Itransition

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I work for Enablon (business unit of Wolters Kluwer company) as an Engineering Manager being in charge of our flagship product development team. Enablon is one of industry leaders in Environmental Health and Safety / Operational Risk Management software markets.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

Initially a small team from iTransition was hired to offload our engineers from maintenance and support. However, over time this collaboration grew into three full-size development teams working on functional enhancements alongside with our main development team.

SOLUTION

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

We selected iTransition by a recommendation. The deciding factors for us were (and still are) quality, price and responsiveness.

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

The scope of work varies from feature development, quality assurance, infrastructure related work to 24/7 support and maintenance activities. Our team delivers bundled (EHS and ORM) products that are customized to specific customer needs. A new version is delivered every quarter. Technology: .NET (C#, Visual Basic), JavaScript, TypeScript, React.js, PWA (React Native)

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

We work with around 40 people from iTransition at the moment. These are mainly software and quality assurance engineers.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The most recent achievements are:

• Transition to common unified interface between EHS and ORM products
• Mobile solution delivery using PWA technology
• Various product enhancements and improvements

We are happy with the results and timely delivery.

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

We usually communicate via email and catchup regularly once a month. For urgent matters, we use WhatsApp.

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

We simply treat iTransition as value for money. They are very responsive to all our queries and provide excellent people within reasonable timeframes. We appreciate their proactiveness and the way they treat us (always with a high degree of attention).

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

The overall level of English could be a bit higher.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I’m a Senior Computational Biologist at a community-based healthcare organization serving individuals and families in New York.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

We needed the patient data stored within our ERP system to be unified and relocated to our revamped data warehouse. As our patient database was continuously growing, we needed an EHR-integrated ETL tool for transferring patient data into the data warehouse with no losses or corruption.

We wanted the warehouse to contain clean data on our patients’ length of hospital stay, status of health, readmissions, test results and other parameters for further analysis and reporting so we could timely detect any anomalies, identify treatment trends and contribute to clinical research.

SOLUTION

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

We looked through some highly-ranked IT companies and made a list of those suiting us best. We chose Itransition after an on-site meeting as we saw Itransition’s experience and portfolio perfectly met our requirements. Their past clients’ references were also essential for us.

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

On our end, we provided a detailed description of the services we wanted, followed up by a few discovery meetings where we discussed the technicalities, deadlines, and methodology. From then on we got daily status reports.

In the end Itransition delivered the solution that really did its job: the custom ETL tool now extracts patient data out of our EHR without loss, transforms data into proper formats, and loads it into our data warehouse.

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

Itransition’s team we worked with included 4 developers, a solution architect, and a project manager who kept tabs on every project detail.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

As soon as we started leveraging the product, we got the first positive results: the clean unified data helped us spot that patients’ waiting time might be too long occasionally, so we could started acting on that. Overall, there’s much better visibility into our clinical data now.

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

Itransition never missed sending a report so we were in sync at all times during our cooperation. In general, we didn’t have any difficulties or understatement with Itransition.

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

We actually saw how hard the team worked to meet our expectations and deliver on time and on budget. Their determination is what I could single out.

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

We were totally satisfied with their work, so no shortcomings come to mind. Some might say on-site collaboration would be better, but we think Itransition really does a great job as a remote vendor.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am Director of Audit at a professional services firm.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Itransition?

Our company was going through a comprehensive technological upgrade. A legacy auditing system that we implemented in the early 2000s was among the solutions that required rework. Initially, we just planned to go with the optimization and customization of the legacy system.

However, the initial analysis showed that staying with the same system would involve even more investment and could lead to more serious technical issues in the future.

Keeping these risks in mind, we opted for an in-depth redesign of the software and Itransition became our software development partner to tackle this project.

What were your goals for this project?

Our legacy software could be hardly adapted to new business challenges. Every new feature we wanted to implement required substantial efforts, the system’s performance and user experience were also below standards.

We urgently needed to modernize this software. Our system also lacked analytics and reporting features that’s why we decided to fill this gap too.

SOLUTION

How did you select Itransition?

We did online research to prepare a list of potential service providers. Then we sent our project requirements to maybe a dozen companies. Surprisingly, we didn’t get any feedback from over half of them.

As for Itransition, they were among the first vendors who sent us a detailed service offering. They had all the necessary skills and experience backed with positive references, so after several calls and online meetings, we selected them as our project partners.

Describe the project in detail.

As soon as we understood that keeping a legacy solution was not an option, we started looking for alternative technologies that could support the needed features. Itransition helped us a lot at this stage because they showed us all the pros and cons of platform-based and custom solutions.

In our case, going for a custom solution was the most reasonable strategy. Itransition audited the legacy system and delivered a step-by-step plan of the new solution’s implementation.

The team was responsible for a new architecture design, data migration, development and implementation of core features, and the solution’s further extension with custom capabilities.

Since we decided to launch brand new reporting features, Itransition’s BI consultant helped us elaborate a set of essential reporting components (charts, graphs, and tables) that became part of the system.

Testing engineers were engaged throughout the project and ensured the healthy operation of the final solution.

What was the team composition?

We started the project with a business analyst, two software developers, and a testing engineer in the team. However, as soon as the project requirements started to expand, we engaged more of Itransition’s specialists.

At the busiest times, apart from the already involved specialists, the team included a software architect, two more software developers and one more testing engineer, a web designer, a BI consultant, and a project coordinator.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

A well-functioning solution that fosters our business operations today demonstrates the success of our cooperation the best. Since I am one of the active users, I can tell that the new solution is way more powerful than our legacy system and can cover many daily processes, including analytics and reporting, that were missing before.

It is also much easier to grasp, so newcomers who just start working with the software don’t put much effort into learning its features.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Itransition aren’t beginners in software development and IT outsourcing, they know all the ins and outs very well, so all project workflows went smoothly. I would also like to highlight that their business analyst was well-versed in the financial domain, which greatly facilitated communication between our teams.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

They are very meticulous and they pay much attention to detail in their work. Their availability and their readiness to address customers’ concerns 24/7 are also great advantages, particularly when teams work in different time zones.

Are there any areas for improvement?

There was just a slight confusion during the team augmentation. One of the developers who was meant to join the team happened to be fully booked for another project. Fortunately, Itransition offered an alternative candidate very quickly, so there was no impact on the overall project flow.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CTO of an insurance platform.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Itransition?

We needed to have some software development done.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We provided requirements, designs, and desired features. We collaboratively made wireframes. Itransition developed a piece of custom software, doing everything from the requirements to delivery.

What is the team composition?

There are roughly 60 people working with us, including project managers, developers, architects, QA engineers, QA automation specialists, DevOps, business intelligence developers, and more.

How did you come to work with Itransition?

I talked to several companies, narrowing it down to two. I chose this company because of their size, flexibility, ability to scale the team quickly, and the way they stay on top of technologies. 

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent roughly $5,000,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We began working together around July 2017, and our engagement is ongoing. The product launched in May 2019.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We have launched two products, with another two going live in 3–6 months. The product has been very well received in the market. We continue to make changes and improvements. It has been a successful collaboration.

How did Itransition perform from a project management standpoint?

Itransition does quite well. They work with our project manager, planning, re-planning, and refining the agile process. They have been very consistent and responsive. We communicate regularly via Slack. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

A key attribute they possess is the ability and willingness to provide valuable feedback and ideas, challenging my ideas at times. They’re collaborative and flexible. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

Some of the lower-level developers could be more assertive in terms of voicing their ideas.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

My company hosts numerous clients in our cloud offerings. I'm the Director of Software Development at our company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

We needed to move an in-house system to Jira, but Jira didn't do all of what we needed out of the box.

My company is light on development staff, and also has no Jira experience. We needed a company that had personnel who could walk us through how to take our in-house functionality into Jira.

SOLUTION

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

I went to Atlassian's trusted developers site. Itransition was near the top of the list. I interviewed 4 people, and Itransition were very knowledgable.

In addition, they had one of their technical people on the call. This was very helpful, because we started brainstorming solutions right away.

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

We needed to customize Jira and have it interact with an outside software application at a few, key areas. Itransition walked us through the need to move to Jira Server (instead of Jira Cloud).

They developed all of the ties to our external, third-party application. However, we had a mutual design process, and Itransition was not afraid to ask questions (or suggest an alternative course of action, when appropriate)! 

Their candor and insights were helpful, ultimately saving a lot of $.

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

3. There was an initial sales person, a project manager, and a systems engineer.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

They developed every project on time. In the event there were minor issues, they addressed each one in a timely manner. They were very flexible to work with, timewise, even though some of my contacts were a few hours ahead in time zone.

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

I don't know what tools they used internally, but we communicated via Zoom and e-mail.

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

I felt like our projects were a true team effort. They did the bulk of the heavy lifting, but we both mutually discussed the objectives, and walked through potential implementation strategies.

Any time there was something that didn't make sense, we'd either change the design or the implementation. Ultimately, we were able to deliver what was needed for this project, which is always the entire point.

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

They were a treat to work with. I can't say every single project is 100% perfect, but I honestly cannot think of anything important I'd say we should have done differently.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the Founder & CEO of MyAutoData (MAUD). We're building the first worldwide platform for vehicle owners to make money and save money by using vehicle data.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Itransition?

We needed web development and design that would be highly secure.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They completely developed a complicated and comprehensive website for us. That included deciding upon programming languages, databases, how to make it scalable, etc. As far as design, they handled the mockups and layout of the website. The programming was done in PHP and JavaScript.

There are 4 phases; we're currently in the second phase, which is development of vehicle generated data. We'll work on our integrated marketplace and a comprehensive query center for market research and benchmarking shortly.

What is the team composition?

Oksana (Project Manager, Itransition) was the main point of contact.

How did you come to work with Itransition?

After deep discussions with other software companies in the UK and Germany, I selected Itransition because of their abilities and enthusiasm for the project.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent about $220,000 on the project.

What is the status of this engagement?

I began working with them in October 2018, and it is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

It was done well, and they were very organized. Following their rounds of testing, we did beta testing. They didn’t find any bugs, which speaks to the quality of their work. When we went live, there were no issues. 

How did Itransition perform from a project management standpoint?

They're very keen on sticking to the timeline and budget. We mostly communicated through emails because they wanted requirement specifications documented. We had bi-weekly conference calls, as well. I got a monthly report on progress.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their enthusiasm for the project and their ability to bring input to the table set them apart. I appreciated their understanding of the not-so-simple project and interesting suggestions and recommendations. They're very smart and do their best to make the project a success.

Are there any areas they could improve?

While having everything documented helps avoid misunderstandings, it can sometimes slow the process down.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Be fully involved with the team. They're committed.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the president and CEO of a 501(c)(3) nonprofit research and education organization.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Itransition?

We do most of our work through our website, so we brought them in to do a complete site rebuild, which includes backend work with the membership system, education and credentialing system, project review system, and fairly complex invoicing system.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

While the design was largely done when they came on board, they’ve visually augmented our previous solution. They managed the front- and backend for our traditional site. That includes the informational end as well as account management. Within the platform, users are able to take courses, track their progress, and maintain credentials through the site. Companies can also create corporate accounts for individuals. 

There’s also a section of the site that allows us to review and structure projects. Project teams can submit and upload documents, while reviewers can score and interact with the teams. Our invoicing is also done on the site. They were responsible for making this work on the backend. To do so, they conducted an analysis of the existing site. We provided them with a list of changes and features we wanted. Then, they mapped everything out for us.  

What is the team composition?

Their team has grown and changed since we started about a year ago. We started with a project manager and a business analyst. Then, we have contributions when needed from UX teammates, graphic design specialists, and QA people. 

How did you come to work with Itransition?

I originally found them on Clutch after having a negative experience with our previous developer. We didn’t have backgrounds in web development, so we used Clutch to assess the quality of developers through reviews. They were ranked highly on the site at the time. 

How much have you invested with them?

We spent about $190,000 to date. It’ll be closer to $225,000 when we complete the project.

What is the status of this engagement?

They’ve been rebuilding the site for about a year. We started in April 2019 and are looking to finish in April 2020.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

While we haven’t launched yet or received user feedback, they’re a very professional team. I appreciate that they document everything very carefully, telling you exactly how much time they intend to spend on a task and how they will complete it. Their willingness to map everything out and track feedback has contributed to my positive experience.  

How did Itransition perform from a project management standpoint?

They’ve been on track. Any delays have been our fault because we changed to the scope of work part way through the project. They’ve incorporated those changes and taken everything in stride. Their team used Jira to document and track the project. It served as our database for decision-making. We also have Zoom calls that get recorded, so they can refer back to decisions.  

What did you find most impressive about them?

With our previous developer, we’d find errors in their work and report them to their staff. Itransition has found errors that we didn’t even notice at first and proposed improvements on their own. They take direction from us but can propose their own solutions that might be better for us. I found that to be very helpful. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, I think they did a great job.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Knowing what you want in advance is helpful. It would also benefit a customer to understand the amount of work and logic that goes into a complex app development project. Be prepared to spend a lot of time figuring things out.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the director and co-founder of a small startup developing media creative software.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Itransition?

The other co-founders and I were working in a publishing house and realized there wasn’t anything on the market that would piece together editorial and creative teams. We needed a software system for a client, and there simply was a gap in the market we thought we could fill.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Our product was already well-specified and we had loose wireframe requirements and collateral around what we wanted to achieve. Based on our specifications, they determined which languages and services would be most useful for the product we wanted to develop, including  HTML5, JavaScript, Tableau, and AWS. In addition to developing the front- and backend, their expertise was extremely helpful.

What is the team composition?

We had a project manager, two front- and backend developers, a designer, and a QA testing team. They also offered several other resources that weren’t working on our project full time.

How did you come to work with Itransition?

We hired Itransition as a development partner instead of bringing on our own developers. During the sales process, they assessed our project requirements and proposed a fair quote. They were very proactive and engaged with our team well.  

How much have you invested with them?

The project has cost between $100,000–$120,000 so far.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started in May 2019 and the project is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We have a live product that isn’t in production yet. We’re still demonstrating our product with potential customers to determine what else we can improve. Nevertheless, the feedback from targeted clients is extremely positive and Itransition has exceeded our expectations. They’ve developed a visually appealing piece of software that we’re very confident in.

How did Itransition perform from a project management standpoint?

We worked in an agile fashion and had calls on both Mondays and Fridays to discuss progress. For formal communication, we used email, but also utilized Slack for day-to-day chats and questions, Jira for task management, and Confluence as our specification repository.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They think about the wider impacts of development and how to improve the system. Because of their extensive expertise, I trust Itranstion to build the product and create the features we need based on the requirements we gave them. Working with them took a lot of weight off our shoulders.

Are there any areas they could improve?

The QA process could be more organized. Testing seemed ad-hoc rather than following scripts, so we couldn’t really keep track of what had or hadn’t been tested. On the whole, they were both cost-effective and far exceeded our expectations.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Have a clear vision and strategy from the beginning of the project. They got on board with us and delivered exactly what we wanted because they knew our requirements going into the project.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I’m Owner and Senior Credit Controller at a subset of a supply chain & logistics provider. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Itransition?

My company was opening a new office, and it needed to be connected to our head office management system (with multiple modules like inventory, logistics, accounting, human resources etc.)

What were your goals for this project?

We have multiple offices all over Europe that are connected to our cloud-based WMS Partner Portal. As our customers have a direct access to the Portal system where they can view stock and order information, we needed our new office to be operational via the Portal from day one.

In our head office we have our own IT team fully capable to do it, but we were short of time and needed everything fast and 100% failproof.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

I searched for the software consulting companies that have a good reputation for their solutions to sustain high performance rates after the project end. I shortlisted a few and reached out to their past clients to inquire about the cooperation process and results.

Though all the shortlisted companies matched requests, I picked Itransition as they successfully ran multiple similar projects.

Describe the project in detail.

After I described what kind of assistance I needed, we discussed the deadline. I was worried that we were too optimistic about timeframes – and I indeed had to move the new office fully opening date for one month. Now I'm are really glad that the Itransition guys talked sense to me at the very beginning.

Then we agreed on what parts of the project were to be overseen on Itransition’s side and what kind of input I needed to provide. During the project, the Itransition team was assessing possible risks in real time and suggesting time- and cost-saving solutions. As a result, new office started operating on the date we planned, and it started to take orders from the very first day.

What was the team composition?

I worked with a project manager, a business analyst, two developers, and a testing specialist. We met in person, spent many Skype hours together, and collaborated over lots of Jira tasks.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Once our new office received its first order, we felt like it had been there for ages. It successfully picked up and integrated all the processes our head company had been building for years.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

I was worried that the time difference would negatively impact our workflow, but the guys from Itransition scheduled everything to overlap with our actual working hours, so I never had delays in receiving updates.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

I was impressed by how efficiently the team estimated the timeframe of the project. Each stage was complete by its due date, even when there were some unexpected issues.

Are there any areas for improvement?

Sometimes, when pressed for time, the Itransition team made tweaks to the process without consulting with me. Everything worked out well in the end, but I would prefer more transparency.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I work as a desktop engineer for a global cloud-based software company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Itransition?

One of our clients, a global provider of Human Capital Management solutions, was going through their CRM database upgrade. The project included several stages: data migration, normalization, database testing, and other.

The time was limited, and we needed a partner for some segments of this project. We opted for Itransition.

What were your goals for this project?

We delegated data cleansing and validation together with database testing to Itransition. In the end, we needed a normalized database containing clean and unified information. To reduce data redundancy, we also asked Itransition to perform database testing.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

We were looking for a trusted IT company both in the US and globally. In the end, we shortlisted 10 vendors and reach out.

After a few meetings, Itransition landed the contract as they proved most experienced in the services we needed. Besides, we couldn’t help but mention their high scores with past clients.

Describe the project in detail.

We had several discovery meetings with the Itransition team to agree on the objectives and deadlines. We followed a sprint-based project methodology, and when Itransition was done with normalizing, cleansing and testing data, their engagement was basically over.

What was the team composition?

Initially, we started out with Itransition’s project manager and a database developer, gradually growing the team to include a data architect, two more mid-level developers and a testing specialist.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

When presenting the project results to our client, they were fully satisfied with Itransition’s work. They have been leveraging the normalized database for more than a year, and we didn’t have a single complaint on their end.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

During our cooperation, we kept in touch through the project manager mostly, and he proved to be very responsive and professional. Every day we checked up the progress via Skype and Jira and our communication was always smooth.

Even though we were geographically distant, we received timely reporting and documentation which was another benefit of our cooperation with Itransition.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

We really appreciated the speed of their response and their commitment. Overall, they were well-positioned to meet the set goals.

Are there any areas for improvement?

I wouldn’t say they had any.