Simple Solutions

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

UPSIDEO is a software company specialized in financial solutions for banks, private and collective management, investment service providers, insurance companies. I am Chief Executive Officer at UPSIDEO.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Simple Solutions, and what were your goals?

We partnered with Simple Solutions a couple of years ago to help us with our growth trajectory and needed additional help in servicing our clients with custom financial software solutions. Our goals were to have talented engineers with the required technical expertise who can deliver our solutions.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

For private banking solution, Simple Solutions was already our partner and was continuation of our collaboration. They knew the project domain and technology and was an easy choice.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and technologies used.

Private banking requires custom solution to allow users to customize input forms in data gathering application. User could apply custom rules on each form field and is able to map fields to pdf document generator. Project was handled with agile methodologies. Web site solution was developed in .NET, SQL, JavaScript and Azure DevOps

How many people from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

This has been an ongoing project for a couple of years with constant improvements and added functionalities. The delivery team has changed over time but was mainly leaded by one of Simple Solutions top engineer with additional developers and QA as needed.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

Project is already in production use by our clients and help them to automate business processes significantly.

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timeliness.

Agile methodologies with daily communication over Microsoft Teams.

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

They could cope with complex financial solutions and constant changes as the project grew over time.

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

Improvements and learning are constant in technology space, hope they will keep up.

UPDATED REVIEW

This review was published on December 9, 2022.

Lionel Szczot
Project Director, UpsideoFinancial services

Paris, France

11-50 Employees

Jan 2019 - Dec 2022

$200,000 to $999,999
Project summary
Simple Solutions augmented a software company's development capabilities. Using .NET and JavaScript technologies, they automated the selling process for insurance policies and made the solution scalable.

Feedback summary
With the help of Simple Solutions, the client completed deliverables on time despite the customer's constant addition of milestones. They used an Agile methodology and communicated regularly with the client through Microsoft Teams. They were a reliable partner that understood their scope of work.
BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

My company is Upsideo, a software company, created 11 years ago. We sell application to subscribe different types of financial contracts, with workflows based on digitalization. I am the project director. I manage project managers, planning, and technical team assignments.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Simple Solutions, and what were your goals?

We had several projects for large financial institutions, which required teams of experienced developers to deliver quality products. They helped us to finish on time, and their skills were a key of the success

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

Software development for insurance company is the second project we work with Simple Solutions and they already have necesary domain and technical knowledge for the project.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and technologies used.

The scope of work was to automate process of seling insurance policies for existing and new clients. Plan of project is to have solution which is scalable for all insurance company advisers and their partners and also integration with different parties necesary to issue new insurance policy. Project was organized by agile methodologies. On project we mainly used Microsoft .NET web technologies and JavaScript

How many people from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

During project lifetime, team changed overtime due to requirements and intensiti of delivery. Simple Solutions provided couple experienced senior full stack developers and QA.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

During course of project client constanlty added their milestone features and expeceted time when new feature should go in production. We can say that project achieved client milestone and is for more that one year in production with constant upgrades. In term of general feedback, projects were successfull and our final clients (financial companies using our softwares) are happy.

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timeliness.

Agile methodologies, Microsoft Teams, daily communication and constant ongoing developement.

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

We could rely on software delivery and detail understanding scope of work. The people are very rigorous and very attached to the quality of what they deliver.

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

I guess that team should have constant adoption of new technologies and tools. Sometimes we could do better planning of delivery and reuse some functionalities from other projects to save time.
Star Ratings
Overall rating: 5

Quality: 5

Cost: 4.5

Schedule: 5

Willing to refer: 5

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

My company is Upsideo, a software company, created 11 years ago. We sell application to subscribe different types of financial contracts, with workflows based on digitalization. I am the project director. I manage project managers, planning, and technical team assignments.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Simple Solutions, and what were your goals?

We had several projects for large financial institutions, which required teams of experienced developers to deliver quality products. They helped us to finish on time, and their skills were a key of the success

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

Software development for insurance company is the second project we work with Simple Solutions and they already have necesary domain and technical knowledge for the project.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and technologies used.

The scope of work was to automate process of seling insurance policies for existing and new clients. Plan of project is to have solution which is scalable for all insurance company advisers and their partners and also integration with different parties necesary to issue new insurance policy. Project was organized by agile methodologies. On project we mainly used Microsoft .NET web technologies and JavaScript

How many people from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

During project lifetime, team changed overtime due to requirements and intensiti of delivery. Simple Solutions provided couple experienced senior full stack developers and QA.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

During course of project client constanlty added their milestone features and expeceted time when new feature should go in production. We can say that project achieved client milestone and is for more that one year in production with constant upgrades. In term of general feedback, projects were successfull and our final clients (financial companies using our softwares) are happy.

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timeliness.

Agile methodologies, Microsoft Teams, daily communication and constant ongoing developement.

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

We could rely on software delivery and detail understanding scope of work. The people are very rigorous and very attached to the quality of what they deliver.

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

I guess that team should have constant adoption of new technologies and tools. Sometimes we could do better planning of delivery and reuse some functionalities from other projects to save time.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

UPSIDEO is FinTech product and service company, which is helping financial companies with digitalization and software development automatization. I am lead project manager on a crowdfunding real estate platform project for one of UPSIDEO financial client.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Simple Solutions, and what were your goals?

We needed to rebuild a new crowdfunding real estate investment platform, which is more customizable to investors' needs, enable users to invest faster, keep up with the market expansion, and be more secure. Also, we required the vendor’s team to integrate more complex platforms like payment systems, digital signature systems, and marketing campaigns as one seamless experience for real estate investors.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

Simple Solutions is already our partner for a couple of years, and we already know their delivery capabilities and have been easy selection.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and technologies used.

The scope of work was to modernize and transform old real estate platform which had lot of technical constrains. Entire project was organized with Agile methodologies and technical implementation was done with React, .NET core, ASP.NET web API, SQL server, Azure.

How many people from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

We worked with 5 team members : Senior QA, Senior full-stack developers, and front-end developers.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

All deliveries were as expected and on time. No big problems which could affect estimated delivery. For any additional unplanned feature, we demanded to be added, they always find a way to make it work. The final delivery was OK, and the client is happy and appreciates the work delivered. No major production issue as of today.

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timeliness.

The team was thorough, every phase was documented and tracked. The communication was fine. We communicated via Teams on daily basis. They followed our agile methodology as expected.

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

How quickly they understood the domain-related issues, technical expertise and also their approach and dedication to every task. I appreciated also their capacity to take a step back and to think how we can do better at each step of the project.

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

Nothing specific.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Synechron is technology and digital experience company with offices across the globe, my position is Senior Director

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Simple Solutions, and what were your goals?

One of our Asset Management Fund clients needed long term full digital transformation and re-designing the architecture of internal outdated applications to modern computing concepts. Goal was to achieve high efficiency of internal workforce, simplify costly processes, improve performance, and have more agile application infrastructure for future changes.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

Recommendation of work they did on other projects and lot of experience in technology stack needed for Asset Management application requirements.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and technologies used.

Main challenges was outdated applications which were costly to maintain, slow to changes of new business requirements, slow performance... There were multiple projects to handle like:

• custom CRM
• custom financial application
• web-based automation app
• single sign-on security
• active directory integration
• UI
• automated deployments and monitoring

Introduce agile delivery methodology to client internal team. Technology stack was quite broad due to lot of legacy applications. Web technology:

• WPF
• Windows forms
• SQL Database
• performance optimizations
• data migrations
• C#
• ASP.NET
• JavaScript
• CSS
• HTML
• Active Directory
• app security

How many people from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

We worked mainly with Enterprise Software Architect and few senior key members from Simple Solutions team.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

We measured every couple months delivery outcome and achieved impact on asset management business and efficiency. Delivery time start to speed up as more progress they make, 30% to 50% App security was seamlessly integrated with Active Directory. Lot of user manual work process has been automated. Migration from old desktop app to modern web gave better user experience and usability. Finally, application speed has been improved more that 80%.

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timeliness.

They brought fresh perspective how to handle and organize entire delivery team. Communication was on daily basis via skype and on our premises.

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

We were impressed by their skillfulness, domain knowledge, hands-on approach, and attention to detail.

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

During our cooperation, we needed 24/7 tech support. However, they couldn’t always meet this requirement, though they tried. truth be told, they were at our disposal often after working hours.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am a Founder and CTO of the SentienceLab. SentienceLab is delivering AI, primarily deep learning-based solutions for clients. Still, also, SentinceLab is building products for in-house usage for the domain of EdTech which is a secondary discipline of SentienceLab. SentienceLab is the owner of its brand iamai.academy and all EdTech products are used by iamai.academy.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Simple Solutions, and what were your goals?

We have built in-house a deep learning, based engine to create virtual speakers (videothetics.com) and we decided to hire a Simple Solutions to add a web user interface around it, and also to migrate the engine into containers.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

I know some people in Simple Solutions for some time, and though that was a reason for the initial contact, we did go through the official vendor selection process to find a reliable and trustful partner. Among several vendors, we prioritized: expertise, the ability to deliver with as little guidance as possible within tight time schedules, and ease of communication.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and technologies used.

We have delivered 2 backlogs on the epic level to Simple Solutions, one for the GUI and the other for infrastructure. We estimated roughly the size of the project and the end date. After that Simple Solutions run 2 weeks sprint Scrum, so we could have had a full insight into the deliverables from the beginning. The Simple Solutions PO worked closely with our PO and architect so, the backlogs were always up to date and aligned with our needs. Luckily GUI work was fully independent of the conternization work, so we managed to pack 2 backlogs into one so it could have been executed by one team. For the GUI work, we used React and we wanted to put the application in docker containers within Kubernetes stack.

How many people from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

The vendor's product owner and technical team lead were closely working with our PO and architect.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

The fullly functional GUI has been delivered with the regression tests and it was also tested against static code analysis. So, besides the code metrics, the most important result was a clean, modular and fully documented code. Regarding containers, we wanted to minimize custom scripting, so vanilla docker and kubernetes scripts were delivered.

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timeliness.

I would answer this: agile and Scrum by the book. I like that the team had full stack developers that easily switch and collaborate on both GUI and Docker tasks.

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

The autopilot mode. :). We did not need to invest much time from our side to explain the work in detail. So, the work with Simple Solutions did not distract us from our internal work. Also, I have to admit, that they are up to the name and they really managed to deliver a couple of complex concepts in a simple manner.

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

I can not think of anything crucial.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Ammado was a global payment platform for donations and fundraising which enabled individuals, nonprofits, and organizations to easily support their cause.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Simple Solutions, and what were your goals?

Ammado was a web-based service with ongoing development. We needed expertise in the latest web development trends and technologies. At that time JavaScript, multiple screens development, responsive design started to gain lot of traction and we needed to have our services working flawlessly across devices. Also, as ammado gained more users, performance and scalability was one of the highest priorities.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

We looked for consultants which have knowledge of the latest web technologies and scalable web sites. We have worked previously with the founder of Simple Solutions and his expertise will fit all our needs.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and technologies used.

The entire project was ongoing and organized by scrum methodology with 3-week sprints. Each sprint we defined delivery expectations of new functionality and improvements for the web site. Technology stack used was: database: SQL server, search server, Redis, Memcached, Solr web services: .NET WCF front: HTML, CSS, Bootstrap, C#, ASP.NET, JQuery

How many people from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

Members of Simple Solutions were integrated into our team as full stack developers.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

Our measurable outcomes were sprint deliverables. There were consistent and constructive as Simple Solution members gained more domain knowledge. We also saw a lot of improvement in performance, site usability and more simplification in code which gave us faster deliverables over time.

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timeliness.

They worked from our offices daily and integrated with the rest of the team. Also, we used Skype with other remote teams.

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

Knowledge to deliver our project vision, reduce development in many areas. They easily adopted new technologies as we progressed with the project.

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

Nothing particular.