Umbrella IT

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the director of OneSky, we offer software as a service (SaaS) to small- and medium-sized businesses for localization purposes.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Umbrella IT?

Umbrella IT used a microservice approach to revamp our backend in a new language framework. They developed the frontend for our online service using React and provided mobile software development kits (SDKs).

What were your goals for this project?

We wanted a successful launch.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

We found them through an online search and set up a test project. Their technical capabilities and project management skills were impressive. We then decided to onboard them for a larger project.

Describe the project in detail.

We created the stack, user stories, and architecture in-house. Their team used those materials to estimate the timeline for each aspect of the project. We then collaborated to meet delivery deadlines.

What was the team composition?

Our tech lead mostly worked with their project manager, who had a team behind the scenes.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

Umbrella IT successfully completed the launch while staying within budget.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

They willingly adopted our internal online-based workflow and provided daily progress updates.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

The team had strong project management skills and a diverse range of expertise. We were able to leverage those skill sets for writing the different framework languages.

Are there any areas for improvement?

We were very satisfied with their services.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I’m an inbound marketing specialist at BEE-Inbound based in Zurich, Switzerland. We help our clients conduct their marketing through HubSpot as well as host their websites.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Umbrella Web?

We needed a partner that could handle a large-scale development project from one of our clients. Considering the complexity of the project, we initially feared that HubSpot was not the best platform but decided to push through with the new HubSpot CMS.

What were your goals for this project?

We wanted to have a top-notch set of templates with numerous custom designs and functionalities. The templates needed to be scalable and easy to use with reusable modules. This would allow us to set a high-standard for HubSpot web development in Switzerland.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

One of our former employees hired them. They were already supporting us with other projects such as Headless CMS and WordPress, so we reached out to them for this one.

Can you go into detail about the services they provided and the scope of the project?

We provided them with PSD files of templates we wanted, which they used to add new functionalities and designs. So far, they’ve created 36 website templates, with roughly 1–5 new modules per template and 120 subpages on Go-Live. We currently have 80 more subpages planned for our next project phase. Their QA team tests all of the templates before delivering them to us to approve.

What was the team composition?

We work with a project manager, 2–3 QA testers, and 2–3 developers.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any information that demonstrates the impact that this project has had on your business?

Upon receiving the first templates and modules, we were amazed by their sense of perfection and love for their work. Not only have they shown us what was possible with the new HubSpot CMS, the new functionalities they developed have saved us hundreds of hours in implementing the templates.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

Their team oversees most of the project management, and we always know where we are in the development process. We actually picked up a few tips from them to improve our own efficiency. Using our PSD files, they broke down each template in Invision to provide us with a detailed quote. This allowed us to more accurately budget the project and define the main scope. We communicated primarily through email, Slack, and weekly Zoom meetings. We also used Trello and GitHub to manage development.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

I appreciate their professionalism, commitment to perfection, high-quality deliverables, and structured approach.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the founder of a mobile phone application called Dursh. It’s a competition-based video sharing application, similar to America’s Funniest Home Videos.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Umbrella Web?

I had a different company develop the core of the app, but I wasn’t happy with their pricing, quality, or timing. I began looking for another agency to develop the rest of it.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

After the previous firm failed to deliver, I needed Umbrella to finish the remainder of the project in a timely and affordable fashion with higher quality. They ended up fixing numerous issues the prior team left.

Initially, Umbrella did some enhancements and changes to the core business model behind the app—the way we were going to turn a profit. Through that, though, they found security issues. The old team had left the app insecure and vulnerable to hacking, and a user had actually taken advantage of that and credited their wallet with in-app purchases. Umbrella also found some other minor bugs and issues they were able to fix.

We’ve now started moving the app to the live servers on the Android and App Store, and Umbrella’s implemented the same changes to our web platform. The old platform would upload videos multiple times or play them in landscape instead of portrait, and Umbrella fixed that.

In the app, users vote on videos, and Umbrella set a tracker to see the number of users before a competition went live. This allowed us to better achieve our business goals and was one of the main changes. We’re currently working on additional features to enhance user engagement (like a comments section), and we’ll roll them out soon.

What is the team composition?

The team manager is my main point of contact. He relays all my information to his team.

How did you come to work with Umbrella Web?

I met someone who had used Umbrella to develop her entire app, and I was blown away by the quality, price, and timeline she mentioned. I then found them on Upwork. I was considering other companies, but I was happy with what Umbrella offered and went with them.

How much have you invested in them?

I’ve spent between $25,000–$30,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked from October 2017–February 2018.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

I’ve tested their enhancements and bug fixes myself, and I’m happy with their work.

How did Umbrella Web perform from a project management standpoint?

They did extremely well. Prior to starting a project, they’d give me a timeline that I was always happy with.

We communicated through Trello and Google Hangouts about three times a week. The project manager responded to messages on the weekend or even during the holidays, so I never had a problem getting in contact with him.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The most impressive thing was their project manager’s communication. He always let me know what was going on and was the only person I needed to talk to. Their English is good, and there was no barrier.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Not at the moment.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

They’re a great team to work with. I would recommend them to anyone.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the CEO and founder of a large social network app with tens of thousands of members worldwide.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Umbrella Web?

We hired Umbrella’s skilled software developers to work closely with our top freelance designer to build the second version of our iOS, Node.js-driven app.

What were your goals for this project?

We wanted to execute a high-level build of our iOS application according to our strict, comprehensive requirement documents and specific design process.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

I found Umbrella on a forum on which they were highly rated for their previous work. After talking to them about our project and discussing their experience, it was clear that they were fit for what we wanted to create.

Describe the project in detail.

We produced detailed requirements documents, wireframes, and high-level technical UI/UX concepts and designs, including sets of micro/macro animations for our new version. Umbrella works very closely with the progress we’ve made day by day on the design front, whilst coding at the pace which we need. It’s a very agile and compliant process that works extremely well for our company and Umbrella.

What was the team composition?

Our chief of design and I delivered the requirements. Umbrella assigned a highly-skilled project manager to lead their team of software developers on a daily basis.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

We’re planning to launch our new product later in the year and we’re very confident that it will disrupt the industry. So far, external feedback is very exciting.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

They work at the highest level possible. If you know what you want, it will be built exactly per your specifications. They have a talented team of software engineers and project managers that communicate very well.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Our previous experience with other development companies had been exhausting. Umbrella is different. They’re very transparent with pricing and project structure. Everyone is extremely talented and I would recommend them to anyone that's serious about building disruptive technology.

Are there any areas for improvement?

No.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am a product manager at a management consulting and technology firm. I am responsible for the design, development, and maintenance of custom technology solutions for our clients.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Umbrella Web?

We hired Umbrella Web for their expertise in application and web development.

What were your goals for this project?

Our goal was to develop a custom portal for college and career advising. We also wanted to develop tools to help students achieve college and career success.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

We researched several firms and clients before selecting a vendor. We chose Umbrella for the quality of their previous work, their proposed budget, and their willingness to work collaboratively during each stage of development.

Describe the project in detail.

They were responsible for helping us build both the backend and frontend of several custom technology tools.

What was the team composition?

There were several of our own staff members on the project team, along with an Umbrella project manager, solutions architect, and two web developers.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What outcomes or results can you share that demonstrate progress and/or success?

Through demonstrating our tools, we established two Memoranda of Understanding with educational organizations. We are using these new clients' data to refine the functionality within our custom tools.

How effective was the project management?

We used Trello, email, and Google Sheets to manage project timelines. Umbrella made every effort to meet deadlines when we had an important demo or presentation. This included working late hours and during the weekend.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Umbrella was able to take our initial ideas and build upon them. We appreciated their honesty and push back when they felt we were going down the wrong path. We had many pivots and each time Umbrella was able to maintain the same quality and development speed. They were also quick to learn new tools or services we requested.

What tips or recommendations do you have?

Provide Umbrella with as much detail as possible on your project roadmap. They can help you avoid pitfalls if they have an understanding of what your end goals are.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the president of Bounce Mobile Technologies. We offer a mobile wallet for local customers to use at businesses in the Toronto area. They can use it to pay, redeem rewards, use coupons, or buy, use, and share gift cards. They can shop inventories online for delivery, or buy in-store.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Umbrella Web?

I have a low-level understanding of the technological aspects. I had the idea, but needed a company to help build it.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They oversaw everything technical. They took our specifications document, with all the features I wanted, and programmed all the functionality for the web and mobile versions. The first iOS and Android apps were cross-platform, and the second version is native.

We showed them our logo, and they built the color palette and fonts to match. They did all the mockups and wireframes, which I either approved or gave feedback on. They made any necessary adjustments, and implemented them.

What is the team composition?

We have a project manager, who oversees three to four developers.

How did you come to work with Umbrella Web?

We published a spec document on oDesk, which is now Upwork. We had a lot of responses, which we evaluated over a couple of months. Umbrella has a young CEO. When he spoke with us, he seemed ambitious, and had a good grasp of what we were trying to accomplish. His insight and contributions added a lot to the process and our success.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent about $450,000 Canadian [$350,073 US].

What is the status of this engagement?

We started the initial process in September 2014. We’re going through the process for the new version now.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The app works well, and the people who use it like how responsive and secure it is. The options in the app are vast, and we get positive feedback. In fact, the only negative feedback has been the app’s ability to do too much, which is probably my fault.

How did Umbrella Web perform from a project management standpoint?

I speak with the project manager at least once a week, sometimes more if there is an issue. They’re really good. Since 2014, I’ve had three different project managers. Sometimes there is a slight language barrier. Even though they’re not native speakers, they’re very proficient, especially with written communication. We speak mostly by Skype or email, and we also use Trello. Our most recent project manager has improved his spoken English dramatically over the last year.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We looked extensively across Canada and the US for a company to outsource to. We were hesitant to send the job to a Russian corporation, but my experience has been excellent. They’ve saved me close to $250,000 Canadian. They’re professional, and get the job done on time and within budget.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They are not native English speakers, so English was their only downside. As I mentioned, they are improving considerably.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Be open to their suggestions. They have a knack for knowing the right features to help you reach your goal. Their implementations have contributed to our success.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

I am Senior Vice President of Product. We are a company that gives savings to charity and coupons to our end-user.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with Umbrella Web?

We wanted to improve the code base and try to deploy a lot faster than we were before.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement in greater detail.

We’ve had a couple of different engagements. One of them was taking our existing five-year-old mobile app and revamping it and making it more modern and current, adding new functionality for iOS. For iOS, in particular, they had taken the existing code base and they absorbed all the business requirements, all of the unusual esoteric institutional knowledge of how the company works, and all the rules. They then took that information and optimized it for today’s app. We worked with them to also create an Android equivalent app.

Shortly after that, we started to do some alternative projects related to trying new business models, new websites, and new extensions. After that was done, we moved onto a new third phase which involved doing some of the existing review work and our platform, which is a little bit antiquated and trying to figure out how to make it faster, as well as create some redundancy with our current team.

Symphony is probably what they used for the most part. For iOS, they used Swift, and Android was whatever was required by GooglePlay. They were 100% native apps.

The vast majority of the initial work with them was defined in the sense that we knew what we wanted to do. We wanted to make an extension that would be in Chrome and Firefox. That was something that existed already that we wanted to augment to be more dynamic by pulling in assets on the fly. So we support a lot of different charities, and for each one of those, there’s the ability to skin it differently. We wanted to take that and then interface with our existing CMS and have an admin upload photos and different texts so that through ATI work, which they developed, we could just send that information through our extension. Revamping our contest system, we did a lot of giveaways for our charities. They created a custom instance of WordPress, which would serve as the admins for the contest to leverage all these third parties like BlueBox.

We also work on analysis tools to go through our coupons and our merchants to make sure that nothing was getting flagged by malware. It was a pretty diverse set of things that we were working on. Today it is less defined only because we’re working more closely with them on the core product. That is sort of every day, “What do we need to do today?” in terms of improving the deploy process, in terms of developing small features that we need based on the marketplace. We need a better filter. We need internal linking. It’s gone very well defined to not so defined.

How did you come to work with Umbrella Web?

I used to work with them at a previous company and I think my Head of Technology found them on Upwork. We did some initial WordPress work with them and I got to be close to them in terms of relying on their skill level and trusted that they would get things done.

Could you provide a sense of the size of this initiative in financial terms?

Approximately $150,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them November 2015 and have been working together since. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

Everything across the board has been very well received. For instance, when we took the existing iOS app and then made the new material design version in Android, it was very favorable. I think the user reviews were positive. Five-star reviews across the board. Internally well received. The speed of execution has always been very solid. Getting mesh flow with our internal developers as well. That’s always been sort of a roadblock, but I think they’re integrating themselves. So speed, quality, both high marks.

How did Umbrella Web perform from a project management standpoint?

That was probably the thing that attracted me to forming this long term relationship. Their first project manager has always been very good about producing within our very crazy constraints. I have the expectation of what I wanted for project management and I’ve gone through maybe three or four since then and the vast majority have been very good. They’ve been very good in delivering information, transparency, and what I need. The technical level of understanding was always very helpful. They were very, very good.

For Ruby, we have two developers, a dev op guy, and a project manager. For the mobile group, we have an iOS person. Android we have two backends and a project manager. So we work with about nine to ten.

For a lot of the internal conversations, we use Slack. Internal developers have a place to go and reference whatever they need to reference. I talk with them on Hangouts and just IM and video chat and also email as well. They were mostly developers, but from a product perspective, I’ve always appreciated them because not everything is done blindly. There are always things that they’ll point out that make sense from a UI or marketing perspective. They were thoughtful about their work.

What distinguishes Umbrella Web from other providers?

I feel like if I have a problem, they’ll figure out away to work through it with me. They know exactly the type of person that I need and if it doesn’t work out for whatever reason, it’s not an issue. They’ll resolve it together with me. All these other offshore companies have been a lot more problematic on that front. They weren’t very Ruby oriented at the beginning, but they found someone who turned out to be a rock star for me. This person has worked out extremely well. Their ability to scale has been very good.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the CEO of the company.

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Learning apps with VR and AI

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Umbrella IT to accomplish?

• Developing a POC for our app
• Using AI for languages
• Creating a VR video player

SOLUTION

How did you find Umbrella IT?

Online Search

Why did you select Umbrella IT over others?

• High ratings
• Pricing fit our budget
• Company values aligned

How many teammates from Umbrella IT were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

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

UmbrellaIT is our go-to company for our IT project. We needed a POC for our app, and they delivered it with high precision, and avialability to give advice all along the project. We were looking for expertise in webapp, NLP, AI and Vr video players, and their team was complete with all these skills

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

• Features developed
• Approvals from key stakeholders
• Support for our team

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

Yes, the project was delivered on time and we are going for a phase 2 of support for the project.

What was your primary form of communication with Umbrella IT?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

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

The capacity to adapt to our needs and the fact that they always have someone from the team ready to assist

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

no, there was nothing they needed to improve on.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I’m a web designer for RingBoost, a provider of local and toll-free vanity number marketing services that gives businesses the tools they need to expand local marketing outreach and boost their number of incoming calls and sales.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Umbrella Web?

We needed to build and maintain our e-commerce website.

What were your goals for this project?

We wanted a customized e-commerce experience for licensing and selling vanity phone numbers.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

We found them on Upwork.

Describe the project in detail.

They developed a customized e-commerce platform from the ground up using the PHP framework CodeIgniter. They currently provide support and are still adding new features to the site as needed.

What was the team composition?

For the main development, the team consisted of about two to three people.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What outcomes or results can you share that demonstrate progress and/or success?

The site is a success and we continue to make improvements to it.

How effective was the project management?

Their project manager was excellent. He always followed up with me and made sure he had a clear view of the project’s goal.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Their thoroughness and attention to detail are remarkable.

What tips or recommendations do you have?

I don't have any improvements for them. I can only highly recommend using Umbrella's services.