Setronica

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Tradeshift Inc. started as an e-invoicing platform and is now a full-blown platform for doing sourcing, finding business partners, conducting offer negotiations, uploading catalogs of items for trade, and ordering internal approvals, among other things. I’m the engineering director of Buy.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Setronica?

We had acquired the company and were entering procurement. We needed someone with the knowledge to provide development and QA.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Setronica developed software for product inventory management (PIM). It’s a microservice-based architecture and frontend. They have full ownership of the architecture of this section of the system. 

The team also has full responsibility for implementation on the backend, data storage, search, and UI. They work in compliance with internal architecture to operate with the rest of the platform. Additionally, Setronica does internal QA.

What is the team composition?

I work with two teams — a larger one consisting of eight developers, four QA specialists, and a team lead, and a smaller one consisting of six developers, two QA specialists, and a team lead. We work with roughly 40 people in total.

How did you come to work with Setronica?

They had worked with the company when we acquired it. Their domain knowledge was the main reason we wanted to continue the work with them. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We began working with the team in June 2015, and our engagement is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

In general, we are very satisfied with the work and QA they provide. They are more than a software factory; they go to great lengths to understand what we’re trying to achieve and how we want things built.

The team also has strong opinions on good solutions, as well as pitfalls. They have some hardcore people on the team who are able to dive deep and create good products.

How did Setronica perform from a project management standpoint?

We handle a lot of the project management internally, setting deadlines and delegating tasks. Their leadership is quite good, and the developers are on the right path. We use Jira and work with agile principles using scrum methodology.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Setronica has very strong skills with enterprise software development in the Java space. They’ve acquired a lot of knowledge on how to work in a modern, cloud-based environment. 

They also take full ownership of their solutions during production and are willing to work as long as it takes to provide what the client needs.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They could focus more on smooth delivery. They sometimes struggle to adapt quickly enough to keep the smooth delivery model we like. It’s not a major issue, though.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

They work best as an interactive partner, so I would advise not to hand a project over to them and wait for them to deliver.