Jalasoft

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the VP of product development at Jaggaer, a SaaS e-procurement provider. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Jalasoft?

We needed software engineers and QA resources. 

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Jalasoft has augmented our team with software engineers, primarily in Java, although we also have a very small contingent of PHP developers. Jalasoft also provides functional QA, manual testing efforts, automated QA, and performance testing.

Jalasoft has their own training and mentoring programs for new employees who will be working on our project. Once they are on board and have gone through Jalasoft’s process, they receive training and mentoring from the existing Jalasoft team and Jaggaer full-time employees.

Jalasoft’s team works in the realm of Java, JSP, HTML, and JavaScript, so we expect them to have the full range of skills necessary to do both front- and backend development. We handle UX and mock-ups ourselves.

For QA, Jalasoft uses a test case management tool called SpiraTest. We also use Jira for ticket management and Selenium for automation. Jalasoft’s resources are organized into Scrum teams that are partnered with onshore resources, including an onshore product owner. They are responsible for delivering three major releases throughout the year, one in March, one in July, and one in November.

What is the team composition?

We have around 65 people from Jalasoft assigned to our project. 

How did you come to work with Jalasoft?

Several years ago, our company was acquired by a private equity firm that had done business with Jalasoft previously and recommended that we consider using Jalasoft as a replacement for our existing outsourcing provider. 

How much have you invested with them?

We have about a $2.5 million investment annually with Jalasoft. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in September 2018, and the engagement is ongoing. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Jalasoft's quality work has definitely helped us cut costs for engineers and QAs, at least compared to the cost of hiring US-based engineers. One of the things I really like about Jalasoft is that they actually act as an augmentation to our onshore team on a long-term basis. Jalasoft’s engineers have built up subject matter expertise on both the problem domain and the technical domain.

Furthermore, Jaggaer has a large proprietary software stack, and it requires quite a long onboarding period for any engineer to fully understand the framework. It’s super beneficial to us that our Jalasoft partners are around for the long term, so we don’t get a lot of churn in our Jalasoft team. 

They've developed all sorts of institutional knowledge that has helped accelerate development. If we had to worry about hiring or onboarding new engineers frequently, that would slow productivity down. However, with our long-term engagement, we benefit from all the institutional knowledge that gets built up.

Jalasoft provides junior —, mid-, and senior-level engineers, and their skills are appropriate. For the most part, we’ve had really good results from Jalasoft’s team. 

Moreover, Jalasoft has been very accommodating when we’ve identified areas of challenge. They’ve either moved people off the project and moved others on or put in place mentoring or coaching programs. I’m very pleased with the way Jalasoft reacts when things aren’t going quite as expected. For the most part, we’ve been very pleased with the quality of engineers and QAs that we get.

How did Jalasoft perform from a project management standpoint?

Jalasoft delivers work on time and on budget. Like any other employee, they are expected to deliver their user stories or features on time as part of that major release. Jalasoft does just as well as their onshore counterparts in delivering those features on the timelines they promised. They’ve done a great job of estimating the work and delivering it reasonably close to their estimates.

We communicate well with them. We primarily rely on Microsoft Teams for communication, and email is another choice.

One of the nice things about our team being in Bolivia is that they are in the same time zone as their onshore counterparts, which makes real-time communication very easy. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

We sometimes have challenges with communication. English is a second language to many of Jalasoft’s employees, and they do a really good job of screening and ensuring that employees have at least a working knowledge of English. There are some times when we struggle a bit. It’s not any kind of show-stopping thing, and we’re able to work through it. If there’s an area of weakness, it’s the language barrier, but it's not a major problem.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Don’t treat Jalasoft as short-term hired guns. They work best when you immerse them in your existing teams and partner with them rather than hand them a turnkey project.

You can try handing off an entire feature or set of features to outsourcing organizations, and you will find that you work much better when partnered with somebody who is immersed in your structure and becomes part of your team for the long term. 

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I'm the former VP of R&D for the nonprofit division at a software company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Jalasoft?

We needed staff augmentation services. Our goal was to reduce costs and ramp-up time management that we needed to manage big teams.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Jalasoft provided staff augmentation services, mainly R&D resources. We had some developers in our local market and different locations around the US, and Jalasoft augmented those teams with developers from Bolivia, Mexico, and other places. Jalasoft helped us build a diverse nearshore team and also provided management for those people. Jalasoft was required to onboard new staff members before they were billable, so we didn’t have to build that service with our management team.

Initially, Jalasoft worked on several projects. On each project, the team would bring in their top architect, engineer, or project manager to learn the product. We would provide training to that person just like we would to a new employee. Those people would then build their own onboarding program and learn more on their own.

Jalasoft was able to streamline the onboarding process by creating onboarding techniques. The team had phased learning training calendars, and they recorded training and let teammates rewatch those recordings. Jalasoft intervened heavily after the recording and would train resources on newer things they hadn’t recorded yet. Jalasoft was comprehensive about getting the people up to speed. If a teammate didn't get up to speed in time, Jalasoft would replace them with somebody who could. 

We required developers with .NET programming skills. In the end, we had a new project that needed a completely different stack. We required professionals with knowledge in MySQL, LAMP stack, Python, and Ruby on Rails. Jalasoft was able to find people with these technology skills. Some of them developed courses for that and taught people that technology.

What is the team composition?

At one point, I had about 50 Jalasoft employees under me. If you added them all up, I probably had over 100 employees from Jalasoft work with me over the past 15 years.

How did you come to work with Jalasoft?

We started working with Jalasoft 15 years ago. It was a direct referral from one of our board members. At the time, outsourcing was new and wasn’t like it is now, where you go to the cheapest job market. Jalasoft was a capable organization that could provide significant cost savings and help us in many areas.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent around $1–$2 million yearly. Overall, we spent well over $10 million.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from June 2011–April 2025.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Jalasoft helped us save time and reduce costs. The team's work met my expectations.

At first, I wasn’t sure about Bolivian developers and their quality of work, but they could do the job. Jalasoft was consistent and tried hard on everything. If they weren’t cutting it, the manager would pull them out and put them somewhere else. Sometimes people weren’t cut out to work at Jalasoft, so they would let them go. After I got to a point where I trusted Jalasoft, I didn’t have to monitor teammates constantly; they did it for me.

How did Jalasoft perform from a project management standpoint?

Jalasoft delivered the work on time and on budget. Projects didn’t always come out on time, but it wasn’t the workers' fault. It was more the management team. We were kind of pushed to say we would get something done before we could get it done. The R&D team would do what we told them to do, but they would also bring up concerns.

In the end, the work that was done was still on time, which was what management had expected. The R&D team would agree to it and then get it done in that amount of time. Most of the time, that was the case unless we had a scope increase.

We communicated through Microsoft Outlook email and Microsoft Teams. We also used Azure DevOps, and Jalasoft was probably some of the best folks I had worked with who knew how to use it. We also used Jira in some of the newer projects.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Their communication at first wasn’t as good. They would give us folks who couldn’t speak English as well as we would hope, so it was hard to communicate with them. Jalasoft would bring in another person who could speak better, and they started making a different requirement for English speakers. They had to be fluent and able to articulate ideas in English. That became a problem over the first five years, but Jalasoft resolved it.

After that, if they had English speakers or people who could barely speak English, they kept them in a technical role where they didn’t really need to speak too much directly to the folks. They started putting leads in charge of little groups, and those leads would speak for that group. They would also own that group’s metrics and any other things we needed them to account for.

Another weakness was the pricing area. They raised the prices every year, and it was a big surprise. In the end, when we were trying to save big costs, that became a pain point. I’m sure it was a pain point on their end, too, because they had rising costs, and we weren’t willing to go up on costs. That was probably always going to be a problem with any organization.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Know your requirements and how long you want them to augment your staff. If you want them to augment your staff as a permanent fixture of your team, or if you need a finite project with a start and an end date that is very specific. If you can define your project with a definite start and end date, you can probably be very successful.

Be ready to execute on that model. If you go with the no-end-date model, at least give it some timeframe. I would also recommend that you trust but verify. You might want to trust Jalasoft, but you may want to verify that they’re getting you the results that you need.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We help school administrators rise to the challenges of today while building the foundation for a better tomorrow. Improving efficiency, optimizing performance, and managing compliance through our suite of administrative, financial, and nutritional solutions.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Jalasoft?

We needed help with automation building and testing.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Jalasoft originally joined to help us build automation for our company from scratch. First, they came in and quickly learned about our products to come up with a plan. Within two weeks, they started showing us results and explaining where we were headed towards.

However, as we’ve acquired more companies, we’ve also required Jalasoft’s support because our demand for testing has grown. A few of the companies we’ve acquired didn’t have any QA or automation processes in place, so Jalasoft has also helped us with that, turning their involvement into a long-term partnership. Now, they’re part of our team.

What is the team composition?

QA engineers, testers, automation engineers, DevOps engineers, lead engineers, and a manager.

How did you come to work with Jalasoft?

Recommendation

What is the status of this engagement?

Late October 2020

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Jalasoft has taken our team to the next level in efficiency, scalability, and professionalism. We’ve been able to merge our resources and work together as one team towards the same goals. Their team is great at communicating opportunities for improvement and any potential risks and blockers with ongoing projects. Jalasoft has also played a huge role in innovation for not only our team but that of others within our R&D departments.

How did Jalasoft perform from a project management standpoint?

Jalasoft performs very well. They’re always timely and even ahead of schedule; they’ve always exceeded our expectations. We’ve worked with them for a long time, and they’ve consistently shown up and done their work.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Jalasoft’s work ethic is impressive. Additionally, I’ve been really impressed with their quality of work, communication skills, and overall presentation.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, they’re amazing.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Allow Jalasoft to innovate and listen to their ideas.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

My role was Senior Director, Product Engineering. One of my responsibilities was to manage the Jalasoft contract. Another was to manage software teams that included embedded Jalasoft Engineers.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Jalasoft?

We needed python engineers, testers, automated testers, and React/Node stack UI engineers.

SOLUTION

How did you select this agency and what were the deciding factors?

The contract was in place before I took over.

Describe the project in detail and walk through the stages of the project.

The staff augmentation project was continuous. Our environment was a large scale agile Product Engineering shop. When I left the project, we had over 60 Jalasoft team members on teams delivering working software to production. The Jalasoft team members were involved from design through production delivery and support.

Describe the recruitment process in detail.

Recruitment with Jalasoft is a world-class process. Due to their university system and their ability to train engineers in the technologies we need, is invaluable. Once a candidate has advanced through their system, they can also shadow teams and learn team nuances prior to joining. As a result, it is very rare for someone to join a team and not be a solid fit.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Attrition rates in tech have been a huge challenge the past few years. Jalasoft was not immune to this, however, their attrition rates were lower than our own.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Jalasoft team members were considered a full member of the team. Some expectations were slightly different due to their average experience being less than my team (primarily senior engineers). Design and architecture leadership were two areas we expected less in. Even then, there were some exceptional engineers who had these capabilities too.

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

While I managed the contract, we had rates that I could brag about, alongside delivery and performance results that outpaced those rates, consistently. Their management support was strong and were invaluable to me in my role. Rate conversations felt more like a partnership than the typically painful talks we have all had with vendors.

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

Proactive cybersecurity reports would build confidence. What has been done, what’s being improved and what future steps are planned.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

PitchHub is a video marketing company, and we have a fast web app that customers can use to design their videos. We provide them the tools like scriptwriting, media management, and a professional video editing service.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Jalasoft?

We wanted to build a team that can work closely within US time zones. Additionally, as part of developing a web app, we needed software Fullstack developers to focus on front- and backend development.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

For the development, we use a PHP backend with AWB infrastructure, and JavaScript React on the frontend. For the UI design, the drawings are done in an app called Sketch, and the collaboration occurs in InVision.

What is the team composition?

Right now, we have one Fullstack developer and one UI/UX designer.

How did you come to work with Jalasoft?

Another company that had used Jalasoft’s services in the past, highly recommended them because of the way they do their certification training. Jalasoft makes sure that the people have certain levels of software development knowledge, so they can maintain and help them grow their careers. The company’s recommendation stuck to the back of my mind when we were looking around to relocate our resources that are closer to our time zone.

How much have you invested with them?

We spend around $20,000 a month.

What is the status of this engagement?

The partnership started in June 2021 and it’s still ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Their work has had a positive impact on our company. Because of the closer timezone, I’m able to reliably spend at least 1–2 hours a day with the developer, to accelerate and help them get them to where they can be productive. Additionally, the partnership also lets us take on tasks that are very hard to describe, so we go further than someone who doesn’t have the same time zone advantage.

Moreover, I’m able to garner more of their services for the budget, and that lets us take on bigger challenges and problems.

How did Jalasoft perform from a project management standpoint?

For the engineering and product development work, I’ve been very happy because I feel like I have top-notch people who are very hard to find in any region — they get a lot done with minimal amounts of management.

The other thing that’s worth mentioning is the management interface. I have a positive collaboration experience with the management level, especially when it comes to schedule costs, capabilities, and strategies.

For the whole project management space, we use Trello, and for the communication, we use Slack and Zoom for live meetings.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We’re impressed with the management interaction we have with them. I believe that’s easy to overlook considering how important it is.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I don’t have anything that comes to mind.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Department VP of ECI

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

We sell ERP and e-commerce solutions while being the industry experts for small to medium-sized businesses.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

• Expertise in ERP application

SOLUTION

How did you find Jalasoft?

Referral

Why did you select Jalasoft over others?

• Close to my geographic location
• Referred to me

How many teammates from Jalasoft were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

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

Working with team to learn application and be able to contribute to the the entire team's success.   

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Being able to understand a monolith ERP system and contribute to the team's success. 

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

yes, they delivered as expected and met the team's goals.. 

What was your primary form of communication with Jalasoft?

Virtual Meeting

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

Their ability to find qualified candidates for the technology needed stands out.

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

It has got a lot better but continue discussing their opinions and give their expertise.