were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

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

We hired Digiteum to develop an iOS application for a global sports equipment retailer. The application uses advanced scanning technologies to help pro athletes choose the best-fitted equipment, maximizing their comfort and performance. We needed people with strong technical experience and adaptability to meet the needs of the project.

It involved several major integrations, including integration with the hardware, AI measuring tools, and the retailer’s web interface. Digiteum engaged senior iOS engineers to jumpstart productivity and set up the pace. The team was highly responsive and resourceful all the way through, showing rock-solid tech skills and flexibility to find effective technical solutions. 

They figured out how to connect the components, control the retailer’s web interface in the native app, and integrate the hardware while doing all the development and testing remotely. We were happy with the timeline and quality of delivery. The application was released as planned, and since then has been scaled to several new versions for different types of sports equipment.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Digiteum delivered a high-quality product on time even though all the work including hardware integration and testing was done remotely. Once added to the App Store, the app has been actively used online and at dozens of retailer’s official stores globally.

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

I had the pleasure of working with Digiteum, and I must say, their project management is commendable. They consistently delivered items on time, demonstrating a strong commitment to deadlines. Moreover, their responsiveness to our needs was exceptional, ensuring a smooth and efficient collaboration. If you're in need of software development Digiteum is a company I would highly recommend.

What was your primary form of communication with Digiteum?

• In-Person Meeting
• Virtual Meeting

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

One of the most impressive aspects of this company was their exceptional project management skills. They consistently delivered items on time, which is crucial in the tech industry. Their responsiveness to client needs was also outstanding, ensuring a smooth and productive collaboration. These qualities made them stand out as a reliable and efficient partner in the business development arena.

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

Nothing

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Head of Engineering of Origin Digital

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Origin Digital contribute to the world's sustainable food production through technology

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

• Software Development Services
• QA Services
• Consultancy

SOLUTION

How did you find Digiteum?

Other

Why did you select Digiteum over others?

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

What was the size of Digiteum’s team?

2-5 Employees

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

Multiple projects over multi year timeframe, including Customer Onboarding

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

• Successful application builds and releases

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

Digiteum provides us with exceptional service throughout our engagements. Their team takes the time to understand our specific needs and provides us with a range of options for candidates. They work closely with us to ensure that we find the right culture fit for our team, They have helped us to build a team of top-quality engineers who are able to deliver high-quality work.

What was your primary form of communication with Digiteum?

Virtual Meeting

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

One thing that stands out to us is the level of expertise that Digiteum's engineers bring to our projects. They have been able to adapt to our various projects and are able to quickly integrate with our organisation and hit the ground running, delivering results that exceed our expectations.

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

You can always improve. The senior leadership are always happy to engage and listen.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Thinking of You is a free messaging app where you can think of others and donate to charity at the same time. The brand was founded by me, Johnny Pitt, a charity and comms entrepreneur, who’s always been struck by the power of the words ‘thinking of you’.

The Thinking of You app launched at the end of 2018, with official support from the Charities Aid Foundation and lots of high profile charities. A recently announced partnership with Percent means many more charities will be coming on to the app, donating will be easier and Gift Aid will now be processed for charities.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Digiteum?

We had challenges with our cross-platform mobile application and were looking for a skilled IT team to test it, review and check the code, debug, add functionality and deploy a well-performing app.

The team at Digiteum provided IT consulting and development services, implemented all the necessary tests and fixes, added features, reviewed and implemented third-party integrations, and helped us put a renewed operating application to the stores.

What were your goals for this project?

The Thinking of You platform offers an easy and convenient way for people to think of others and support charities at the same time. It also helps charities grow their supporter network and increase donations.

We needed a mobile app that would be user-friendly and at the same time safe and high-performing.

The first version of our application required performance tests, upgrades, and optimization. Digiteum’s main goal was to turn a raw version of an app into an enhanced working system.

SOLUTION

How did you select Digiteum?

Digiteum was highly recommended to us by one of Digiteum’s long standing clients, Mike Burgess from BAM Mobile.

Describe the project in detail.

Thinking of You is a cross-platform (React Native) application with a variety of features, including mobile payments, user authentication, Twilio-based communication, push notifications, custom feeds, history, and gift options. It works as a digital tool for online donations and a micro-social network for like-minded people.

We leveraged Digiteum as a consulting and mobile development team. The company’s analysts and engineers worked on the application for several months: analysed the code, identified issues, tested performance and speed, made fixes, added new features, and implemented several important integrations with third-party systems.

What was the team composition?

All work was carried out remotely. 4 specialists worked on Digiteum side, including software engineers, BA and a dedicated project manager.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

We presented Digiteum with the first version of our application which had challenges that needed investigating and solutions found. In the first instance we required them to turn the first version of our app into an enhanced working system.

This first phase is now complete. User testing and feedback has been extremely positive, and we’re delighted that Digiteum has met our objective with the minimum of fuss and complication.

This isn’t the end of the story. We’ve lots planned for Thinking of You and look forward to more successes in the future.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Tatsiana is our project lead at Digiteum and the workflow between us has been effective. We haven’t experienced a ‘them and us’ attitude and we work well together to deliver successful projects.

We’ve developed a strong working relationship and greatly value Tatsiana’s technical expertise, decision making and ability to keep cool under pressure.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

After a number of laboured working relationships with software development companies in the UK, working with Digiteum has been a breath of fresh air. They have a no-nonsense, can-do approach and the team works hard to get the job done - which fits brilliantly with our work ethic.

We have also been most impressed with Digiteum’s agile way of working showing maximum flexibility and minimum constraints when deadlines need to be met.

Are there any areas for improvement?

To date we have worked with Digiteum on a project and adhoc basis which has worked well for us. Long term we may want to explore a retainer service where we can benefit from a reduced rate.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the Chief Innovation Officer at Diaceutics. We are a data analytics and end-to-end services provider enabled by DXRX - a proprietary diagnostic network solution for the development and commercialisation of precision medicine diagnostics.

Diaceutics has created commercially useful data sets for every precision medicine brought to market and provides services to 36 of the world's leading pharmaceutical companies. We have built the world's largest repository of diagnostic testing data with a growing network of 2,500 labs in 51 countries.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

We needed to shift our business from a precision medicine consulting service to something that would scale with the huge surge in precision medicine treatments being released.

The solution we had had was a SaaS network marketplace that we called DXRX. DXRX is an end-to-end solution for the development and commercialization of Precision Medicine diagnostics, from biomarker discovery to in-market test availability. The platform enables a vibrant marketplace where all stakeholders in Precision Medicine come to find trusted partners and collaborations in a secure, standardized way.

DXRX provides access to a pipeline of global diagnostic testing data on one secure platform. We needed to build DXRX in under a year while managing costs and delivering a high quality product.

SOLUTION

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

Our Director of Engineering had worked with Digiteum in the past with success. We decided to bring Digiteum in a few engineers at a time with the idea of seeing how a few engineers performed and then if this went well, we would expand the relationship.

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

DXRX is a cloud based platform (AWS) that leverages multiple services from AWS. The platform is written in a variety of languages and frameworks (Java, Python, Django, AngularJS, SPring, …). The platform is API focussed and microservices focussed but also has to deal with 3rd party SaaS systems (for things like IAM support) as well as 3rd party partner systems. The platform also has a complex ETL pipeline that handles various sources of “big data”.

We have also have a strong focus on DevOps, Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment. We leveraged Digiteum for frontend and backend work on DXRX, Test/QA work and DevOps work. In addition, we had a dedicated project manager and dedicated data engineer.

Digiteum helped us launch DXRX on time and on budget in October of 2020. All work was done remotely (across our team and Digiteum) due to C19 and we also had to work with three other suppliers. Personnel were located in 5 countries.

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

We had 10-15 team members in software development, DevOps, Test/QA, data engineering and project management.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We had an extremely tight deadline. We needed to ramp up a development team and supplement it with an offshore team all while architecting the platform, bringing in other 3rd party partners and delivering the platform in 8 months.

Feedback from our customers and from the market has been very positive on DXRX and Digiteum was key to helping us achieve this success at a reasonable costs and at a high level of quality.

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

We worked in an Agile method (scrum) and used the standard Atlassian software development tools (JIRA, COnfluence, etc) as well as MS Teams and Slack.

We ramped up the team over several months as we could bring folks on much quicker than hiring permanent team members.

We delivered DXRX in 8 months in a very agile and product driven manner.

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

Digiteum became part of the team. They blended in with our team and there was no “us versus them” - it was one big team. This is even more remarkable given that all team members (our team and Digiteum) had to work remotely due to C19.

Their communication is excellent and were are a good source for process and technical improvements to the DXRX platform.

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

Some engineers could speak a bit better english but all are understandable and overall, the quality of spoken english is excellent.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the chief technology officer of a company that produces software for the healthcare industry, geared toward assisting different organizations to transmit information about patients from one to another. I was tasked last year to do some software development outsourcing, which is how we started our relationship with Digiteum.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Digiteum?

We have a lot of expertise in server-side development, but we have a relatively thin staff for GUI [graphic user interface] development. We decided it made more sense to outsource that component, rather than trying to build a large, in-house team. That was the main driver that got us going with Digiteum.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We have an application that we wrote about seven or eight years ago. It was based on a GUI technology, Adobe Flex, which has unfortunately become quite out of date -- It reached the height of its popularity just as we selected it, only to basically fall off. We asked Digiteum to basically rewrite our applications in a more modern solution stack, such as HTML5, CSS, Angular.js, which is a JavaScripting platform to make it easier to do development on browsers. We also used Bootstrap, which was kind of related to making it look visually appealing.

I can classify the things they’ve done in two ways. One is that they do have designers in-house who have been quite helpful in deciding on the layout and flow of the website. We give them suggestions on how we think it should look, and then they come back with their own suggestions. They help us visualize what the design will look like by using certain tools prior to actually starting the code. We know roughly what it will look like.

Probably the bigger piece of it is the actual implementation of those designs. They basically do the whole thing. We provide them the backend programming interfaces, and they do all the GUI development and testing of those components. So, that’s what they’ve been doing for about six months now, since the end of last year.

How did you come to work with Digiteum?

We get inundated on a daily basis, with folks looking to provide services like this. We didn’t go through a massive selection process when deciding on Digiteum. We took a handful of different providers that happened to send us emails at that time, and we started speaking with the owner at Digiteum, Michael Grebennikov. We had a very favorable impression in terms of how he would provide resources and the pricing he could offer for those services.

We had a very bad outsourcing experience seven or eight years ago. We had outsourced our GUI development back then to a company in China. An important task for us was to find a group of people that we can communicate with real-time in English; that hadn’t been possible with the team in China. One reason we decided to go with an Eastern European group is that we wanted folks that we could relate to better and speak with easily. The pricing definitely factored in, and we saw some of their work on other projects. We saw that they produced visually appealing designs, so we thought they had the expertise.

How much have you invested with Digiteum?

We’ve invested between $50,000 and $100,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in November on 2016. The six-month contract recently expired, and we’ve renewed with Digiteum for an additional three months.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

It’s too soon to see metrics around their work. The six months of work they’ve done has only carried us through to about 50% completion of this rewrite. Until we have that other 50% finished, we really can’t take this to market. They’ve been delivering in a timely manner, but it’s a complex application with a lot of programming interfaces that we have to develop concurrently to their work.

I’ve asked my team quite often for feedback on how things are going with Digiteum. Generally speaking, I think they’ve been quite positive about it, and my team is not the easiest to deal with. We’ve worked together very well. We have a status call once a week, and they put their entire design team on even though it’s quite late in Belarus. They’ve always been very good about ensuring everyone attends all these calls. They have people who can communicate effectively during the calls. I don’t think we have any complaints about their progress or the quality of their work.  

How did Digiteum perform from a project management standpoint?

I think they perform fairly well. The project management isn’t really their strongest point, or maybe they decided there weren’t enough complex interactions to warrant it. They’ve given us a team of two developers, a half-time designer, and a quarter-time technical lead. It’s a relatively small and modest team on my end as well. I usually have four or five folks actively involved with the Digiteum team. I don’t see much project management activities going on with them, and it might be nice to have more visibility into hours and delivery dates. We’ve seen some of that, but at the same time, I haven’t given them feedback to ask for more in that area. With the size of the team we have, I don’t need to know all the details as long as we keep seeing steady progress from week to week.

What did you find most impressive about Digiteum?

The designs they come up with are visually appealing. I think they do a good job in guiding us in the design. They’re proactive in that way, and we’ve been happy with the solutions they present for layout and usability. That goes back to the main reason we decided to outsource this project. We just don’t have that expertise in-house, so the GUI’s we develop are functional but not very pretty. Digiteum does a good job in their design.

Are there any areas Digiteum could improve?

We have an internal issue-tracking system that allows them to tell us the issues they’re working on and the hours spent. For us to start doing more QA and work with them more closely as we get to the final parts of the project, they could do more in that area. I’d like them to use the tools we’ve given them to update us on progress and work done. We often find that nothing gets added to that system for two or three weeks, and then there’s a big batch of changes. It’s hard for us to figure out what they changed. So, the project management is probably an area where they could do more.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the director and founder of BAM Mobile Limited, a digital agency that builds products for mobile. BAM is about 2 ½ years old.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Digiteum?

We were looking for a scalable development resource, particularly an offshore firm. 

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

I recruited Digiteum at the company I worked for previously. I’ve worked with them for maybe 4 or 5 years and they’ve been my sole development resource over the period. When I was at my previous agency, we hired them for tablet app development. They did some work for us for Corbis. We did 2 tablet apps and probably 3 or 4 website builds. That was iOS, PHP, WordPress, a backend powered website, and some customized Tumblr blogs, all for the same client.

Then we used them to help us develop a software as a service business, specifically an administrative backend CMS to build customized tablet apps. It was a system that would compile apps by drawing content from multiple social feeds for our clients. We sold that as a service to our clients. More recently, we designed and built a website for an Asian-funded bank in Africa. It included integrating foreign exchange systems, a federal exchange platform, and money exchange systems. That was a high-security project since we dealt with banking data and individual data as well. Plus, the site needed to be very responsive.

After that, we built an app for Instagram. Instagram sponsored the music awards here in England called the Brit Awards. We installed tablets in the back of the limousines that took all of the musicians and celebrities to the show. Using our app, they could take a photo while they were in the back of the car and it got posted on Instagram. We also built a mobile app for another startup client of ours. It was a photographic app called I Remember. They built an augmented reality app on iOS for a soccer team called Aston Villa.

Basically, everything I’ve done in the last 4 or 5 years has probably been built by Digiteum—probably 5 or 6 websites and 6 or 7 apps. Digiteum provides resources as we need them, then we do the sales, design, and strategy. They put project and development resources and bring it to market. We worked with a number of people over that period of time, developing relationships with some of the staff. Eugene and Tatiana are on project management, while QA has been a couple of different people. We’ve probably had 4 different iOS developers but we usually went to the same lead development team. There were probably 2 Android developers. For the backend, it’s probably 3 of 4. It tends to be very scalable, which was one of the reasons we chose Digiteum in the first place. We fire a problem at them and they come back shortly after with a solution.

How did you come to work with Digiteum?

They actually approached me through LinkedIn because they were impressed by the mobile development work we had done at the time. We looked at lots of different options from the UK, Brazil, and Poland. Then we met Mike and Julia from Digiteum. We narrowed it down to the guys in Brazil and Digiteum in Belarus. We went to visit, went through the project and came out of that convinced that they were the best people to do it. The time zone was an important factor, and the length of time on the plane to go and see them or for them to see us was really important. The price was probably third; relative to a UK-based developer, they’re very high value. Now they come to visit us more than we visit them. We found that Digiteum’s breadth of experience and focus on mobile development was a good fit for what we needed. They’re largely for app development but also have the ability to work on .NET, PHP, etc.

How much have you invested with Digiteum?

We’ve paid $500,000 to $1 million for their services.

What is the status of this engagement?

I started with them in January 2012.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We used them to develop a prototype to help us pitch to Corbis and present to their chairman, Bill Gates. I presented with one of their prototypes and that was a million-pound project. That was a good first impression. Second, I think one of the projects that we ran for Corbis hit about 75% of the market that they were targeting. That’s better than anyone could have expected. Otherwise, individual projects have their own goals. I’m very pleased with their work or I wouldn’t continue to use them. If my happiness is a metric, that’s useful.

How did Digiteum perform from a project management standpoint?

To begin with, we had standard concerns about time zone and about not being located in the same office. We also had a potential language barrier. I think they demonstrated that none of those were an issue. They come over here often enough. We have developed a relationship with project managers that understand our requirements without having to spell them out. We have a process of daily standards and documentation so we know what progress is being made, receiving daily builds or weekly builds of apps. It makes you feel comfortable. If I need to report back to a client on progress, I need to be comfortable that progress is being made. We have found a way of collaborating that really works.

What did you find most impressive about Digiteum?

Their iOS development is the thing that we’ve used the most as well as the level of detail in their estimates. Quite often, we give them a fairly rough proof and we say, “Can you give me a cost on this tomorrow?” Very quickly, we’ll receive a topline number. If we interrogate them, they’ve already thought out the details of what is required in order to fulfill that piece of functionality. So, they are very thorough and provide quick detailed estimates. They’re usually extremely accurate and have thought through the detail a lot more than we’ve prepared in the brief.

Are there any areas Digiteum could improve?

Nothing comes to mind. I think the exchange rate post-Brexit has hit us a little bit, but I’d rather have the comfort of someone I know can deliver than to shop around.