Sparq

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the product owner of an intelligent barn operating system. It connects different devices in one spot and allows automation, tying other data sources such as herd and feed data. Overall, it’s a solution in the dairy space for everything around the barn.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Octobot?

We hired them to do all the development work on the product itself.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We layout the roadmap and requirements of what’s needed, and Octobot is the team that delivers and gets the work done. We use Figma for UI/UX design, and Octobot uses a couple of different programs for development.

What is the team composition?

There are now eight people on the team. We have a team leader, 2–3 backend developers, and about five frontend developers.

How did you come to work with Octobot?

They were hired before I came on, so I’m not sure how they decided to go with Octobot.

What is the status of this engagement?

I’ve been working on the project for about five months. It started in April 2020, and it’s ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

It’s not an official metric, but we measure the progress based on the releases and our roadmap. We see if we’ve hit the mark and continue to add and solidify what we have. The end result will be the product on its running stage.

Moreover, we rely a lot on them to get the work out. Without Octobot, we wouldn’t be able to develop the product that we want. They’re crucial for our business.

How did Octobot perform from a project management standpoint?

Communication and deadlines are very important for our role together. We have planning sessions every other week for the sprints to come, and we use Aha!, a roadmap planning tool. All the team has access to it so they can follow along. We also use Pivotal Tracker — an agile system product like Jira — to store and organize all the work needed.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Compared to my experience with other development companies, Octobot has performed exceptionally well. The team is thorough and timely. If they have any doubts, they address them and ask us.

They’re also pretty intelligent, resilient, and accommodating. If there’s an issue, they’re willing to work late. Moreover, Octobot has similar aspirations as ours in terms of making a mark in their industry, and it reflects in their service.

Are there any areas they could improve?

We have difficulties sometimes because they primarily speak Spanish, so things may get mixed up a bit. However, it never affects the quality of the work; it just makes it harder to explain certain things, so we just have to rephrase questions.

Nonetheless, we don’t have any complaints. They’re an amazing group to work with.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Respondent 1: I’m the brand and marketing manager at a software platform for the dairy ecosystem.

Maite Muse: I’m a product owner.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Octobot?

Maite Muse: We needed help with development.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Maite Muse: Octobot does all of the development for our software suite.

Respondent 1: They also do design.

Maite Muse: They developed our iOS app and successfully launched it in the app store. Since then, we also started developing an Android application. They designed everything with adaptations from the original mockups.

Respondent 1: We provided a pathway, and they took it to much deeper levels.

What is the team composition?

Maite Muse: We worked with project managers, developers, designers, and their leadership team.

How did you come to work with Octobot?

Maite Muse: They were a reference from one of our advisors.

What is the status of this engagement?

Maite Muse: We started working together in November 2020, and our work is ongoing. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Maite Muse: I’ve been really pleased with the communication and quality of work we’ve had with the Octobot team. They’re always coming up with new ideas for any issues we might encounter. Their design team did a great job creating an intuitive UI/UX for our users that makes it simple for users to visualize somewhat complex datasets.

Respondent 1: It’s especially impressive because the team wasn’t familiar with dairy metrics. They were able to dive into our world and create an app in a short amount of time.

How did Octobot perform from a project management standpoint?

Maite Muse: We used Jira and Slack for project management. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

Maite Muse: They really bought into our mission, and they’re committed to it just as much as any of our other teammates.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Maite Muse: No, I don’t think so.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Maite Muse: The more open you are about your vision and your plan, the more they’ll be able to fill that need.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am an IT manager at an employment institution based in Uruguay.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenges were you trying to address with Octobot?

We recently with through a collaborative digital transformation with Octobot, which required them to develop a custom piece of software to help manage our different processes. This development represented the core of our institution.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Octobot used Python and Django for the development, and they also provided consulting.

How did you come to work with Octobot?

When we first found Octobot, they were a small company, and we had a very small development with them. Their work was excellent, and after that initial experience we increased our collaboration.

How much have you invested in them?

We’ve spent around $600,000 with Octobot.

What is the status of this engagement?

We began our first collaboration with them in 2013, and we’ve continued working together since.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Octobot’s services have always been excellent. The developments they’ve done for us have brought great benefits to our institution. Additionally, not only is our institution happy, but our users and clients have also provided great responses to the platforms.

How did Octobot Perform from a project management standpoint?

We’ve always had a very close relationship with them. They’ve shown great involvement in all our projects. Flexible and technically adept, Octobot always prioritizes project success. They are very personable as well.

What did you find most impressive about them?

It’s hard to choose just one aspect. Octobot has great technical skills and they also have a great ability to understand the needs of their clients.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

IPV Capital is a venture capital and private equity firm. I’m an associate, so a junior member on the investment team.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Octobot?

We wanted to revamp our website to make it more professional and attractive.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Octobot built a completely new website. We had an existing website for them to work with but their team developed the new platform from scratch.

Octobot initially sent us a mood board with several different themes. We chose one of the themes for the website and then they started designing the product. Their team sent us PowerPoint presentations throughout the process, so we made edits to different sections of the website during the design and development phases. We finally launched the website four months later.

After developing the website, they built a data room where users can access files about our company. Users can create accounts and then enter our digital file repository where we can upload files such as tax records and presentations. Users can download these files. Octobot built the whole backend ecosystem supporting it.

What is the team composition?

Guillermo (CEO & Co-Founder) was our main point of contact, but we worked with 2–3 of Octobot's software engineers.

How did you come to work with Octobot?

We found them through referral. One of our partners at the firm was familiar with Octobot because his professional contact used their design services and was satisfied with them. We decided to work with them based on the strong referral.

How much have you invested with them?

For the website project, we spent around $20,000. The data room was an additional cost. We had a lot of back-and-forth changes for the data room, so it probably amount to $5,000–$10,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started the project in January 2020 and launched the website around April 2020.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We came to them without ideas for how we wanted our website to look. All we knew was that we wanted it to be simple. Octobot came to us with several different ideas and several different layouts, which blew us away. The website’s design impressed us.

When we had ideas, their team was willing to work with them. Throughout the project, Octobot was willing to come up with new ideas, which surprised us.

How did Octobot perform from a project management standpoint?

We communicated via email but also had video chats during which Octobot presented their work in progress. Throughout the project, we communicated about every other day.

Octobot was super engaged and helpful throughout the whole process. We had them make a lot of changes to the templates, and their team was always open to different ideas. They were open to our constant back and forth. Their team responded quickly and did quick work.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their responsiveness was phenomenal. We came to them with a lot of different changes and updates. Every time we made a request, Octobot was open to it. They were never frustrated by our constant changes in direction. Their team was responsive to our changes and supportive of them.

Are there any areas they could improve?

It’s hard to find an opportunity for improvement. If I could make one recommendation to them, I would say that their team could’ve presented more ideas on how the website could look. They could’ve brainstormed additional thoughts, layouts, or ideas.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I would recommend working with Octobot. Present your ideas but also give them room to think of the best way to execute the project. Be communicative about how you want to structure the website but let Octobot handle the design. They will give you a lot of unique ideas.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Milk Specialties Global creates high-quality ingredients designed to optimize health and nutrition. The human nutrition division focuses on industry-leading whey and milk protein isolates, concentrates, and hydrolysates. The animal nutrition division is a leading supplier of functional fats, proteins, and carbohydrates.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

Marketing our products to our clients by creating a web app where they can simulate the outputs of our products to see the difference compare to competing products. These tools also help our clients achieve their calf weight growth goals by generating accurate output models of the product depending on the condition.

SOLUTION

How did you select Octobot and what were the deciding factors?

Octobot was able to meet us on the timeline and budget that we had allocated for the product. We also went through a couple of recommendations from Octobot's previous client and received very positive feedback.

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

The project was to implement the following

1. Replacement of the legacy calf-growth toolkit
2. Design a web app that can use browser/os agonistically
3. The app should be able to work PWA on mobile devices
4. A major portion of the app should be able to function offline
5. Dedicated customer workspace for testing using our products

The project followed an agile approach with releases every week and meetings scheduled accordingly with a focus on step-by-step feature implementation. PHP, Django,Azure

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

Octobot's team has the following structure

• Project manager X1
• Business Analysts X1
• Web Developers X2
• UI/UX designers X1
• Systems/Technology integrator X1

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We have achieved 100% of functionality and feature that was initially requested. Octobot's team was very flexible and proactive with our requests and understood the requirements. The feedback from business users and clients is very positive and the Marketing team is very excited to use the tool.

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

An agile approach to the project with a proactive approach was vey helpful Tools -Slack -Emails

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

The team is stable (no frequent switch of team members) and very tightknit and the communication is always on point.

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

More visibility on the Internal Agile process of Octobot

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the IT manager at a medical association in Uruguay.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenges were you trying to address with Octobot?

We needed IT support.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We were looking to renew our IT area so we counted on their help. We worked on all online services for our clients with them as digital partners.

What is the team composition?

It has changed over time, but usually, we work with two or three people.

How did you come to work with Octobot?

We did some research on the local market. They were referred to us so we contacted and interviewed them. We had a first test project with them and from then on they became our partners. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them around 2015 or 2016.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

More than a service provider, Octobot has become a partner to us. They have gone beyond meeting our expectations and have provided an added value to our services and to our brand. We are very happy with their work.

How did Octobot perform from a project management standpoint?

We are in permanent communication. We usually use Slack, and when needed, we have Skype video calls. We are based in different cities but that has never presented any issue, the communication has been excellent. Every week we establish sprints for the week together and they always meet everything in a timely manner.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We have our own developments and work with other service providers’ developments. Octobot has had an excellent interaction with these third service providers, so their performance and interaction with not only us but our other partners has been excellent. 

Another thing I would like to highlight is that they have women working in their team as developers, which is something hard to find in the IT industry.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I couldn’t say anything, they're constantly improving.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We have two sides to our business. One involves attribution and advertising campaign to offline attribution. Our team helps agencies and brands determine whether or not their campaign efforts are driving customers into stores, creating conversions. We also have a mobile app that allows customers to take control of their personal data to sell it directly to brands and agencies, sharing the progress. I’m the VP of product.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Octobot?

We wanted to enhance our development team with additional engineers and leadership for the engineering team. Ideally, our partner would be in our time zone as well.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They provided us with engineers to help support and lead both our attribution campaign system and our data-centric mobile app. Their team made use of React and Django Python. 

What is the team composition?

We worked with three people from their team.

How did you come to work with Octobot?

Their tech stack and focuses are identical to ours. We put one of their engineers on a small two-sprint project as a test of the shop’s capabilities. He did an amazing job with communication. That’s what convinced us that we needed to hire them. We knew we could be comfortable with a team of three of their engineers working with us. 

How much have you invested with them?

We spend about $20,000 each month with them. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in May 2019, and the engagement is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

They’ve greatly improved the speed, predictability, and quality of our development efforts. 

How did Octobot perform from a project management standpoint?

Their engineers act as an extension of our team, working on our sprints and using our communication tools. The communication factor has been a non-issue on our projects together.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Our team finds them to be honest and transparent partners. When leveraging more junior engineers to help on our projects, their team always provides them the support that they need to be successful in our work. As a customer, I don’t need to worry about that, which is greatly appreciated.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, I can’t think of anything.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the co-founder of Cloud IT Guru, a technology solutions company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Octobot?

My company wanted to develop a product. We needed to hire a development company that could understand our product idea and take it to production.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We already had the product’s user interface, design, and mockups, and we provided all of this to Octobot. They developed our product using Python, PostgreSQL, AWS, and Docker containers.

What is the team composition?

We work with two Octobot team members.

How did you come to work with Octobot?

We evaluated a lot of companies on Clutch, and Octobot’s reviews were very good. In our interview with Octobot, they expressed interest in our product. We wanted to implement a complicated product architecture, and Octobot understood these needs better than any of the other vendors that we considered.

How much have you invested with them?

My company has spent $60,000–$90,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in September 2018, and the project is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The product came out much better than we expected it would. We’re very happy with the way the project has gone.  

How did Octobot perform from a project management standpoint?

We followed an agile development methodology. Octobot managed project deliverables with Pivotal Tracker and Slack, and we had no communication challenges. We had weekly calls to discuss progress, and the same Octobot team members were always on the call. The team was open to answering questions and sharing information.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I don’t believe we would have gotten this experience from another firm. Octobot took the time to understand our user interface. We admire their proactive and detail-oriented team.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, I haven’t found anything for them to improve. They have a very good understanding of the system, and they make customer service a top priority.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I work for a pharmaceutical company that operates drugstores located all over Uruguay. We are the number one chain in the country.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Octobot?

We needed to implement a new system for replenishment planning and demand planning. Before this engagement, we many different systems. We had to make them interact to accomplish our goals. We hired Octobot to develop an SD so we could own the data and centralize all the information. 

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Octobot developed an SD system for demand and replenishment planning. It aggregates data from all our separate systems into a central location. During our first engagement, Octobot developed a platform for input management. 

What is the team composition?

The size of the team from Octobot changed according to our needs. I interacted with five people including the CEO, CTO, a project manager, and two developers.

How did you come to work with Octobot?

We sent our project and specifications to a few vendors. Two previous companies had been unable to finish our project according to our requirements and within our deadlines. Octobot had been successful during our first project together.

What is the status of this engagement?

We first worked with Octobot on another project last year in 2017.  This new project started at the beginning of 2018.  They're still working with us and providing ongoing platform maintenance.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We surveyed all of our internal teams that were involved in this project and asked them how to rank the suppliers we used. Every one of them ranked Octobot as first place. Factors we took into consideration to rate vendors included response speed, analytical skills, and comprehension of the project and our goals.

One thing I especially appreciate about Octobot is how easily they offer accurate solutions to the problems we pose. Their work was simply excellent.

How did Octobot view perform from a project management standpoint?

Octobot was highly committed to finishing their work on our schedule and met every deadline.  They used Slack to communicate with our team and quickly replied to all our requests. We also used Redmine as a project management tool.  

The team responded to us immediately and were available even after hours. There were no issues on their side.  Our communication was always fluid, and our collaboration worked perfectly.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Octobot’s greatest strength is their capacity to understand what the client needs. They have an impressive analytical capacity and understood the workflow right away. The team’s quick thinking enabled them to provide fast and precise solutions.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Honestly, there wasn’t anything negative about our engagement with Octobot. They could always extend their working hours, but they were flexible with us about working outside the set schedule. 

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We are a full-service advertising agency with five global offices and around 500 employees. I work in our connected experiences team, which creates and manages everything that touches the internet. My role within that team is development director. I oversee the execution of all the visual properties and user experiences we design.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Octobot?

We worked with Octobot to build our own website. They refreshed our former one, which was about four years old.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

At our request, Octobot used WordPress as our CMS and platform. We had some familiarity because our previous site was built on it. We explored a few options, but settled on WordPress. Their team hired a WordPress specialist to accommodate this.

We worked with them on about a dozen other projects. The technologies ranged from HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, to iOS app development. We’ve also done some API work with a workflow management tool called Workfront.

Another large project used a JavaScript library. It was developed for a site that used a 360-degree camera to give a virtual tour of an indoor space.

What is the team composition?

From the hours report Octobot gave us, we worked with five or six developers. The developers were all based in Uruguay, but our main point of contact, the co-founder, worked from Minneapolis for most of the year. He was in Uruguay for the first month of the project. Outside of that, he came onsite for meetings and reviews. We had the team from Uruguay on videoconference.

How did you come to work with Octobot?

We had worked with them a lot before this project, so they were a proven partner. Compared to our other options, the price point was also excellent. Otherwise, we would have had to acquire internal development resources or pay twice as much to use a similar local development shop.

Because of our history with Octobot, we knew that they were a good partner who would accommodate our timeline and functionality changes. They also had great attention to detail. We could resend designs and wireframes, and they would implement the functionality and design immediately in very high fidelity. With other remote teams, that can be a long, frustrating cycle of reviews and revisions. We were very happy with the work Octobot did for us in the past. That largely influenced our decision to use them for this project.

How much have you invested with them?

For this project, the cost of their work has been $50,000–$80,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

It’s an internal site, so employees have many opinions on it. We started talking about it internally in October or November 2017. Octobot effectively began developing the site in March 2018.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We got excellent internal feedback. Everyone in the agency loved the way it looked and functioned, which I largely attributed to Octobot’s attention to detail. They implemented our visual designs at a high fidelity. When we ran into issues, Octobot proactively suggested alternative solutions and enhancements, which we implemented quickly.

We supplied wireframes, designs, animations, and other pieces of functionality for visual implementation. Once we started development, some of those elements proved impractical or simply clunky. Octobot usually brought those situations to us with a potential solution and an estimate of how long its implementation would take. Working with them was exceptionally valuable.

In many cases, their alternative solutions were excellent fixes. Our team could have devised them on their own, but the fact that Octobot could make those suggestions was indispensable. They already had roadmaps for building them, which expedited their path. 

How did Octobot perform from a project management standpoint?

They were very good partners, and flexible with the changes we dictated. We used to communicate with them on Slack. When our company shifted away from it, Octobot didn’t skip a beat. We continued to use email and other tools. 

We gave their co-founder access to Workfront, our internal workflow management tool. He seamlessly communicated through that tool, using it in coordination with Octobot's internal project management tools. It was great to have their co-founder as a local resource. We got the best of both worlds, with face-to-face conversations to hash things out, plus all the benefits of a remote team.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their key strengths were their flexibility and ability to execute whatever we threw at them, often on very tight timelines. They never failed to deliver what we asked for within a reasonable amount of time, even if it was beyond our initial goal. They were either early, on time, or gave us a heads-up that they couldn't meet a deadline. They were always upfront about the feasibility of those timelines and deliveries. They often hit deadlines early, which was always a bonus.