Qualifast

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

rees is a career coaching platform that was made to assist users in their career development and/or their job hunting process. I'm the CEO/Founder of the company and have been involved in content creation, product development, and company vision.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

We were looking to build an MVP of what we believed our users originally wanted from a career coaching platform. We wanted an interactive front-end where users could capture their daily sentiment, as well as, integrations to Intercom to connect with a coach that would provide support. We also wanted to capture data as so that we could learn how our users were engaging with the platform. We hired the Qualifast team to help through their expertise of front-end and back-end development, but overall their ability to refine requirements to build something simple and usable.

SOLUTION

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

We selected to work with Qualifast through a referral from a friend who could not speak more highly of them. Through our introductory calls and scoping out the work it was easy to see that they were thoughtful in their development approach, they were responsive with questions/concerns, and best of all they were very friendly and supportive with what we were building.

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

We started off with a kick-off call where our team shared designs of what we wanted the MVP to look and do. The Qualifast team asked a lot of great questions in regards to the complexity of what were asking to be built. Then they provided a demo of what they built and we offered some feedback, which they later implemented. From there we had a functioning MVP from which we could launch with. We brought on a couple dozen alpha users to help test and provide feedback. From their feedback we designed a new version of the experience and have been iterating with the team since. The front-end is a mix of Javascript, Typescript, HTML, CSS, and Shell. The back-end is a mix of Shell and Java.

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

We worked with three people, two of which were our main points of contact. Boris and Mario acted as liaison for all our requests. Mario handled a lot of the front-end development, while Boris did QA and helped spec out the work. Alex did most of the back-end work but we never had too much contact with him.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

I was impressed at how quickly the team worked to stand-up the MVP. The main accomplishment of having Intercom and Stripe fully-integrated is what I'm most happy about. We can now onboard users and have they interact with the platform seamlessly and process their payments. The end-to-end experience is clean and easy to use, and ultimately we're helping our users with their career development.

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

We used Slack and email to communicate mostly. We had touch bases whenever the team had something to share or we wanted to review a new feature to get an idea of costs. They built on Github and we received notifications as things were being built out. Overall they were very responsive to any questions and made sure that we had deadlines and goals that we were striving for.

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

Qualifast makes you feel like they are truly part of your team. When features were too complex they walked us through how to quickly and cost-effectively accomplish the goal. Their approachability was definitely my favorite quality in working with them.

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

From this engagement, I honestly think we had the best experience we could have asked for. Their communication was solid, and their work output was great. As with most build, you want more speed, but I think they helped get us to MVP as quickly as they could.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

We are an Italian startup that offers an accompanied transportation services for kids, elders and disabled people. I am a co-founder

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Qualifast?

I am a co-founder in a startup that needs to use IT solution to run its business. We hired Qualifast to tech-scope and implement this IT solution.

What were your goals for this project?

We needed an MVP with which we could get market friction and seek external investment afterwards. Thus we set a goal of solution able to process real-life orders and payments. We wanted this to be polished app that we could distribute publicly.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

In fact we, 2 founders, have considered 5 vendors in 4 different countries. Competence, price/expected quality were the deciding factors

Describe the project in detail.

They implemented an Android application /native/ for order placing and administrative web interface through which we can manage the orders. They took care of the entire solutions with all aspects involved in it, including quality checks and maintenance.

What was the team composition?

They were about 4 or five people altogether. Can not tell exactly as we were assigned project responsible at their side that centralized and coordinated all communication and efforts.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Before Qualifast we did not have no software solution, thus no way to sell our services. Now we have paying customers, which is the easiest to measure impact.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

They have super easy-going Communication and are strict with deadlines. Excellent level of English

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Focused, efficient and 1 point of communication

Are there any areas for improvement?

Price/quality ratio

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Flat Manager is the largest short-term rental management company in the Balkan region. We enable homeowners to earn more from their properties by listing them on platforms like Airbnb and Booking.com and managing the bookings. I am the founder and CEO of Flat Manager.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Qualifast?

The operational processes in our business are difficult to set up, but the main challenge is ensuring they are executed with high quality and in a timely manner. Cleaning and maintenance of the properties are processes which are usually outsourced to contractors who have to follow strict procedures and report back.

We were also lacking a database of our properties with all the necessary information required by our teams to process reservations easily. Probably the major challenge is that this software is not going to be used internally only - Flat Manager is expanding via a franchise program to different cities around Europe.

It is vital for any franchise to be able to monitor the quality of the work of all franchisees, which further increased the complexity of the software.

What were your goals for this project?

We were previously using Google forms, but this approach was highly inaccurate and inefficient. We needed a software that would create specific tasks with checklists for various events such as cleaning after guest check-out, apartment checks by our property managers, maintenance work, etc.

The software had to be web-based and we needed mobile applications for cleaning and maintenance teams, which would allow them to complete the checklists while at the property, take photos as proof, report damages to the properties and other functionalities.

These events are a lot so we needed the software to integrate with our existing property management system and get all reservation information for all properties.

We also needed a database with these properties, which can be used by our guest communication team, whose members have never been to the properties but have to answer specific questions about them. Since the software will be franchised out to partners in many different countries, we had to come up with a way to monitor the quality of the services provided by franchisees.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

There are many highly-skilled developers in Bulgaria, employed by small and large IT companies. Regardless of the fact that our CFO came from one of the largest Bulgarian software development companies, we decided to take a meeting with Qualifast because they came highly recommended by unrelated people and companies.

During our initial meeting the Qualifast team was able to grasp the purpose of the project very quickly and even suggested functionalities that we had not previously thought of.

The team had no previous experience with property management software products so their ability to comprehend our needs for the project was truly remarkable. Furthermore, the team members were friendly and very professional at the same time.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

Qualifast built the entire software, web and mobile, from start to finish. Our contribution was just in the form of guidelines and necessary information.

What was the team composition?

We worked closely with 5 of the team members. Each one was specializing in a certain part of the software (eg Android mobile) but it was evident that they were all very well synced. There were no changes over the course of the project.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We have recently started a parallel run with the new software and our current way of work and it is going very well. We expect to save a tremendous amount of time and significantly improve the quality of our work. We are presenting the software to potential international franchisees and the feedback we are receiving is very positive.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

Throughout the first month we were mostly figuring out the details, specs, requirements and the whole logic of the software. This proved to be a very good strategy because we did not have to make any major changes during the actual development. We were holding in-person meetings once every two weeks on a strict delivery schedule. The software was completed right on time with no delays.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

We were most impressed by the team's capability to quickly and accurately comprehend the needs of the business, even though the domain was previously unknown to them.

It is a very well-synced team, everyone knows what their doing, there were no delays and it was truly a pleasure to work with them. Qualifast is small enough to pay special attention to the customer and yet large enough to have people with the necessary skillset for any project.

Are there any areas for improvement?

At the time I cannot think of areas for improvement. We have decided to work with Qualifast to upgrade the current solution by building our own CRM.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the director of engineering for a mobile app that focuses on being a marketplace for travel that offers good deals on flights and hotels.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Qualifast?

We had native app developers that built our initial platform but had very much focused on the iOS side of the product, so we hired them to bring our Android features up to date.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They have built the Android hotels and flights parts of the app basically from scratch. We had an MVP in place, but they significantly augmented our functionality as well as the UI/UX into something that we could legitimately market to our customers.

What is the team composition?

We worked with 2 members of their team.

How did you come to work with Qualifast?

I didn’t hire them but started working with them when I got involved with them when they started working on the hotels part of the app, as that is my core area of responsibility.

What is the status of this engagement?

They started working with us in February 2019, transitioned to my part of the project in October, and we are continuing to work together today.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We haven’t launched the platform yet, but we are estimating that it will bring a 30% increase in essentially every part of our business, including liquidity and revenue, which we are incredibly pleased about. Feedback from our team has been very positive on both the design and functionality of the project.

How did Qualifast perform from a project management standpoint?

Project management was one of their major strengths, especially from their CEO who was actively involved with us. We weren’t able to assign them a project manager right away, so they did a lot of work in the beginning to break down the requirements of the task and do the planning of our roadmap and deadlines for the rest of the project. We were very impressed by their ability to lay all of that out accurately and professionally, as well as to stick to it going forward.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their whole team is incredibly proactive. They calculate risks and communicate them very well and are always very patient when waiting for you to make decisions.

You can tell that they are not just in it to earn money but really care about the success of your project and want to understand the context around it. They would actually bring ideas to us, challenge things, and ask for context that really made it feel like they had a stake in the game.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Honestly, I haven’t seen anything that I think they need to improve.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Definitely meet them face to face so that you can understand the context of their work environment in order to help make the engagement as seamless as possible.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Colibra provides boarding pass wallets where users can store their flight boarding passes, as well as receive information on their flight statuses. We offer our own product, namely a free flight delay insurance. In Europe, there’s an EU regulation stating that, if a flight is delayed above three hours, then it’s the airline’s fault, and they must reimburse their customers.

The problem is that they don’t always provide those reimbursements. When flights land, we calculate and offer the reimbursements instantly through our app. We have a backend system that investigates the cases and filters the ones we’re not going to collect on. I’m the COO of the company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Qualifast?

Qualifast provides quite a comprehensive service. Our software system is comprised of two mobile applications—Android and iOS. Those involve a backend system that connects with flight data providers and a web administration panel where we handle our cases. For flight delay cases, there’s a lot of email communication, sharing of documents, and so on.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Qualifast started with us from the beginning, helping us design our solution. They’ve helped us design functionalities and consulted us on what we should prioritize in our MVP. Then, they helped us design the processes for user identification, notifications, and collections.

After that was done, they created the architecture for the actual software and coded most of it. Our company employs just one iOS developer. Everything else was done by Qualifast: Android, backend, and administration system development. Also, our CTO is from Qualifast. He’s responsible for code quality, code reviews, and code architecture.

We’re using agile scrum in terms of process, and we use GitHub and Jira, and Zeplin for design. In terms of infrastructure, we’re using Google Cloud, and the Android app is written in Kotlin and Java.

What is the team composition?

I work directly with their team. They offer a holistic approach. If I need to be detached and let them make decisions on their own, that's possible. Since I’m from the industry, it was important for me to remain part of the process.

How did you come to work with Qualifast?

I have a history with their CEO; we worked together at his previous company. Obviously, that’s not the way the decision was made, but they’re focused on working with startups.

I knew that Qualifast was focused on working with startups and being part of the business process. They’re comfortable with changing directions quickly because of market realities.

I also had talks with some of their other customers, and they were quite happy with Qualifast. That was good enough for me.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent between €50,000–€100,000 (approximately $55,000–$100,000 USD).

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Qualifast in June or July 2018 to scope out the work. The actual coding started in January 2019. It’s still ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We have around 15,000 active installations. Despite not having QA resources, we barely have any defects. There are very few complaints about instability, crashes, and so on. That's a credit to their engineers and an indicator of the quality of their work.

In terms of qualitative feedback, we’re very happy with working with them, and their effort is the reason we have such a great product. They’ve helped us shape the user experience in a native way for both platforms.

How did Qualifast perform from a project management standpoint?

Everything is working perfectly in terms of project management. Missed deadlines were due to scope creep rather than Qualifast underperforming. They’re quite accurate in their estimations, and they deliver.

There have been occasions where they underestimated the volume of work, but they stayed late and worked during weekends to keep the deadline. In my experience, it’s not frequent for a contractor to take such responsibility for their own deadlines.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’re really active, proactive, and vibrant. They really participate, and they love the product. Maybe our product is great, but I think it’s more about their approach. They help us shape a better product.

Look at usage data on their own, they give suggestions for feature improvement, user experience, and general functionalities. If I try to push something that isn't right, they'll catch it and give me feedback on how to do it differently. They really become part of the team, and they own the project they’re working on, rather than just following instructions.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They need to have more people, so they can have more projects. The service is great, and I’m quite happy.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

Qualifast is a great company, especially for someone who has a great idea that they want to bring quickly to market. They have a lot of experience as well as energy and expertise. They’re quite knowledgeable technically.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the CEO and founder of Ocenime.bg. We are a startup working in the real estate field and have a real estate automatic evaluation portal. We also develop different products for banking institutions and real estate agencies.  

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Qualifast?

We’re developing several products with which Qualifast is helping us. They work mostly with the frontend and some of the backend work.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

So far, we have developed three different products with Qualifast. The first one involves the website. They built the frontend mostly and were communicating with backend services. They helped to deploy this website as well. 

After that, we built another product that is not available for free online. It is a web-based banking application that works on-premise. We gave Qualifast the design and some of our main machine learning APIs as backend microservices; they built the rest. They used Angular and Java in the frontend, and they deploy using Apache and Docker as well as HTML5. Additionally, they made an admin panel for us.

What is the team composition?

I work with four members of their team in total, including the development lead and two people who helped us with the backend and Apache deployment. We work with someone on smaller tasks as well.

How did you come to work with Qualifast?

They were recommended to us by a friend of ours who worked with them in the past.

How much have you invested in them?

We’ve spent between $10,000–$50,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We began working with them in April 2018, and we still work with them on a project basis.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We work closely with Qualifast using a back-and-forth process. Since we are a startup, a lot of the requirements we give their team change depending on our clients. Qualifast is prompt and easy to work with. If something doesn’t accomplish what we initially discussed, they can quickly change it. Fast quality speaks really well for them.

How did Qualifast perform from a project management standpoint?

For each project, we show them the design and let them know what functionalities we need. They give us an expected timeframe they will accomplish this in, and then we start working. If there are feature requests, they will let us know if it will go outside of the timeframe or not.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Qualifast is good at working with start-ups and in environments where product specifications are not set in stone. In bigger companies, you would expect sprints to be a sprint without changes. However, in a start-up environment, sometimes you can’t plan that well, and requirements can change due to different circumstances. They are good at answering those needs.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I don’t think there is much they can improve on. They are really professional and have worked in the field in the last 10 years.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

It is really easy to work with Qualifast. You just need to speak your mind—if there is something that is bothering you, let them know. They’re flexible, and it isn’t a problem to suggest new features and submit change requests during the project.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a co-founder and the CEO of Reloyalty, a FinTech company leveraging a new open banking standard in Europe that allows each bank card to be connected to an application. We’re authorized by consumers to track the application and give them loyalty points for their everyday spending. We also give personalized offers based on shopping behavior. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Qualifast?

We’re a startup, so we didn’t have a lot of funding in the beginning and couldn’t afford to have in-house developers for all our needs. We were looking for a partner to build different components and found Qualifast to be right for the task.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We started out by building our iOS and Android app with Qualifast. Because they’re knowledgeable on quite a few topics, from front- and backend development to algorithms, we started working more and more with them. We have a technical team as well, but we consider Qualifast a long-term partner. 

We considered building a hybrid app to start with, but there are multiple elements involved, including banking, and we wanted to present a good level of security and UX, so we decided to develop everything natively. We started with the Android app’s development and built other things little by little. We have quite a complex backend that integrates with different APIs and payment systems.

Qualifast is helping us with provider integrations and handles the whole frontend web merchant dashboard. They’ve also helped us with infrastructure security and setting up penetration testing.

We initially started with Node.js and we were looking to move to something more established, with more security. We were looking for Java, which is Qualifast’s main strength and was one of the reasons we started speaking with them. The web frontend is built on AngularJS. People prefer it, so we were happy with that. We’ve always done UI/UX design internally and never needed it from Qualifast.

What is the team composition?

I’ve built other companies before and have worked with other providers. The model of assigning someone as a project manager along with coders has never worked with us. I started the relationship with Qualifast with a bit of skepticism about whether it could work or not. In their case, Boris (CEO, Qualifast) used to be a VP-level person at a large outsourcing company, which means that he really understands how to work with clients.

At the beginning of our collaboration, not only did he work directly with us to set up the whole team but also asked a lot of questions for helping us define the scope and assisted with identifying what technology processes to set up, how to manage our internal communication, and so on. Qualifast was a sort of co-founder for us in the beginning in terms of commitment and involvement. 

We’re working with a lot of people at Qualifast. Obviously, they have a person assigned for each platform—web, Android, and iOS—and many developers in the company have their own specialties. We’ve worked with all of them for different purposes, as well as with Boris directly. 

How did you come to work with Qualifast?

We had an iOS developer back then and we could’ve built it our product internally but we didn’t have Android resources. We started looking for Android developers and found Qualifast. This kind of work is their specialty, namely apps with significant backend components.

We found Qualifast through kind of a coincidence. I was looking for freelancers to build the app and mentioned it to a friend of mine who happened to have gone to an event with Boris. We started talking about it and connected. I wasn’t looking for a company, but he convinced me, and I tried it out.

How much have you invested with them?

The total cost of their work has been above €150,000 (approximately $166,196 USD). I don’t have an exact amount since we have a flexible arrangement, and the average monthly invoice is €5,000–€10,000 (approximately $5,540–$11,080 USD) for part-time work. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We started scoping out things with Qualifast a year-and-a-half ago, around June 2018. They continue to develop our mobile apps as we don’t have in-house resources for those. They also continue to help us with third-party integrations, backend processes, and so on. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Qualifast is really good at working with startups and they’ve helped us build our technology organization in terms of how we scope things, maintain scalability, and make decisions on speed versus long-term scalability. They also break down everything they do into timesheets. Our technical team is directly observing their work, and we track everything with full transparency.

How did Qualifast perform from a project management standpoint?

They always try to estimate things properly. We sometimes want to do something in a month, but they explain why it will take a month and a half, which can be annoying but they’ve never missed a deadline as far as I can recall. Qualifast always scopes things in a professional manner and will give us an exact timeframe.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’ve obviously evolved as a company and have worked with both large and small clients. They’re currently focusing on startup companies that need tough work like security, backend, mobile integrations, and so on. They bring experience that we can’t hire internally right now, given that those resources would be too senior for our budget.

They’re really good people to consult with on the variety of use cases that could happen. I considered them co-founders in the beginning, and we want to have a long-term collaboration since it would be difficult and expensive to hire those kinds of resources internally. They have super knowledgeable people that can help build out organizations. This is one of Qualifast’s main strengths and there aren’t many companies doing that. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

Qualifast is a fairly young company, but they’re receptive to feedback whenever there’s a mistake. Like any startup, we want to launch things faster but they want to be more on the safe side of the equation and be more professional. That can become more complex to deal with and take a bit more time, but they try to minimize errors. Maybe Qualifast should be more flexible at times, but their approach may actually be a good thing. Otherwise, in terms of speed of delivery for the scope we’ve set up, they’re really fast. 

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

They tend to become long-term partners, which has worked best in our case. Other companies may be looking for shorter engagements, but I recommend working long-term and setting up an operation with Qualifast. There should be a back and forth, in the beginning, to set things up right and see what Qualifast can take care of. It’s good to set them up as part of the team and open up the relationship with them.