Fluvius

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Owner of ZanataTech LLC

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Prop trading industry.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

• Replace scattered manual processes and spreadsheets with one back-office console for the trading-education platform, so the team could run 8,000+ monthly active users — accounts, evaluations, subscriptions and support — in a single system.
• Give the team a real-time operational view of trading activity: live Rithmic and Tradovate market data, a built-in customer CRM and analytics, with multi-level admin access so support, finance and management each see only what they need.
• Manage multiple data feed and platform integrations, API connections
• Creating a browser based trading platform
• Working on risk management mechanisms and automation

SOLUTION

How did you find Fluvius?

Referral

Why did you select Fluvius over others?

• High ratings
• Close to my geographic location
• Great culture fit
• Referred to me

How many teammates from Fluvius were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

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

We have utilized Fluvius' services across a few projects over the course of 6 years.

We have an ongoing project where they develop and maintain our node based API for our operations and day-to-day functioning of the business. This involves creating new platform connections, data feed connections and the general maintenance of a proprietary software.

Fluvius have also helped us develop and maintain a browser based trading platform and a connected risk management solution which has served us well for many years now.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The back office now supports 8,000+ monthly active users on a single console, without adding operational headcount as the user base grew.

Support and account questions are resolved in one screen — CRM, Intercom history, live trading data and CSV exports — instead of switching between three or four separate tools.

The legacy Go back end was rewritten to Node.js in 6 months — a scope normally estimated at about two years — by senior engineers using AI-assisted workflows, with no interruption to the live platform.

We have integrated multiple other providers to our product offering which previously proved to be a challenge for the previous tech provider.  Our customers now have access to technology we were unable to provide before, adding value to the business.

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

The team is dedicated and delivers on a good timeline. They set realistic goals together with my business leadership and stick to them with good quality work. 

What was your primary form of communication with Fluvius?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

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

They  have access to a talent pool of both senior and experienced developers and younger, more junior developers as well. The senior guys are fairly seasoned and understand business difficulties much better, obviously, but the junior devs are also motivated and Fluvius seems to be able to find and nurture focused, dedicated and meticulous youth, which is rare in any industry these days.

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

Most recently one of their team members took a holiday and they immediately found a replacement developer to fill in for those weeks. Since the replacement did so well, we ended up keeping both developers for our project.

I believe that in a similar fashion, if they find a way to allow their customers to "test" the work of a junior colleague (the same way we found the way to test the capabilities of a new developer while the absence of another created a gap in billable hours), it is very likely that with the talented youth they have access to, they will sell more dev hours to their customers.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We provide software development services, focusing on websites and mobile apps. I’m the owner.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Fluvius?

I wanted to hire a flutter developer to assist with an ongoing project.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

To begin, Fluvius sent me the resume of a potential developer and set up an interview. After asking my desired questions, I initiated a trial period that could be canceled at any time. That one-month trial was a success.

I’d worked with another developer on the existing code base, and there were lots of issues and bugs. Fluvius’ developer has taken over and stabilized the project, which wasn’t the easiest task. There was a lot of code they had to familiarize themselves with before solving any issues.

The solution itself is a mobile app that deals with recording voice memos. It also has authentication capabilities and an integration with a Firestore database.

What is the team composition?

I work with one developer and one UX designer.

How did you come to work with Fluvius?

They reached out to me through LinkedIn a few months ago when I was looking for an iOS developer.

How much have you invested with them?

I’ve spent around $20,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We’ve been working together since April 2021.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Fluvius’ coding level and experience are solid, and they know what they’re doing. Beyond technical skills, their reliability and trustworthiness have made it very easy to manage them. They are very self-motivated.

How did Fluvius perform from a project management standpoint?

Language barriers and misunderstandings are minimal, and this is important with offshore developers. Additionally, they ask questions if they’re not sure about a task. Other companies I’ve worked with will go off and create something incorrect rather than clarify what I want.

Fluvius uses their own internal system to manage the project, but I determine the priorities for the team. My company is fairly lax with timelines, and I, as a developer, understand that some complex items need time to be properly implemented.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They are consistently reliable and perform consistently well. I’ve worked with lots of software companies but this longest engagement I’ve had, as developers aren’t usually up to the level that I like. Fluvius has proven to be solid, however, and to possess a solid work ethic.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I’m a 15-year developer, and I can’t reasonably expect to outsource to someone at the expert level with it being very expensive. People can expect senior-level resources from Fluvius, however.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Clarify requirements and try our Fluvius out; that’s why they have a trial period. It also helps to have some sort of status meeting with them.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the managing director of a small company. The company mainly provides engineering consulting services, however we have been working on a software development project as a side project.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

I contracted Fluvius to develop two concept demonstrators (prototypes) of the software. The first version was to seek user feedback, and the second version was to incorporate some more advanced features and customer-suggested improvements. The prototypes needed to be stable enough for customer evaluation but not necessarily for full commercial deployment.

SOLUTION

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

I selected Fluvius via the Upwork platform. They appeared to have the right mix of skill sets to develop my application, which needed to be cross-platform (Windows, Mac, Linux). Their price was good for their experience, and they definitely had greater capability than a lot of the (cheap) single-person developers.

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

The first concept demonstrator was broken into 6 phases. These were based on Fluvius's analysis of our requirements. The breakdown was sensible and allowed me to check progress and ensure that the requirements were being interpreted correctly. I made six milestone payments. I added an additional milestone to include some emergent features. The second phase involved implementation of a number of features and improvements, and was exectuted on an hourly basis. I was happy with the hourly basis because I trusted the team, and I didn't want to add a risk premium because the nature of some of the features would have been difficult to estimate in advance.

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

I primarily worked with Anton as the software development lead. Early in the project I dealt with Georgi to set-up the work breakdown and contract. Both were very professional. I enjoyed working regularly with Anton as the sole technical point of contact. He communicated well and was very responsive to my questions and queries.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Feedback from my users has been positive. They like the user interface and functionality and have not made any adverse comments about the software stability. Most of the comments have been made regarding the use concept for the software and some of the functions that I designed.

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

We tended to communicate solely through Upwork, so we had a good history of our conversations. We used Skype occasionally to talk through more detailed technical discussion. This all worked well. For sharing documents, we used simple free tools such as Google Sheets. For software version repository we used a Git repository in my Bitbucket account. The tools we used were simple, effective, and appropriate for the project.

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

I think their responsiveness was their best feature. Because of the time difference (10.5 hours) I would typically get a response overnight, which was great. They were easy and professional to deal with.

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

There were some occasions where milestone builds were provided with some required features missing. This is not uncommon with software development projects. Independent testing of builds and verification against requirements would improve this type of oversight. I must stress that this was only occasional, and I was genuinely overall happy with the team, and the project.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Founder and CEO. The company is an app company that also provides a dashboard for Speech Language Pathologists. We have a suite of tools for SLPs and their clients.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Fluvius?

Fluvius built a very clean and functional ReactJS dashboard that our customers were able ot use.

What were your goals for this project?

Build and validate an MVP.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

They had great reviews on upwork, and passed all of my interview/screening stages.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

They built a fully integrated ReactJS dashboard that consumed a Firebase datastore. The dashboard had interactions from an App that they also worked on briefly.

What was the team composition?

Multiple developers and their team lead.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The dashboard was exactly what we needed, it allowed us to test features on our live customers and performed well.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

I managed the project as I'm also a developer. But Fluvius had team members available for review and QA testing as well should I need more.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Very responsive, followed their deadlines, and wrote clean code.

Are there any areas for improvement?

None that I can think of. Will continue to use them on future projects!

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CMO of a media company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Fluvius?

We wanted amazing developers who could get work done quickly and efficiently.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Fluvius does all our development work, both frontend and backend. They build our database, write our codebases, integrated APIs, and take care of all our technical debt.

What is the team composition?

We work with about four people.

How did you come to work with Fluvius?

They were referred by a friend.

What is the status of this engagement?

The partnership started sometime late or mid last year. We still work together.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We just make sure everything works, arrives fast, and is on budget. Fluvius hits them all.

How did Fluvius perform from a project management standpoint?

They hit all our deadlines and suggest things we haven’t thought of. We communicate over Slack.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Fluvius is a great team to work with. They’re very personable and get the job done well.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No.

Any advice for potential customers?

They’re a fantastic team to work with. I highly recommend them.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the VP of IT at a digital solutions company. We offer digital marketing, web design, and other solutions to help businesses.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Fluvius?

We needed to quickly develop a system to automate part of our business processes.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Fluvius created our internal investment automation application. It helps us manage our investors and stakeholders, so we’re up to date with their financial data related to our investment rounds. They actively participated in designing the functionality of the device. The team suggested a good combination of technologies to use and solutions to speed up the process. The main language they used was Node.js, and they used React.js for the frontend and MongoDB for the database. 

What is the team composition?

Starting from the beginning of our collaboration, we’ve worked with about five developers.

How did you come to work with Fluvius?

We posted the job on UpWork, and Fluvius made us a good proposal. We sent them a test task, which they did well on, so we brought their developers onto our main project.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent around $20,000  so far.

What is the status of this engagement?

We’ve been working together since February 2019. We spent about three months discussing the platform and testing before we got to work. Their work is ongoing as they continue to maintain the development of the platform. Whenever we need a new feature, we ask Fluvius to implement it.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

They demonstrate a good level of communication and they’re highly professional. At one point in the project, one of our developers wasn’t available. Fluvius brought in their lead developer to fix the issue in a very short amount of time. 

How did Fluvius perform from a project management standpoint?

Our project manager was always available for any urgent questions. The team consistently meets deadlines, and if they ever see that a deadline is coming up too quickly, they’ll bring in extra resources to help. They’re a very flexible team.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We really appreciate that they’re always available. Even if it’s outside of business hours, Fluvius works hard to fix issues and deliver us solutions.

Are there any areas they could improve?

In the beginning, they struggled a bit because they weren’t as experienced with our industry and had to work to become familiar with our terms. But since then, the value they’ve brought to the project has greatly outweighed any minor issues we might have come across.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Clients shouldn’t be afraid of the price, because the quality is extremely worth it. Also, it’s important to describe in detail all the information related to the project to the team. If you have wireframes and a work plan, Fluvius will produce really great results.