Quantum

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Fermata is a startup that monitors plants and uses AI to enhance their growth and help farmers make better-driven decisions.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

For contributing to a solution for hemp flowers detection and disease classification with the help of computer vision.

We addressed Quantum team with the following challenges:

• Hemp flowers detection: find hemp flowers on the photos of hemp plants in the indoor farm. This information can be used to distinguish between two phases of hemp growth cycle and provide the business with insights on when to start/stop harvesting.
• Classification of healthy/sick hemp plants: detect signs of illness on the hemp plants, such as gray/yellow-ish leaves, rash/stains on the leaves, etc. This information allows the business to automatically monitor the health state of the plants and quickly treat/remove the affected plants, thus saving around 25% of crop.

SOLUTION

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

We’ve had a recommendation from our partners.

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

Quantum has applied the latest computer vision techniques to build image processing solutions to tackle the above-mentioned challenges:

To solve the hemp flowers detection problem, first of all, images from cameras were collected and prepared for training including data labelling. Then they trained several object detection models. As a result, they got around 80% of accuracy.

For the second problem Quantum developers have created a pipeline with the following stages: image segmentation (to find leaves on the source camera shots), leaves processing (to retrieve and filter valuable information for each detected leaf), disease classification (to detect ill leaves which can have multiple symptoms).

At the end, the model worked with 11 classes with metric value up to 90%.

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

There was a Data Scientist and supervision of the Head of Data Science from the Quantum team. Account manager also provided the support.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We achieved around 80% of accuracy for hemp flowers detection and 90% for disease classification.

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

The work was very comfortable for us. As we use the Time & Material model we had two meetings per week with Quantum’s team to share the results and plan the experiments. We settled up Slack for fast communication.

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

We are impressed with Quantum’s innovative ideas which came from regular brainstorms, flexibility in changing the direction of work due to arising restrictions and new information to achieve the required quality.

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

No, I think they do an amazing job.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the CTO of Soapy Care LTD. Soapy created the ECO Hygiene Micro-Station as a unique, technological solution for hand hygiene challenges. The automatic hand hygiene station ensures a thorough wash cycle every time, scanning the hand movements, and providing immediate feedback on the wash cycle's quality.

The micro-station dispenses the correct amount of soap and warm water required for a perfect wash - saving up to 95% of water and 60% of reagent otherwise wasted in the washing process. Here at Soapy, we're determined to create a safer, more hygienic environment for people all over the globe - one hand wash at a time.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

Gesture recognition - Detect the hand movement and wash steps during the hand wash.

SOLUTION

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

Quantum was recommended by the Ukrainian-Israeli chamber of commerce for its high quality and fast response

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

Quantum split the project into several stages:

1. Data Labeling and preparation.
2. Baseline building.
3. Deployment to the hardware platform. After this first part, we discussed how we can increase the speed of the solution on the device and did the research of different small computing devices like Jetson Nano, Intel Compute Stick, and others that could be used.
4. Deployment to a smart computing device.
5. Baseline improvements.

This stage was iterative and heavily depended on the results, achieved during baseline model development.

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

A Data Scientist and an Account manager were involved in the project.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We achieved around 80% accuracy and were ready to go to production in a very short term.

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

The team collaborated effectively. Quantum created a channel in Slack for urgent communication. We had weekly meetings where we discussed the progress and set aims for the next few weeks.

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

They generate a lot of ideas how to solve the business aims. Quantum looks at the project from both a technical and business point of view.

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

No. I think they are a fantastic vendor with a proactive approach.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am COO the the project, responsible for business operations and development

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

Quantum provides a full-circle software development service for Arianda product. The goal was to create the Artificial Intelligence Applied Diagnostic Navigation system with flexible workflows and opportunity to change the treatment protocols quickly which can be integrated with EMR systems. The product's main goal is to support the doctors fighting against COVID-19.

SOLUTION

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

Personal connections, reference from the network

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

Ariadna (Artificial Intelligence Advanced Diagnostic Navigation Atlas) - decision support system at different levels of the system healthcare. We started cooperation with Quantum in a stage of project requirements collection and idea validation with the potential clients, than build architecture and started project development. Quantum build the team themselves and showed the great outcomes.

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

3-4 developers, 1 tech lead, 1 business analyst

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We have finished version 1.0 in July 31, 2020. Currently we are in the piloting phase with 2 hospitals and continuing the development. The system was developed in defined budget, scope and timelines.

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

We had daily communication in Slack and regular conference calls. Really comfortable and transparent

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

Their flexibility and readiness to change the scope according to the changing situation with COVID19. Proficiency in project management are both very impressive. They have an amazing business analyst in the team who helped with requirements and business understanding.

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

They are professionals and can deliver amazing results.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We’re an agriculture machine manufacturer based in The Netherlands. I'm a senior scientist.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Quantum?

We’re currently doing product development using 3D vision technologies, and we went to Quantum for help with software development.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Quantum worked with us on a software with machine vision image processing, algorithm fine-tuning, and evaluative performance. They first evaluated our progress on the software work, and identified the bottlenecks. They offered suggestions on how we could improve it, then gave us a proposal.

The team helped us choose different kinds of functions for machine learning and deep learning. They used a lot of functions in OpenCV that helped us achieve automation using 3D vision.

What is the team composition?

Our main contact person was their representative in The Netherlands, and the second one was the team leader in Ukraine, who was in charge of communication and organizing things. I mainly worked with a software engineer and his supervisor, who was the lead engineer. The lead gave us second opinions and improvement ideas. There were four people in total.

How did you come to work with Quantum?

Quantum met a member of our management board at a conference and had a talk about the project. We decided to start a trial with them.

How much have you invested with them?

The cost is between $50,000–$100,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

The first phase ran between March–June 2020, and the second phase will be between July–November 2020.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Quantum delivered everything to our expectations. They helped us clarify our product development problems, they made estimations on what our expected performance would be once we solve those, and they proposed some solutions. They reached their target for phase one, so we’re very satisfied with their efficiency.

How did Quantum perform from a project management standpoint?

They made an initial analysis of what we had and gave us a proposal for each phase and the targets they expected to reach. We had daily meetings with their engineer and lead engineer to keep updated with the progress. They divided each phase into different stages, and they gave us reports at the end of each stage. We got a big report at the end of the phase, with a proposal for the next one.

I’m the main person in contact with the team, and we’ve mainly used online chat. I have a brief video call with them every morning, and we have a meeting with the whole team every week to discuss the progress and any changes we need to make. There are sometimes emails sent to everybody, including colleagues from my side.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Efficiency is the most important thing. Quantum really makes it efficient, and they reach targets on time or even before. We’ve also been very impressed by their machine vision knowledge.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, they’ve been excellent.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

You should start a trial project of three-or-so-months with Quantum, to learn their working and communication style and how efficient they are. You won’t be disappointed — you’ll want to  continue with bigger projects.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CTO of an invoice management company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Quantum?

We engaged Quantum to help further develop our systems. We were also seeking support in some of our other operations.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

The Quantum team developed many of the critical functionalities of our invoicing system, which manages and converts different types of invoices into one format. We provided them with the desired architecture via wireframes, which they implemented in Python, using the Django framework.

What is the team composition?

We have one point of contact for the business side of things and several contacts for the development side.

How did you come to work with Quantum?

I met their CTO at a freelancing company. We spoke about the project, and after I interviewed them, I decided to go ahead with the partnership.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent somewhere between $30,000–$40,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We began working together in November 2019 and it’s an ongoing engagement.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

They’ve delivered upon our agreement. Beyond executing according to our expectations, they’ve also contributed excellent ideas for system improvements. Thanks to their original ideas, we’ve been able to better serve our clients.

How did Quantum perform from a project management standpoint?

They’ve done very well so far. They’re responsive and available through our main modes of communication, which were Slack and email.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their technical expertise and proficiency in project management are both very impressive.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, they’re one of the best companies I’ve ever worked with.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

You can be straightforward with them. Their team is capable of assisting with almost any issue.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the sales manager for Manna Irrigation, an agricultural startup with an application that provides irrigation recommendations.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Quantum?

We needed someone to develop our web app.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We gave them the requirements and they did the work, developing our web app using JavaScript and React Native from scratch. They also did the user interface and specialized data integration, as well as provided a customer control dashboard. Finally, they managed to do “on the fly” consultation.

How did you come to work with Quantum?

They did some scouting in Israel and found me.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent around $20,000 with them.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in January 2019, and the work is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

They helped a lot and managed to provide a wide basis of solutions. I gave them the project, which included backend, frontend, and sometimes things involving algorithms, and they managed the provide the whole solution. The user feedback has been brilliant, and the app looks modern. Our customers really appreciate the work that Quantum is doing.

How did Quantum perform from a project management standpoint?

Project management is great because they’re precise. We use email, Jira, Slack, and GitHub. Every step is documented, and there have been no problems. They have high-end communication and deliver on time and budget. They achieve their estimation for the projects.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They had the ability to deliver a key project. We provide the specification and they provide the solution. They are very unique.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, there’s nothing I’d have them improve.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

They’ve done a great job.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the founder and CEO of iKnowology, a company that works in professional services, BI, and data science.  

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Quantum?

We are working on developing a component with a data developer from Quantum.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

The product is a pipeline that allows us to ingest large amounts of data from different sources. It’s an environment that uses Python and Kafka.

What is the team composition?

We work with a developer and a project manager.

How did you come to work with Quantum?

We found them online.

How much have you invested with them?

Our team has invested around $10,000 on this project.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in 2017.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Their developers were very professional; it was always a pleasure working with them. It always felt that if we had some uncertainty, we had a professional or team leader to confer with on questions. The project was successful—we had no issues. I got everything that I expected.

How did Quantum perform from a project management standpoint?

They were very easy to work with and highly professional. Their team is responsive. We base communication off of biweekly meetings. Whenever there’s an issue that requires some brainstorming, they create straightforward solutions.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I really appreciate that they are nice people to work with. We have a good relationship.

Are there any areas they could improve?

None that I can think of.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We are a group of ten companies, and I am the vice-senior director of business development.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Quantum?

Quantum is currently supporting the development of a software platform that we are building.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We are developing a platform for business collaboration that allows for connections and communication, as well as the distribution of information both internally and online. Quantum developed those features as well as our backend and frontend database, all from the ground up. Their team has provided us with an MVP, and we are now focused on fleshing out the product.

What is the team composition?

They have a program director who joins our planning calls, but I also work directly with two or three of their programmers. I believe they also have other team members working on our account behind the scenes.

How did you come to work with Quantum?

This is the third team we have worked with to develop this platform, so we were in a position where we had to start over from scratch. Quantum was recommended to us by a trusted personal contact who has worked with them for a long time, so we felt comfortable bringing them on.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working in February 2019 and the project is still ongoing. We are wrapping up the initial settlement now, but plan to work with them next year as well.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Qualitatively, they are the only software development company that I’ve worked with who has been able to accomplish everything they promised to us. From the beginning, Quantum has spelled out a very clear path and stuck to it, making corrections whenever deviations were necessary or requested from our side.

In terms of scheduling impact, their predictions were always accurate and their timing throughout the project was incredibly good. Their work was always effective and efficient, and they were able to accomplish things that I couldn’t imagine my other teams could ever have gotten done. They were a third of the price and twice as fast as anyone I’ve ever worked with.

How did Quantum perform from a project management standpoint?

We meet weekly, and one call for less than an hour is always enough for us to get up to date on the work that they’ve done and what is planned for the next week as well as answer any questions. They always make us feel confident about what was getting done and give us incredible clarity on the reasons behind all of the work that they’re doing.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Whenever I explain something to their team, they understand it immediately, to the point where they are able to execute on it without any further discussion necessary. That demonstration of expertise has helped a lot in establishing confidence in their work and has resulted in a better product than I would have ever imagined.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, there is very little that I would want to change about them.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

We gave them a month-long project to start off with. Once they accomplished that, we flew their team here and spent a whole week going through the entire project to nail down specifications face-to-face. I think that kind of clarity and connection from the beginning would be a huge help to anyone looking to work with them as well.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Bayce provides an innovative B2B platform to store and share work in a branded and visually stimulating environment normally found in B2C products. We give the client the tools to own the whole experience both for internal and external users in a B2B platform designed for the B2C users of today. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Quantum?

We were looking for a Backend JVM Developer and Architect that could create a Google Drive-like enterprise cloud file storage with advanced user permission management. The main challenge was that the Quantum team was able to figure out the existing system and finished it by the indicated date despite the tight deadline.

What were your goals for this project?

The goal was to build the entire product from scratch based on an MVP with a broken architecture. Quantum fully delivered on this and were very helpful in helping us make the correct tech decisions, resulting in a product that has not crashed once since its launch - a huge contrast to what we were used to.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

Through interviews with various vendors, the Quantum team stood out as very professional, well established and a good culture fit to our organisation.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

We at Bayce believe there is more to a client's work than just a file name and that the presentation of an idea is just as important as the idea itself. Bayce marries these philosophies and provides a platform to showcase client work and projects in a way like never before.

Built on and around the Amazon AWS architecture, Bayce comes with military-grade data encryption levels for security while being cost effective in the marketplace. This also gives us the flexibility to scale and adapt to specific client needs such as data storage locations meeting their geographical and legal requirements.

More technical details: complex access rights – use neo4j and AWS CloudFront security capabilities, complex search – use neo4j FTS (Full-Text Search) in their new version 3.5 for enterprise, minimize load time of assets across the world – integration with CloudFront; The main technologies used were: Kotlin, Neo4J, Spring Boot, AWS, CircleCI

What was the team composition?

From Quantum, we worked with two people - and architect and a backend JVM developer. Or team comprised of other elements as well, and Quantum played a key role in helping us manage the entire tech team efficiently.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Quantum team has created the new version of the web backend of Bayce to store and share users’ work and integrating it with AWS for file storage, web server deployment, etc. Managing CI and CD pipeline. Support for OAuth2 login and SSO via customized identity service.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

We use Google Hangouts and Slack for weekly updates, but all project-related work is done in Jira, which is what we use internally. Communication and workflow have been very effective.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

The professionalism and level of organisation in Quantum's processes is very impressive. and aside from being great to work with, they also delivered a very high quality of work usually before the estimated time and never late, and within our budget.

Are there any areas for improvement?

No, not at the moment. Everything is being done as expected and delivered on time.