Software Dev for Utilities Consulting Company
- Custom Software Development
- $50,000 to $199,999
- July - Sep. 2019
- Quality
- 4.0
- Schedule
- 5.0
- Cost
- 4.0
- Willing to Refer
- 5.0
"We challenged them, and they responded to those challenges in a very short period."
- Other industries
- London, England
- 11-50 Employees
- Phone Interview
- Verified
Sagacity Software provides ongoing software development support for a utilities consulting company. They worked to build a solution for a water company and later productized the solution.
As a result of Sagacity Software’s work, the consultancy’s client saw an improvement in their ability to complete work efficiently, making them more competitive in their industry. The Sagacity team was also receptive to feedback and possessed strong project management skills.
A Clutch analyst personally interviewed this client over the phone. Below is an edited transcript.
BACKGROUND
Introduce your business and what you do there.
Skewb is a two-and-a-half-year-old company primarily providing services for the utility sector. We look at selling business outcomes as part of the service, and we offer a data-driven solution system. I’m the director of digital in the company. I manage all digital activities, from writing routines on the clients’ estates to providing SaaS offerings.
OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE
What challenge were you trying to address with Sagacity Softwares Pvt Ltd?
We were working with a mid-sized water company in the UK, and we were trying to use that opportunity to build our product, to then roll it out to different companies around the world. The intention was to exit our company within the next five years, so we needed a product that would help our valuation during the exiting.
SOLUTION
What was the scope of their involvement?
Sagacity Software was our main offshore development partner for a services portal solution, which was meant to manage the workflow going through a developer services organization. We need to get water, gas, and electricity into new utilities projects, and there’s management around that to ensure that everything is done according to regulations. All of that is done on our platform.
As a spin-off to that, whatever functionalities we built for our initial client were productized in order to be rolled out to other clients. We’ve rolled the platform out to four other clients so far.
I had in-house architects that think through the entire solution and how it’s going to fit together. Once that was done, Sagacity Software provided full-stack development. They also gave us some architectural input. They haven’t provided infrastructure architecture, but they’ve worked on data, solution, and application architecture. The AWS infrastructure has been managed by my onshore team.
The app has MySQL and PostgreSQL components, and I know that they’ve also used PL/SQL to do database operations. They used Golang on the frontend and PHP as well.
I’ve also had a project with them building a prototype mobile framework, which used the Xamarin framework.
What is the team composition?
We have two dedicated architects within their team who reviewed our requirements and determined how they fit into the product roadmap. We had 9–10 people at the peak of the project, but normally we worked with 3–4 people.
How did you come to work with Sagacity Softwares Pvt Ltd?
One of their founders was a candidate that I interviewed for my old organization as we were creating an offshore office there. He worked there up until he co-founded Sagacity Software. About five years ago, I was looking for an offshore partner for my previous organization, and I reached out to them. I gave them a small, £5,000 (approximately $6,433 USD) project, and I was really pleased with the work. I watched their organization grow from there, and I went to them again when this project came up.
How much have you invested with them?
We’ve spent £60,000–£70,000 (approximately $77,182–$90,045 USD) so far, and we have another £40,000 (approximately $51,454 USD) worth of pipeline work for them.
What is the status of this engagement?
We started working with Sagacity Software in July 2019, and the first phase of the software came out in September of that year. The product went into full flow by April 2020. We’re continuing to work with them for at least another six months.
RESULTS & FEEDBACK
What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?
The big aspect of what we do is not just building software solutions. We pride ourselves on building business outcome solutions. The business case we were trying to solve with this project was related to water regulators in the UK. There’s a particular set of metrics around enabling the building of houses. The company we were working for was ranked 17th, which meant that they had to pay a fine of about £2.5 million for not being a cooperative water company. By the end of year one, they were up to number 13, which dropped their fine down to about £1.7 million. I wouldn’t attribute all of that to the new platform, but 60–70% of it was down to how the platform managed the completion of the work.
How did Sagacity Softwares Pvt Ltd perform from a project management standpoint?
We had a very agile structure for setting up the project, and I had an onshore team responsible for the architecture while Sagacity largely did the development. I’d say that a lot of the management happened on our side.
I gave them a bit more authority to manage some aspects of the project, though there were a few areas that could’ve been managed better. However, they worked over weekends to get things back on track. Sagacity has good project managers but, as with most offshore companies, we still need a level of oversight to ensure that things are airtight. As far as small offshore companies go, I’d put Sagacity in the upper 75% for project management.
We use Jenkins to coordinate the work from a solutions point of view, and we pass our requirements to them using an agile board. My project managers use those boards to make sure all the requirements are done, and I get reviews on a fortnightly basis. I also get them to send us weekly status reports, summarizing what they’d done that week. I have no problems with how they manage requirements and report to me. We have a well-set-up DevOps estate.
What did you find most impressive about them?
One of the reasons for the success I’ve had with them was that we started with a blank slate. We were able to get both the solution and the delivery in place, and I liked the fact that Sagacity could conceptualize the kind of solution we wanted. We’ve gone from concept to product without too much intervention from my end. They came with unique ideas and product solutions. We challenged them, and they responded to those challenges in a very short period.
They were also good in managing a dual line of code, with one for the client and the other for the productization of the platform. It was a challenging means of working, but they handled it well.
Are there any areas they could improve?
There are a lot of holidays in India, and they weren’t very quick in communicating when one would come up. We only got to know about them 1–2 days in advance. This is something they’ve improved over the last few months. Apart from that, I’ve been happy with everything I’ve gotten from them.
We’re a $10 million company now, and they’re our main IT supplier. We have a new pipeline for which we’re looking at them to be our main supplier.
RATINGS
-
Quality
4.0Service & Deliverables
-
Schedule
5.0On time / deadlines
-
Cost
4.0Value / within estimates
"We’re always going to look for cheaper alternatives."
-
Willing to Refer
5.0NPS
