S9Y.ai

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Spendee is a smart financial assistant for young generation. We allow users to connect all their bank and payment accounts in one place. From their transaction data we are able not only to allow them to check their finance in one place but also provide them with custom tailored tips and insights how to become more financially responsible and literate.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire S9Y.ai?

We hired S9Y for a React Native app for both iOS and Android platform.

What were your goals for this project?

We wanted to launch a completely new version of Spendee app and got in touch with S9Y to test and prototype what technologies to use. From some testing and prototypes we quickly moved to hiring S9Y for the complete delivery of our mobile app.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

Recommendations from one of our investors. Reference from their other clients. Experience within their team.

Describe the project in detail.

React Native mobile app running on both iOS and Android platforms. They are solely responsible for the whole development of the app

What was the team composition?

5 people, React Native developers and their team leader who is also the primary contact on the S9Y's side

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The development is not finished and live yet, so there is still too soon to talk about that.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

It was extremely flawless, the same way as if they were directly our team members. They are attending all-hands meetings, daily standups, and other events. We do not consider them just to be external partners, they are simply a part of the team.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

We appreciate their extreme will to deliver things sooner than expected and in better quality. This is probably caused by the personality of their team members, who are really responsible and well-skilled.

Are there any areas for improvement?

None.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

We are the insurer market leader in the Czech Republic providing services to 4+ million clients. My responsibility is to manage the old tech core systems, that we are decommissioning on one side and AI/ML initiatives systems on the other.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire S9Y.ai?

We use the services of S9Y for our innovation/differentiation projects, as they are able not only to provide the technical skillset, but also bring out of the box ideas. The cooperation started with the AI/ML project checking the quality of our correspondence and then continues with multiple others (automated document processing, automated incoming email categorization, mobile app for marketing purposes, ...).

What were your goals for this project?

We are distributing more than 30 mil documents per year to our clients, created by 2000+ templates. We have regularly had issues with these in the past and we were unable to remove them without testing. The idea of this project is to use AI/ML to check all the documents and identify anomalies.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

We ran several rounds of workshops with multiple vendors to see, what they would be able to propose for our issue. S9Y were the only ones able to prove the theory and show a practical PoC.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

We were looking for a company able to help us with checking our outgoing correspondence. We started discussing with multiple potential vendors, got some ideas.

Then we created a dataset to run a PoC with a shortlisted number of vendors. S9Y delivered us with a working prototype. After agreeing the terms of our cooperation, we were able to deliver the first version of the checking app in 2 months to production. This saved us a lot of issues in our merger project. After that we continue delivering additional features.

What was the team composition?

Most of the team members are not 100% allocated to this project. From our side we have an IT manager, IT architect, PM, 2 business analysts and 2 correspondence specialists. From S9Y we have a PM, 2 ML engineers, 1 FE developer, 1 devops engineer and 1 graphic designer.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We identified and corrected more than 10.000 incorrect letters in 4 months. We are able to analyze documents, that generate "almost empty page" too often, so we are saving print and postage cost.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

We have a business-only PM on our side and a business and technical PM on S9Y side. The project is agile and able to alter the scope when needed. We are quite happy with how the project is progressing.

In the beginning we underestimated the need of business process analysis and design on our side, but thankfully the implementation team was adaptable enough (plus working nights and weekends) to deliver on time.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

The ability to motivate their employees. The enthusisasm and ownership of S9Y employees is unbelievable.

Are there any areas for improvement?

The S9Y is not a consulting company, so although they provide excellent services in technology, our projects would have been a bit easier, if they were able to provide also business process analysis.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Workpress Aviation is a parts manufacturer for the aviation industry. I’m the business development manager of the company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with S9Y.ai?

Our company’s grown very quickly in the last year, and we had to meet our customer requirements while maintaining capacity, control of production, and flexibility. We’d had a very basic system in place, from when the company had 20–40 people. We have 200 people now, and the amount of work and complexity have multiplied innumerable times. We needed strong support from an ERP.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

S9Y developed our ERP to fit perfectly to our needs. We needed to have full traceability to identify every single part of our products and their original raw materials. We needed lots of information to be managed on databases, with overviews on hand at every moment.

The ERP is web-based, and we also have an iOS app. We use iPads in production for immediate information. The system is able to control everything from the quotation process to production preparation, the production itself, quality aspects, financials, and part delivery. It enables us to get any information on parts and production.

What is the team composition?

There are four people supporting us: one project manager and some programmers.

How did you come to work with S9Y.ai?

Our CEO brought them onboard. I believe it was through a reference.

How much have you invested with them?

The cost so far has been around $600,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with S9Y in June 2016, and they continue to improve our system. We’re now working on a planning module with AI elements.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

For us, the key aspects of our partnership with S9Y are their performance, flexibility, and precise work. They’re really excellent in these respects. S9Y reacts quickly to requests and can change the applications during testing if they’re not working as we’d like.

We wouldn’t be able to operate at this time without the system. Our production and requirements are so specific that we couldn’t really have implemented a standard ERP. They’ve developed individual and company-wide reporting functionalities, tailored for our needs. We can create reports for individual cases, such as when we need to investigate something.  

How did S9Y.ai perform from a project management standpoint?

They’re very flexible and able to support us at night or during weekends if we need it. They’re really good from this point of view.

We have meetings on a regular basis led by their project manager and a member of the development team. We mainly discuss priorities, which change quite often in our case, along with progress and other topics.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We’ve worked very closely with S9Y and know them very well. They’ve supported us all the time. I appreciate their reliability, flexibility, and responsiveness. We also trust them, which is very important for our industry. We need strong partners.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I don’t have anything at the moment.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

We’d be willing to recommend them, but we need them.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Tacticaware is a security company that develops software for their volumetric detection security system, accur8vision. Accur8vision is a security system that uses lidar technology along with a 3D map to protect an entire area instead of just the boundaries.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire S9Y.ai?

Frontend/backend for our security device. Frontend for our security system.

What were your goals for this project?

To improve our product by another user interface for mobile platforms

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

We selected this vendor through our common customer.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

The project was a web UI for our security system and the services provided was for GUI settings, camera streams, and 2D visualization of the secured space

What was the team composition?

The team composition consisted of about 4 programmers but we were mostly in contact with 2 team leads

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We cannot demonstrate anything just yet as it is still a work in progress and we haven't released any information on it yet but it's going to be amazing.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

Excellent! They are very knowledgeable and helpful. They are also helping in shaping the project when something is incorrectly designed for web tech.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

S9Y has a very knowledgeable team, they know what they are doing. Very responsible in handling all tasks No job is 'finished' half way done. They will alert you about problems and do not withhold any information. They inform you about everything High quality of work, they want to complete everything to the maximum performance! You know that they are not taking advantage of anything. They have fast response time and is helpful with customer questions, even outside working hours They are a friendly group of people and it was super nice to work with them.

Are there any areas for improvement?

None that come to mind. They did an outstanding job!

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO of an industrial coating company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with S9Y.ai?

I wanted to implement a nice looking, highly customizable information system.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They came up with a design very quickly and we were able to meet and talk about a prototype from there. I was able to click on that and see how it looked, and I told them what I wanted to change from there. I saw the progress in real-time.

What is the team composition?

We had one project manager and two developers. In total it was 4–5 people.

How did you come to work with S9Y.ai?

One of my friends had already worked with them and recommended them to me.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent 3 million Czech crowns (approximately $126,000 USD).

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working around August 2018, and our project is still ongoing with improvements.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

At first, we ran into an issue because they didn’t understand the domain I’m in. We were able to quickly fix that once we started the prototype.

They quickly understood that my goal was to optimize my cost and processes. Overall, they delivered very good work. I was very satisfied.

How did S9Y.ai perform from a project management standpoint?

We have regular weekly meetings. Whenever I needed something late at night, they were very responsive.

What did you find most impressive about them?

In general, I like new technology and learning about it. It was very impressive to learn how the development process went, step by step. I also liked how the designed our tool to my specifications.

Are there any areas they could improve?

The speed of delivery could be improved.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I would definitely recommend them because the results I got them, for the price, was amazing.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the CEO and founder of a company that provides an accountability software to construction companies that helps lower the cost of construction for investors by connecting them with contractors that they can trust.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with S9Y.ai?

Since we are a construction company, we needed a partner to help us build the platform that we wanted to deliver to our customers.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They built both the web application that we use to monitor all of the data and control interactions from the backend, as well as the mobile application that both contractors and investors use to interface and make sure that everything is going according to their project’s expectations.

I believe the app was built in PHP and Javascript primarily. They handled both all of the backend development as well as the designs. I worked closely with them to make sure that the final product came out the way that we wanted it to look.

What was the team composition?

There were 3–4 developers, one designer, one project manager, and the owner of the company involved with us on a regular basis.

How did you come to work with S9Y.ai?

One of my friends worked with them on a different application that he needed for his business, and he had a great experience so we decided to partner with them as well.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent a total of about $50,000 on the project.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our project lasted from around June 2018–June 2019.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

I originally tried to build the app with another company, and the collaboration was terrible. They didn’t communicate and their work was not very good quality, so I came to S9Y.ai with a broken product to see if they could fix what was there and build out the rest.

Within a very short period of time, they had completely turned the application around to my satisfaction. They have continued to be incredibly helpful and proactive since then, so I am very pleased with their performance.

Our users have enjoyed the product as well, and we are continuing to gain more and more people on the platform who see its value. So far, we have been able to gain substantial interest from investors as well

How did S9Y.ai perform from a project management standpoint?

I was impressed by how proactive they were about providing excellent service at all times. There were several points where they stepped in and told their own team members that they needed to be doing more or communicating differently, and we never had to push them to get what we wanted. We started with emails but used their Slack suite as well for day-to-day messages.

Their team members were always asking about our end goals for the application and thinking about how they could modify the solutions in order to best approach those goals. They expanded their advice into marketing for the application and taking those considerations into the development so that I could best advertise to my potential customers.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They are an honest team to the core. They don’t approach their work as a contract company providing a service to you; they see themselves as partners in your project, so they are always very invested in the quality of the final product. The whole experience was fantastic.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Occasionally I got a bit lost in the technical details of their explanations about what they do, so they could potentially do a bit more to break down those concepts to people without development experience. Other than that, I really don’t have any complaints.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

If you have technical people on your side of the project, you will do very well with them, but if you don’t, just make sure that one of their managers or owners is involved in the conversations because they are better at explaining the details in ways that are easy for you to understand.