Saratoga

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO of a South African publishing company. We own the second-largest online news platform in the country, known as IOL.co.za, and we have a number of other magazine entities within the group. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Saratoga?

We had a need for senior developers for our software development team in the custom development of our large news platform.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Saratoga is providing React.js development, following a roadmap with two-week sprints. We’re continually evolving the product and building new tools with them. 

We’ve worked with their UI/UX designers at times, and they’ve been involved in shaping the wireframes for us, but most of our design resources are internal.

What is the team composition?

I’ve worked with two developers and their CEO.

How did you come to work with Saratoga?

Our former CTO started working with them, so the relationship extends back to that point and started before I joined the company. We regularly look at other vendors on the market, but we’ve developed a very good working relationship with Saratoga over the years.

How much have you invested with them?

The total so far is between 30 million – 40 million South African rands (approximately $2 million – $2.7 million USD)

What is the status of this engagement?

The engagement has been ongoing since January 2014. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

A metric we use is their ability to deliver according to our timelines and the knowledge they share. They also meet our certain objectives, be it software upgrades or new releases for product development. 

How did Saratoga perform from a project management standpoint?

We use Jira and Slack to communicate. They're very good at meeting our deadlines.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their ability to listen to our needs and their willingness to share knowledge make them stand out.  We have a shared culture, and it would be difficult for someone to think that we’re from two different organizations because of how tightly integrated we are as a team. We work together to find solutions to problems.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I can’t think of anything for them to improve at this point.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

Communication is the most important ingredient. Clients should make sure to have regular engagements with the vendor and treat them like an extension of their own team to get the most out of the developer. 

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the group executive at a legacy print company. We own and produce about 17 newspapers in three cities across South Africa. On our digital platform, we aggregate and publish all the same news each day.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Saratoga?

We needed help to develop our digital news platform. 

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Saratoga helped us build a framework to host the new website they developed for us from scratch. They designed it to be mobile friendly and showcase content from other providers. For example, third-party suppliers provide financial or sports data we need to display. As they created the layout, the team helped us place advertisements and content from our CMS.
 
Over the last 3-4 years, we’ve completed several iterations. We’re currently developing on the new framework using Progressive Web App (PWA), Google’s recommended product to make apps mobile friendly and fast. They’re presently incorporating features and functionalities from the app into a basic browser. 
 
We work with Sarasota on a sprint-by-sprint basis. They perform all the maintenance and complete new requirements. As we scale up, we’ve started using the framework for other websites. As the second largest news platform in South Africa, we see over 5 million unique visitors online every month.  
 
What is the team composition? 

We work with a business analyst, a lead developer, one senior developer/architect, one junior developer, and one developer/frontend CSS designer. 

How did you come to work with Saratoga?

My company was already working with Saratoga when I joined. A reason they were selected is that they’re a smaller group within a holding company. 

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent more than $1 million.

What is the status of this engagement?

We’ve been working together since July 2014. Our engagement will be ongoing for the long term. We will always need developers to support and improve our system as we continue to scale up. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Before we started working together, our website was attracting about 1.8 million unique browsers per month. Saratoga has helped us scale the technology as our business grows and more people come to the site. They delivered a platform that’s fast, responsive, and mobile-first. We attribute the site’s growth and success to their tech and development team. 

The framework Saratoga built was so robust and automated that it generated opportunities for different websites and properties. Next week, we’ll be rolling out the sixth website that uses this framework, and the seventh one within two months. Saratoga will manage each one. Initially, we’d only anticipated them working on a single website for us. 

How did Saratoga perform from a project management standpoint?

We have weekly and sometimes biweekly meetings with Saratoga and all our different stakeholders. Together, we discuss technology, editorial, SEO, and design strategy. We have a sprint planning meeting every two weeks. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

It doesn’t feel like we’re working with an outside company. We can easily and very comfortably work in their offices. Similarly, they fit in well in our space. It’s always been very effortless to collaborate with Saratoga.

Are there any areas they could improve?

The entire software development industry is currently struggling to attract more development talent Engineers are in short supply, and it’s not as easy to find new resources

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO of a supply chain business called Worldwide Chain Stores. For over 48 years, we’ve developed technical solutions for warehouse and labor management. We’ve recently launched the third generation of our web-based, real-time Java application into markets. It’s a cloud-hybrid that we deploy on premise.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Saratoga?

Years ago, the third generation of our product had gone through its first phase of development. However, we had to shelf it temporarily because we’d lost our core competency for the product. When I became CEO, I wanted to resurrect the project, bring the technology up to date, and then continue development. Our goal was to match the previous iteration’s functionality before enhancing it further to meet current e-commerce needs and technological trends.

As a result, we needed resources to augment our in-house team. They needed to have a strong understanding of mission-critical applications that required 24/7 uptime and high throughputs. Furthermore, they had to have a sense of what our industry was looking for in a future platform.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They provided a team to rewrite some of the base legacy code from past product builds into new technology. We worked with them to write our business requirements in a specific way so that they could develop the functional requirements. Because we had an existing client base that had used our second generation platform, we had certain non-negotiable prerequisites: the product could have no downtime, it needed to conform to a DB2 database without being restricted to IBM tech, and it needed to be open and database independent.

Additionally, the product had to be compatible with various cloud services (e.g., Azure, Google) and be deployable with the customer’s chosen stack. They were able to achieve this by writing the code in Java and choosing particular stacks. We’ve since launched the first version of the product and continue to use Saratoga for R&D. They’re responsible for opening the technology architecture to add new trendy features, which will help us become more innovative and competitive in our markets.

What is the team composition?

They assigned a development team that specialized in technology architecture. Because they lacked any supply chain expertise, we established a competence and domain team to educate them about our industry. Over time, Saratoga has come to understand some of our terminology and processes.

How did you come to work with Saratoga?

Saratoga was a sister company of our shareholders. They recommended Saratoga to us, so we researched them. In the end, we felt that they were able to help us meet our short and long-term goals.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent about £200,000 (approximately $260,000 USD) thus far.

What is the status of this engagement?

Their work began in March 2017 and is ongoing, but we’ve worked with them in other capacities before then. Considering how much we’ve invested to get their domain knowledge up, we don’t intend to end the partnership anytime soon.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

As a collective team, they’ve helped us meet our delivery dates, stay within budget, and satisfy our customers. When we implemented the first version of the product, we held a user conference to demonstrate the platform. Customers commended us for sticking to timelines and remaining within budget. We couldn’t have done that without Saratoga’s involvement.

How did Saratoga perform from a project management standpoint?

Initially, it was difficult to bring them up to speed on our domain. We invested a lot to bring them to our location and sent our teams to theirs. They’re now a core part of our business, and we view them as an extension of our business. We communicate daily using Slack and provide updates to keep everyone on the same page.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Whenever we’ve had to increase the team or had lost a member, Saratoga was quick to send more resources. They effectively brought new individuals up to speed and integrated them into the team.

Are there any areas they could improve?

When engaging with a new industry, it’s imperative that the team members get a sense of what they’re working on. In our case, we brought them to a warehouse and let them walk the floor to give them a real-life experience. It’s not just about technology; coders still need to understand what they’re building and how a code change affects the user.

Generally, the quality of their work has been good. However, there were times when they had to redo parts of the code because they didn’t have a strong enough understanding of our domain. This depended on the developer and where they were in the learning curve.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a systems development consultant for Stewardship. It’s an organization that offers financial services to churches and charities in the UK. Beyond philanthropy, they provide both professional and educational services. I manage software development for them.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Saratoga?

We needed a new software development partner. Our previous partner didn’t meld well with our company culture, so we wanted to find a firm that understood our needs and could flexibly accommodate our size.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We have a product suite and Saratoga built up the core functionality, replaced certain aspects of it, and created new products within the platform. They built everything on Microsoft SQL Server using C# MVC with a darknet stack going all the through. They also built an API that allows other organizations to integrate with us for things like address information and bank account verification. They’ve done some business intelligence work for us as well. We’re long-term partners and their ongoing responsibilities include architecture design, software development, and product testing.

What is the team composition?

We have a project manager, one QA resource, and five developers that work on our platform.

How did you come to work with Saratoga?

I know their former CEO personally and that facilitated the original introduction.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent roughly between $500,000 and $1 million.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in February 2015 and the engagement is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

They’ve released two new developments in the last year that were on time, within budget, and built to our specifications. Additionally, they designed and developed our foundational API that leads the direction we’re taking the rest of our products. That’s been a major success and has put us in a good position for the future. Also, we don’t have to give them detailed product descriptions or guide them through development. They’ve demonstrated the ability to deliver a board scope. Another positive factor they contribute is proactivity. This enabled them to achieved goals of ours like continuous integration and automated testing.

How did Saratoga perform from a project management standpoint?

We communicate through Skype, email, and HipChat. I live close to their offices, so we’ve met face-to-face as well. Most of the documentation and formal communication takes place on Jira.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their desire to meet our needs distinguishes them from other providers. They’re flexible and possess the ability to scale up or down with us.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They’d benefit from having a bigger pool of developers. We’re currently in a situation where one of the developers resigned and they’re struggling to fill the spot.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Group CTO of Liaison Group

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

We are a trusted partner to the NHS, specialising in recovering cash for reinvestment and freeing up time to deliver more care. Through our focus areas of workforce, non-pay spend, and continuing healthcare, we’ve delivered over £1.1bn of savings to be released back into health and social care to drive system improvements.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Saratoga to accomplish?

• Support developing Rostering Solution components

SOLUTION

How did you find Saratoga?

Other

Why did you select Saratoga over others?

Great culture fit

How many teammates from Saratoga were assigned to this project?

1 Employee

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

C#, .net code development to support rostering solution components - modules varied over time as the project progressed

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Error free code to spec and on time.

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

Saratoga provided a single resource to support the project. This was an initial engagement which had circumstances and our strategic direction been different we would have looked to expand.

What was your primary form of communication with Saratoga?

• In-Person Meeting
• Virtual Meeting

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

Our engagement with Saratoga has been easy. While slightly on the expensive side, they provided a great quality resource who has provided value for money, overall shame not being in a position to expand but that’s our call to rationalise internally.

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

None