Poatek

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a marketing specialist at NR Investments. We're a Miami-based real estate development company that acquires, repositions, and sells real estate. Additionally, we develop both residential and commercial real estate.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with PoaTek IT Consulting?

We were searching for a company that would develop an iOS app to help us manage our buildings.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We’ve split this project into three phases: an ideation and backend development phase, a design phase, and an implementation phase. First, PoaTek IT Consulting identified the scope and direction of the project. They helped us narrow down which features would be best before creating wireframes for the entire app.

After that, we entered the second phase of the project, which involved product UI/UX design. We are currently in the final phase of the project with them. At the moment, we are building the app for iOS only, but we’re planning to develop an Android version in the future.  

Once complete, the app will allow residents in several of our buildings to communicate with each other. The app’s intention is for residents to organize activities, speak with management, and interact more frequently in common spaces. It came to our attention that many people living in the same buildings don’t know each other, and we hope to change that.

What is the team composition?

We started out with a team of 2–3, but now we have five people working on the project. The team size has allowed me to work directly with developers and designers.

How did you come to work with PoaTek IT Consulting?

We received a recommendation from a partner of one of our principals.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent around $60,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

The project started in October 2018, and it’s ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We’re very happy with the work they’ve done for us. This is my company’s first app development project, so we’re appreciative of their help with both developing the product and identifying scope.

We could’ve ended our work with them after they completed the design and wireframe phase, but we opted to stay with them because of the great work they’ve done.   

How did PoaTek IT Consulting perform from a project management standpoint?

Throughout the project, they’ve respected our budget and timelines. We’ve never gone off schedule, which is a big plus for us. They’ve met their goals, so we, in turn, have met ours. We usually use email, Skype, and a project tracking system called Zeplin to coordinate—their team is very responsive.  

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’re outstanding communicators. Because we’re new to app development, they’ve been helpful with explaining unfamiliar, complex information.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I don’t think so, they’ve been great.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Be very clear with project goals, spending limits, and time constraints from the beginning. They’re very good at respecting each of those.  

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the digital manager for an industrial agriculture company based in Brazil. We provide a variety of services to farmers. We also sell agrochemicals, fertilizers, and other products that they use. Additionally, we produce biodiesel using the soybeans that our farmers harvest.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with PoaTek IT Consulting?

We wanted to build an application to help farmers manage their crops. Our firm doesn’t have an in-house IT team, and software development is far from the core of our business.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

PoaTek developed a mobile banking application for farmers. There are features in the app that allow users to check how much product they’ve purchased and how much they’ve withdrawn over time. The app also lets farmers view the amount of grain that they have with us. There are news and push notifications, as well.

We spent a decent amount of time confirming our requirements during the ideation phase. They’re still working on the solution, and it’s going to be available on both Android and iOS devices.

They’ve already built an entire backend interface that our salespeople can use. We’re able to enter information from our end via a web application. In addition to developing the app, PoaTek IT Consulting is helping us with testing and putting the product into a database.

What is the team composition?

We have a scrum master who serves as my direct point of contact, and I can reach out to the CEO as needed. I’ve also had contact with the UI/UX designer, as well as the backend developer.

How did you come to work with PoaTek IT Consulting?

We initially went with another company, but that ended up being a poor decision. We were left with an inferior product and decided to shift to a new developer. I went back to the people who were part of the bid the first time around, and PoaTek was at the top of the list.

They were the best alternative in terms of quality. They didn’t have any clients in the agribusiness, but their CEO is very knowledgeable regarding agriculture and farming. We ended up partnering with them, and it’s been great so far.

How much have you invested in them?

We’ve spent approximately $50,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We began working with them in 2018, and the work is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The development work is excellent. PoaTek IT Consulting has practically overhauled the entire application that we had before, and the quality is incomparable. They’re far and above a superior team. It’s a top-notch application—similar to other high-quality mobile apps, including ones that deal with banking.

How did PoaTek IT Consulting perform from a project management standpoint?

I can go straight to the scrum master to resolve any issues that come up during development. She’s very responsive and reaches out as soon as she can—if not immediately—whenever there’s an issue. She is always on top of the sprints and user stories, and I can see clearly that her team is following an agile method.

Each team member understands the agile method of development, and they’re open in terms of their communication. Despite some problems with prioritization that we’ve experienced on our side, PoaTek IT Consulting has been able to help us stay organized. They recommend areas that we should focus on based on what will have the most impact.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their relationship with us has been the key. They have the ability to merge quality services with excellent communication and support. Also, they don’t focus exclusively on the development side. They’ve also been able to help us understand how our customers will respond to the app. This has been really valuable for us.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, I don’t think there are any. The negative aspects have all come as a result of our inability to prioritize correctly. In terms of their performance, I only have good things to say. They’ve been helping us organize and have done more than what we’ve required.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

They’re a fantastic partner. They can be flexible, but, at the same time, they understand the importance of corporate structures. PoaTek IT Solutions can navigate these environments while still delivering high-quality services and deliverables.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I'm the CEO of a collaboration software company based in Fort Lauderdale, with satellite offices in England and Australia.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with PoaTek IT Consulting?

I needed a proof of concept for a tech city that we're designing. We needed to hire someone to look at the different treatments for the design of that website.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Most of the work was images—they used Squarespace and WordPress as well as Axure to render the prototype.

What is the team composition?

There were two different people involved. One of them was involved 95% of the time and the other about 5%.

How did you come to work with PoaTek IT Consulting?

They really recruit some of the top talents. Instead of going to a regular recruitment company and worrying about the quality of the work, they've done an excellent job at vetting their resources.

How much have you invested in them?

We've spent around $15,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in March 2018 and the relationship is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

They were excellent in several respects, including their insight into what we were doing and the design. We were impressed with how they got the concept and rendered it from the sitemap down to the selection of graphics and images. They did a really good job of being able to look at the problem at a high level and solve it.

How did PoaTek IT Consulting perform from a project management standpoint?

They were very responsive and their availability was very good. The resources they provided were outside my time zone, but that person still made themselves available almost 16 hours a day. That was a huge selling point because as a CEO, I tend to work odd hours, but I could reach out to them when I needed to.

What did you find most impressive about them?

It was a small prototype, so we didn’t talk about any project management tools. I interacted with one of the principals and I found him to be very bright. He quickly understood what we were doing and was able to ascertain the right skills that we needed to deploy. It worked out quite well in that regard. I know I can go to them if I am looking for a strong skilled person.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I know that they're a growing company. As they scale and grow, they will have a larger variety of resources that we will need to call upon. They've done a very good job for us, considering where they are as a company right now.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am a managing principal at a management consulting firm. We focus on financial services.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Poatek IT Consulting?

We were expanding into a new region in South America and needed a resource with established ties in the Brazilian market.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We wanted to quickly scale into some specific skillsets. They identified and recruited top talent to the project and were able to provide resources for a year. We formed a partnership and they always sent us good people. Most of the resources centered around data science, statistical analysis, and algorithm development for personalized banking features.

What is the team composition?

We worked with five or six people from their team over the course of our relationship.

How did you come to work with Poatek IT Consulting?

Their local knowledge of the Brazilian market definitely made them stand out from their competition.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent around $200,000 or a little higher.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from March 2016 until March 2017.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

They provided high-quality work with very few defects or model problems. We had a very close collaboration with their integrated resources and the interaction was seamless. We delivered an advanced financial services platform to the market that included multiple algorithms. They designed, developed, tested, implemented, and provided end-to-end service.

How did Poatek IT Consulting perform from a project management standpoint?

They were integrated within our team and acted as part of our normal delivery process. They had a relationship manager and we knew their executive team. They were very communicative and willing to work within to our style.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They always came to the table if there were challenges or problems. They had a proactive partnership mindset and went the extra mile to teach me about the intricacies of local tax and employment laws and union relationships. They offered a personalized, trustworthy service from the beginning.

Are there any areas they could improve?

If they were a bigger company or offered more economical options, we would have continued working with them. They were very good at finding talent for us, but we couldn’t justify the cost beyond the scope of the project.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the product manager at Lifekee. We provide address book data for our users on a content management platform.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with PoaTek IT Consulting?

We needed to address the enterprise market, and we needed help with mobile app development. We were looking for someone with extensive experience in the field but couldn’t find the right level of talent on a contract basis in our area, and we didn’t want to commit to a direct hire. We wanted someone else to manage the employees.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They helped us develop a native iOS and Android mobile app. They used Swift and Java. They also did QA and other testing.

What is the team composition?

We had 2–3 developers.

How did you come to work with PoaTek IT Consulting?

I knew one of the directors who had expansive experience in the technology field. He worked for Citibank developing an enterprise class of platforms, which is exactly what we needed.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve invested $150,000–$200,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in March 2017 and the work is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We were able to launch the MVP. We were able to add features in an agile manner. They brought in other technology when needed because they have the resources in-house.

How did PoaTek IT Consulting perform from a project management standpoint?

We use Slack and Jira, and they accommodated what we were using. Their attitudes are great. Their skills were at the proper level, and their technical level was better than expected. Their English is very good. It was a smooth process, and they’ve met all the deadlines.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They not only have mobile talent in-house, but they also have specialists in backend, QA, and the whole spectrum of development. They were able to bring in anybody as needed to troubleshoot or give support to their team.

Are there any areas they could improve?

It would be nice to have face-to-face meetings with the developers.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the managing director for business development and investor relations at Kawa.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with PoaTek IT?

We hired them to develop our investor platform for web and mobile.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

PoaTek IT managed the development process for a customer-facing site, a web-based back office management tool, and mobile apps for Android and iOS. I’m not sure of the specific technologies they utilized.

What is the team composition?

We had two team leaders, one for iOS and one for Android. There was also a project manager and three programmers on the team.

How did you come to work with PoaTek IT?

We were considering several options and they offered the most comprehensive solution in terms of programming quality. We were able to verify this through referrals and partners they’d worked with in the past. The cost was also a factor, and the timing of their deliverables was ahead of the other services we quoted.

How much have you invested with them?

It was a multimillion dollar project.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started the project in 2015. We launched it at the beginning of 2016, but the collaboration is ongoing. We’re still adding features and performing other work.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The first part of the project we completed was a platform that allows our investors to track their investments and generate monthly statements. We’re now able to reimagine and reconfigure the way in which we communicate with clients, and how we manage their investments with us.

We’re also able to deploy capital a lot more efficiently. When we have a new investment opportunity, instead of calling 200 people, we can put the opportunity up on the app and notify people immediately. We can more effectively gauge who has interest in the new opportunity, which has helped our business development and investor relations efforts tremendously. We’re currently moving into phase two of the project—deploying the platform to investors who don’t know us, and who aren’t familiar with the firm.

We will be going out to market with the new platform, in search of new investors to add to it. We don’t have any data on this yet, Since we’re just starting to roll out the program, we have yet to collect substantive data on how it’s being received.

How did PoaTek IT perform from a project management standpoint?

I have a senior in-house programmer who’s worked directly with PoaTek IT. They were easy to work with and reliably met deadlines.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The work we do is specific and technical. Finance requires a very precise skill set in terms of calculations and financial math programming. They were able to figure out a significant portion of the project on their own, without assistance from our analysts. This saved us a lot of time and money.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I don’t think that there’s much to improve for this particular project. The team has been fully dedicated to us, and they’ve hit every target for deliverables.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CFO of an automated valet parking management provider.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with PoaTek IT?

We’re a small company and our owner is the only developer and CTO. We were looking for a team of developers that could learn our business and help develop current and new products.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They assigned a resource for app work and have someone else working on the development of our product. It’s a homegrown product, so the developers work with our owner to write interfaces for customer operations, or upgrade apps and develop new ones.

What is the team composition?

We started working with them a year ago. The project began with one employee, and now we have four contracted engineers from their side.

How did you come to work with PoaTek IT?

One of our contacts told us about them. They were a good fit because they looked for people based on the criteria we provided. The price was much more reasonable than what we would pay an actual employee of our company. The price differential was much better than working with someone locally.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent around $200,000 on their services in 2017. Right now, we’re on a path of spending $360,000. The investment has kept going up from 2017 to 2018 because we’ve continued to add developers.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in February 2017. They’re still collaborating with us.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Our owner described their work as high quality. He’s trying to get them to learn our business, which takes time. When they’re given specific interfaces to work on for clients or other tasks, their work is the highest quality we’ve seen. We’re very happy with the development.

How did PoaTek IT perform from a project management standpoint?

The items and products have all been delivered on time, meeting whatever specifications our clients had requested. Thanks to them, we’ve always been ready on time.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’re very easy to work with and will try to adjust their operations to meet our needs. Although our agreement calls for overtime pay, they try to watch the hours and make sure we aren’t billed more than expected, based on our agreement. We work with them to make sure that everyone is happy—that the product gets delivered, the employees get what they need, and we don’t get charged more than we expected.

Are there any areas they could improve?

We would like to see the employees in-house more often. This is still a struggle, given that there are visa requirements and it’s expensive to fly people back and forth from Brazil, but they’re looking at opening a local office so this becomes easier.

It would also be easier if they understood our business more deeply. If they were on-site, that be a little bit better.