Idyllic Software

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Project Travel was a software-as-a-service platform which worked with education offices, helping students travel abroad for study, volunteering, and so on. Our aim was to remove the paper process and digitize it for a more seamless experience, helping more students travel abroad. 

I was the founder and chief executive officer of the company. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Idyllic?

There were other companies offering pieces of what our platform was, but we were the first to provide a product of this type. We were pioneering new territory in terms of covering the overall experience of a student wanting to plan their trip through an application. The technical challenge was creating a platform without an existing example. It was built from scratch, from our brains, and through user testing.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Idyllic has worked on our web-based app. One of the reasons for engaging Idyllic was that we knew we'd be able to achieve the web coding piece, from an architecture and planning perspective, up to the deployment of the code. We had an internal designer, but we also worked with Idyllic's design team. They also provided a business analyst, user testing, and quality assurance services.

We also had some developers which worked alongside Idyllic's team. Idyllic ensured that we would be able to deliver a complete deliverable, instead of only a piece of one.

Idyllic's coding was mostly on the backend, coordinating with our front-end person. We provided them our wireframes and documentation as a basis, and we had also built an alpha product. Idyllic was working on the beta version which could be put through user testing.

How did you come to work with Idyllic?

Our startup was based in Boulder, Colorado, but we met with Idyllic through our network in Chicago. We heard some great reviews about the company, but also interviewed several local shops.

There's always a stigma of using a non-US company, but we stayed open to what was possible. We met with Idyllic's founder and some of the team and found them to be thoughtful in their presentation. They understood our platform and gave us a good vibe. We knew the cost would be lower, but it was also important for us to find a company which could offer a long-term collaboration. For the same price we paid Idyllic, we would have bought one month of a US shop's time. Using a long-term partner would allow us to deploy code, interact with users, get feedback, and implement it. 

How much have you invested with Idyllic?

The cost of our project was around $150,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Idyllic in October 2014. We originally had a 3-month project with Idyllic. The time span increased by one month as we added new items. After this, we continued to work with one of Idyllic's team members directly for another 6 months. The project ended fully in August 2015.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Because Idyllic was mindful of cost, they worked with us in taking the platform to the next level, while still taking the time and cost factors into consideration. Many shops promote doing things right out of the gate, which will translate into doing 100% of the testing and perfecting. We mainly wanted an app which could survive for a year and generate user feedback, so we were okay with it not being fully buttoned-up. Idyllic was receptive to that. They delivered good results and didn't simply code based on their individual egos, giving us things which we didn't need. Idyllic worked based on our business goals, listened to our instructions, and took initiative appropriately.   

The quality of the site was in line with what we discussed and expected. It may not have been the perfect site based on other people's standards, but it was perfect for our needs. Nothing was overbuilt or reaching beyond our business goals.

How did Idyllic perform from a project management standpoint?

Outside of the technical aspects, Idyllic showed us how to best work with a remote team. We came upon the normal challenges of collaborating in this fashion, but Idyllic was very good in terms of coordinating and taking feedback. I have used these methodologies for building a relationship in other third-party collaborations.

In an Agile world, the meaning of deadlines gets a bit lost. Idyllic delivered sprints regularly. Because we had a large time difference, I had calls with the team at night. When our local developers were wrapping up for the day, they could make notes for Idyllic's team and see the progress the next day. I don't recall having issues with deadlines, beyond the scope creep on our side. There are no perfect relationships in development, but Idyllic did a good job of being conscious of timelines, deployment, and communication. 

What did you find most impressive about Idyllic?

After spending time with Idyllic's team and their founder, I've come to value their integrity and leadership. Whenever we had any concerns or questions, Idyllic's principal responded to us. I could tell that his team believed in his leadership and followed the integrity he set in terms of how to work with clients, how to follow their needs, what the code quality standard is, and so on. Idyllic's principal does an excellent job in exuding his passion for technology. I've come to look for the same elements in other relationships.

Are there any areas Idyllic could improve?

Because of our specific position of building a second beta while still pioneering a new product, there were many questions for which we didn't have an answer. Idyllic's team was excited to join us in this adventure, which made us too excited at times over what was possible. There were a few times when we stepped into a certain story, only to discover that it was bigger than we'd realized. Idyllic could work more with clients in ensuring that last minute client ideas don't become distracting, which is a hard task.

I'm very pleased with the relationship overall, and I put the responsibility of figuring things out more on our side. Idyllic's team could have said no to us on more occasions, but that would have impacted our path to innovation. 

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We are an end-to-end health-food school catering service. We serve 25,000 meals every day to 300 public and private schools in California. We make partnerships with schools in order to become exclusive providers and communicate with the families in those communities. Parents can visit our site and pre-order meals up to 50 days in advance. Our differentiator is this technology, giving users the ability to order meals via mobile and the web. I am the chief technology officer of the company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Idyllic?

We were looking to make some changes to our online business model and wanted a refresh of our various ordering technologies. I wanted to find a partner who could not only assist us in the conceptualization and design but with the actual execution of various parts of our website.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Our applications were already existing but the iOS version had not been updated since late 2010 while the Android version was made in 2014. They had some age and needed to be overhauled once we adopted a new business model. Idyllic rebuilt them from the ground up, using a similar business logic. Idyllic maintains the JavaScript single-page application that serves as our ordering calendar. We worked with a 2-person QA [quality assurance] team and 2–3 web developers from Idyllic at any given time, including 1 resource for iOS and Android, respectively. They also assigned a designer in charge of creating the look and feel of our apps. We were working with another database developer, as well as with 1 for our backend Microsoft stack.

How did you come to work with Idyllic?

A few years ago, we were looking for a team that could redo our main site including its backend. I was considering using the Ruby on Rails platform and Idyllic came to the top of my list. We did not proceed with the project but when the time came to find someone for our most recent one, I called Idyllic. I learned that they had grown as a team and added iOS development services.

How much have you invested with Idyllic?

The total cost of our project was around $180,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started talking with Idyllic in January 2016 and started the work in February. The project had a fixed duration and once everything we needed was built, it was done. I keep in touch with Idyllic for additional tweaks.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Idyllic did a great job over a short timeline, without a lot of deep QA. Given the changes we've made to our system, I would have otherwise needed to spend more time and energy on internal and external QA, but we didn't have those resources. Idyllic did good work for our price range. Our previous build from 2012 was done by another vendor and had all kinds of browser problems. After a few bug fixes during the first weeks, we've had very few issues with what amounts to a complex Ember.js-based platform. The Android app has been solid. The iOS one has had some crashes, but this may be due to the nature of the operating system. I wasn't as pleased with it, but Idyllic did a great job overall of meeting my expectations.

How did Idyllic perform from a project management standpoint?

We elected not to go with a formal Basecamp arrangement, partly because of the timeframe. I am a hands-on technology person and knew our product the best, so I had daily calls with Idyllic's team in order to review progress and discuss any questions. Slack was a great daily communication channel as well. We used Jira as an Agile process workflow. I could put in user stories for how the platform needed to work and logged issues and bugs along with the QA team.

What did you find most impressive about Idyllic?

Other groups that I've talked to, both US-based and offshore, wanted for us to specify what we needed to be built and to let them build it. Idyllic cared about doing the work right, the first time. I worked with a UX [user experience] designer for the first 6 weeks, building mock-ups. I brought the material to my own team and we walked through it, asking questions and refining the design. We also had 15 hour-long user interviews which led to a lot of insight about how the design was working. This was a differentiator which I didn't expect from an offshore company.

Are there any areas Idyllic could improve?

Early on, we didn't have a proper cadence of communication with Idyllic, which led to projects being developed blindly without my involvement. We were able to address this and started having daily calls with our teams. As with any offshore team, once we started going down the chain of technical resources, the communication was not as good as it would be in the case of native speakers. I'd give Idyllic's team a 6/10 in terms of English skills. I could definitely understand them, but I did ask them to repeat things. Communication through VoIP calls can also make things difficult. It's something to sacrifice when paying a third of US prices or even less.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

BigFuture is a cloud-based application that allows users to see what they own no matter where the investments are located. BigFuture also provides sophisticated retirement planning models and financial literacy.

I'm the chief executive officer of BigFuture responsible for our commercializing efforts and am deeply involved in the daily project management of the application.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Idyllic?

Eighty percent of Australians do not have a financial planner, nor are they very financially literate. BigFuture aims to empower individuals to become more knowledgeable about their money, being able to see how their total wealth and investments change over time. A user should be able to see their asset allocation and individual securities. 30% of Australians weren't born in Australia, so it was important that they could see overseas assets and that BigFuture was multi-currency (mapping assets to Australian dollars) but also multi-functional currency (measuring all assets in a different currency other than AUD).

Once a user knows what they own, it is important that they understand their finances, so we wanted to embed educational features into the application itself. We have built over 20 animations and written education modules.

Finally, everyone will have different savings and expenditure patterns as they move to retirement. We wanted to build a model that can produce a stochastic outcome of likely financial results and show this against the spending patterns a user may have in retirement.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We had Ruby developers in-house and wanted to have the services of a company that could provide Ruby on Rails capabilities for the front-end. We also needed iOS and Android developers for the mobile companion apps. Idyllic completed all the front-end development and also designed and developed our native mobile experiences.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Idyllic was extremely professional in supplying their services. This was a greenfield build with sophisticated requirements of pulling in data from 3rd party suppliers and interacting with a sophisticated database.

Idyllic kept costs under control. Had we used an Australian developer, we would have likely gone bankrupt as we had, as is usual, many changes to the scope.

One of Idyllic's greatest benefits was that they could solve problems proactively. We encountered many challenges, and each time, Idyllic came up with a practical solution.

My only caution is that Idyllic had more resources it could apply to the project than we had to manage it. If I had my time again, I would have slowed up the project in the early days so our developers could keep up.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We are a financial technology startup developing software for self-service business and consumer loans. The technology revolves around machine learning applied to financial data from companies or individuals. We predict risk scores, interest rates, and max credit lines, thus enabling users to take a loan. We take care of money disbursement and auto repayment processes. I was a software engineering manager for the company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Idyllic?

There was a lot of demand from our marketing team to work on our brochure site. It was cutting into the time that our engineering team had for improvements to the core loan platform, as well as an international business expansion. 

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Idyllic came in when we were extremely backlogged and helped us make a number of improvements. The brochure website was built using precompiled HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and Node.js templates for generating static pages. Aside from our main app and the brochure site, we hosted and maintained a WordPress blog. We engaged Idyllic to help us with the feature requests coming from our marketing team for the WordPress blog and the static site. They were end-user-facing requests around content and display elements. Idyllic assigned 3–4 people as well as a project manager for our work.

How did you come to work with Idyllic?

My boss proposed outsourcing, specifically to India. I had never done this, so I made some Google searches for offshore firms. I stumbled upon Idyllic and 3 other companies. The cost wasn't a huge factor in the decision because they were all in the same range. Idyllic's team was very responsive during our pipeline inquiries, provided good code samples, and had a more compelling pitch around the work they'd done in the past. That made them stand out.

How much have you invested with Idyllic?

I don't have this information.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Idyllic near the end of 2015 or right at the beginning of 2016. The project had a 3-month duration.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The marketing team was thrilled at how rapidly improvements and changes were being made to the website. Our internal engineers also liked the code quality delivered by Idyllic. I considered them a lifesaver, especially since I was responsible for other projects while keeping internal customers happy. I could give them a number of tickets to run with. After getting the initial connectivity and process kinks worked out, it was like having another team working on our site.

How did Idyllic perform from a project management standpoint?

Idyllic delivered on time and within budget. We used Google Hangouts for conference calls, as well as Jira and HipChat for asynchronous communication. We had daily standup meetings with the team via video chat.

What did you find most impressive about Idyllic?

Idyllic is the only firm I've used for outsourcing work, so I don't have any comparison points.

Are there any areas Idyllic could improve?

There's nothing I can think of.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the director of IT for a worldwide chauffeur luxury transportation company. We work with high-level CEOs and talent throughout the world.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Idyllic?

We're a technology-enabled company. Currently, we are in the process of redesigning our reservation and dispatching software. We wanted to develop enhanced solutions that could be bolted into the existing system. Because we run a proprietary platform and we're running a lot of development work ourselves, we decided to outsource the development to another company. We had not worked with offshore teams before, but I was looking for a less-expensive alternative to our consultant in the US. That is where Idyllic came into play.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Idyllic has built our iOS app. After we've gauged consumer adoption for it, we plan to develop an Android version as well. Idyllic was in charge of the design and framework of our app. They created a touch point for the API provided by our in-house team. It provides all the pieces of information displayed on the app. The app is meant to provide customers with ease of use in securing reservations. Besides customers with single sign-on profiles, we also allow administrators to manage multiple accounts and book multiple reservations. We also provide corporate-level access, allowing large institutions with over 10,000 employees to secure reservations for anyone in their group. We have an integrated map technology included in our chauffer devices. This feature lets customers see their positions remotely and view chauffer names and other information. Our customers can also receive ETA updates and alerts from the app. The system makes it easier to make a booking without a phone call to our company.

Idyllic wanted to employ a 5–6-person team for a 3-month delivery, but we needed to keep the project within a specific budget range. The team was scaled back to 2 developers, one for frontend and one for the backend. This pushed our timeline out, especially since we also chose not work with a project manager. Because we were working with an app for the first time, we needed to get a feel for it and request additional features along the way. Around 5 months into the project, we wound up increasing the development team on Idyllic's end. We also added a project manager, a designer, an additional front-end developer, and 2–3 testers. We came to work with around 8 people towards the end of the project.

How much have you invested with Idyllic?

The budget was initially projected at around $70,000. Given our additional scope and some unforeseen issues, the total cost for their services was around $110,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Idyllic in January 2016 and finished at the beginning of August. We're not engaged with Idyllic at the moment but they remain available for us, should we choose to move forward with the Android project.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The app hasn't had a public launch because of the nature of our clients. Before we have a massive launch, we want to make sure that the product is exactly what our customers are looking for. At the moment, the app is only in the hands of a few select clients, so I don't have any metrics for it.

How did Idyllic perform from a project management standpoint?

When we first started working with Idyllic, we had bi-weekly calls with the team. After deciding to fast-track the project, we engaged in daily calls. Every day at 9 AM, we had a 30-minute call involving both of our teams. This helped speed up the process and address any issues which were coming up. Before, if the item wasn't a touchpoint, it would take a bit longer to get to a result. It was easy to delegate tasks to Idyllic and they provided us with an online ticketing system. We also set up a Slack chat which made communication easy. That ease of communication was wonderful. It seemed like Idyllic worked around the clock, especially when it came to our UI developer.

Are there any areas Idyllic could improve?

When we began working with Idyllic, the scope of our project was not fully understood. That led to some creep. Because this was the first time I'd worked with an offshore team, I don't know if the problem was due to my communication—if we didn't present enough information for Idyllic to have a full understanding of our features, or if they didn't take the time to dive into every detail in order to provide a more accurate estimate. The process got better towards the end of our relationship. Idyllic asked many questions and made sure that the timeframes given were actually what they were going to stick to.

Do What tips or recommendations could you share that might increase the likelihood of success with Idyllic?

If the client doesn't have a technology background, it's important to include a project manager or some type of visionary when working with a company like Idyllic. That person should help guide the thought process and keep things on track. It would also be extremely beneficial to give details for each feature and functionality. This can be hard because clients often need to get something tangible in their hands before actually deciding on a route. Having only a general idea will increase the scope creep significantly and lead to failure. In addition, I suggest that anyone working with an offshore team engage in daily calls in order to keep the project on target.

BACKGROUND

Could you briefly describe your organization?

The organization is called Central Coast. It’s a social media advertising agency. We produce and distribute content across social channels for our clients as well as build and share some applications for them or contract those tasks to development firms.

What is your position?

I’m the CEO.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

Could you describe the business challenges you were attempting to address when you initiated the relationship with Idyllic Software?

We’ve worked with them for a long time. They’ve partnered with us for almost three years now on various projects. Our challenge was basically internal staffing needs. We just don’t have the capacity to deal with large-scale development projects. We needed to partner with an external team in order to augment our development staff. We had to ensure that the firm we partnered with had a large talent pool of reliable and proficient developers. 

SOLUTION

How did you select Idyllic Software as your solution partner for this endeavor?

I had someone working for me who’d gone through the same computer science program at DePaul University with Jinesh [Parekh, founder of Idyllic Software]. It was through a mutual connection of theirs that Jinesh reached out to us. That’s how we were originally introduced to Idyllic Software.

Could you describe the scope of work delivered by Idyllic Software?

In our case, it was a fair amount of HTML, HTML5, for some front-end proof of concept development for a custom Web portal. They’ve also done a significant amount of Rails work for us. They’ve redesigned and deploying some fairly intricate mobile applications.

Currently, we’re working with them right now on two projects, both Rails projects. One is a mobile application, and the other is a tablet application. One is a smartphone, and one is a tablet application, all in built in Rails and across platforms.

Could you provide a sense of the size of these initiatives in monetary terms?

We’ve spent almost half a million dollars for one, and another couple of hundred thousand for another.

When was the most recent project completed?

I’m actually in San Juan, Puerto Rico, for a convention with a client to speak about this new application that is almost complete. It’s in the last bit, and we’ll put it on hold until this meeting has ended. It’s working great. Idyllic has done a great job with it.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

In terms of results, could you share any statistics, metrics, or user feedback that would demonstrate the effectiveness of their work?

Right now, these two clients at the convention are very excited. I’m very excited about this, the redesign of this application, which has cost a small fortune. It’s been ongoing for three years, and they’ve really done an excellent job. The user experience is much better than it was before. We’ll see what the end users’ reaction will be, but the main client has seen it already and is very happy. The prototype that they built a couple of years ago for us is for the cloud portal, basically to manage virtual machines on an enterprise cloud for a large telecom. The second in command was using with their work, and their portal as a demonstration of the future thinking of this company. It’s an enormous telecom company. I know those sounds anecdotal, but it’s been great.

When working with Idyllic Software, is there anything you’d consider special or unique about their approach or development methodology that distinguishes them from other vendors you’ve worked with?

I can’t say anything but good things about them. We partner with them quite a bit. We’ll be working with them again on a project for a newer client of ours, and it’s a pretty big deal. Sometimes, the perception of an Indian shop is this cheap offshore kind of thing. That’s not what they are. They are certainly not inexpensive. They are reasonable and fair, but they’re also excellent at what they do, incredibly responsive. I’ve worked with Jinesh quite a bit, but also four or five other members of specific teams, depending on what we’re building. We usually have stand-ups once a week. We use Google Hangouts for project updates. It’s been a fantastic relationship.

They’re really smart, too. I’ll give them that. I appreciate the fact that they have a fairly strong point of view and provide valuable recommendations. They’re not just doing exactly what we say, but rather giving a point of view and taking a lot of things from a business standpoint. In terms of software development, which they’ve now been doing for about 10 years, it’s very easy for those projects to explode because someone will have to do it and the developer says sure, and then it just keeps going. They’re very good at focusing on MVP, getting past the milestones to get something out and done because every day, somebody comes up with a new “what if,” and that invariably causes scope creep beyond belief. I’ve worked with other developers in the past who love to build and do that. They have no problem doing it, but they don’t articulate that it will make the project go on forever. That’s one of the difficult things about software development, even in the agile process. From a software development standpoint, it’s great when you’re on the other side. If I’m on the billing side of clients, they like to get the money coming in. But, when I’m paying for that and have to manage what’s coming through, having a reliable development team that can micro-manage itself is essential.

In retrospect, are there areas you think that Idyllic Software can improve upon as a service provider?

I haven’t really had any issues on that side. I know that sounds ridiculous, but there’s nothing they need to improve on within the context of our relationship. They’ve been very responsive and successful. The mobile area is going to be something that they continue to grow and improve because they’re primarily doing Web applications for desktop and laptop. I think they could definitely grow in tablet because I think that’s necessary. The work they’re doing for mobile right now is outstanding, but I think it was a little bit of new territory. Either way, they’ve been able to deliver.

BACKGROUND

Could you briefly describe your organization?

Shipsticks is a low-cost service provider that ship’s boarding equipment so that you don’t have to carry it or travel with it to your destination. We started exclusively with golf clubs, but we also now transport luggage and ski equipment.

What is your position?

I’m the CTO of our organization.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

Could you describe the business challenges you were attempting to address when you initiated a relationship with Idyllic Software?

We had tried to use a couple of different U.S.-based software development firms, including some pretty high profile ones here. They couldn’t effectively manage our project. We went through a campaign to try and hire an in-house developer, but the company is based in Florida. It was very challenging to find a developer that wasn’t overcharging for their mediocre work. We were hooked up with Idyllic Software through an independent consultant we had talked with. We contacted Idyllic with our statement of work, and they made us an offer that we couldn’t refuse. They basically said, “We’ll do two weeks of software development for you guys for free. If you like what we produce at the end of time period, then you can pay for it. Otherwise, no harm, no foul.” That’s how our relationship began. We’ve since scaled our relationship with Idyllic Software in accordance with our project needs, but we continuously give them more work. 

SOLUTION

Could you describe the scope of work that they’ve delivered over the course of this relationship?

Yes. They’ve done a considerable amount of work for us. They’ve basically operated as an extension of our own organization. We had, at one point, three developers from Idyllic that were serving as our core development team. I would handle the project management component, and they would deal with the technical specs. They’ve been responsible for visual design, backend development, data preparation and migration, third-party systems integration, server configuration, QA/QC and performance testing, and support.

Could you provide a sense of the size of this initiative in monetary terms?

We’ve spent at least $500,000 on their services, if not more.

Does this relationship remain ongoing?

It was until about two weeks ago, when we decided to transition to a different service provider. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

In terms of results, could you share any statistics, metrics, or user feedback that would demonstrate the effectiveness of the work they’ve delivered?

They’ve completely overhauled our shipping flow and made it much more efficient. They helped to enable the growth of our business by almost 600 percent in four months. They’ve completely stabilized our online processing and tracking platform. They’ve released a host of new features, including a coupon system. These are just a handful of the improvements we’ve made with Idyllic Software.

When working with Idyllic software, is there anything you’d consider special or unique about their development methodology that distinguishes them from other vendors you’ve used?

The most important thing from my perspective was that they worked with our style of development. We tried using a firm here in the United States that wanted to talk with us once a week, set up a Sprint and then go ahead and just try and execute on a plan. We needed a closer touch in order to get some of the complex tasks accomplished. I think Idyllic is outstanding in the sense that they’ve accommodated us, and they literally became a part of our team. They did not in any way feel like an external vendor to us.

In retrospect, are there areas that you think Idyllic Software could improve upon as a service provider?

I don’t know. One of the reasons why we moved away was due to cost, which is a primary driver for us. We found a lower cost provider that had more of an integrated suite of services. That’s why we ended up moving away from Idyllic. I felt like they were better managers as a whole, with some minor exceptions. Idyllic Software has a fantastic team of developers, but I didn’t get the sense that their management team could really scale with projects without diminishing some of their efficiency. For their price point, I’d want to have both areas covered. 

BACKGROUND

Could you begin by briefly describing your organization?

We recently rebranded. It’s Simple.co. We’re about helping small businesses better manage their online presence. We try to deliver the same consultative services that a consultant would provide a small business, but through software. Our platform analyzes the online presence of a small business. It teaches them how to create one if they don’t have one, and then provides ongoing monitoring and strategic recommendations.

What is your position?

I’m the co-founder and technical lead.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

Could you describe the business challenges you were attempting to address when you initiated the relationship with Idyllic Software?

When we began this business, we had a lot of work on our hands. As you can probably imagine, there is a lot to do when you’re first starting a business. We also had some custom software to develop; the platform that I mentioned. We were looking to outsource our development to a technology partner in order to create our first minimum viable product [MVP]. We’d already formed a well-defined concept, so we needed a team of developers to create a functional application to test.

SOLUTION

Could you describe the scope of the project?

They provided the full stack of development services. They implemented a lot of custom backend code. We handled most of the visual design ourselves, but they assisted with some of the strategic components. We collaborated closely with them on most of the core architecture. They also helped us integrate and configure the system with third-party applications. Overall, most of their work was relegated to the technical aspects.

How did you select Idyllic Software as your solution partner for this endeavor?

We were considering developers all around the world. At first, we conducted our research here in the United States, but they were very expensive and most offered services that weren’t necessarily relevant to our project. We then looked at places in the Far East: Indonesia, Eastern Europe and some, just like Idyllic, that were in India. As I mentioned, we had an idea of what we wanted to build. I sent our project specs out to a handful of potential vendors and received estimates from them. We used their proposals to evaluate how we’d work with them, and Idyllic really demonstrated that they could work with a startup. They understood that requirements evolve and change. We’re agile enough to work with that. They were also people who understand that startups are often on a budget and work with budgetary constraints. It was a mix of technical depth, the ability to work with changing and evolving requirements, and to recognize what our financial circumstances were very stringent.

Could you provide a sense of the size of this initiative in monetary terms?

Our total spend was just under the $100,000 mark.

When was this project completed?

There was a point at which we completed the core development phase, but I stay in contact with Idyllic all the time. If there are questions that come up occasionally, I can reach out to them for support.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

In terms of results, could you share any statistics, metrics, or user feedback that would demonstrate the effectiveness of the work they’ve delivered?

They helped build our product. If you go to our website, for example, you’ll see testimonials about why people like our product and the value that we’re able to deliver. Idyllic was a key contributor to that success, since the functionality couldn’t exist without their services. If we hadn’t launched an effective and valuable product, we wouldn’t even be here right now.

When working with Idyllic Software, is there anything you’d consider special or unique about their approach or development methodology that distinguishes them from other vendors?

I can say that they’re able to deliver on a consistent basis. They have solid talent, and they provide quality-engineering services. They were able to help me ensure that our product was architected in a way that would be maintainable and scalable moving forward. These are things you would look for in any good development shop. In addition to that, the other thing that really drew my eye was their ability to balance those three levers that I mentioned earlier: The ability to work with changing requirements, ability to work within my budget, and the ability to help me identify or really scope out my project given the document of my vision.

In retrospect, are there areas you think they could improve on as a service provider, or are there things you’d do differently as the client before initiating a project with Idyllic?

I can’t really think of too much. The biggest obstacle when dealing with outsourced partners is dealing with people in different time zones. We were able to figure out what worked for us. They were flexible with us and usually hopped on calls during off hours to deliver progress reports and answer our questions or concerns. In an ideal situation, that wouldn’t be something to overcome, but I think they were able to do it well.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

 I am the CEO of an information technology company 

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Power personalized in-game ads

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Idyllic Software to accomplish?

Launch a 2 player gaming app with 2 games.

SOLUTION

How did you find Idyllic Software?

Referral

Why did you select Idyllic Software over others?

• High ratings
• Pricing fit our budget
• Great culture fit
• Good value for cost
• Referred to me
• Company values aligned

How many teammates from Idyllic Software were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

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

Game development of two games together with admin functionality, payment, and anti-hack guardrails

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Successful launch of the two games

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

Very meticulous in planning and delivering to the scope and within budget 

What was your primary form of communication with Idyllic Software?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

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

They go above and beyond for their customers.

Help us resolve some critical issues even if it was beyond the work plan. 

Definitely a great team to work with.

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

No