Iflexion

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m one of the founders of mentavio.com, which is an online psychology consulting platform. We allow people to book a session with a counselor online and have a meeting with the psychologists on the browser through video conferencing or voice call.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Iflexion?

We needed development support to get the software launched. We needed them to convert the beta version that we already into had a stable version.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They provided software development services mainly in AngularJS, PHP, and JavaScript with 1 project manager and 2 developers. They also did a little bit of HTML design adjustment. It’s mainly a desktop platform but it was optimized for mobile.

Counseling is a privacy critical; the core feature was the communication function which included a highly encrypted self-developed part for chat and video.

How did you come to work with Iflexion?

I was browsing a number of sites with IT company listings. I asked Iflexion for a quote and they got back to me immediately. They’ve been highly professional and are one of the best IT companies I’ve worked with. They’re very responsive and have had no sick days throughout the year.

How much have you invested with Iflexion?

We have spent €50,000 [U.S. $58,233] with them so far.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in September 2016, and the project is completed. We haven’t decided whether to continue working with them or to hire staff internally. This has nothing to do with their quality, but rather a decision of our partners and investors. They will decide if we will keep on outsourcing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

I don’t have any statistics to share. We asked them to do code fixing and develop new functions for our platform. Their reliability is very good. We had some bugs come up but they fixed them quickly without needing help from our developers. They’re a very good IT company. They analyzed the code and on-boarded the right people. We’re super lucky to have them.

How did Iflexion perform from a project management standpoint?

We only had project management with them for the first 4 or 5 weeks. Once that was done, we didn’t really need them anymore because everything was on track, so we handled the developers directly after that. We had JIRA and our own tools to manage them and they fully integrated into our team. They delivered on time and the cost was very accurate. There was only one project that took longer but that was because of us.

What did you find most impressive about Iflexion?

They never had a sick day, which is impressive for Europe. We only paid for the hours delivered and nothing else. They’re also super responsive; if we had a question, we never waited more than 30 minutes to get an answer.

When you develop software, you have bugs, and it’s critical if that happens on a weekend. We didn’t even have a service agreement to work on weekends, but they did. If there was a critical bug report, the employees would respond on a Sunday afternoon. It’s nice to know that someone is looking at the problem without any of the bureaucratic stuff in making us wait until Monday. That’s the most important quality of an IT company.

Are there any areas Iflexion could improve?

No. They did everything perfectly. They sent hourly reports and if there were any that were half an hour different, they would fix it. They were very professional.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Our platform is called Evessio (evessio.com), and our organization is called Version Two Software. We're a startup geared towards building the Evessio platform. Evessio is an events management software platform, which handles the management of events: conferences, exhibitions, or awards ceremonies/awards events.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Iflexion?

We came off the back of my business partner managing and running a software business for about six years, with something of a legacy technology, and with lots of industry experience. He and I got together. He said he was looking to rebuild the platform; I was looking for something to do. It was a sideline for him originally, but when got together, we said let's build a business around this.

I had a technology and software background, and so it was up to me to think about how we might get that done. Initially, I was looking to potentially do a fair amount myself. I'm based in the UK, so I was looking for onshore development, looking for partners here when we were looking to grow, and also offshore. In that process of due diligence, I came across Iflexion.

Our process was, we've got an idea, but it had several years in the industry—it was old and needed revamping. We started with a blank sheet of paper in terms of software, completely re-engineering the platform: new language, new structure, new everything. I started by myself, got to the point where I needed support and scaling, and looked at hiring vs. offshoring, and eventually took the offshoring route, which led me to Iflexion.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

I didn't go to them with a blank sheet of paper. I had started the project, as far as the technology went, with a blank sheet of paper, and I had spent nearly a year on my own, selecting a language, database, and framework, and building an early prototype of the project. I had a very clear understanding of where I was going in terms of the technology. Equally, I had a pretty good high-level outline, but I knew what functional areas within the technology I wanted to build. That was my opening gamut, saying here are the specifications, and they quickly got me speaking to one of their business analysts to say, "We need to take what you've got and to break that down." I said, "If I'm going to get into offshoring, how big is this going to be? Are we talking about months? Years? How many people?" I needed to get an estimate from them, and they were very good about taking what I had and breaking that down and giving me a sense of a slightly more granular use case for the product.

My first interactions were with their sales and pre-sales people, and then business analysts, who started to add a bit of clarity, and we went from there. The thing that started to work well for me was I was working with a business analyst for the first time. Rather than interfacing directly with developers, I was interfacing with somebody who could transform the needs that I had into a structure that both I could understand, and the developers could then work with.

Our product is a software-as-a-service platform which manages an event. An event has a few different components to it, and the first and most obvious one is a website. It's a content-managed website which lives on a domain. If you're responsible for managing that, you need to login to an admin platform; you need to define various aspects of that event; you need to create and manage content.

We had some fairly particular challenges that we needed to solve because we understood the industry. Events are things that quickly happen year on year; they're repeating. This event is annually recurring. What we wanted to do is come up with a way that we could easily allow our users to create next year's event based on the current year's event. The idea of cloning and content reuse was a core challenge that we needed to solve. I'd created a version of that, and the team took what I'd done, understood it, and made it two or three times better. It wasn't just a case of delivering the functionality that I'd said I wanted; it was a case of look at what we've got and really understand it in some detail, and improve on it. And that continues to happen as well. In terms of revenue as a business, we're now break-even plus a little bit, and we're just at the point of getting into marketing, sales, growth, and new business.

I was not involved in the selection of the team of developers. This has been a thing that has been quite refreshing for me. You take a bit of a leap of faith when you're working offshore. It was a team in Belarus and Minsk, and I'd never been there before. I went over and met them, and they were very professional and engaging. I've worked with a few different countries, in terms of offshoring, and I've found them to be quite challenging, as well as engaging. I took my spec and said, “I want things to be done in a particular way.” Sometimes they would challenge that and say, "How about this? There's possibly a different way to do that." As a result, rather than saying: “Yes, we'll do whatever you want, and we'll charge you for it,” they quite quickly engaged with me, finding that to be a very good part of the process. But at the same time, it was important for me to actually go over there.

For the first six months or so, I was there two months or so, engaging with the team. I wasn't involved at all with the selection of the team, so I completely inherited whoever they gave me. And that was my choice as well. In previous offshoring relationships, I had decided to take the own team route where they would dedicate people to me, and I would be involved in the selection process. But I specifically wanted more flexibility, and the more flexibility came from not getting to choose who I get, but I can scale up and scale down, should I need to.

How did you come to work with Iflexion?

I found them online. I cast the net fairly wide to about six or seven companies, narrowed it down to four based on the first pass of responses, and then fairly quickly down to one in terms of who I was going to spend time with to pursue the opportunity.

There were four other companies under consideration, one of which I had used in a previous role—a company that had outsourced professionals based in Kiev. I had a very successful relationship with them, so I went to them first, but they didn't have the core language skill I was looking for, which was Python. Two others which I had looked at just didn't give me the right level of confidence. Iflexion’s team based out of Minsk and Belarus gave me confidence about the Python skills in particular, but also the interface that I had with them from the first few conversations and the way that they followed things up quickly made it a one-horse race.

What is the status of this engagement?

It would be in October 2015 that I first engaged with them where they would have written the first code. We're about 14 months into the relationship. The platform launched in April 2016, and we're off to the races at this point.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

This was a very interesting experience for me, which happened very early on in the project. I had my initial conversation with Iflexion, and was slightly tentative about the offshoring aspect of it. I had an opportunity to work with a UK company via a contact that I knew personally. Instead of initially engaging with Iflexion as a first instance, I decided to use the contact that I had, saying to them let's do this for a month. They're based in London, and I'm not far from London, so I thought it felt more comfortable to me, as opposed to going offshore, to be able to get on a train and go and sit in a room with the developers and the project team on any day of the week. We talked about that.

Cost-wise, I could see that the costs that they were going to charge me were really not affordable to me. However, because I had a personal connection, I was able to get to a highly discounted rate. We started the process, thinking we'll give it a run for a month. We were using a technology that was slightly new to them, so it was slightly experimental for them and me as well. I can say that the cost of that month didn't work out. We shook hands and parted on a friendly basis. It was an experiment for a month, and I got code at the end of it.

In contrast, in terms of metrics, the cost of that exercise to go and do business with a local UK company at a highly discounted rate was pretty much double the rate that I would spend on an ongoing basis with the team that I currently have. They were fine, having a very good process and being a very successful local company, but it was, as a startup, unaffordable and unsustainable to me from a cost point of view. Being able to get as far as I have really wouldn't have been achievable had I not had access to Iflexion and the rates that they're charging me.

How did Iflexion perform from a project management standpoint?

Although I didn't have any involvement in the selection process, I have to say, without exception, I've had just a really high-quality set of people working for me. They have a fantastic process as well, whereby they will bring free-of-charge interns on my project, and I get to decide whether or not I want to do that. There's a degree of risk involved in getting a junior in on a project. So I can get free-of-charge resources while they work as interns, bring them on board, they get to have some learning, and I get a slightly non-senior resource, but at free-of-charge, to augment my paid team. Overall in the project, there have been different roles from business analysts to project managers, from senior developers to junior developers, and even interns—all of which I can say that my experience has been fantastic.

In terms of workflows, we used Skype for communication and JIRA as a workflow. We had a wiki in which we captured high-level requirements and use cases. There was a task manager, breaking use cases down into smaller chunks and actually getting sprint plans in place down at the task level and the bug level. I was also working with a QA team over there (a sister company), which is an absolute lifeline for me. We have a great workflow which includes the specification. We're using JIRA to manage the tasks and the use cases, but bugs and testing as key parts of the process are handled by a sister company (separation is good in that respect). From a software point of view, we used lots of communication on email, Skype, and then the task board across JIRA.

What did you find most impressive about Iflexion?

Comparing the productivity and performance of the UK company and Iflexion is slightly unfair in the sense that, while I worked with a very capable team of developers locally, the language and the technology was new to them. But I can honestly say, in my career of working directly with a lot of developers, my lead developer is one of the top three developers that I've ever had work for me, and the capability of the rest of the team has been of an equally high caliber. That’s compared with a lot of different scenarios in my career. Iflexion is a very capable group in general. The level of education and skill, from the project managers to the business analysts and the developers, has been very high.

Are there any areas Iflexion could improve?

The only thing that I have, and it's not a criticism but a choice of my own really, which is, from time to time, they'll move resources around, because they're juggling not only my project but a whole bunch of other projects. From time to time, I might lose a resource who's spent some time getting up to speed on my project. It's an unfortunate aspect of our relationship, but it's not really fair to say that it's a complaint or a negative. If I could afford it, I could keep the resources and I could change the nature of that relationship. But other than that, I really don't have too much to complain about. They pretty much meet all of the needs that I have.

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

In retrospect, I got into this because I have a capability for myself as a developer. I did what I'm doing right now to scratch the itch that I had of going back to my roots of being the developer, writing the code from the ground up, getting to a prototype, and spending the time doing it. But honestly, in retrospect, I would suggest anybody who has the idea to go to them first. Take a fairly raw idea, invest the time with business analysts, have them understand your spec, and even write the first round of code. Perhaps don't get as involved as I did. I did what I did for a very specific reason, and I would do it again. But if you're going down the outsource route, embrace it and be comfortable handing off some of the technology, but be involved, as well. Embrace it, but get on a plane and go and see the team. Don't treat them like a faceless resource. Absolutely go and meet them and see them. I now have had a bunch of time in Minsk and spent a bunch of time with the team, and I regard them as my team, as if I'd employed them myself. That changes the dynamic of the relationship. There's absolutely no doubt. Because they know me and I've had personal contact with all of them, I believe that part of the success of the work that I get is because they know me and they understand me and vice versa. Don't treat them as a resource; treat them as a team. At the same time, embrace them and allow them to run with the project because they're skilled people. They get it done and figure it out.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We are a startup company developing a product that solves issues for people with hearing damage, predominantly relating to experiencing music. The product consists of a smart headphone with many electronics built in being controlled by a smartphone application. It will be put into the market over the course of 2017. I am the founder and managing director of the company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Iflexion?

We needed design services for the graphical user interface portion of our mobile app. We do not have that expertise so we needed to partner with someone. 

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We brought graphic design specifications relaying the app's purpose as well as some ideas around the general look and feel. I provided existing hardware images as examples.

Our initial contact was with the account manager from Iflexion, who brought the team together. We had a kick-off meeting by phone with the design team, the project manager, and possibly some programmers who provided experience around how the app should work.

How did you come to work with Iflexion?

We made an initial request and put together a shortlist of 4 companies. We found Iflexion through a referral from a French electronics firm we'd collaborated with. During our first meeting, Iflexion gave us ideas around how our task should be approached, using design examples. That was an initial decision point around wanting to work with Iflexion. I also met them in Belarus, where I met the whole team.

How much have you invested with Iflexion?

The cost of Iflexion's services has been between $10,000 and $15,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Iflexion in July 2016, although our initial RFQ [request for quote] was put together much earlier. The initial engagement has been completed, as is the follow-up order I gave Iflexion for another mobile app design.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

From my standpoint, I've been extremely satisfied with the work done by Iflexion. I'm a very demanding customer, talking more from an emotional and artistic point-of-view. Iflexion has been patient in listening to me and provided input proactively. The result has exceeded my expectations.

Beyond this, from the initial contact until the moment of delivery, Iflexion provided a very good experience.

How did Iflexion perform from a project management standpoint?

Iflexion was easy to work with. Communication was frequent and the people I spoke with were not only fluent in English, but understood their trade, listened, analyzed, and came back with examples which confirmed that the direction I was looking for was clear.

Iflexion provided a tool called InVision, which allowed us to visualize the designs being worked on online. It simulates the working of a mobile application, showing how different pages and buttons worked. Since the work was mainly graphical design, we didn't use any specific project management systems. We worked off of the spec page-by-page, and I don't think there was a need for a more involved approach.

We have had a number of Skype calls with Iflexion's team. Much of the interaction was done through email, and we also had a face-to-face meeting at the start of the project, where we spent a few hours going through the specifications in detail.

What did you find most impressive about Iflexion?

The way they managed us as a prospective client during the RFQ process was one of the reasons for adding the company to our shortlist and ultimately choosing them as a service provider. Iflexion is very customer-centric and gave us the impression that they understood the requirements from start to finish. I've experienced this with every member of Iflexion's 6-person team.

Are there any areas Iflexion could improve?

I'm a critical person, but Iflexion's services were good. They provided a mix between understanding what I wanted and adding to that based on their own design and user interfacing experience. I could be difficult at times, but Iflexion explained to me why something was important from a customer perspective. In hindsight, this has been one of the most rewarding partnerships I've experienced over a long career. 

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

PreGo International is a company registered in Norway and the United Kingdom. We have subsidiaries in Malaysia and Singapore. We provide payment and card-related program solutions to migrant workers.

What is your position?

I am the head of business development. I also coordinate our IT team.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with Iflexion?

We needed development resources. We don't have an internal team, so we decided to outsource the work. Cost was a big determining factor behind that decision instead of finding internal staff. 

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement.

Initially, Iflexion created a customer portal through which people could log in, check their balance, and make transactions. This evolved into a mobile application and a company portal through which a simple payroll could be managed. They also built the supporting CRM [customer relationship management] system for us. Everything was created from scratch.

On average, there was a team of six people working for us. We sped up some of the development during a two-month period and thus had more resources assigned to us.

How did you come to work with Iflexion?

A business partner recommended them. I read many reviews for their company online, on freelancing sites. One of my colleagues contacted them and we started an interview process in order to figure out if they were the most suitable provider. The chemistry with their project manager was very good, so we decided to proceed with Iflexion.

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

The total development cost so far has been around $225,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We continue to work together. We've had a continuous development cycle with them for one and a half years. Our most recent module is scheduled to launch in July of 2016.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

The first module built by Iflexion was a registration portal that was launched on a Friday. One of our clients was a big, multilevel marketing company. By chance, they published it on their web page, so by the time we came to the office on Monday, we'd already had 12,000 registrations. The system handled that well and has been stable. We haven't launched any other parts of it, but they are scheduled for next month.

Follow-up has been very good from their team. We had some hiccups in the beginning because we changed the scope a little bit. The project became bigger than we'd expected, but everything was fixed quickly.

How did Iflexion perform from a project management standpoint?

We worked with a good project manager. I had constant communication with him. Our biggest mistake in the collaboration was not getting fully involved from day one.

We use Jira for log tracking. They work as an external team and I have communication on a daily basis with their project manager. Any issues can be sorted out on-the-go.

What distinguishes Iflexion from other providers?

They're great in terms of backend logical systems, and they know how to find creative workarounds. 

Is there anything Iflexion could have improved or done differently?

I haven't been very satisfied with their frontend interface designs. We began the interface design portion of the project a bit late, so we've only sorted it out recently.

If there's an opportunity of meeting their team face-to-face and getting to know the designated team project managers, it would be good for any prospecting clients to do so. Constant feedback and communication are absolutely crucial. We went through a very good business analysis phase with their company. This set the expectations for both of our companies and made it easier to visualize our progress.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

We sell clothing to high-end customers exclusively through our website. The customer experience is completely digital.

What is your position?

I am a co-founder of the company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with Iflexion?

We had worked with another vendor on our site. That company closed down due to lack of money, so we were left with a 50% complete website and no one left to continue its development. We decided we should find a replacement partner and began searching.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement.

Our site needed to be extremely user-friendly. Due to budget restrictions, I wanted the site to be a simple and customizable solution, instead of something very complex. We had numerous options provided by Iflexion, like 3D views of products. We didn't opt for this because of the amount of rendering required. Our site had to be fast and simple. I collaborated only with our project manager and the developers would then follow his lead.

How did you come to work with Iflexion?

I found them through the internet, after looking for UK developers. I contacted five other developers out of a total of fifteen companies, but I chose Iflexion because of their prices and efficiency. I based my choice on their previous work as well.

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

The total cost was around $7,000, [5,000 GBP] given that 50% of the site had been completed and all the basics were already in place.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

Iflexion's efficiency, compared to my previous company, was tenfold better. They worked extremely fast, were transparent, and produced a high-quality result. My site is not extremely complex, but I am nonetheless satisfied. Very few defects were found in their work and even when they were, we had them resolved usually within 24 hours.

How did Iflexion perform from a project management standpoint?

I talked to one of their principals in the beginning, negotiating the features that I wanted. He put me in touch with the project manager, and from that moment, I had only one point of reference for Iflexion. This worked extremely well for me. During previous website development projects, I'd have to talk to different developers, but I don't really know anything about this subject. My project manager guided me through the process completely. I was only interested in the price and in knowing how soon it could be completed. Communication was a strength of the company.

We communicated through email and Skype. Every message covered one single task, so we never got lost in the process.

What distinguishes Iflexion from other providers?

There isn't something in particular. I knew what I wanted and they delivered it well. 

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

Eyee Candy has created a mobile app that works as a combination of a social network and a social game.

What is your position?

I am the founder of the company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with Iflexion?

We needed to create a mobile app. We didn't want to develop native versions because of the costs associated with having two development teams. We were investigating whether web technologies had advanced enough to be used as the basis for a mobile app, eliminating the native development process. After some research and consulting, we determined that we could, in fact, do that, reaching a close-to-native experience, instead of a website feel.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement.

We've been working continuously on this project with Iflexion for more than a year.

We initially started with an 11-person team. Currently, there are two to three developers that we use regularly. We interact with their project manager as a main point of contact. One of their lead developers is sometimes present during calls.

How did you come to work with Iflexion?

We looked for different groups that could do this for us and received proposals from them. My technology consultant reviewed each one and recommended Iflexion.

We made some internet searches based on our idea of what the stack needed to be. Based on those keywords, we came to different groups and took it from there.

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

The total development cost has been more than $200,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

The app was launched in October 2015 as a minimum viable product. We've continuously improved it since then, after having a user base and figuring out what worked and what didn't.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

It's been an incredibly good experience. I believe that we've created the most advanced web app within its category. Users don't realize that it's not a normal app, in the sense of being downloaded from an app store. We've received extremely strong and positive feedback from users regarding the technology itself, how easy it is for them to navigate through it and how close it is to a native app.

How did Iflexion perform from a project management standpoint?

Iflexion has been incredibly responsive and fast in terms of fixing issues and being able to anticipate challenges before they occur. I cannot say enough good things about them.

We use JIRA for project management, at their recommendation. We relied on Iflexion to set up the infrastructure and manage the entire process. We used what they put in place.

We're based in California. We usually communicate with them during our lunch hour, when it's already late in the evening at their location. They've been very engaged and invested in the project, taking ownership of it. Whether running an in-house team or a remote one, if the people are not invested in the work, it won't be successful.

What distinguishes Iflexion from other providers?

Smartphones hit the market less than 10 years ago. No one knows what their evolution will be. HTML5 has been standardized and accepted while other new technologies have emerged, enabling developers to create native-like web apps. There are huge advantages to this, although it will not work for everything. A video game wouldn't likely use these technologies. Social media, photo and video sharing apps can be created using this approach. The fact that Iflexion was on top of that and knew how to utilize the technology was hugely beneficial for us. Had we had this idea six months earlier, the technologies would not have been where we wanted them to be. We were lucky in terms of timing but, even more so, we were lucky to find a group that yielded such a good return on investment for creating the product itself. The learning curve was focused on finding out what our company wanted, rather than figuring out how to do it. Iflexion has come up with workarounds for our requirements. My approach was to create an app that would look so familiar as to not show the fact that it wasn't a native app. We planned to be a pioneer for this, and the results have been very good.

For another company that wants to take the same approach, Iflexion is the right group. I don't think that anyone has more experience in doing something like this outside of the native mobile environment. At the same time, they've created a product that feels, acts and works like a native one. It was a tremendous feat of engineering.

Any client looking to engage in the same kind of work should need to know what they want. Iflexion will guide them through the process. They're very good in terms of taking the ball and running with it, anticipating what will need to be done and being able to make adjustments for potential needs in the future. Working with them has been extremely easy.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

We specialize in ticketing and communication for different events. We also offer a platform on which people can talk about our events.

What is your position?

I am the founder of the company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with Iflexion?

I needed a team that could finish some of the features that I had planned but couldn't implement by myself. My previous developer could not finish the project, either, so I needed a new partner.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement.

Iflexion worked on my web-based platform using PHP and other technologies. They worked on music streaming for the site, iframe integration with other websites, search, tagging, mobile optimization, and so on. When we started the work, the site was within its first draft, so they built most of it, around 90 percent. They're currently building two apps for me as well. Their team consisted of three resources for the website and another three for the app development.

How did you come to work with Iflexion?

I researched development companies. Iflexion had the most responsive team. Their manager understood our project, and they offered a good price. Their proposal was the cheapest per hour.

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

The total cost of their services so far has been $85,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in October 2014.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

Thanks to Iflexion's work, I've been able to develop many features in a short amount of time. Because of the ticketing feature of my platform, I have two more revenue streams than before. The mobile optimization, iframe integration, and app development have contributed to the success of the service. I've seen a larger number of users access the site from mobile devices while having a decrease in bounce rates.

How did Iflexion perform from a project management standpoint?

I didn't usually give them deadlines for the work. When something ended up costing more than expected, we were able to resolve the issue among ourselves. There was usually an underlying reason for something like this happening. We used JIRA briefly but, mostly, we communicated through email.

What distinguishes Iflexion from other providers?

They're very responsive and communicative. I can call Iflexion at any time of the day and someone will be available to address my question or request. I'm located in California while they're in Belarus, but they've been quick to fix issues, even after working hours.

Is there anything Iflexion could have improved or done differently?

They could add 24-hour service. It's easy to contact them after hours, but an actual guarantee of this would be great.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

We are a Florida-based IT healthcare company. Our primary focus has been the development of software for the medical and healthcare industries.

What is your position?

I am the chief information officer of the company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with Iflexion?

We needed more development resources for upcoming project work but didn’t want to find full-time resources locally.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement.

We currently have a multi-million dollar engagement for which we've completely outsourced all technical aspects of the development to Iflexion. They are the primary development partners that we use. The project is expected to amount to several tens of thousands of man-hours.

The current development stack of the project encompasses around 15 different technologies, including Microsoft SQL Server with Business Intelligence, ASP.NET, Kendo UI, Ajax, JavaScript, C# and just about every web development, frontend and backend technology stacks. We develop for Bluetooth communication protocols, among other things.

Their team is comprised of about 25 people, including project managers, business analysts, UI/UX designers, and QA specialists.

How did you come to work with Iflexion?

I've had a longstanding relationship with them. I've known their director of business development for about ten years. We had a previous engagement with Iflexion some time ago, so when the opportunity came for bringing a professional development firm onboard for our current project, Iflexion were our first call. We didn't shop around for other companies.

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

On an annual basis, the development cost is around $750,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our original engagement with Iflexion was in 2006. There has been a break in the work, during a time in which we explored other sectors of activity, particularly looking at hardware. We engaged with their team in August of 2015 for another development cycle.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

I receive detailed reports from Iflexion. Every three months, we receive a burn-down of their activities and what they've accomplished during that period. They've hit the estimates of the engagement on time and also within budget.

How did Iflexion perform from a project management standpoint?

I receive reports from them broken down into Excel files. I've never had issues managing tasks or progress that way, even though it's a little rudimentary. 

What distinguishes Iflexion from other providers?

There are several things that stand out about their company. From a financial perspective, being an offshore company makes them very appealing. Their team members are highly educated and they've always been very professional and communicative. We've worked in the software industry for 25 years. Iflexion stands out as one of the most professional outfits. They do everything by the book and follow standard business practices. Their communication has been outstanding. Another thing that I like about them is that they're open to entertaining any suggestions we may have. They understand that software can be tackled in 10 different ways in order to get the same result and one approach may not be universal. In our sector, in order to stay on top, we can't be linear thinkers. We have to lean towards the dynamic side. I've found that Iflexion provides the right flexibility in terms of being small enough to move quickly and aren't stuck to their path.

Is there anything Iflexion could have improved or done differently?

From my perspective, there isn't anything.

A junior business analyst was working on our project a while ago. Whenever things were clearly defined, she managed great. Once we started moving towards uncharted territory, we had to assign a more experienced analyst to the job. The person brought in by Iflexion performed amazingly.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

The site is a resource for any user that is looking to plan an event. We provide them with a list of vendors, be it a venue, a photographer, videographer, any type of service that you can think of. For example, if they're looking for a clown for a birthday party, they can find him on my site.

What is your position?

I'm the founder.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with Iflexion?

My biggest challenge was that we had worked with other IT [information technology] developers before, and they were not getting the job done. The other firms I had worked with didn't pan out. They either lost interest halfway through the project, or they were redoing the same thing repeatedly and making no material progress. They would fix something and simultaneously break something else. We couldn't put a clean site out there. We had a lot of user-facing defects. I wanted to find a technology partner that had the experience to develop a fully functional site, but wouldn't cost a fortune.

SOLUTION

Could you describe the scope of their involvement in detail?

The functional part of the site was coded in PHP, and they used CSS for the front-end. Beyond that, I don't have the expertise to describe the technology. The project scope was a technical one. Iflexion didn't provide things like hosting, usability services, or training.

In time, I've expanded the scope of their involvement. The original site was not mobile-friendly. We're currently in the planning phase to update the site and implement a responsive design.

How did you come to choose Iflexion?

I did some research online and found them that way. I interviewed them along with a few other companies, and I found the process with them to be very easy and transparent. That's when I hired them to take on the project and finish the website for me. The site was about 80 percent complete at the time I hired Iflexion.

Could you provide a general cost estimate for this project?

We engaged them about four months ago, and it's been about $500 a month, so $2,000 at the most. We work on a time and material basis. Iflexion is very competitively priced, and they're very efficient as well. They don't waste time doing the same thing twice.

Has the site been launched?

Yes, I originally launched the site in September [2014], but we experienced a lot of technical issues. Iflexion solved all of the issues as I presented them. We have a couple of pending issues, but that's because we have to determine exactly which route we want to take. They're very efficient. I give them an issue and, within two weeks, or sometimes within days, they have it completed, and they do it right the first time.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics, metrics, or user feedback from this engagement?

The best metric is that it actually works. It follows the logic that we intended it to follow. We expected the site to perform certain tasks and follow a certain flow of business logic, and they've been able to accomplish that without exception. I've not yet looked at any anecdotal feedback from end-users. I personally do all the testing, and I know what to expect. I'm definitely satisfied with the quality of their work.

Have you been satisfied from a project management perspective?

Yes, Iflexion is excellent. They're very responsive to my needs. I have a project manager and a project supervisor assigned to my account. I send them an email and, within 24 hours, I have a response. Considering they're 10 hours ahead of me, they're quick.

Is there anything that you'd consider unique about their practice?

Iflexion is very transparent with what they do, and they always keep you up to date. If I have a question, I get an answer within 24 hours. I'm not waiting around to see if they completed a task because I don't have to babysit them.

What I liked about them is that they gave me the pros and cons of what I was trying to do. If they believed I should take one route versus another, they let me know without trying to steer me one way. They make suggestions, they give options, and then you decide. That makes them more of a thought partner than just another vendor.

In retrospect, are there areas in which they could improve as a service provider?

The only issue I've had is when we had to outsource some PCI [payment card industry] compliance work. I wouldn't put it on Iflexion, I would put it more on the people they outsourced it to. They didn't completely follow through when they should have. I brought the issue up to Iflexion, and they're working on it right now. To their credit, they were not aware that I was having an issue until I advised them, so I don't want to put the blame on them.

What advice, if any, would you give a future client of theirs?

I haven't been dissatisfied with anything Iflexion has done. The only pointer I can think of is maybe follow up a little bit more when you outsource for specific tasks, and not just assume that it's done.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company.

We are a software company that provides sales automation solutions. We've been in business for 33 years, and we've actually trademarked the terminology configuration price quote  or CPQ, which is an industry for doing complex quoting, pricing, and proposals. As such, we've gone through many technologies in our 33 years. We're the first CPQ vendor to be in the cloud. We integrate with a lot of different CRM [customer relationship management] solutions, like Salesforce, SAP, and Oracle. Then, we push orders into various back-end systems, like ERP [enterprise resource planning] systems. We also have solutions around sales negotiation and electronic signatures as well as products around process automation, lead generation, and predictive analytics, leveraged to drive up-sale and cross-sale activities, and building in speed to quote capabilities.

What is your position?

I'm the chief technology officer and vice president of product development.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

Could you describe the business challenge that you were trying to address when you first approached Iflexion?

We wanted to build out a new cloud based data management solution. We have several data management solutions for setting up products, pricing and rules. One of the solutions we have is our robust client server application. We have another product, which is a very light Salesforce native solution. What we were looking for was an enterprise-scale cloud solution that could be wizard driven and really allowed product managers, pricing administrators, and subject matter experts to maintain their products easily through a Web browser, so they could do it globally, in large teams, versus being limited by a client-server implementation.

SOLUTION

Could you describe the scope of their involvement in detail?

In addition to functional development, we expanded the relationship with Iflexion to include QA [quality assurance] testing, so we've brought in some of their testers. We've also had their teams working on other product development in parallel. We currently have two products being supported through Iflexion as well as various testing teams supporting other product lines.

One product is primarily Java-based, with MySQL server back-end, leveraging Hibernate as a caching mechanism. It's mostly REST API [application programming interface]-driven, and then just an HTML5 user interface. The other product line is mostly written in Python and HTML5, and it's a MySQL database.

Aside from having some resources swapped out, I would say that Iflexion really didn't cause any delays. At times, we've had problems when certain people left the team, and other people needed to come on and be ramped up but, other than that, they haven't missed any deadlines.

How did you come to choose Iflexion?

We've had a relationship with them for many years. A sister company of ours uses them almost exclusively for custom software and Web development. It was after discussions with that company's CTO that I decided to give them a shot. We had worked with them prior to my joining the company. Then, in the last couple of years, we renewed the relationship.

Can you give a sense of the size of the initiative?

We've probably spent between $500,000 and $1 million working with Iflexion. We're on target to go more than $1 million by the end of this year.

Is this an ongoing relationship?

Our work with Iflexion is project based, so each deliverable is bid out separately. At this point, there's no intention not to use them on other projects.

Are these fixed-bid projects, or are you being charged average hourly rates?

We're getting charged average hourly rates, but they're bid out at a certain rate. If something changes, we go through a change request process.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics, metrics or user feedback that would demonstrate the quality of their performance?

Given our flexible design, the quality of the code was satisfactory. There were some communication gaps in some of the requests and requirements around unit tests, and what we would like to see delivered. Additionally, there were some problems because of poor overall upfront design on both our parts. If we had a stronger conceptual design going in, I think some of the quality reworking would not have been necessary. Our problems didn't stem from poor coding. We just had a poor design concept going in, which caused a lot of inefficiency in coding and problems with the system architecture.

The designs have been a collaborative effort. When we brought them on, the project was already in flux and had some design, but it was really changing. The right way would have been to stop and develop a detailed redesign, spec out everything that we wanted, including the look, the feel, the capabilities, and how to get those capabilities. But, we didn't do that. We immediately began working as a team with them, and consequently the design was very much in flux. So, there were a lot of things that had to be redone based on decisions made after the code was written. I don't hold that against them. It was just poor execution on our part.

There were areas on the second project where I don't think we had very good communication. Things changed, and we could have done better, but we worked through those problems. We sat down with the account management team and set clear expectations. We've been satisfied from that point forward.

Is there anything unique or special about Iflexion that really makes them stand out?

Even though they're based in Belarus, they have done site visits to maintain the relationship, and I think that really stands out as something that our other partners don't do. They really try to establish a solid rapport and efficient workflow.

In retrospect, are there areas in which they could improve?

The one challenge was that because they're based in Belarus, some of their developers do not have strong English skills and, of course, there are cultural differences. Their communication certainly could improve, both in linguistic skills and in styles of communication. We'd like to be able to reach out and ask questions more proactively. So, there were some cultural things involved but, overall, I've been satisfied with them as a partner.

What advice, if any, would you give a future client of theirs?

I would definitely say that they work really well in blended teams. I actually prefer that methodology because it provides a little bit of overall direction at the technical level. Have a strong design upfront before you engage and really understand exactly what you want to achieve. Have requirements, have mockups and things like that before you engage so you can structure the conversation. Also, have a very strong project manager on your side to manage expectations. We've had that from the beginning, and that's really helped our projects be successful. We're working in coordination with their project managers, but we're managing the projects overall ourselves.