Scalo

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the delivery director and development center leader for a software provider in the banking industry. Our company provides software for the banking industry, mostly for frontend solutions.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Scalo?

We are quickly growing, and we aren’t able to support that growth internally, so we decided to use external services and providers to staff and accelerate our growth.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We build our software for banks that have their own mobile applications, mostly for banking transactional systems as well as systems to onboard new customers. The latter includes all of the workflows necessary to process new customers entering the bank.

Scalo has provided recruiting, screening, and staff augmentation for our internal projects. They do not provide any separate pieces of work. From a technology standpoint, they are fully aligned with our technologies: Java, Angular, Kotlin, and Swift.

What is the team composition?

Currently, we are working with 10 consultants from Scalo.

How much have you invested in them?

We have daily rates, and so far, we’ve spent around €200,000 (approximately $221,000 USD).

What is the status of this engagement?

The partnership began in August 2021, and it is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We don’t track performance in any formal or quantitative way, but I would say that we haven’t had any negative feedback about the individuals. We’re pleased with the quality of the candidates and consultants provided by Scalo and provide feedback both on a regular basis and on-demand.

It is difficult to calculate being on time and budget in a staff augmentation model, but the quality of the consultants has been satisfactory.

How did Scalo perform from a project management standpoint?

They are very responsive. We have several forms of communication: our equipment team coordinates the recruitment and info pipeline on a weekly basis, and I have meetings with their account management bi-weekly. We have direct email communication daily as well.

We use Greenhouse for the recruitment pipeline, but this is only for the new candidates being interviewed. Normally, we just use email.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They have a very good network of recruiters that reach many candidates in Poland. I am impressed with how successful they are in connecting us with the right candidates. When it comes to prices, they are also pretty reasonable.

Considering the scale, we still expect them to do more because we are growing even faster than expected, but we’re happy with the candidates they’re providing.

Are there any areas they could improve?

There is slightly too large of an attrition rate, and I think they can scale up better, at least from my perspective. Other than that, I don’t have any other comments.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

No, there’s nothing in particular. We are satisfied with their services.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We’re a software company, and I’m the leader of the team responsible for customer-specific development.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Scalo?

It’s relatively hard to recruit developers in Finland, so we partnered with Scalo to find skilled developers suitable for our project needs.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Scalo provides us with external developers for our team, who work with us on different projects. They’re as close to an employee as they can get without being directly employed by our company; they’re really close teammates.

Most of our projects are related to web development, so Scalo’s resources mainly help us with PHP development and, occasionally, Python development. As for the projects specifically, we’re building web applications for data management and reporting.

Additionally, our projects vary in size. Some work orders take about an hour to complete, whereas others take over two weeks of development work.

What is the team composition?

We’re currently working with three software developers from Scalo, and a fourth one will join us the next month.

How did you come to work with Scalo?

When I came to this position, we were already working with Scalo, so I don’t know how my company found them. However, I know that some of their resources have worked with us for over two years.

How much have you invested with them?

I don’t have the exact numbers, but we spend an average of €18,000–€20,000 (approximately $21,000–$23,000 USD) per month, and this rate has been on that level for a while. Thus, I estimate that we’ve spent over €400,000 (approximately $460,000 USD) in total.

What is the status of this engagement?

I believe we started working together around February 2019, and our engagement is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

As Scalo resources are basically just external team members, our success comes from completing the projects. For the most part, their estimates are fairly accurate, and everything is delivered as promised and planned.

How did Scalo perform from a project management standpoint?

Although their skills vary from individual to individual, Scalo’s project management is good for the most part. Whatever they promise, they deliver. We use Jira for project management and Microsoft Teams to communicate.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Scalo’s resources know what they’re doing, which helps them pick up things quickly. Whenever we need more resources, the onboarding process is pretty smooth, especially compared to how much time it takes to recruit someone internally.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I don’t have any constructive feedback for Scalo.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Be aware of your needs. If you can define the technologies and the skills you need, the engagement will be easier, and they’ll help you find suitable candidates.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m an executive at an advertising tech company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Scalo?

We were creating a product in the advertising technology environment. It was a product for publishers to improve their revenue by making a dynamic inventory on their side and getting more income out of their advertising. We needed help with the recruitment of an outsourced, part-time frontend developer with broad experience and availability.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Scalo helped us with the recruitment; they gave us some candidates, and we selected one. We interviewed the candidate and started working together — everything went through them, like the invoicing. 

What is the team composition?

There’s one part-time frontend developer, a salesperson, and an account manager from their team.

How did you come to work with Scalo?

A former colleague recommended them. I contacted another company, but Scalo gave me better and quicker feedback.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent €13,000 (approximately $15.000 USD) with them,

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from June–September 2021.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We benefited from the technical input of the developer — they were experienced, and it went great. The metrics of their service itself worked great as well.

How did Scalo perform from a project management standpoint?

We communicated via email and video calls.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They have a wide selection of candidates with different experiences, which worked with our requirements.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I don't think there's anything they can improve on — they provided us with different options.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Ask for more candidates to choose from since the beginning.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the VP of engineering at an IT services company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Scalo?

We needed to expand our team with additional IT cloud consultants. To hire in-house consultants was difficult, and we wanted to ramp up our team as quickly as possible.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Scalo acts as an extension of our core product team, and they work on our core functionality, which is focused on product payment. They’re also working on a web application that shows our productivity metrics on a dashboard. Thanks to this app, all of our metrics will be in one place.

We initially provided them with information about the architecture of our payment functionality. However, they had to do R&D for the web app. They’ve also given some ideas to our team on how to organize and deploy our infrastructure; we always get good input from them.

What is the team composition?

We work with four PHP backend developers from Scalo.

How did you come to work with Scalo?

I had worked with Scalo in the past at a previous organization. I knew that I could rely on them, so I brought them in.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent around $30,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in June 2021, and our engagement is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The metric dashboard request came from our CTO and our co-founder themselves. It is still a work in progress, so there’s not a final evaluation. However, we’re happy with the progress in what we’ve seen so far.

How did Scalo perform from a project management standpoint?

We're managing both projects. However, Scalo’s team is self-organized. We communicate via Slack as needed, and we also have daily standing meetings and sync-ups via video calls.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The quality of Scalo’s team is impressive, and they’re very mature. They initially got up to speed quickly, and we didn’t put much effort into doing so.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Out of the four people from Scalo, one isn’t a really good communicator and has some troubles blending in with the team. Other than that, I’m extremely happy with their services.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Scalo does a great job assigning people, and they have a great presence in Poland. If you want to extend your team here, they’re the place to go. Their team members are really mature, and they will help you with the preselection so that your time is well invested.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the director of a credit bureau that has operations in about 40 countries with 2,000 employees.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Scalo?

They provide software contractors whenever we need to scale up our software development team.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We send them a job profile with our expectations, a description of the project, and our technical requirements.  In turn, they send us CVs for different candidates.

Once we’ve assessed each candidate, we invite the people we’re interested in for a recruitment call. After the technical evaluation, we make an internal decision about whether or not we want to work with them. If we do, we send the information to Scalo and negotiate the price. Then they inform us if the person accepts the offer or not.

What is the team composition?

We’ve worked with about 50 people. There are some technical support people, technical assistants, business analysts, and the rest are developers.

How did you come to work with Scalo?

We researched Polish software contractors and evaluated several firms. We chose Scalo out of those we shortlisted.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in June 2015 and our partnership is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We’ve assessed our vendors and, compared to our other partners, they’re pretty good. We don’t officially measure any KPIs, but we’re pretty happy with their work.

How did Scalo perform from a project management standpoint?

They cooperate well, so we’re satisfied with our partnership. We generally use email and phone to communicate. We used to meet from time to time, but haven’t in a while due to COVID-19.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They provide more candidates than other companies we’ve worked with. On top of that, they’re able to compile a list relatively quickly.

Are there any areas they could improve?

We expect our vendors to have a bench of people because when we need people, we need them right away. I would appreciate it if we could get a potential candidate on the same day.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Try to openly communicate your needs. They usually understand what we want and are flexible in their negotiations.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the co-founder and CTO of ELSA, a foreign language learning app.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with NBC IT Outsourcing?

We were looking to build some new back- and frontend technologies to help companies use our app.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We brought in a small team of architects. The technology stack was Python with SQL database and an AWS cloud connection. The team collaborated with the frontend developers and designers we outsourced.

Now, the team is helping with other features that go directly into the app. They’re working on the backend technology that creates APIs for the app which involves a lot of interactions with our databases across several technologies.

What is the team composition?

We’ve worked with two developers as well as a project manager, who we talk to about any business or project needs.

How did you come to work with NBC IT Outsourcing?

NBC IT was recommended to us by another company in our area that was already working with them. We evaluated them as we did everyone else, and decided they would be able to provide us with good service.

What is the status of this engagement?

We’ve been working together since December 2018. We launched the platform successfully, but the developers remained on board and moved into the core of our product.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

I’ve enjoyed working with NBC IT. The team is always flexible in terms of their service, and they work hard to provide us with what’s best for us. There have been a few occasions when they’ve reached out to us to make suggestions on technology stacks or other strategies that would make our product better, which we really appreciated. They proved to us that they really care about us reaching our milestones.

We don’t just have client-vendor interactions. We have an actual relationship with NBC IT, so we can really talk to them about decisions in our project. It’s been a pleasure working with them. 

How did NBC IT Outsourcing perform from a project management standpoint?

The two developers have integrated perfectly into our teams. They’ve been involved in all the daily stand up meetings and sprint planning with us. NBC IT has become part of our development team. We treat them as part of our company.

What did you find most impressive about them?

NBC IT really tries to make the engagement as good for the client as possible. It’s clear they believe that their success is related to ours. They’re thoughtful and always go the extra mile to make sure things are going well.

Are there any areas they could improve?

There’s nothing that comes to mind. They even visited us once when they were in Portugal, which was really nice. We’ve had a great experience.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Be very clear on your objectives and your limitations. NBC IT is an excellent long-term partner.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Vodeno is a development company working on software in the financial services area. We mainly target banks and insurers. We’re working on our own core banking system, with solutions such as mobile banking apps, payment modules, and remote client onboarding modules using biometrics.

Most of our work is the development, maintenance, and implementation of our solution for external clients. We have one big client using our systems, and we’re implementing them for new clients. We offer both module and full digital banking implementation.

I’m responsible for financial and sourcing issues. I’m working with a full IT staff, coordinating who’s working where.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with NBC IT Outsourcing?

We have internal developers, and we also have a few strategic partners, including NBC IT.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

NBC IT is working on parts of our system, providing backend development, automated testing, and development process analysts. They integrate with our team. We have a simple flat structure across the teams.

We’re working in Java and Python on the backend.

Their analysts are also helping our product team with using tools like business process model and notation (BPMN) and smart contracts.  

What is the team composition?

The team size is quite fluid. We keep smaller groups of people after finishing a project. We’re currently at the stage of hiring more people from NBC IT, and I believe we’re working with 5–8 IT specialists from their side. They’re not providing a project manager.  

How did you come to work with NBC IT Outsourcing?

They have a lot of experience with the banking industry in Poland. They’d worked with many of the biggest Polish banks, and they had a lot of specialists in loans, deposit savings, and so on. This was the most important factor for us.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with NBC IT in 2019, and it’s ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We’re an agile scrum company, so the key metrics we track in our system are developers’ performance and burnout curves. We work in two-week sprints, and we check deliverables. We haven’t had any problems with NBC IT’s delivery.

How did NBC IT Outsourcing perform from a project management standpoint?

We haven’t had any communication problems with their team. We work with them the same as with our internal developers.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We have a good collaboration with NBC IT.

Are there any areas they could improve?

It depends on our approach. NBC’s developers are doing a very good job, but the results depend on our planning and sprint reviews. I have no issues with them.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

We have four partners onboard, and the workflow is the same with everybody. We don’t assign full projects to them. All the management comes from us, and all our external developers work together as one team. That’s just our business model, and there are various others out there.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

My organization is one of the biggest banks in Poland, part of an international banking group. I’m responsible for IT development for the SME segment.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with NBC IT Outsourcing?

We collaborate with multiple outsourced developers, testers, and so on, and NBC IT is one of those companies.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

NBC IT is providing full-stack development for a customer interaction app. It has a complex backend based on Java, and it has multiple integrations with external services.

We have a standard development lifecycle, with requirements analysis, programming, peer reviews and static code analyses, and unit testing. Our CI/CD stream and automated testing are on Jenkins, usually with Selenium, as per our requirements.

What is the team composition?

NBC IT provides developers, analysts, and testers, including for automated testing. We’re working with four to five people from their team now, but the size is always changing. We’ve collaborated with 15–20 of their specialists in total. We have a broader collaboration with them, in business areas beyond my own. We have a main point of contact on their side.

What is the status of this engagement?

I personally started collaborating with NBC IT around February 2018, but they’ve been with my company for much longer.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

NBC IT isn’t our best collaborator, but they’re in the topmost part. They’re efficient in finding and verifying resources on the market. They offer us only vetted resources, which isn’t a universal practice with development companies.

They generally deliver a very good quality of work. NBC IT is among our best providers.

How did NBC IT Outsourcing perform from a project management standpoint?

We work on a time and materials basis, and they don’t offer project management. There is a coordinator on NBC IT’s side.

We have meetings, and we talk on the phone and through email. The communication is very efficient.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The communication is fluent, the skills of their technical team are very good, and they’re experienced. NBC IT offers us good specialists that integrate well into our agile teams.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Any company can improve, but I can’t think of anything in particular about NBC IT. Maybe the price.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

Anyone looking to have an efficient collaboration with NBC IT should express requirements very clearly, along with a description of the skills needed, including soft skills.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We are a donation company, so we help charities and nonprofits to raise money. Our core functionality is what we call round-up. Basically, we give charities this tool so that they can reach out to their own donors. Our platform allows donors to connect their credit or debit cards, and then round-up their transactions to the next zero and donate their digital spare change to whatever cause they care about. I’m a co-founder of the company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with NBC IT Outsourcing?

They are building our entire backend. NBC IT Outsourcing came in and took what we had, understood our architecture, worked with our technical architect, and is developing everything from scratch.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

At the moment, they’re building a web app using Ruby. We have an existing web app that is a first-generation MVP, and then the team is building it to make it more robust and workable. They’re creating it for both US and Ireland.

NBC IT Outsourcing had to work through a lot of complexities on currency and country locators, and other similar things, but everything should be completed in a week. They’re also helping with the placement of things and other services. After that, they’re going to be starting to work on our mobile apps as well. The mobile apps will be developed in React.

What is the team composition?

The team started out small with just one developer. Then, we had a project manager support us part-time, and the team has since grown. We now have an initial developer, two people for QA, and two people for the frontend. 

How did you come to work with NBC IT Outsourcing?

They approached us at a summit. Lucas (Sales Representative) came to us and found us through the mailing list first. He reached out via LinkedIn and told us he was going to be in Dublin for the tech summit. He mentioned that he wanted to come by our booth. When he came by the booth, we had a great relationship.

NBC IT Outsourcing pitched to us when we were originally looking for the step up from our first MVP developer. We loved their pitch, but we wanted to stay in Ireland. That was basically the only reason we chose not to go with them at first. Once we were looking for new developers the following year, they were first in line and they knocked it out of the park again with their offer. 

How much have you invested with them?

After the mobile app is developed, our investment will be around €100,000 (approximately $120,500). For the web app, we’ve spent around €68,000–€75,000 (approximately $83,000–$91,000). 

What is the status of this engagement?

The project kicked off in June 2020, and the work is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We’ve not officially launched the web app, so the public feedback is not yet available. We’re launching in the US on Monday, but our internal feedback has been great. Anytime that we say something, NBC IT Outsourcing understands the backend logic behind it immediately, and then the implications that it has for further iterations, changes, or tweaks that we will face down the road. Overall, they think critically before doing anything.

They’re exceptionally hardworking. I don’t think we’ve worked with any team before with working hours like that. They clearly care about the product and it’s not just a job for them, so that has been amazing for us as well. 

How did NBC IT Outsourcing perform from a project management standpoint?

We have scheduled daily stand-ups, which can be 10 minutes or 45 minutes. Furthermore, we also have a Slack channel and it’s always open. We used Jira for all the project management. 

I think it probably took us a couple of weeks, as with any new team to hit our stride. Once we were able to hit that, we began to understand how we all communicate, and since then, it’s been fantastic. NBC IT Outsourcing is also receptive to feedback. They take criticism well and they build tools thoughtfully. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’re super professional in all aspects of the project. They understand the commercials on their side and on our side. The transparency has been complete — there is no rock that’s been uncovered on the development side. They’re completely upfront and transparent about their margins and the developer costs, and everything that goes into building something including their buffers.

In all projects, when you’re building a platform, you have to have an allowance and they clearly identify what is what. That’s why there’s no sandbagging in the budget. They show us the specific line items and they explain to us how long they’re going to take on each of them. Moreover, they mention that they added the buffer and the team places it as a separate line item — that’s just great in understanding where we are in relation to estimations. 

I previously mentioned going a little bit over budget originally, but not significantly. It’s probably more our fault than it is anybody else’s fault. In addition, it’s also been great working with them because we have the ability to scale up as needed. Whenever we want to hit a deadline or we need something to be done faster, they have a great pool of resources that we can just tap into, depending on our varying needs. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

I don’t think they have any areas where they could improve. Perhaps, they could have more of them since they’re really great. I wish they could be on our actual team.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Make sure you have a dedicated team and don’t tighten your budget when it comes to development costs. After all, you can’t shortcut good work.