Helmes

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the VP, Product Development of HireRight

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

HireRight delivers employment background screening and verification to help businesses make informed hiring decisions.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Helmes AS to accomplish?

• Find a reputable vendor with a solid market presence, a strong company culture, well-defined processes, and an appropriate company size. Additionally, ensure that the vendor carries Cyber and Tech Professional Insurance.
• Bring in engineers with specialized expertise for mid-term projects.
• Collaborate on project execution.
• Expand the team by bringing in experienced IT professionals to work effectively in cross-functional teams and increase overall productivity.

SOLUTION

How did you find Helmes AS?

Referral

Why did you select Helmes AS over others?

• Great culture fit
• Good value for cost
• Referred to me
• Company values aligned

How many teammates from Helmes AS were assigned to this project?

28-32

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

Helmes engineers have been actively working on over 10 projects, serving both internal and external users connected to the core business. A team of 30 engineers has been collaborating in various capacities—whether in dedicated project teams or as part of in-house initiatives. Their focus has been on developing new features, building modules, and maintaining applications. 
Additionally, some engineers have been contributing to the R&D and Cloud teams. Across all projects, Helmes professionals have consistently delivered their work on time, demonstrating a high level of transparency and effective communication.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

I would like to highlight key achievements:

• We successfully scaled in-house engineering teams in a short time, enabling them to handle increased workloads during the business growth phase.
• The augmented team significantly reduced the average response time for feature requests.
• We swiftly brought in highly specialized technical experts, allowing internal teams to focus on strategic initiatives.
• Unlike other vendors, Helmes not only maintains a low attrition rate but also ensures a high level of engineering expertise—both of which are crucial for involvement in complex projects.

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

Helmes management has demonstrated exceptional efficiency and organization. They consistently delivered on time, meeting all agreed-upon deadlines.

Additionally, they're highly responsive to our needs, promptly addressing any concerns or requests throughout the engagement. I also appreciate Eugene Kunda's involvement and dedication.

What was your primary form of communication with Helmes AS?

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

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

The most impressive aspects were their commitment to employee well-being and support, their strong sense of responsibility and attention to detail, and the management’s swift responses paired with transparent communication.

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

While Helmes has been highly effective in scaling teams, further investment in onboarding processes and knowledge-sharing frameworks could enhance efficiency.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CTO of a cosmetics e-commerce company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with TeleSoftas

We needed a company that could help us build and scale our team to support our business delivery and tech evolution efforts.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

TeleSoftas works as part of our teams in a hybrid working model, which is different from the traditional offshore model. They represent roughly 20% of my team, and they work remotely as part of our technical team to drive initiatives and deliver value across all of the areas we’re working in.

They provided QAs, full stack frontend engineers, and UX designers, who all work with our in-house scrum team on the delivery of various projects, including e-commerce platform development, new market penetration, and new product launches. They’re tasked with scaling our applications, as well as looking at our frontend traffic and finding ways to implement better logging and tracing. Aside from that, they also handle some UX design work for us.

So far, their senior engineers have led the delivery of some of our key projects as well as some key features within other projects. Together, we’ve done 65 product launches last year, and we’ve already done more than that this year. We’ve also created two new versions of our site and successfully moved our e-commerce platforms and warehousings systems.

What is the team composition?

I work with 9–10 other people from their company, which includes QAs, full-stack engineers, and UX designers, but I’m primarily in contact with Marius (Technical Team Lead), who helps scale up and deal with issues and concerns within the team.
 
How did you come to work with TeleSoftas?

I’ve actually worked with TeleSoftas before I joined this company. I hired them because I really think that their hybrid working model is highly effective and because they give us the opportunity to scale up quickly and, at the same time, save money on hiring fees.

How much have you invested with them?

We pay them an average of £30,000 (approximately $40,000 USD) each month, so I’d say we’ve spent a total of around £540,000 (approximately $720,000 USD) so far.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in June 2020, and the engagement is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The main impact that our engagement has had is the growth of our business. Thanks to TeleSoftas’ contributions, we’ve managed to significantly increase our US presence.

Aside from that, we’ve also managed to save £70,000–£80,000 (approximately $93,000–$107,000 USD) in just hiring fees alone since we started working with them. Having them in our team allows us to manage our costs more effectively than hiring people ourselves. The time to ramp them up is much faster than hiring someone in-house ourselves. 

Additionally, they manage their people’s arrangements and training for us. Basically, there’s very little risk on our part in terms of onboarding anyone from them, which is fantastic.

How did TeleSoftas perform from a project management standpoint?

TeleSoftas has their own in-house management team, so we didn’t need to hire a project manager nor pay for their team’s management. Their company is in charge of their training and development, and we merely feed into the skills that we might require them to have for our projects.

Because they’re a part of our scrum team, we have our own product owners, scrum masters, and team leads who manage the whole team, including them.

As for communicating with them, we primarily use Slack, Google Meet, and phone calls. They used to do site visits as well, but that was before the pandemic.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The thing I like the most about TeleSoftas is that they’re very transparent and honest. If there’s something that they don’t have the in-house capacity to do, they would tell us straight away. They don’t waste anyone’s time or try to take something they know they can’t do.

Another thing that I really like about them is their flexibility and open-mindedness, which makes them incredibly easy to work with. If we need them to make changes, or if there’s anything we didn’t like about their work, they’re very accommodating and will make the appropriate changes as soon as possible. We’ve never had any sort of issues with them.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I think it would be a good idea for them to expand their company. Due to the rate we’re scaling, it’s getting harder for us to get more senior resources from them. This is not a criticism, just something I think would help us both.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

First, I’d say be quite upfront with what you need because they are experienced in doing different kinds of work in different areas, and there’s a lot they can help you with. 

As a business, I think it’s very important to know what you want from the start. Then, it’s just a matter of how you utilize and integrate the resources they provide with the existing in-house resources that you already have.

They’re very easy to work with, and so it’s a very good idea to have honest, upfront discussions with them before you start your project.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We’re a major telecommunications operator working in the Baltic countries. I’m the digital development manager.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with TeleSoftas?

They were the main contractor for our software redesign. They took over from our previous company and helped us set everything in place for the redesign.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

TeleSoftas provided design, development, technical support, and QA for our product. They also helped us implement GDPR for our self-care service.

They helped us create the UI/UX concept of the new software. We gave them documentation on what we wanted to achieve and our customer profile, based on which TeleSoftas delivered the idea and implementation.

What is the team composition?

We’re working with four people from TeleSoftas, including a UI/UX specialist, a QA person, and full-stack developers.

How did you come to work with TeleSoftas?

The project was a common effort for the Baltic states. We made a tender, and TeleSoftas won.

How much have you invested with them?

The cost over the last three years is approximately $300,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with TeleSoftas in the autumn of 2018, and it’s ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The work is still in progress, so I can’t provide measurements, but I can see a commitment from TeleSoftas to delivering what we expect from them.

How did TeleSoftas perform from a project management standpoint?

Our teams use Jira for sprint planning and development, and Confluence for specifications and communication.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They really jumped on the project and took over from the previous company. They’re fast learners, and they found ways to address code quality and take care of the product.

Are there any areas they could improve?

There were some areas on the management side that we wanted them to improve. It took us longer than expected to solve some team issues. Some members weren’t performing well. We gave them second chances, but some things couldn’t be fixed.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

My advice is to discuss the scope in the beginning and identify any potential issues.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I work for Tele2, a mobile provider, as an IT director based in Estonia. We basically offer mobile and broadband and fixed internet to multiple countries in the Nordics and Baltics. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with TeleSoftas?

Our previous partner didn’t satisfy us which is why we looked for another software development partner who would be able to provide services in the Baltics, specifically in Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. 

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We hired TeleSoftas for 6–7 software development projects across the Baltics. 

What is the team composition?

We started with 35 people but right now we are working with 25–30 people from TeleSoftas. I can’t give an exact figure because I am not managing the team that is working for Latvia and Lithuania anymore. We have worked with the VP of account managers and the development team including the developers.

How did you come to work with TeleSoftas?

We had a good reference for TeleSoftas. Our aim was to work with a company that had been working in the market for a long time. It had to be a solid company with a good portfolio of projects. Additionally, the price had to be in the range that we were looking for. We spoke with TeleSoftas and from the beginning, they were the ones that satisfied our needs. 

How much have you invested in them?

We spent about €500,000 (approximately $590,000 USD).

What is the status of this engagement?

We began working with them in October 2018 and we are still collaborating.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

So far, TeleSoftas has been providing us with high-quality service and they are always meeting deadlines. Thus, we have no complaints and everything they have developed is according to our expectations.

How did TeleSoftas perform from a project management standpoint?

We are practicing scrum with the development team so we have daily stand-ups, weekly sprints, and planning. We also communicate with the TeleSoftas team on a daily basis and closely work with their account manager too. In our engagement, they always do their best to fit when it comes to our available time and materials.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We are absolutely happy and satisfied with TeleSoftas. We look forward to continuing to work with them.

Are there any areas they could improve?

We had a few problems with personalities but after we made it known the problem was immediately fixed so there is nothing bad to say. There were a few QAs that we weren’t that happy with and we asked to have them removed, and they have promptly followed our requests.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Enjoy it because TeleSoftas is a company that does everything with a great attitude.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the director of an academic health site. We were founded to help accelerate the implementation of new research findings into practice.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Telsoftas?

During the COVID-19 pandemic, I was deployed to a field hospital in East London to support surge capacity for the NHS. We worked to provide additional ICU beds to manage the surge in patients. We set up a learning health system made up of bedside learning coordinators to ensure that we were adapting quickly based on new insights. This system was paper-based, but we hired Telsoftas to help us improve the information flow for our learning health system. We wanted a streamlined database.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They’re building an app with a backend database that allows us to track observations through to action and completion. 

What is the team composition?

I worked with a team of 6–8 people. 

How did you come to work with Telsoftas?

I asked for recommendations from my colleagues. We spoke to several companies, but Telsoftas understood what we were looking for and what we needed the best. They also seemed to have a passion for working with us on this project. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in June 2020, and our work is ongoing. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

It’s probably too early to tell because the product is still in development. We’re currently in the testing phase. 

How did Telsoftas perform from a project management standpoint?

They’re really responsive. Our project lead is great at facilitating meetings. They have a system where we can share and review documents. We also have regular meetings. They’re always very clear about what they’re working on and any areas of uncertainty they may be encountering. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

They were on top of what our requirements were and read all of the documentation we sent over in great detail. They came to our first meeting very prepared and informed. They took the time to understand us and our needs. 

Are there any areas they could improve? 

Not at the moment. 

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the CTO at Maistro.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

We needed a partner that had a deep rooted product engineering mindset versus a project view of delivery. Telesoftas were an extension to our existing engineering team.

SOLUTION

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

Telesoftas were already known to me having worked with them in former roles. Nonetheless, we ran a tendering process where Telesoftas came out on top. Factors that influenced our decision were technical skills, excellent location with respect to travel and timezone, modern infrastructure, price, English language capabilities and a strong cultural fit and work ethic.

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

The key phases in this type of working relationship is the initial onboarding and knowledge transfer of the product, tools and processes. Telesoftas demonstrated to us that they were able to achieve this in very quick time keeping our product delivery to the business and our customers on time

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

6 people ranging from PHP, Angular and QA.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Our main goal was to extend our product engineering capacity in a cost efficient way, accelerating our roadmap and to a high standard.. This was achieved to the satisfaction of the rest of our business stakeholders

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

Telesoftas adopted the tools and processes we needed them to. We ran agile development processes and their communication was excellent. Some of the tools we used were Slack and Jira but we also met face to face and over video conferencing.

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

Their commitment and dedication to their customers and staff are impressive. They have a long pedigree of developing products on behalf of their clients, some of whom are $billion dollar companies with some of the most technically challenging solutions in their industries.

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

As with most complex and large products, it can be a challenge for both internal and external engineering teams to fully understand how the product is used by customers. This is not the fault of any one party but a challenge that everyone needs to focus on and improve.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

On the dot Limited started as an Innovation Lab (LastMileLink) that later was formalised as a stand alone company within the CitySprint Group focused on promoting and disrupting the Same Day delivery arena.

During my tenure at CitySprint Group I had a number roles across engineering, product and pre-sales reporting to the On the dot Limited CEO as Head of Partner Services.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

On the dot Platform was fundamental to CitySprint own Digital Transformation journey as well global player innovative new user journeys, garnered a number of awards and industry recognition.

One of our requirements was to develop a new native courier mobile app and this was what Telesoftas was initially recommended for.

Our goal was to create an innovative scalable same day delivery platform accompanied by a new scalable native mobile courier app and a modern ReactJS customer facing booking platform.

SOLUTION

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

Although our new CTO refereed Telesoftas as a valuable partner, there was a rigorous appraisal in place where Telesoftas was tested by our senior engineering leadership as well as by the others long standing development partners already working alongside our team hailing from Australia and India.

Following partner appraisal process, key deciding factors in selecting Telesoftas were:

• The dept and breath of product and engineering skill proficiency
• Agile process proficiency
• Cultural and commercial fit amply demonstrated through a booking app POC to validate the whole range of required skills
• Languages and commercial fit leading to Telesoftas becoming one of the 3 main development partners that collectively collaborated across the new On the dot microservices platform creation

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

Telesoftas initially redeveloped one of the web booking portals using GOlang for the back end services and ReacJS for the front end in parallel with commencing work on the new mobile native (Android-Kotlin and iOS-Swift) courier app capable to scale to tens of thousands of couriers.

To achieve this level of scalability, Telesfotas become part of the Courier MBaaS microservices and a new scalable architecture was proposed , designed , documented and Implemented.

The technology stack , whilst diverse initially (PHP, Zend, Android Java, Angular, Java, JavaScript, Koa, PostgreSQL, MySQL, MSSQL, Unify 4GL DB, GOlang, AWS, Azure, SugarCRM, Kentico) was quickly evolving settling on GOLang , ReactJS all deployed and run within AWS with Kubernetes and Councourse CI/CD. whilst Kotlin and Swift were selected for the native mobile apps.

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

Whilst numbers fluctuated we had an average of 20 people across solution architects, backend dev , frontend dev and mobile dev supported by an accounts manager and project manager / scrum master in turn supported by Telesoftas team leaders and soft leaders for each skillset and the Telesoftas HR department for ensuring the right fit when recruiting for us.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Telesoftas immediately delivered value by developing one of the booking apps for credit card customers over several months that included ideation , POC , product fit and by the development of the new courier app in record time supporting the incumbent platform as well as the new microservices one being developed.

This was measured through tangible outcomes , a faster time to market for new features, increased customer onboarding and satisfaction leading to ROI across the board and several awards for the new On the dot platform.

Another significant contribution was through the enablement of our teams to provide innovative journeys and products to our increasing and ever demanding customer base who were looking to capture their consumers attention and convert.

Not in the last place , the way all Telesoftas team members conducted and collaborated across all Scrum ceremonies , workshop, customer meetings, documentation and use of all our internal tools like Jira and Confluence was exemplary making them a valuable team member in every way

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

Not in the last place, the Project Management, People management , the way all Telesoftas team members conducted and collaborated across all Scrum ceremonies , workshops, product discovery and refinements, customer meetings, documentation and use of all our internal tools like Jira and Confluence, Slack was exemplary making them a valuable team member in every way.

Always with timely deliveries and a much more professional and collaborative manner when compared with other partners we worked in the past, accurate time keeping, timesheets and billing leading to a great commercial relationship.

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

Most impressive I found the people, a testament to the culture Telesoftas managed to create, emotional and soft skills accent by having an soft team leader for each technical team leader. They had a constant focus on people development and delivering value for their customers through transparency, collaboration and quality of products.

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

There is always room for improvement, one area in particular was giving Telesoftas more responsibility and autonomy by empowering a complete Telesoftas cross-functional team to deliver complete products, with even better documentation and more simplification of the pipeline through more automation and better usage of the whole Github suite of products.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

 I am the Principal Architect Platform Engineering of a QA solutions company. 

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Leading global provider of automated test and assurance solutions for networks, cybersecurity, and positioning.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

• Provide product architecture and engineering services

SOLUTION

How did you find TeleSoftas?

Referral

Why did you select TeleSoftas over others?

Referred to me

How many teammates from TeleSoftas were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

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

TeleSoftas team was brought in to provide product architecture and engineering services for a new cloud native highly scalable platform. The team was involved in the following activities: 

• Furthering the architectural vision for the platform. 
• High-level design of major components. 
• Implementation, unit testing and integration testing. 
• Integration with overall DevOps pipelines. 
• Implementing agile best practices.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

All project parameters were met with a high degree of quality. The team was responsible for providing bi-weekly progress demos.

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

The team was highly responsive, and fully embedded in the overall engineering team structure. All project-related deliveries were on time. The team was highly flexible (agile) in responding to directional changes as the project progressed.

What was your primary form of communication with TeleSoftas?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

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

• They had highly skilled engineers. 
• Kept our (customer) best interests in mind all the time. 
• Transparent communication.

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

None.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am Daniel, CEO of UAB Salve Munde.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

To create a voting platform for a client.

SOLUTION

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

They were recommended by a colleague.

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

The create a voting platform, where people can vote on political parties integrated with the national ID system.

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

There are 5 people: developers, QA, and team lead.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The customer is happy and has extended the project by purchasing additional work.

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

Brilliantly! We communicated by email and phone.

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

The people. Wonderful people!

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

Nothing! We recommend working with them.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

We operate the largest BtoB platform for the global water sector

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire TeleSoftas?

new native mobile apps for our site

What were your goals for this project?

better engagement, push notifications, premium services

SOLUTION

How did you select TeleSoftas?

This team did the app for our first generation platform. They were great.

Describe the project in detail.

Very complex app for a nested network knowledge sharing platform and business exchange

What was the team composition?

project manager, back end, & design

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

It is ongoing but I can confirm the professionalism and quality of every aspect of the process and team.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

wonderful

What did you find most impressive about this company?

the people and pocesses

Are there any areas for improvement?

no