INNOVANT

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Brain Power is an educational technology company. We develop applications that help students, especially those with learning disabilities or are on the autism spectrum, learn better. We also provide other types of tools to help teachers work with these types of students. 

I am the COO, and my role is to run all of the divisions of the company, including sales, marketing, software development, finance, and administration.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with INNOVANT?

We weren’t able to grow as quickly as we needed because we were having trouble with finding good software developers and engineers. Even when we do find the right talent, that person only ends up staying with us for 3–6 months because a bigger company will offer them more money. We ended up looking into contractors and offshore companies to build a global team, and that’s why we hired INNOVANT.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We started by augmenting our internal staff with people from INNOVANT until, eventually, our entire development team consisted purely of their software developers. 

Now, on top of building out our applications, they run our entire agile process and handle what a product manager typically does. They collect and document requirements, conduct testing, and oversee our DevOps and deployments. 

It’s a very collaborative process in that they meet with our senior members to discuss ideas for a new application or a new feature. We tell them about our vision, and they provide us with options for the implementation. They tell us which solutions are faster, and they bring up questions and different perspectives about any feature we want to create. 

What is the team composition?

We started with 2–3 developers, but now we’re working with 12 people from INNOVANT. 

How did you come to work with INNOVANT?

We evaluated different offshore providers, and INNOVANT was one of them. They were actually referred to us by one of our advisors. We liked their experience and the references that they had, but the biggest deciding factor was the strong educational background of their software engineers. They don’t just go out and hire freelancers like a staffing agency; they’re actually a company that hires and trains their own people. 

We were also taken by the fact that they’re in our time zone. We knew that that would make it easier for us to work together, so we decided to engage them. 

How much have you invested with them?

Over the course of two and half years, we’ve invested around $1.2 million.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our ongoing partnership began in November 2019.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

With INNOVANT involved, we’ve not experienced any downtime in our software development. Our productivity has doubled ever since we’ve taken them on board. 

How did INNOVANT perform from a project management standpoint?

We originally intended to have a VP oversee and manage their team, but we realized that INNOVANT already has their own management structure in place. We’ve since relied on them completely. They now independently manage all of their agile processes, reporting, and development, testing, and production environments through AWS. We don’t have the need for any technical staff anymore. 

We mainly use Jira as our project management tool, and we conduct our daily stand-up meetings through Google Meet. For day-to-day communication, we use Slack.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I’m most impressed by the quality that INNOVANT brings to the table. Some of our past overseas contractors would submit code that needed a lot of reviewing and fixing, but INNOVANT is able to maintain and follow good coding standards because of their management structure. They really think about the architecture of our applications and make sure that these are maintainable in the future. I’ve never seen that level of service where the work is thoroughly managed from CTO to developer.

Are there any areas they could improve?

We did have one hiccup at the beginning of the engagement, but it’s more on us than them. Apart from INNOVANT, we were also using the services of several independent contractors from other countries. INNOVANT offered to manage those people instead of having them report to us, but we kind of resisted that recommendation. 

Those contractors now report to INNOVANT, and we realized that it was actually the right choice. I think we probably should’ve followed their advice sooner. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Don’t try to micromanage everything. Especially when bringing in a development partner, it can be hard to let go of control since it’s your product. However, you can trust this team. The more you let them be autonomous, the better they’ll be able to come up with a high-quality product.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Tech Lead and acting CTO of Source Main LLC

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Custom application development, CTO responsibilities, technical project management and leadership.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

• Improve quality assurance
• Speed up software delivery
• Identify usability issues

SOLUTION

How did you find INNOVANT?

Referral

Why did you select INNOVANT over others?

• High ratings
• Referred to me
• Company values aligned

How many teammates from INNOVANT were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

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

Innovant was tasked with implementing our first rigorous QA process, defining our Jira processes and performing QA testing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Innovant was able to relieve our subject matter experts of their QA responsibilities allowing them more time to do business development and product design. We were able to fulfill our SLAs that were defined in our contracts.

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

All items were delivered on time, Innovant was proactive as well as responsive to our requests.

What was your primary form of communication with INNOVANT?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

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

They work well as a team, but also were able to fit into our existing team structure well. They demonstrated their abilities well on each task.

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

I don't have any recommendations.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Chief of Staff of IEP Solutions, LLC

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Our company creates products to help people with differently-abled brains thrive: our product, fastIEP, is an end-to-end solution for goal authoring, data collection, and progress monitoring in the classroom.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

• We hired INNOVANT to take the concept/design of our product and execute it, making it into a fully-functioning product that can be sold.
• We hired INNOVANT to continually iterate on our product and create features that were requested by our customers.

SOLUTION

How did you find INNOVANT?

Referral

Why did you select INNOVANT over others?

• Pricing fit our budget
• Great culture fit
• Referred to me
• Company values aligned

How many teammates from INNOVANT were assigned to this project?

6-10 Employees

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

Our company was creating a new product for teachers to collect data in real-time, and view progress toward their student goals automatically. The initial challenge was developing a robust product from a lean concept prototype, which was created to validate our CEO's innovative idea. INNOVANT began by developing an initial prototype, followed by a rapid scaling process. 

We started the project with 2 senior engineers and slowly expanded the team. This scaling allowed us flexibility in response to project needs. The next goal was to release a usable MVP as a market test, which INNOVANT engineers developed. Following the MVP, we released a full product. 

Since then, we have been working together with the INNOVANT team to continuously add features and improve the product based on customer feedback and research. While working together, INNOVANT's team suggested significant improvements to our Agile process, improving our overall efficiency. The product they developed used .NET for backend, Angular for frontend, AI algorithms with Python.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The measurable outcomes were: 

• creating an initial prototype of the product;
• creating an MVP that was useable for our market segment to trial and provide feedback; 
• creating a full version of our product that was released to our users (and market); 
• continuing to deliver features that are requested.

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

The project management approach was highly collaborative and adaptive. The INNOVANT team worked side by side with our internal project manager, improving the overall management by being part of our team. They also provided an experienced VP of Engineering who worked alongside our CEO. 

INNOVANT team members attended our daily meetings and used all our tools (Slack, Jira, etc) for day-to-day communications. They showed us a deep understanding and involvement in our vision, suggesting different implementation strategies.

What was your primary form of communication with INNOVANT?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

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

The most impressive aspects of INNOVANT are their exceptional communication skills and the high quality of the deliverables. They consistently showed us that they were open to feedback and willing to adapt to our needs, which was highly beneficial in aligning their work with our evolving needs and preferences. Also, they truly care about creating a good product; they proactively think about the product's future and how to improve it.

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

No, it truly is a pleasure to work with their entire team.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the CEO of Viaaqua

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Fitness, Wellness and Spa Center

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

• have a trusted technology provider
• integrations with other operating systems
• Integrations in billing services

SOLUTION

How did you find INNOVANT?

Referral

Why did you select INNOVANT over others?

• High ratings
• Pricing fit our budget
• Referred to me

How many teammates from INNOVANT were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

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

We made an integration between two systems our new billing system and the Shopping Center system. We stop using and old software for a newer one, in order to reduce our working time and improve our efficiency. Also we can measure in real time our sales and our sales process.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Reducing our maintenance cost and time of an old, obsolete system saves us money. We could start to use a new modern software to attend the new demands of our industry, because we remove the old software

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

Yes, on time and on budget.

What was your primary form of communication with INNOVANT?

• In-Person Meeting
• Virtual Meeting

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

The ability to respond in the requested times and budget. The good disposal in all the process and to solve problems. The human managment was very important to find my needs and made the process very friendly.

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

Our experience was excellent. We recommend them to include more complementary services so we could continue working with them in some new areas.