Foridev

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO of Le Panier Francais, a French goods reseller.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Foridev?

We used to use WooCommerce, Shopify, and other services but needed a revamp. We were looking for a developer to custom build our e-commerce site again and hired Foridev for the task.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We picked an open-source technology and Foridev designed and developed our e-commerce website on top of it, creating several backend functions for our business. This includes a backorder feature for when a product is out of stock and it notifies clients when the product is available again. This doesn’t exist on regular websites.

Of the several other features we created with Foridev, there’s a specific one for products that will soon expire. We’re an online grocery store and have 1,000 products that will all expire, so when a product gets close to its expiration date, the website moves it automatically to a different category with a different price.

Overall, the website is highly customized to the way we do business. We also created a pick and pack feature with which we can scan all the products. This is included in our backend. We also just finished a specific API integration with other software, and overall, the website is working well. With open-source technologies, there are no difficulties in integrating with the cloud or with a different system.

What is the team composition?

There are three people involved, though the project manager is my main point of contact.

How did you come to work with Foridev?

I looked at 5–7 companies and found Foridev on Upwork. I saw that they’re excellent in feature development, backend operations, database, and programming. I was looking for a company with strong backend development abilities and they had that. 

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent $25,000 so far on their services.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in March 2018, and the collaboration is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Building an e-commerce website is a process, and we’re always changing and improving things. Thanks to Foridev, the website loads very fast—at about 800 milliseconds. We’re happy with their work.

How did Foridev perform from a project management standpoint?

We use Jira to communicate and follow an Agile methodology. We’ve done different releases and have completed around 600 tasks since we started, though there are about 200 other tasks in the backlog that aren’t done yet. We’re always changing direction, adding, and improving things with Foridev. They’re a good company that communicates well.

What did you find most impressive about them?

When there’s an issue, Foridev is there any time day or night. I can text them and they’re very responsive. I’ve tried a lot of companies and it’s not always easy to find individuals or teams that really care.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I’d like it if they had more programmers because I’m not their only customer. We have a huge backlog and I’d like to speed things up a little. They give me the time that they can and other than this, there’s nothing else they need to improve.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Make sure that the person who is going to work with you understands your culture. Foridev is in Ukraine and they have a different way of thinking that can sometimes be very binary. You also need to make sure that the vendor is tech-savvy enough for you and that they understand what you’re talking about. When I talk with Foridev, I present designs and drawings for the processes and tell them how I want things, which they execute perfectly.

As long as you can document, explain, or write the requirements, there are no issues. If you’re not able to explain things properly, you’ll run into trouble.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I’m the CEO of Rentdim UG, an online marketing company that specializes in Amazon. We operate several blogs and e-commerce platforms in several product categories in partnership with Amazon.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Foridev?

We needed customized development services for several projects on our OpenCart websites (online store management system). Most of them involved OpenCart-based extensions, requirement evaluation, and bug-fixing.

What were your goals for this project?

We wanted to have unique extensions to become more independent from third-party software vendors.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

We saw their projects and extensions in the OpenCart marketplaces. We were entirely happy with their software quality after the first project, so we continued to engage them.

Can you go into detail about the services they provided and the scope of the project?

Our most recent project with Foridev was developing an independent, OpenCart-based extension for the Amazon product advertising API. They analyzed websites with similar extensions to understand the business logic, and then recreated the extension. The first release required only a little bug-fixing/tweaking.

What was the team composition?

We worked with two developers and a requirements engineer.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The extension has vastly improved many critical areas of our business. The burden of updating prices was reduced by nearly half thanks to our importing a greater amount of data from Amazon via the product advertising API. Foridev also improved our interface, adding buttons and lists and removing a process step that was dragging down our admin productivity.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

We worked through our project manager. He did an excellent job forwarding our requirements and documentation to the developers and explaining our business needs.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Foridev’s interpretation and understanding of our business needs were good, despite our processes’ complexity. That’s why we continued to involve them in a variety of follow-up development projects. Working with them was absolutely the right decision.

Are there any areas where they can improve?

One small idea would be to expand standardized documentation for software deliveries. This would improve the release process.