Polar Night Software

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Producer & Board Member of Balanced Alternative Techniques. 

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

We operate BatMUD, one of the oldest text-based online games on the Internet.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Polar Night Software to accomplish?

• Further development of BatMUD's graphical game client

SOLUTION

How did you find Polar Night Software?

Referral

Why did you select Polar Night Software over others?

• Pricing fit our budget
• Great culture fit
• Good value for cost

How many teammates from Polar Night Software were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

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

We outsourced the whole (game client) application development to Polar Night Software. They worked based on our roadmap, feature requests and prioritization. Polar Night Software proactively pushed their updated code to our git (Bitbucket) server and debugged any issues reported. The whole software stack was under Polar Night Software, while we concentrated on planning and explaining functionalities that we wanted to see in our application, which they then implemented.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We were able to make multiple new releases (updates/upgrades) to our our application directly to our customerbase with Polar Night Software's deliverables. This increased the take-up rate/downloads of our application (with the help of these updates) and gave several years of further lifetime to the application from the usability perspective.

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

The active communication (including usage of Slack/instant messaging) was up to par with our expectations. Any time critical deliverables were delivered without delay. Polar Night Software was very open to changes and our feedback also after their initial implementation (based on our user stories).

What was your primary form of communication with Polar Night Software?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

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

They were able to cater to our changing needs and also were very open to us on the points where our selected technology had its limitations, but also worked to find any possible workarounds.

Are there any areas for improvement or something Polar Night Software could have done differently?

Any issues faced were mostly due to our own deployment pipeline and not related to Polar Night Software. We believe we will be utilizing Polar Night Software in the future, too.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am an executive of Legal Jobs Sp. z o.o.

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Our business connects legal professionals with top-tier job opportunities, offering a carefully curated platform for law firms and companies to find the best talent.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Polar Night Software to accomplish?

• Backend development
• Frontend development

SOLUTION

How did you find Polar Night Software?

Referral

Why did you select Polar Night Software over others?

• Close to my geographic location
• Referred to me

How many teammates from Polar Night Software were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

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

The software house was responsible for the full-stack development of a job offer platform, utilizing Scala for the backend and Angular for the frontend. The scope of work included designing and implementing a scalable and robust backend architecture to manage:

• job listings
• user accounts
• application processing.

The front-end development involved creating a responsive and user-friendly interface that allows:

• seamless navigation
• job search
• application submission.

Key deliverables included:

• a fully functional platform with integrated user authentication
• an admin dashboard for job posting management
• a search engine for job seekers
• API integrations for third-party services such as payment processing and notifications.
• Comprehensive testing
• deployment
• ongoing maintenance were also provided to ensure platform stability and performance.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The measurable outcomes from the project include a 40% increase in user engagement within the first three months, evidenced by higher job application rates and longer session durations on the platform. 

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

Their project management was highly efficient and responsive. They consistently delivered all project milestones on time, often ahead of schedule. They were proactive in addressing our needs, regularly communicating progress and quickly adapting to any changes or feedback. Their commitment to quality and attention to detail ensured that every aspect of the project aligned with our expectations, resulting in a smooth and successful collaboratio

What was your primary form of communication with Polar Night Software?

In-Person Meeting

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

What stood out most about this company was their deep technical expertise combined with a strong commitment to customer satisfaction. Additionally, their proactive approach to problem-solving and their willingness to go above and beyond to ensure the project's success set them apart. Their unique blend of technical skills, creativity, and dedication made working with them a remarkable experience.

Are there any areas for improvement or something Polar Night Software could have done differently?

While Polar Night Software delivered exceptional results, one area for improvement could be enhancing their initial project scoping process. 

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm one of the co-founders and the CTO at FleetGuru, a SaaS startup developing a software solution for fleet management.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Polar Night Software?

Based on our CPOs suggestion, who had a previous good experience with Polar Night Software, we hired them to work on our new completely revised frontend. They also helped us with choosing and vetting our in-house frontend development team.

SOLUTION

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

We chose Polar Night Software based on our CPOs suggestion, who had a good experience working with them in her previous role at Speys.

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

Polar Night Software was responsible in designing the architecture of our new React frontend, choosing the libraries/components, a good part of the development, as well as helping us to onboard internal developers into this project.

Describe the recruitment process in detail.

Not much to describe here - as our CPO had previous experience and good relations with them, the decision was pretty much down to a few online meetings to confirm that they are interested and have the available resources.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Unfortunately, with the world today and its effects to the investment climate we had to temporarily pull the plug on this project, but funding permitting we are hoping to pick this up again.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

We used them as staff augmentation, so their developers were participating in our work processes just as our own people.

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

I liked their responsiveness and accommodation at every step. We really appreciated Piotr's, their CTO-s, decision to join our project hands-on after one of their allocated developers unexpectedly left the company.

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

It might sound cliche, but I really can't find anything to complain about. 🙂

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the IT team lead of Speys, a company that does digital logistics.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Polar Night Software?

We’re building a platform that brings together the quality infrastructure and expertise to deliver real-time visibility and control. We needed more development power mainly on the content side.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Polar Night Software does mainly frontend development and also some architectural support regarding building our new self-service environment. When I came on board, the task we did was a new homepage for our company. 

They helped develop all the frontend. They’re mostly responsible for developing the frontend. Our own team did the analysis and design for that. Now we’re building this self-service environment for our customers. 

We used them to put the architecture together on the frontend side. They also are doing all the frontend developments there. We’re building a platform for our customers right now.

What is the team composition?

We currently work with two teammates.

How did you come to work with Polar Night Software?

Our company had a contract with them before I came on board. They knew the owner and were quite sure of the quality they provided. When I came on board, there were questions in-house on whether to keep the external developers. 

Since Polar Night Software is doing a really good job of providing us the best developers, we decided to continue with them. We will work with them for quite a long time instead of hiring more developers in-house.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent €68,000 (approximately $80,000 USD).

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in March 2020, and the work is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The quality is one of the biggest reasons we decided to work with them. The developers they have are highly skilled in frontend development. They have given us very good input on our development. They have even taught our own developers a bit.

How did Polar Night Software perform from a project management standpoint?

There’s really good communication on the management side and the development side. They give very good feedback about the technology, development, what is good, and what can be improved. The developer is always willing to give his feedback. 

He’s not just a service provider who comes to do his job; he wants to do it very well and deliver very good quality. If he sees that there’s a place where the team can improve, he makes it known. I’ve had the opportunity to speak with them openly about our possibility for cooperation and how they can give the best knowledge to us.

We use Jira where we can easily see how our development is going, how we plan work, and how we are moving toward our goals. They always answer my emails very quickly. 

Polar Night Software always asks if I have any questions, how to move on, or what we could improve. The developer gives a lot of feedback about his own work but also about places where the team or the other developers could improve. They’re very good team players even though they work remotely.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The team is very good at communicating. They’re honest and open which helps everyone improve. They have a good work ethic. There hasn’t been a time where I needed to worry if they were going to do what they promised.

Are there any areas they could improve?

It would be great to add some backend development power at some point but this is not their main focus at the moment. In the future, maybe it’s something they could consider more. I haven’t had any deep talks with them about it though. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Communication is the most important thing. If you’re facing any problems, just talk to them. You might find out that they already have a solution for you.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Kiks Technologies is developing a SaaS e-commerce platform for services, called Kiks Marketplace. There are lots of platforms for products, but we mainly focus on selling services through this e-commerce solution. We offer it to customers as a white label product and allow them to customize it and make it feel like their brand. It can accommodate household, construction, cleaning, and many other services.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Polar Night Software?

The initial development of this kind of system takes quite a bit of effort. We needed help with software engineering and architecture.

We were working with a partner from Estonia, but we didn’t have a steady workload. It got quite low at one point and we decided that we needed a partner that could work as-needed and also handle maintenance and support.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

The backend development, design, and most of the business and data architecture were done in-house. Polar Night’s scope has mainly been frontend development, ideation, and problem solving. They’re familiar with our platform, so they can suggest solutions for whatever issues we bring to them.

What is the team composition?

Henri (Founder & CEO) assists us from a customer relationship perspective, and we have two developers from their team. They switched the lead developer quite early in our relationship, and it went well.

How did you come to work with Polar Night Software?

I did some googling and had a couple of interviews with Estonian companies. A LinkedIn post from someone from Polar Night caught my eye, and I started investigating them. I contacted Polar Night’s CEO, introduced our case to them, and everything went smoothly from there.

How much have you invested with them?

The cost so far is €20,000-€50,000 ($23,700-$59,000USD).

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Polar Night in April 2020, and it’s ongoing. The platform is in production, and we’re in a steady maintenance mode now. They’re making small improvements and providing support for the platform. Polar Night has been flexible in providing these kinds of services and we haven’t had to hire in-house experts.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Polar Night produces high-quality work, and the quality/speed ratio is amazing. Their engineers ask good questions and are able to question our ideas. This tells us that they really know what they’re talking about. We’ve had a really good, friendly collaboration with them.

How did Polar Night Software perform from a project management standpoint?

They reply to us almost immediately, and they strive to get the task done as soon as possible. It’s never taken them more than two days to get a job done. Project management is done on our side. We use Trello for task management, and we have a clear process for what to do when a task is done.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Polar Night is highly skilled in software development. They’re reasonably priced, the quality is really high, and the communication style is very compatible to our own. They’re easy to approach and we understand the context in which they’re working.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Our needs have been frontend development so far, but I wouldn’t mind if they managed our backend and cloud infrastructure as well. That would be really helpful.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

I would put a lot of effort into the communication. It’s important to agree on how to communicate and keep the channels as open as possible, as well as set expectations on how to manage tasks and handle scope changes/issues. Polar Night is really flexible in this regard, and this kind of working method has been good for us. We’ve kept project management, design, and the overall architecture on our side, and they’re just helping us produce what we need.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Co-Founder of Rog Partners Oy

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Research organization focusing on qualitative customer and market research

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Polar Night Software to accomplish?

• Building the website.

SOLUTION

How did you find Polar Night Software?

Referral

Why did you select Polar Night Software over others?

• Pricing fit our budget
• Good value for cost
• Quality

How many teammates from Polar Night Software were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

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

Polar Night Software designed and developed our company’s website from scratch. The result was a top-quality site tailored to our business needs. Our target audience consists of demanding clients—venture capitalists and C-level executives—so the final product had to be of the highest standard. The implementation was executed excellently. The project was particularly challenging due to a tight schedule. They took also responsibility of the design.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

A high-quality, stylish, and functional website delivered on time within the agreed tight schedule. The quality was not compromised despite the urgency.

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

The team and project management were highly accessible, and communication worked smoothly throughout the project. Overall, the service was both friendly and professional.

What was your primary form of communication with Polar Night Software?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

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

Skilled professionals and friendly service.

Are there any areas for improvement or something Polar Night Software could have done differently?

Hard to say anything. Everything worked smoothly with them in this project.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am a department head at a construction equipment company 

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Construction Equipment Rental

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Polar Night Software to accomplish?

• Long-term partner for Software Development
• Support our digitalization effort with skilled professionals

SOLUTION

How did you find Polar Night Software?

• Referral

Why did you select Polar Night Software over others?

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

How many teammates from Polar Night Software were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

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

Continues Software development where we have teams built from multiple service providers. Team members are working full time on our projects.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The output of each product team has increased significantly thanks to the professionals from Polar Night Software.

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

Polar Night Software is very flexible and understands the customer needs. They spend time to find people that would fit the customer project well and that can be seen from the resourcing we've received.

What was your primary form of communication with Polar Night Software?

• Virtual Meeting

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

The professionalism and the caliber of their employees exceeded all of my expectations.

Are there any areas for improvement or something Polar Night Software could have done differently?

The way they're currently working fits our ways of working perfectly.