Inetum Poland

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CTO of a retail tech company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with JCommerce?

We hired JCommerce to create a progressive web app for our users.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

While developing the web application, the team at JCommerce focused on UX design and frontend development. They also completed backend development and configured the AWS. Using JavaScript and HTML, they built it from the ground up.

Their team also developed an API that allows external third-party integration partners to receive retail data. We said that we wanted an app that displayed retail data in an engaging way to users.

What is the team composition?

I’ve worked with quite a few members of their team. Our typical team consisted of a UX designer, frontend developer, and backend developer. We also had assistance with solution architecture.

How did you come to work with JCommerce?

We found them online.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent between $50,000–$250,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our engagement with JCommerce started in March 2018.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Their work was well-received by the rest of our team. They’ve also been helpful on the account management side. We perform the testing ourselves.

How did JCommerce perform from a project management standpoint?

We do the project management from our side, taking on the development resources. Our team does all the requirement analysis. The team at JCommerce meets all the deadlines we set.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’re happy to help with upscaling and downscaling the team, starting and pausing various projects. Some other companies are probably not as flexible in terms of ordering the project on short notice. Their flexibility has been great for our startup.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, I don’t think so.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Get in touch with them.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a manager at an AI company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with JCommerce?

We had a lack of business intelligence (BI) developers in our area. My company sought outside help on a project that we needed to start quickly.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Jcommerce helped us create a tabular model for a system’s reporting and analytics. They used Azure.

My company doesn't have much experience in the area of BI, and they also help with consultancy. We have a lot of discussions about architecture and areas of opportunity in analytics.

We also work with them in areas of more traditional software development. We work mainly in a Microsoft stack.

What is the team composition?

We work with 3–4 people.

How did you come to work with JCommerce?

One of my friends was very satisfied with JCommerce and recommended them. They had good quality and pricing. We tried them out with a small project, found they were very skilled, and decided to use them.

How much have you invested with them?

My company spends $20,000 each month.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in February 2018, and the work is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We’ve been able to meet our customer’s needs, and they’re very satisfied. Our customer appreciates that JCommerce provides new ideas and really knows the business. They are a real value-add. The team is very experienced, and they do high-quality work.

How did JCommerce perform from a project management standpoint?

We manage the project. From time to time, there are situations where we are in a bidding process and don’t know a certain technology. JCommerce has specialists and BI developers in every existing technology.

They give us status updates. Whenever there are problems, they respond quickly. At the end of the day, everyone is on the same page.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I value their BI skills the most. They have a good process for verifying the quality of the resources that they provide. I have a good relationship with them, and we understand each other.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They work remotely. At one point, there were 1–2 guys that weren’t engaging in the projects, but they were quickly removed. We weren’t charged for the hours that they spent in the project. We can trace when they’re not performing to our satisfaction. Those who don’t perform are very quickly removed from the team. From an ethical point of view, they are good and take care of it.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

You need to be familiar with working with remote resources for IT projects and be okay with it. Develop a trusting relationship with their developers.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We’re a company based in Silicon Valley with almost 200 people in Poland, along with an R&D center where we mostly focus on our own products. I’m an HR manager for the company, providing teams for the whole business which are able to address all our plans for the market and the products that our customers need and are waiting for.

We consider ourselves a startup, but we’ve been in the market for a long time and we’ve received investment money. Our whole business is quite dynamic, operating in the IT industry and also offering products for businesses.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with JCommerce?

We sometimes have development needs for which we can’t hire team members fast enough.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

I typically interface with JCommerce to figure out whether they have the competencies we need within the right time. We’re picky about skills and mindsets when hiring, even in the case of contractors working for us for 6–12 months. We still want people that are good fits for our teams. In most cases, JCommerce has been good at understanding our needs and figuring out solutions for us.

We work with different providers through both fixed-price and time-and-materials contracts. Some of our projects prove interesting for their developers as well, and we discuss the scope each time. I always ask them if they’d like to understand more about the scope of the project.

We’ve had the most experience in the Java and Node.js areas. In the case of Java, we try to cut out projects into small pieces, and we give those to JCommerce’s engineers. They typically work with our engineers as part of an integrated team.

We have a core cloud-based backend. JCommerce assigned two engineers for this part, who worked on it on a daily basis for a few months. They each can describe their parts of the system to other team members in order to put together epics and smaller sprints.

What is the team composition?

We’re currently working with three developers from JCommerce.

How did you come to work with JCommerce?

I remember their account manager reaching out to me. She was open and wanted to understand our perspective on what we’re doing, where we want to go, and whether there are any opportunities for them to contribute. I told her that I had some needs, but that I’d had some really bad experiences with providers in the industry. She not only told me about their services but also presented candidates to me and give me accurate data on when exactly they could start.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them around July 2017 and the engagement is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

In most of our cases, we’re happy with their developers’ performance. If we weren’t sure they could help us, we wouldn’t have hired them. We’ve had some issues, but JCommerce worked on all the items we gave them feedback on and communicated about the things we can improve. There’ve been two cases already of us hiring the developer after the collaboration with JCommerce, so we’re pretty happy with their quality.

How did JCommerce perform from a project management standpoint?

We handle the project management on our side, and we include their developers into our teams. They work with our engineering manager, our program manager, and everyone else. They participate in our dailies and other meetings, and they try to remain active team members. They also estimate how much time they need for each part of their work.

In terms of how we’re able to address our needs in terms of skills and time frames, we have a good collaboration with our account manager at JCommerce. She’s my first point of contact to figure out needs and what we can do about them together.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They look at the needs of the customer first and then figure out whether they can provide a solution or not. If at any time I had an idea of what we could do better, even if it wasn’t common for them, they were always open and flexible to figuring out how we could change the situation.

They’re a well-shaped business with fair prices. They also have nice time-to-market solutions so they’re able to figure out quite quickly what our needs are and operate this way. They have an amazing attitude in working with customers.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, we’re very satisfied.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

It’s important to be as open as possible. Explaining the background behind any needed work is helpful to ensure a solution shaped to the client’s needs.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the development team lead for Calago, a software implementation company. We implement information management and e-commerce solutions for wholesale companies. We have business and technical consultants that work onsite with our clients to understand their business processes. The consultants analyze and define user stories and we undertake technical implementation based on that.  

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with JCommerce?

We needed more developers to expand our development team. The capacity we could find here in the Netherlands was limited due to a lack of quality candidates.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

JCommerce supplied us with five Java and PHP developers that met the qualifications we specified. We brought them on for a specific project but with the idea that the work would continue. They’re part of our full development process including design and prototyping.  I do an initial analysis and we discuss it to come up with a solution together.

What is the team composition?

We work with five developers directly.

How did you come to work with JCommerce?

Our recruitment team found them and I set up a call. We had multiple discussions. I made my decision based on the quality of those talks as well as the fact that they had worked with another company with which we’ve done development work. We decided to try them for a few months as a test. We were very satisfied so we kept the engagement going.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent between $50,000–$200,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in February 2018 and it’s ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

They made it possible for us to continue delivering our product to our clients by implementing and expanding the functionalities of our software. They give good feedback. We do code reviews and the quality they deliver is always to standard. They brought experience and knowledge working on development projects, suggesting changes to the way we worked. We took on some of their suggestions which improved our processes and productivity.

How did JCommerce perform from a project management standpoint?

We communicate via phone, Skype, and Google. There are always challenges when working with offshore developers but they perform well. They’re accommodating to be available. It’s more difficult to have a constant stream of contact but we’ve never had any major issues.

What did you find most impressive about them?

One of the things I appreciate most is the communication with their team leads. If I need an extra person or if I feel that there are issues with one of the employees, it's easy for me to contact one of their managers to discuss things. I can call or email them directly. I don’t have to go through a system to make an appointment. Also, when we first started working with them, they were happy to have me visit. They’re a very open company, which you don’t always see with offshoring.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Not really. We had some early trouble with slight delays in communication due to a developer’s illness but it was resolved quickly and hasn’t recurred.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Not specifically other than give them a shot. They're very flexible in regards to making agreements or assigning developers so you can, for example, try them for a month and see if you like it or not. If you're thinking about it, there's no real reason not to give them a try because you don’t have to make a long-term commitment.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the head of digital operations for a company that makes laser cutting machines.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with JCommerce?

We needed outside support for our software development team in order to hit specific production milestones.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We rely on JCommerce for extensive and ongoing C# development within our CAD/CAM system for production. The software they are developing is not a new product but rather an evolution of an existing product.

What is the team composition?

We communicate with the CEO, the head of marketing, and the business development manager, along with roughly 20 of their developers.

How did you come to work with JCommerce?

We selected JCommerce from a field of several other international companies. JCommerce was the best option given their demonstrated expertise in C# development and their willingness to adopt the industrial specialties of our software. The CAD/CAM system is unique and one they hadn’t worked with before, but they were willing to learn it.

How much have you invested with them?

I’d estimate we’ve spent between $300,000–$400,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our engagement began in October 2016 and is ongoing. We anticipate several more years of partnership.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

They have become a very important provider for us. We do not measure personal KPIs, but we can tell that JCommerce employs many talented developers. In some ways, they are more skilled than our internal staff.

How did JCommerce perform from a project management standpoint?

We use Jira and Confluence to communicate, and we rarely have any problems.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We truly challenged them with an unfamiliar manufacturing system, but they have adapted very well. They are patient, they bring thoughtful recommendations, and they steer things in the right direction.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, we have been very pleased with their work.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We’re an IT transformation company in the banking and insurance sector, acting as an intermediary between a consultancy firm and an engineering company. We develop the ideas together with the clients and then we work on the actual development of the product together with our outsourced engineering partners. I’m the engineering project lead.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with JCommerce?

We needed to build a completely new insurance platform for the client. We have multiple teams working on different types of product. For one, we were looking for a partner who could develop the contract system of the insurance company; the heart of the insurance system.

The other challenge was to develop a payment system for the identity platform that we’re currently building for the European markets.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Both projects are both similar from the technology perspective. We're using microtools architecture based on Java on the backend, and for the frontend, we’re using JavaScript. In addition, we use Springboard, Postgres, MongoDB, and the platform is hosted on the cloud. We’re also working on the mobile side, with Swift and Kotlin.

What is the team composition?

There are 25–30 developers, with two main contacts on the delivery side.

How did you come to work with JCommerce?

We found them through a Google search looking for nearshore providers close to Germany. At the time, they had 100–150 employees, though now they’re around 350–400. We chatted and found they offered very good price to quality.

How much have you invested with them?

$2 million.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in June 2016 and the work is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The first platform was quite internal for the company. We went live with the system and it’s now used by the end customer of leading insurance companies, which is significant a factor of success.

How did JCommerce perform from a project management standpoint?

Project management isn’t the biggest asset that they have. They lack the foundation of well-trained managers. Due to that, the developer sometimes can’t succeed based on the goals we give them. They’re a good company with development, but managing the developers isn’t to the highest professional standards.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’re really flexible with organizing around your needs. We have a lot of development requests for resources, to which they react quickly and provide good candidates.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They could improve their project management as it seems the developers aren’t managed as they should be. They lack structure in the work we assign. They need to find managers that are able to steer everything in the right direction.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the COO of Glomo, a software development agency that builds solutions for clients across many sectors globally.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with JCommerce?

We’ve worked with them on quite a few different occasions, but what often happens is that my staff and consultants will either lack a skill set necessary to a project, or we won’t have enough people with a certain skill set. We look to them for additional resources, in terms of people.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

I look at JCommerce as one of our main providers of offshore-type resources. We’ve needed frontend developers recently, specifically JavaScript developers working with React. We’ve also used a couple of PHP developers on backend projects.

Over the last couple years, we’ve had people work with us for as long as six months and as short as a month. Not only for specific projects, but also as extensions of our own development team, helping build apps or web solutions for our clients.

What is the team composition?

Normally, it’s been one or two people at a time.

How did you come to work with JCommerce?

My company has been working with them for many years, longer than I’ve been here, but we continue to work with them because their flexible. Regardless of the skillset, they can always provide what I need.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent between $50,000–$200,000 so far.

What is the status of this engagement?

We’ve been working together since 2015.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Obviously, it’s a massive cost benefit for us; if you're looking at the numbers, they’re offering record prices for the services they provide. They’re also able to give us resources that measure up to a high standard quickly, which means we can meet our client commitments regarding timelines and quality.

How did JCommerce perform from a project management standpoint?

We integrate individual consultants from them into our projects, so we do the project management ourselves, or our client does. I had concerns about someone's communication skills once, and JCommerce addressed them rapidly. The person wasn’t used to working with international clients and they offered to find someone else right away or find a solution that makes it easier to communicate with this person.

They’ve been in Poland for all the project we’ve worked on with them, so we use online communication. We have daily standups with whoever’s on our team, track all the project work on a JIRA board, and use Slack and Google hangouts in terms of day to day contact. All the consultants we've worked with have been communicative because they’re used to working in this type of setup. They're organized, they communicate well, and they all speak excellent English.

What did you find most impressive about them?

For me, it's all about the speed. The reason I keep using them, again and again, is because when I reach out for proposals, I’ll give my needs to five different providers and JCommerce always comes back the quickest. They’ll say they have someone that can start in one or two weeks, whereas other people can’t have someone start for one or two months.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I've been super happy with the people we've had on board. We’ve have had one or two issues, but the team at JCommerce is quick at dealing with things when they come up. I can’t really think of anything.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We are a local consultancy group in northern Europe, with offices in Sweden, Germany, Norway, Finland, and Latvia. We operate in consulting, both enterprise and digital, including analytics, for which we work with QuickView and Microsoft Power BI.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with JCommerce?

We support customers with ongoing operations, performing small and large development projects using QuickView. We have involved JCommerce in some of these operations, given that we needed a European Union partner that could support us at a lower cost.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

JCommerce works with us in the area of analytics and business intelligence for a number of clients. They are an integrated part of our delivery towards the end-customer.

JCommerce has provided services within the application operation (or application maintenance) area. They perform daily availability checks, ensuring that jobs are being executed as planned, without any errors. For any error that is found, JCommerce performs reloads and other tasks. They've also checked the trends of systems and alerts, handling the housekeeping or daily checkup of our environments.

JCommerce also picks up and reacts to incidents that customers face within reports and analyses. JCommerce will pick up those incidents and report them within our internal system, and try to resolve the problem.

JCommerce handles small change requests from customers, including redesigns or new functionalities. They've also participated in larger projects, either as a single consultant or within a team of consultants that we use.

How did you come to work with JCommerce?

In 2013, we were in the process of responding to quite a large bid in the Swedish market. The customer had previously been working with offshore services from a large Indian consulting company. We knew that price was important for them, but we were quite sure that they were not looking for a partner that would move everything to India, but rather wanted to work with someone locally. We started to look for a partner within the European Union who could work with ClickView. After some research and bidding, we found JCommerce, had a few meetings and decided that they would be a good company to engage with.

How much have you invested with JCommerce?

The cost of JCommerce's services has been between $50,000 and $200,000 per year.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with JCommerce in February 2014, and have expanded their involvement to additional customers since then.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

From both our end clients and our internal evaluations, the feedback for JCommerce has been quite positive. The company is easy to work with from a cultural perspective, the people we've met so far have had good skills, and we've had a good collaboration in general.

The only improvement point is the language levels of certain individuals, but most of JCommerce's resources have been well trained and well educated.

How did JCommerce perform from a project management standpoint?

JCommerce has never taken the lead in terms of project management, but the individual leadership skills shown by their individual consultants has been good. JCommerce collaborated very well within the various teams we've formed.

What did you find most impressive about JCommerce?

JCommerce is a large company with around 250 employees, and I know that they have offerings beyond the analytics work we've used them for. From a general perspective, I've found the quality and skill level offered to be good. JCommerce is responsive and quick in finding solutions for our customers.

Are there any areas JCommerce could improve?

There isn't anything to improve that would be in the hands of JCommerce's management. Most of their members speak English well. Poland is experiencing a nearshoring phenomenon, which is showing in the attrition rates that JCommerce has had. People tend to move around, but the new resources we've worked with are fast in understanding our work. This is a general market issue, not specific to JCommerce.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I work at Solita, a Finnish software company that develops customer software and analytics solutions for Finnish corporations. I’ve been responsible for some of our strategic accounts, especially in regard to their analytics solutions.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with JCommerce?

We were trying to find a competent business intelligence and data warehouse specialist. Because there were problems finding enough of them in Finland, we turned to JCommerce to see if they could find some good people for us in Poland.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We talked with JCommerce quite a bit, and in the end, they provided us with a team of specialists working in Poland. They work with many different business intelligence and data warehousing tools, including Cognos Business Intelligence, Informatica, Denodo Data Virtualization Platform, Tableau, etc.

How did you come to work with JCommerce?

Solita has worked with other firms that also have provided niche resources, but JCommerce was the first I had worked with. Solita had worked with JCommerce previously with positive results, so they came highly recommended from in-house. We clicked from the start. It was easy to work with them, and their company’s culture was similar to our own.

How much have you invested with JCommerce?

I would say we have invested somewhere between $300,000 and $500,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

I can't really say when the relationship between Solita and JCommerce began, but my cooperation with them started in December 2015, and their team of BI specialists still works with us. My own role has changed, but I know the team probably will continue its work with us at least until 2017 and most likely even longer.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

They have produced quite a few results while working side by side with the customers and the Solita team. We are creating a totally new data warehouse and business intelligence environment for the customer. The results also have been good since using the Agile project methodology. I can't discuss the results in too much detail, but suffice it to say we’ve both been happy working with JCommerce.

 How did JCommerce perform from a project management standpoint?

Currently, the customer handles the management side, and we provide the specialist resources.

What did you find most impressive about JCommerce?

I think JCommerce has been able to provide us with a high level of expertise. They’ve also been quite outgoing, and cooperation has been easy with them.

Are there any areas JCommerce could improve?

When working with an offshore team, communication is always more difficult than if you were working side-by-side at the same location. This is something we have to continually improve. Also, we haven't been happy with some of the specialists who have been provided, but they have been keen to listen to our feedback and make adjustments.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the operations manager of the Development department of an IT firm specialized in valorising business, data and technology. We have 3 locations based in Belgium, +1000 employees

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

We were in need of extra capacity to upstaff our internal development team

SOLUTION

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

We were in search of a solid partner, based in Europe, capable of delivering competent people

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

Project was a revamping of an existing part of the platform, build on the Angular and .Net stack, delivered with an agile scrum approach

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

1 developer

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

the incorporation of an external team member took a bit of time, but in the end, we managed to find a way that works for everybody (client, internal team, external team)

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

Agile scrum boards, using JIRA and Confluence from the atlassian stack, using the typical Sprint Ceremonies daily stand-up, grooming, refinement, retro, demo, ... )

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

Their availability and follow-ups have stood out in the partnership.

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

decisions need to be made very fast, the flexibility on when someone can start, could be better.