NoName

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I worked with MobileMan on a business case for [a European pharmaceutical]. I was a Business Unit Director there.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with MobileMan?

MobileMan, as far as I know, works in the B2B [business-to-business] space for applications. They develop applications for mobile devices. We were looking to build an application for the pharmaceutical and health industry, where patients could anonymously give information in real-time about their health and about treatments for an ailment they had. Our company could then use the information to optimize treatment protocols we produced. Previously, there was no better method to get real information about how the medicine we produced affects patients.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

MobileMan built the whole front and backend system for the mobile application for iOS. It was built when Apple first released the iPhone with the touch functionality. Our application was specially made for patients who could not push buttons: people, for instance, who had health issues that previously prevented them from sharing information with us about their disease. They could not write and they could not carry things, and so by using a touch device and using this MobileMan application, they could interact with us.

How did you come to work with MobileMan?

I think we found them on the internet. We were searching for app developers in Europe. We invited them, and they made a presentation.

How much have you invested with MobileMan?

I cannot tell you exactly about that; it is confidential.

What is the status of this engagement?

I think we started working with them in 2009. All in all, we worked with them for two years I think. The decision not to go on with MobileMan going forward was not because the work was not good or anything like that; the work was very good, but we had other strategies which we were looking for then.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

How did MobileMan perform from a project management standpoint?

I worked with Mr. Yusuf Erkan and with his engineers, but first of all with the chief executive officer of MobileMan, who made the presentation and the strategy. Everything was very quick and professional. I think five or six engineers were working on the project.

What did you find most impressive about MobileMan?

The performance was perfect. The application was perfect. The look and feel of the application was very good and the communication was good as well.

Are there any areas MobileMan could improve?

No, I don't have any criticism for them.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Our company was a public company based in Switzerland. It was a startup division trying to gain market share in VoIP [voice over internet protocol] with several products. One was a messaging product. The other one was a VoIP solution to call people on mobile and desktop. It was a couple of years ago, so the market was not that well-developed. Skype existed, but on mobile, there was no alternative calling solutions available.

I was responsible for product marketing and product management. I was the interface between development and what the market needs.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with MobileMan?

We wanted to expand. Our founders had encryption technology. We wanted to use that [encryption technology] across different platforms. For example, with the Blackberry platform, we didn’t have the experience there to really make it possible on the different operating systems or devices. There’s some complexity involved when it comes to how to use the microphone and the speaker. MobileMan was very helpful. They provided a proof of concept and then actually made a working prototype, allowing us to enter this market across several device platforms. They were an external development team working closely with our internal development team.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They did backend development. Their job was to use the technology that was provided and to make use of this encryption technology on a different platform - a different device operating system. The focus was on Blackberry. They helped some with Android as well. I remember one person well, who was the lead developer that worked on interfacing with our development team. There must have been 2 - 4 developers involved. They had resources where they could scale up if they needed to.

How did you come to work with MobileMan?

We approached each other. Then, MobileMan pitched to create this solution. I cannot say how it all came about.

How much have you invested with MobileMan?

I think it was probably around 150,000 Swiss Francs [US$ 152,000 approx.]

What is the status of this engagement?

It was about six years ago. I left the company in December 2010. It was still going on then. I was involved for 8 months.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We had some commercial trials. Since it hadn’t been done before, it was kind of tricky. What we’re used to now is that you have to have your phone and you have applications on your phone that interact with it. Back then, a phone was not designed to do that. They overruled this behavior [the split between phone and applications] to use the speaker and the microphone for different purposes and to be able to communicate using the data stream instead of the voice channel. Even managing to get the working client [device] was kind of new back then. It was a successful launch. The company still exists and still does the same work. Blackberry is not as much in focus, though.

How did MobileMan perform from a project management standpoint?

It was a good way of interacting. The information flow was good. There were some demonstrations and presentations. I remember there were no problems meeting deadlines. The first period was uncharted territory.

What did you find most impressive about MobileMan?

What I really liked was how they approached things. They said, “we’ll try it and we’ll make it work”. They actually succeeded. They were very solution oriented.

Are there any areas MobileMan could improve?

Not as far as I remember.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Blaser Swisslube is a chemical company making metal working fluids. One is water based and one is oil based. The company is 75 years old. It’s a leader in technology. We provide special fluids to increase productivity for customers.

I was in charge of project management.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with MobileMan?

We were looking for a strategic advantage in pushing productivity for our customers. We were talking to MobileMan to help us create software for [an analytical tool that we use to interact with prospects and clients.]

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

It’s a totally custom made piece of software for iPad and the web. They made the proposals for the input masks and for the output user interface. It was reviewed by our corporate identity department to make sure it fit with our corporate identities. It integrates with CRM [customer relationship management] solutions. We have the CRM from Microsoft. The software is pulling customer data from the database of Microsoft Dynamics, so you don’t have to manually input all the customer data. It’s also using the data of Microsoft Dynamics to store all the information. The tool includes a database to store the information, but it’s then transferred to Microsoft Dynamics. 

How did you come to work with MobileMan?

The president of MobileMan is a friend of our chairman of the board. He was referred over to me to see if he would be suitable in doing the job. He proved to understand our strategy quickly.

How much have you invested with MobileMan?

We have spent 1.2 million Swiss Francs [USD $1,225,000.].

What is the status of this engagement?

We’ve been working with them for two years. It’s ongoing. The software is never finished!

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

It definitely increases business. It’s a very helpful tool in convincing the customer to work with our specialists. It’s a much more professional approach then when you come with paper and start writing down data. It’s very successful. It’s now being used by our salesforce worldwide. That’s over 200 salesmen.

How did MobileMan perform from a project management standpoint?

We were interfacing with one man. Sometimes you talked to the programmers. They used a software for recording all our requests. We could go into the tool and see where it is in the process. It was very professional. There were four or five developers working on the project.

What did you find most impressive about MobileMan?

It was exceptional how they understood our strategy. It’s mainly pure technical strategy, and they understood it quickly and used that knowledge to help us develop the right solution. That was really astonishing from an IT company.

Are there any areas MobileMan could improve?

I don't like using the software to track the progress as much. It was more to do with me. I prefer personal interface, but that has nothing to do with them. I think it’s very professional how they do things.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I have been working in the company RWE AG for two and a half years. It is based in Košice, Slovakia. We had been working on developing internet tools. Originally, our development team was about 12 people. Later, we made some changes to the team based on our changing requirements.

I lead a small team of developers in the IT office in Košice.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with MobileMan?

In 2008, we had been using some tools for project and task management, and we had some problems in achieving better efficiency in the development process. My colleague and I had been searching for experienced companies that could show us how to evolve the development process and our project management. At the time we had been using a bug viewer for bug tracking and backend task management and Microsoft Project for the project management. There is also some complexity to it - we had problems connecting all the tasks to issues back with Microsoft Project. We are trying to solve the problem of efficiency and speed.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

For us, it’s really been design and development. They have also helped us with product management. In the beginning, we did quality assurance [QA] with them. Their engineers still participate in the QA process, but we have QA in-house now. They work right alongside with our team. In the beginning, we had about 1.5 people from them, but it got up to three full-time resources.

We were using Microsoft Project originally, and they helped us migrate to Jira and Confluence.

How did you come to work with MobileMan?

A colleague gave us information about MobileMan. Initially, I was looking for a company with good Rails experience. We looked at several other companies, and we were looking for a company in the States at first. However, we found that even if they were several thousand miles away, we liked them more than companies that were more local. What really attracted me was the quality of questions they asked. Their preparation was great. If someone made an inquiry, they came back and asked really good questions about customer discovery.

They asked a lot of business questions to help us fine-tune the product vision whereas most people ask us about our budget, but MobileMan wanted to understand how they could help. It was more consultative than most of the other firms that we reached out to. They didn’t feel like contractors, they felt like team members.

How much have you invested with MobileMan?

More than $100,000 in the first two years.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started in 2008. It’s an ongoing engagement. Our last release was in October, and we’re currently testing a release that will hopefully get pushed out in the next two to three weeks.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

I don’t have quantitative metrics. However, in the time since we started the company, we’ve hired a number of engineers who have just not been able to match the quality we get from MobileMan. We hired a guy last year who was highly regarded, and he was a good engineer, but hours after he deployed a new feature, the bug reports would come piling in. It also took him two times longer to get the job done.

MobileMan is kind of rigid in their process. When a feature is released and it’s done, it just works. They’re very thorough and ask a lot of good questions upfront before they start writing any code. So in the beginning, it seems a bit slower because they ask a lot of good questions, but in the final analysis, it’s a good combination of quality and speed.

How did MobileMan perform from a project management standpoint?

They did very well - they were very organized.

What did you find most impressive about MobileMan?

I think one of the things they do really well is just embed themselves into the company. They look at themselves as an extension of our engineering team, not as contractors. They take ownership. They build things that will work hopefully forever. They don’t think of it as just building a feature, marking it as done, and collecting their money. They really think about the long-term. If there’s one thing they’re really good at, it’s taking initiative. They want to know how the business is doing and they want to know what the business’s priorities are; they don’t view their job as just pushing code and pushing features.

Are there any areas MobileMan could improve?

In the beginning, it seemed like their processes were very rigid. They wanted every single item on a checklist checked off. Sometimes things can take longer because they want to follow a tried and true process. The positive to that is that things always get done the right way.