MakeIT

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm founder of Gardening. The company provides smart gardening tools and vehicles

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

I hired MakeIT to deliver software for our smart IoT vehicles

SOLUTION

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

The goal of the project is to develop AI based algorithms and software to make autonomous gardening vehicle. I've found MakeIT in my LinkedIn professional network, discuss terms with MakeIT technicians and quote got fit to my expectations.

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

The goal of the project is to make autonomous gardening vehicle, so no need of any manual work. The vehicle is able to analyze ground, define area and cut grass in the right manner.

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

I hired 2 full-stack machine learning engineers and project manager to leverage my product. I've worked directly with Product guy to validate customer needs and convert them to real and specific technical requirements and interfaces.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

My company hit OKR that I defined initially, so new AI-based software is helping to get better sales prospecting.

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

I'm fan of Agile and Lean startup framework. When I was working with MakeIT, we used both of them. The quick prototyping and cheap validation of new ideas were the key point in our collaboration with MakeIT, so we brought value to end customers pretty well.

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

The development team velocity is excellent, and lots of hypotheses and ideas were validated quickly.

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

I recommend to have Growth department to provide more insights and business development.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Startup Founder

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire MakeIT?

Building Frontend + CMS for a custom shopping aggregation site

What were your goals for this project?

Setup proper Frontend on Vue.js with Nuxt.js for performance and SEO and CMS to manage Backend.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

I found him after long search on upwork and other portals.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

MakeIT build the full frontend and cms for our website. They consulted me from conception phase of website until compeltion of the product. We together developed a concept of technologies to be used and a roadmap. We ended in Vue.JS as frontend technology.

For better SEO results, performance and usability we decided to top up Vue.JS with Nuxt.JS. The frontend is headless, so completely separated from backend and CMS. Communication is handled via REST-APIs and JSON. As CMS technology we used PHP, especially laravel framework, and build a custom CMS which is used to configure the whole website.

The whole stack is hosted in the AWS Cloud and ready for unlimited traffic through Load Balancers and automatic scaling. Furthermore we used a MySQL Database as well as Elasticsearch. The whole project went very well. Communication was pretty nice and availabilty was given every day at normal working hours and sometimes even later at evening. I am very happy with the provided work and will be further working with MakeIT.

What was the team composition?

1 fullstack JS and PHP developer and one product manager (the CEO Sergey)

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any information that demonstrates the impact that this project has had on your business?

Whole frontend is made from MakeIT

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

Main project Idea came from me. Sergey made Project Management to take care of the technical part.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Their deep technical understatement and really good consultancy on technical projects set them apart. Really enjoyed discussion with them.

Are there any areas for improvement?

none i could think about.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm Lead of Java department for communication cloud provider company

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire MakeIT?

We're cloud communication provider. We wanted to find offshore team of developers for maintaning and scaling of our omnichannel conversation API.

What were your goals for this project?

The main goal is maintaining project and troubleshooting of customer's bug reports and feedback from our ticket system.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

MakeIT recommended by our longtime partners

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

The main goal is stiching conversation from multiple sources in single thread and maintaining of voice apps in the cloud.

What was the team composition?

Project manager, QA automation and several full stack developers.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any information that demonstrates the impact that this project has had on your business?

An offshore technical support team handles 40% of support workload.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

Communication is perfect. We have daily stand-ups to keep track of progress in four different timezones and MakeIT shows the capability to always be in touch. Developers commitments are fulfilled

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Their meticulousness to detail is inspiring, and they write technical documentation best of all.

Are there any areas for improvement?

That would be better if MakeIT establish R&D office in APAC region to be closer

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I was Delivery Manager at big IT-outsourcing company at 2017

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire MakeIT?

We found MakeIT as subcontractor to create internal project management tool.

What were your goals for this project?

Recreate user-friendly JIRA for internal management

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

We compared small and medium size software development providers from Ukraine with presense of big-projects, reputation and price.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

We are sick and tired of using Atlassian JIRA and Trello to manage internal processes. We tried to use Asana and other popular platforms. As a result, we came to the conclusion that we want to create an internal platform for project management according to our needs and make the application interface more friendly than JIRA.

What was the team composition?

Team consists of 1) Project Manager 2) Business Analyst 3) Full Stack developers 4) Product Designer

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any information that demonstrates the impact that this project has had on your business?

We successfully deployed PM tool and involved our employees. New product is reliable and user-friendly.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

We have pretty good Product Designer and BA to gather and structure our ideas. Sometimes we were so moody and requested to create lots of mockups and designs to ensure we're on the same page. In addition, bug-free app was main requirement.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

What I like about MakeIT is their responsiveness. We used the uncomfortable JIRA for years with their poor design. Therefore, a good UI / UX was our first priority. I believe that MakeIT did this and was able to provide us with a convenient and most importantly understandable Project management tool.

Are there any areas for improvement?

Make IT was a subcontractor for another outsourcing company. I think MakeIT should concentrate on getting more contracts from other outsourcing companies as well.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm self-employed Project Management consultant for various of companies across Europe.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire MakeIT?

I do a lot of lead generation, that's why I have to collect my prospects in my own CRM WP plugin. I wanted to make some plugin customization.

What were your goals for this project?

I wanted to modify my Wordpress CRM plugin, add new functionalities and make some integration with Zendesk.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

One of my customers suggested to use MakeIT as good Wordpress Development company.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

The main challenge was I had to do double job. I had my wordpress CRM to manage and track my prospects, and I have Zendesk to get issues from my ongoing customers.

I suffered a lot with consistency of data in both platforms, that's why I wanted to make integration. My custom wordpress CRM should be integrated with Zendesk, to get updates from there and automatically change content in my CRM and vice-versa.

What was the team composition?

The main guy was project manager who helped me to gather all requirements properly. Backend Laravel guy made integration in accordance with criteria I specified in Trello.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any information that demonstrates the impact that this project has had on your business?

MakeIT helped me handle problem of incontinence of data, so I don't need to waste too much time for structuring messed up data.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

I don't like to waste my time in empty meetings, but MakeIT demonstrated their ability to understand my needs and bring them to life. Overall, everything was smoothly.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

I'm impressed of MakeIT ability to develop everything fast. I had limited budged and timeline, but MakeIT delivered everything on time, based on Roadmap that we did together.

Are there any areas for improvement?

Nothing to suggest, everything was quite good and reliable.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Sales and integration of gps moniting systems on the vehicles. Consultations about fuel economy and fuel stealing problems in car parks. I am the CEO of this company

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire MakeIT?

We hired MakeIT to create a CRM with Payment Management features and ticket system

What were your goals for this project?

Automate the accountant work and manage the process of interaction with clients and leads, increase the effectiveness of the support team

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

I found MakeIT by recommendations from friends and their previous customers

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

Automation of accountant work. As we work with many different customers and provide monthly subscription services, we needed to automate the process of auto invoicing, payment control (auto disabling access to the control panel in payment wasn't made within the set time, payment reminders etc. Everything should have been synced with our bank account so the accountant didn't need to put everything manually. Also We needed to manage the client relations so the same system had to include all the needed features to work with leads successfully

What was the team composition?

We had a PM Dmytro in our project, but later the new man Eddie was assigned to us as our personal Account Manager. As the project length was quite a big, the team size was changing in the different parts of the project. But we were always in touch with the QA and I know that team of 6 developers was involved in the project at the biggest part of the development process

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any information that demonstrates the impact that this project has had on your business?

Much time and effort were saved in the routine tasks, so we saved a lot of money because we didn't hire the accountant assistant that we had planned on hiring before. Support team also has much more free time now, so we've got much more time for new ideas and improvements.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

I'm a "hard" client - I know what I want and I require everything to be done exactly as I want it. And it sometimes created some additional discussions during the development process. But anyway, the MakeIT team were professionals and always tried to help me, is some of the features weren't important or were too pricey, they told me so.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Good attitude. I know It's sometimes hard to talk to me, but every time I spoke anyone from the company - whether it was Sergey or Eddie, every of my complains were solved within a seconds. They always were polite and cheerful

Are there any areas for improvement?

I think that they need to work on their positioning. Although this company was recommended to me, I looked in the internet but found just a tiny bit of information about the company. I was frustrated at the beginning, but in the end, the did their job perfectly.v

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Experienced specialists of our association conduct individual consultations in all areas of astrology (personality astrology, karmic astrology, compatibility, medical astrology, elective astrology, horary astrology, etc.). I am a vice-president of this association.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire MakeIT?

We're working in astrology for the many years and have our common customers within our association. With that in mind, we noticed that for the last few years we don't grow, at least as much as we would like to. So we decided to get more members and get more interest in astrology among the people

What were your goals for this project?

We decided to improve our relations with all the new astrologists and get them involved in creating a network. The first requirement was to make an Adwords campaign and find our future customers and astrologists from the context links. Also we wanted to improve our cooperation by keeping in touch with our customers. That was hard without a special software so we needed to have some sort of CRM

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

Their sales agent found us in the yellow pages catalogue and called. After a short call we realized that this company should fit our needs.

Describe the project in detail.

Makit has consulted us in terms of getting more astrologists as well as direct customers, and they recommended to avoid Google Adwords due to the specific of services we provide. SO Sergey and his team helped much, as we spent less money on adverisement but received what we needed and in total spent less. Our project consisted from implementation of CRM with auto notifications and follow-ups, setting up our sales funnels and analysis of our current situation. We created a seminars plan where we were telling about our topic and found interested people. Everything was done perfectly

What was the team composition?

We were working with the one PM and she was our consultant at the same time - Alona. Also some tech guys were setting up our CRM system, configured accounts and created emails, but we didn't contact them. All the instructions and tutorials were handled by Alona. And Sergey was consulting us about all the crazy ideas we sent him

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Almost without additional monthly expenses, we doubled our customers list within a half of the year and got a lot of new attendees in our seminars and lectures. Many people were showing the interest in our topic and some of them became our colleagues. From now on the work is going much smoothly and steady than in was before

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

We scheduled all of our conversations but sometimes we had to postpone one or two of them as we have our own clients and have to prioritize work with them. This never was an issue as MakeIT team was very flexible in schedule and always found some time slots for us

What did you find most impressive about this company?

The flexibility. And we were also thinking that we know exactly what we need until we met Sergey. He patiently explained why me had some mistakes in our assumptions and how we should avoid them. That was an intense experience and I never regret listening to his suggestions and recommendations

Are there any areas for improvement?

MakeIT team is great. We are still working with them.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm Product management and business development consultant with experience on the growing of software companies

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire MakeIT?

The scrapping of prospects from different websites

What were your goals for this project?

Scrap potential prospects from Crunchbase, Angel.co and collect on my internal spreadsheets

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

I explored MakeIT has a huge experience of web-scrapping at Upwork based on previous customers' feedback.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

Scrapping function should fetch investors, companies, and decision-makers from the USA and Canada Markets on Crunchbase and Angel.co databases. Function collected everything on the one well-structured spreadsheet to make email further email campaigns.

What was the team composition?

I had small team which consisted a developer and business analyst

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any information that demonstrates the impact that this project has had on your business?

We collected more than 10k potential prospects from different sources

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

MakeIT communication was perfect! I worked with lots of guys from Ukraine before, but MakeIT one of the best software development provider.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

MakeIT provided full-transparency and understanding of my needs. Business analyst helped me structure my requirements, the developer brought all my ideas to life.

Are there any areas for improvement?

MakeIT should not work only at Upwork, but also expand their activities on other platforms. When it comes to services, everything is perfect.