Oak-Tree Technologies

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the the technology director for a software consultancy specializing in custom solutions in the areas of commerce, marketing, and sales.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Oak-Tree Technologies, and what were your goals?

We hired Oak-Tree to help us develop a Django REST API for a custom B2B marketplace web app we were developing. We needed a high quality back-end, including a robust schema and API that would reliably handle payments and logistics, and all other data data operations.

SOLUTION

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

We interviewed Michael, the lead developer for the project, and we were impressed by his professionalism, his knowledge of the tech involved, and his solid academic background in Computer Science.

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

They developed a Django REST API featuring complex features such as payments and a custom integration with our logistics partner over SOAP, which automated package pickups and deliveries across the country. They used clean and modern Python throughout. The system also featured Celery and Redis as task runners, Cloudwatch logging, and was deployed on Amazon Web Services, displaying a great performance on our tests.

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

A single lead developer. He was very self-directed and made good recommendations not only at the technical, but also project-management level, ensuring our success.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The resulting codebase was conforming to PEP-8 style guidelines, everything was working, test coverage was adequate, deployment was achieved with a single command, and despite running on some of the lowest tier of infrastructure in AWS, the API was extremely fast, resulting in a great, low-latency UX for our users.

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

We managed the project primarily via Trello. We kept an open line through chat and scheduled up to three stand-up video calls per week on the mornings. Communication and responsiveness was excellent throughout the project, there really wasn't a day where we couldn't get hold of our lead dev and he was really proactive in telling us when he was taking breaks during to national holidays, etc. New features were delivered quick and the timelines were respected, there were some delays due to external factors - primarily difficulties with the logistics partner - but none of it was the responsibility of the dev team, and even with all that, delivery times were acceptable for a software project of this complexity.

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

It's a pleasure working with communicative and proactive experts in computer science and software engineering.

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

I do not think so. Project met some difficulties as with most software projects, but we do not attribute any of them to the team.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm a Senior Business Analyst and Product Owner at AdPartner, a digital advertisement network, operating in Ukraine and reaching tens of millions unique users per month.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Oak-Tree Technologies, and what were your goals?

Since the impending deprecation of third party cookies in Chrome resulting in inability of cross site user identification and channel attribution, our company was looking for the alternatives able to provide high quality ad services to our customers. One of the alternatives , as we see it, is contextual ad targeting. To enable this feature we needed the basic prerequisite: to understand the content of webpages where our ads are placed.

And we contracted Oak-Tree Technologies to help us with implementation of this task.

SOLUTION

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

We found Oak-Tree via LinkedIn and considered them along with almost 10 other vendors, taking into account various parameters, i.e. timing & price, demonstrated technical expertise, general communication quality etc. One of the key factors determining our decision was the architectural solution suggested by Oak-Tree.

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

Webpages text thematic identification consists of the following subtasks: - text extraction (we aimed to be able to get texts of webpages from hundreds and thousands sites, including those who protect themselves against unauthorized crawlers); - text cleaning (remowing the clutter); - language identification; - text translation (when needed); - text thematic identification (done with help of an external SaaS solution, Oak-Tree's task was to provide stable communication with this SaaS solution).

Implementing these tasks Oak-Tree used the following techs and approaches: - serverless approach under Open-FAAS, - serverless functions, communicating with each other via Kafka; - logs management via Airflow; - system and data management via Django.

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

We communicated mostly with one person - Partner and VP of the company Michael Makashyn. Several other people, i.e. Python Developers and DevOps engineers were also involved in the project.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The webpages text thematic identification system is able to work over log files with the speed up to 5.000 URLs per second, select new URLs from the stream and ultimately send up to 50.000 new URLs for thematic identification daily. We understand how to scale up the whole system if needed and decided to continue cooperation with Oak-Tree to maintain the solution.

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

We used Telegram, Zoom and e-mail as communication tools. We are fully satisfied with the project management approach demonstrated by Oak-Tree. They were truly agile and responsive to all our requests.

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

I believe it's the combination of result oriented approach, the technical expertise and price.

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

There's always a place for improvement, as no perfection is still alive. ;) And I do not feel like hunting out flaws, since the work was done and was done well.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

This project was related to a business operating as a sole proprietorship where I am the sole owner.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Oak-Tree Technologies, and what were your goals?

I came to Oak-Tree with nothing more than an idea sketched out in a basic business plan. In short, I was looking to harness the many desperate movie (and related) databases to form a customized movie recommendation engine for individuals based on their own preferences.

SOLUTION

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

After presenting my idea to the team, Oak-Tree was able to transform my vision into reality by scraping and acquiring several relevant databases and build a custom recommendation engine based on an ongoing learning mechanism based on the movie preferences of an individual.

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

The scope of work was to transform my simple business plan into a full working product and website. This began with several meetings to discuss the vision and then progressed into regular meetings to check in on the Alpha, Beta and final product. The final deliverables included a fully functioning website that included the customized and personalized movie recommendation engine.

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

I had the pleasure of working with 4 individuals from Oak-Tree. These included Rob, Brandon, Ethan and Michael. I'm not certain of their positions, but understand they are principles in the business.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Each step of the project was clearly communicated and they were happy to meet with me as often as I needed to be comfortable on the direction and progress.

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

Communication was as often as I needed. We started with a kick-off call and jointly agreed upon milestones and communication frequency.

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

They were very intuitive and able to understand exactly what I was trying to achieve and make it a reality.

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

There is nothing that I would change or do differently.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a business partner at two companies, namely Stamping Up and Digitalist Interactive. One of our companies deals with spare parts compatibility and provides price comparison services.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Oak-Tree Technologies?

We process a lot of data, which are mostly photos, titles, descriptions, prices, and visibility. Our team also uses an API that fetches spare part information, such as manufacturers, brands, manufacturing date, and model. We put all of these on our platform. 

To improve this process, Oak-Tree Technologies works on our platform’s backend structure using Python. Apart from that, their team also guides us around understanding our business by working on our database structure. 

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Oak-Tree Technologies deals with our backend and database architecture to make our processes more efficient. We use them for Python coding on the backend because that’s their expertise. 

After launching our platform, we’ll do code reviews and testing. Moreover, as our frontend developer has gone on vacation, we’ll also give Oak-Tree Technologies some frontend tasks. We also plan to use them for other projects as we develop new features after production. 

What is the team composition?

We work with Max (Software Engineer) and Michael (Partner & VP), and we speak with them 10–15 times a day.

How did you come to work with Oak-Tree Technologies?

Before working with Oak-Tree Technologies, we had hired another vendor, and I wasn’t satisfied with their work. Upon giving them a complicated task, they told me they couldn’t work for two weeks because they had another project. 

As a result, I switched to Oak-Tree Technologies, which I found on Upwork. We described our tech issues and business goals to them, including how our database should function. I gave Michael one sprint as a test, and then we gave them another one. From there, we started working together fully. 

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve already invested around $10,000, but we expect the total spend to be about $23,000–$30,000. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in February 2021, and the partnership is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

I’m happy with Oak-Tree Technologies’ work because they give us what we need. Apart from working on our tech needs and issues, they’ve also guided us to think better about our system. Their team, specifically Michael, has helped us understand how to fetch data better. 

Moreover, they have a broad-minded attitude; when someone from their team knows how to do something in a better way, they share and do it without charging us additional costs. 

How did Oak-Tree Technologies perform from a project management standpoint?

To manage the project, they use Jira. Sometimes, we don’t hit milestones, but that may be our fault. At times, the delay is simply because of errors on the API. Barring those delays and errors, Oak-Tree Technologies delivers accurately and on time. 

Even when we encounter bugs, they’re quick to act. I can drop a message to Michael and ask him to have a look at the issue, and he takes only 5–30 minutes to make changes. To communicate, we typically use Viber, Telegram, and Google Meet. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

I’m impressed with their capabilities, specifically Michael’s, because their company has complicated projects. For example, Michael has told me about the skin scanning software they’re developing, which has AI integrations and is about 85% accurate. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

They should hire more staff. Sometimes, Michael takes days to reply, and that means we’ll be a little late in terms of our timelines. They perform their tasks well, but it will be easier if we can deal with more people from their side so we can propose solutions and avoid delays. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

If somebody asks me for good Python developers, I’ll definitely recommend Oak-Tree Technologies.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the CEO of Stryker Industrial Solutions

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Engineering Services

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Oak-Tree Technologies to accomplish?

• Product Development
• Scoping New Products

SOLUTION

How did you find Oak-Tree Technologies?

Online Search

Why did you select Oak-Tree Technologies over others?

• High ratings
• Pricing fit our budget
• Great culture fit
• Company values aligned

How many teammates from Oak-Tree Technologies were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

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

Completely build a new product both on web and mobile. Helped scope the entire project and found improvements. Delivered the product on time and beat expectations.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Product functionality and outputs.

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

Timely responses and delivered project on time.

What was your primary form of communication with Oak-Tree Technologies?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

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

Their ability to solve problems quickly and find process improvements was impressive.

Are there any areas for improvement or something Oak-Tree Technologies could have done differently?

N/A

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the CEO of an advertising & marketing company

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

We are a growth marketing software & agency

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Oak-Tree Technologies to accomplish?

• Develop marketing targeting & attribution software

SOLUTION

How did you find Oak-Tree Technologies?

Referral

Why did you select Oak-Tree Technologies over others?

• Great culture fit
• Referred to me
• Company values aligned

How many teammates from Oak-Tree Technologies were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

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

Michael & the OakTree team provided assistance by

• Scoping work based on our requirements
• Setting up our AWS infrastructure
• Creating a database to host various user tables 
• Geocoding capabilities 
• Script to ingest key client side web data

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Functional product that met our goals

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

Michael & team hit every deliverable timeline scoped on our project and were highly communicative throughout our project

What was your primary form of communication with Oak-Tree Technologies?

Virtual Meeting

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

Strong attention to detail and ability to translate business requirements into technical scope

Are there any areas for improvement or something Oak-Tree Technologies could have done differently?

No. Everything was great!

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am an executive at Subsidio

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Mobile Apps

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Oak-Tree Technologies to accomplish?

• Create mobile app

SOLUTION

How did you find Oak-Tree Technologies?

• Online Search

Why did you select Oak-Tree Technologies over others?

• High ratings
• Good value for cost

How many teammates from Oak-Tree Technologies were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

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

Create a subscription tracking mobile app

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Project completed in full

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

Completed all requirements in full

What was your primary form of communication with Oak-Tree Technologies?

• Virtual Meeting

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

Their project delivery time was impressive

Are there any areas for improvement or something Oak-Tree Technologies could have done differently?

N/A

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the CTO of a software company

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Digital marketing and software development for healthcare practices.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Oak-Tree Technologies to accomplish?

• PHP Software Development
• Python Software Development

SOLUTION

How did you find Oak-Tree Technologies?

Online Search

Why did you select Oak-Tree Technologies over others?

• Pricing fit our budget
• Great culture fit
• Good value for cost
• Company values aligned

How many teammates from Oak-Tree Technologies were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

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

Custom software development services for various SaaS products catering to the healthcare sector.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Software features that can be tested and work as per the defined requirements and specifications.

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

Project management was also provided by us, not them. However, those working on the tasks are timely and have met our needs.

What was your primary form of communication with Oak-Tree Technologies?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

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

• Work discipline
• skill level
• culture fit
• good communication

Are there any areas for improvement or something Oak-Tree Technologies could have done differently?

Nothing I can think of.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Consultant of an information technology company

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

IT management

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Oak-Tree Technologies to accomplish?

• Develop a web application

SOLUTION

How did you find Oak-Tree Technologies?

Online Search

Why did you select Oak-Tree Technologies over others?

• High ratings
• Pricing fit our budget
• Good value for cost

How many teammates from Oak-Tree Technologies were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

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

Basic Django web application for algorithmic trading of cryptocurrencies.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The project was designed in milestones to allow for steady progression.

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

Their project management was great and the team was very responsive. Items were delivered on time and progress updates were continuously communicated.

What was your primary form of communication with Oak-Tree Technologies?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

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

They showed excellent technical expertise and a high level of service.

Are there any areas for improvement or something Oak-Tree Technologies could have done differently?

None

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I work as the technical lead at Kleverly, a company using AI and machine learning to help marketing companies and other businesses find influencers to do marketing campaigns with.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Oak-Tree Technologies?

We had a database of social media influencers, and we wanted to build a product around it so that people could have a website to find influencers using machine-learning tools. We already had these tools, but we needed help with building the actual website and all its features.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Oak-Tree has helped us develop our website from scratch, integrating different features such as account creation, payment processing, and a search engine. Additionally, they’ve done the backend and frontend development necessary based on the technology that I’ve built. As for the technology stack, they’ve used Python and Django for the backend, as well as React for the frontend.

Initially, we established reaching the MVP as the goal for the project. We wanted Oak-Tree to only develop the search engine around our database without integrating the machine-learning technology to test our idea first. For this, we set up the project milestones and a fixed budget, and we provided them with wireframes and a requirements document that outlined each section of the website. Then, they executed and completed the project through Upwork.

Given that Oak-Tree did a great job, we decided to keep working with them on an hourly basis. For this, we went outside Upwork and signed a contract directly with them. Since then, they’ve been helping us with further development work.

Currently, our website’s core feature is the ability to search for influencers from a large database and filter the results using advanced filtration options. To achieve this, Oak-Tree has written a custom sorting function following our requirements. We’ve given different weights to the keywords in the influencers’ biographies and accounts, so the search engine sorts the results according to those weights.

For the machine-learning portion of the project, I designed a tool in Python where users upload an image. The tool helps compare its deep features to the deep features of the images in our database, and it then displays the results sorted by which images are the most similar to the one uploaded by the user.

The third core feature of our product is similar to the latter. It allows users to upload an image, and it then recommends hashtags based on the properties of that image using machine learning. Other features include limiting our users’ monthly searches based on their subscription plan and the ability to change their information, password, subscription plan, and credit card information.

What is the team composition?

We work with two people from Oak-Tree: Michael (CEO) and Dmytro (Junior Full Stack Developer). Michael has acted as the project manager, and we’ve negotiated the project cost and deliverables with him.

How did you come to work with Oak-Tree Technologies?

We found them on Upwork. When we were looking for a service provider, we interviewed a lot of companies and liked Oak-Tree the best, so we hired them.

How much have you invested with them?

The project will cost over $50,000 in total.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in April 2022 and decided to sign a direct contract in June 2022. Our engagement is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The website developed by Oak-Tree works great. Everything is smooth and fast, so it seems to be well-optimized overall. We’re very impressed with their work; they’ve done a great job thus far.

How did Oak-Tree Technologies perform from a project management standpoint?

We’ve been very happy with Oak-Tree’s project management; they’ve been fast and efficient, and they don’t waste time. When we worked through Upwork, we had set a somewhat flexible timeline. Still, their team was quick to finish everything. Now that we’re not working on a fixed-project basis, we simply send them a list of tasks every week, and they usually complete them.

Throughout the project, we’ve had to sort out some bugs, but they’ve been really minor. Every week, we meet with Oak-Tree to assess their development work and test it to find bugs. If we find bugs, we make a list and send it to them, and they get them fixed by the next week.

Additionally, Oak-Tree’s communication has been great. We communicate via Discord, and although we have a time difference, they answer immediately via Discord during our time overlaps. Still, we don’t expect them to answer immediately. We’ve also used GitHub for project management, and we’ve done Google Meet video calls, but we haven’t done them in a while.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Oak-Tree’s technical skills are top-notch. They’re very talented and smart, and they know a lot about a variety of things. Their detailed knowledge is excellent.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I can’t think of anything Oak-Tree could improve on. They’re great.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Work with them! You’ll be pleased.