UNL Solutions LTD

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the CEO of software company that specializes in medical software development.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire UNL Solutions LTD?

As our company also offer dedicated team service, we outsource professional developers at UNL Solutions for furniture manufacturer.

What were your goals for this project?

The goal was to provide technology consulting and development assistance to the customer’s in-house team.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

We launched a tender to select an outstaffing supplier. Along with commercial experience with PHP and JavaScript, we looked for Agile process maturity and perfect cultural fit — ability to conform to the core organizational values and development processes. They oriented at the mixed onshore/offshore delivery model, while expecting the on-site presence of the experts on demand. UNL Solutions proved to be compliant with the tender requirements by implementing a pilot project that outlined our collaboration and communication practices. During a short trip to our premises,we evaluated UNL Solutions's operational efficiency, and finally selected them for the project.

Describe the project in detail.

Our customer is a leading European affordable furniture manufacturer with 50+ distribution centers across the world. The company has an in-house IT department dedicated to development and maintenance of software tools automating production, logistics, warehousing and sales processes. Because the company was growing quickly, expanding its production lines, distribution channels, and global footprint, they were looking to partner with a dedicated development team to cover the pool of associated development projects.

What was the team composition?

20+ specialists are currently in the team Team Leads JS engineers PHP engineers BAs engineers QAs engineers

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

At present, UNL Solutions team counts 21 specialists, mainly JavaScript, PHP, Unity3D and mobile development experts. UNL Solutions’s engagement has been gradually increasing, and progressive growth of subprojects along with project roles extension indicate that UNL advanced from mere team augmentation supplier to a trusted technology partner.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Cameras, teleconferencing, instant messaging, video chat, screen sharing, and other collaboration tools help bridge the gap between the distributed teammates.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

UNL Solution’s dedicated development team and the Customer’s in-house one have been incrementally committing changes to the codebase, guided by technical and business-focused managers, responsible for technical scope planning and execution control, and handling budgeting and staffing issues correspondingly.

Are there any areas for improvement?

No, everything was perfect

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm CEO of Fast Food Delivery Group in London. It's a young company with enthuthiastic ambitions. We want to become #1 delivery platform in UK.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire UNL Solutions LTD?

We hire UNL Solutions for app development. We need to make a delivery app available in the UK

What were your goals for this project?

The main goal was to make the app easy for users to navigate. Also, we need to connect all internal and external systems to the app. So the task was a difficult one.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

We've got a tender. 7 companies applied for it. We gave them a test task and UNL Solutions made it the best way.

Describe the project in detail.

The original problem was knowing if we could design a system that can skim the Internet, find ads on the Internet, take that data, and propose it in the app- to all of those interested users in order to get them negotiating price. That was the first hurdle, and I didn’t know if it could be done.

UNL Solutions was able to find a way to make it happen, and develop the software that could handle that. For me, they were able to make the system, so I don’t have to have a ton of employees. They were always looking to make my life easier, to make my business successful. They helped me overcome that obstacle right away, which was at its core a technical resources challenge.

What was the team composition?

3 js developers+PM+2 front end java developers

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

They have set up a whole bunch of parameters to measure it once it’s launched, so I’m looking forward to seeing those but, until it’s launched, I won’t be able to measure that type of stuff. I’m very satisfied.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

The project manager is primarily the only contact I’ve been having, and I haven’t had any issues with project management or workflow. I prefer not to talk to multiple people, but rather have a head person to make sure things are going well, so I’ve enjoyed it this way.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

They’re very responsive. There is a big time difference and that concerned me when we began, but they have been very responsive anytime I have questions, concerns, or updates. If they don’t agree with me, they’ll talk me through it. There hasn’t been a single disagreement that didn’t end up being productive.

Are there any areas for improvement?

No

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I’m the Project Manager of IT for a technological development company. We are growing rapidly and have locations in the UK and USA.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire UNL Solutions LTD?

Improve the stability of the existing FluxHub library, build UI and transform an old ActionScript framework into CSS flex-box layout.

What were your goals for this project?

The main goal is to support the operation and collaboration between employees, partners, suppliers, and customers for better performance in carrying out daily activities.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

By recommendation

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

As the platform exists in both web and mobile parts, the basis has been written in the prototype-based and multi-paradigm JavaScript language. In addition to JS, the developers have used Angular 6, a framework that aims to simplify both the development and the testing of applications by providing it for client-side MVC and MVVM architectures.

What was the team composition?

A PM, 2 node js developers, 2 js developers

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Among the most significant features of the platform are efficiency, modernity, a high degree of competitiveness, intelligent design.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

Despite the platform being still under development, the team performs its duties on a high level and within the original time frame. 

What did you find most impressive about this company?

If there is an issue, they're more than eager to address it. My team has a great working model with them. When we really need to get something done and the time zone difference is making that difficult, UNL sends one or two resources to work in-person with our team for an extended period of time.

Are there any areas for improvement?

No, everything is perfect

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I work for the company that offers process consultancy and application software to reduce configuration time and engineering costs.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire UNL Solutions LTD?

We need to develop a CRM web platform designed to collect information, operate with it and make reports.

What were your goals for this project?

Organization’s owners should have been able to freely ask to register their organization and have a back office panel where they can manage their organizations.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

By our partner recommendation

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

In the process of building, UNL developers have created several user interfaces with special functionalities for each of them: public, organization, administrator.

The platform admin can manage all public contents (pages, CMS) and system configurations all users, approve or reject the registration of new organizations / authorities, deny access to the system to some users and see for every organization its balance.

While an organization owner can manage all organization data (activities, objectives, users, expenses) and visualize some useful statistic graphs or PDFs.

Main features of the platform are: reliable transaction high-performance reliable replication mechanisms backoffice panels’ rich functionality

What was the team composition?

Ruby on Rails, Ruby, Bootstrap, PostgreSQL, RSpec developers

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The platform has been developed on time and successfully launched.UNL Solution and Devinterface have continued their collaboration on a range of other projects.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

Everything was perfect.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

UNL Solutions LTD has really high-quality developers.

Are there any areas for improvement?

No

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Project Manager at Global Publishing Company

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire UNL Solutions LTD?

Our company urgently needed an upgrade. Our core functionality was written in Flash and couldn’t perform properly.

What were your goals for this project?

We looked to enhance the solution and extend its functionality. We wanted our customers to enjoy a high-quality product and get positive feedback from them. For that reason, our company turned to UNL Solutions with the request for an experienced team who would help us improve our product.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

I don't know how that process began.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

• The scope of work included: Initiated and applied TDD (Test Driven Development) to the team
• Implementing sub-tasks using main aspects of OOP (Object Oriented Programming), OOD (Object-Oriented Design)
• Using GWT for front-end development. HTML, CSS, JavaScript (jQuery, Prototype), Ajax using web services
• Transforming Flash into SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) using SVG lib, canvas Implementing of XML rendering via XSL and macros templates
• Optimizing of request dispatching to back the system security
• Implemented “Type-ahead” feature
• Using Lucene index system for content indexing

Above development, we also provided a business analyst who investigated the market and consulted the client on the most money-wise functionality.

What was the team composition?

UNL Solutions provided a team of 2 experienced Java developers and a QA specialist to deliver the needed application.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The solution was rolled out on time and currently is actively used by over 600.000 customers.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

UNL Solutions Team kept the development course simple through systematic and regular testing and design improvements delivering frequent "releases" in short development cycles. We could quickly see the progress and change requirements without lagging the process.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

UNL team who worked on this project had a tough deadline. They applied extreme programming methodology to meet the deadline, and it worked well.

Are there any areas for improvement?

None. We are doing fine. We do not have any major issues with them.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

We’re a consulting company that analyzes Big Data.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire UNL Solutions LTD?

We wanted to develop a payment processing app for one of our clients. The app would feature new parsers and formatters to work between different payment formats.

What were your goals for this project?

The main bottleneck was sorting out the payment conversion functionality. It was taking too much time to implement converters from one payment format to another, which resulted in a slow workflow. We looked to improve the overall quality of the software to speed up our client’s processing time.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

We found UNL Solutions LTD on the internet.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

UNL Solutions LTD developed an all-in-one module for our app that allowed users to quickly convert payments. After developing the payment models (e.g., MT101 Swift, IZV, and DTIZV formats), they parsed and transformed the input models into the necessary output format using ANLTR and a custom framework. 

Their scope of work also included implementing a payment monitoring function using Apache Struts 1, Apache Wicket, JavaScript, and Oracle as the database. The team then developed a standalone platform to create payment graphics using Eclipse RCP (rich client platform), and they tested the formatters and parsers using a custom framework based on JUnit.

What was the team composition?

They provided a team of two dedicated developers to assist our client with the application.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

UNL Solutions LTD significantly reduced the overall development time as well as the amount of effort required for the client to support the software. They also eliminated all initial bugs.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

Their team is exemplary. Both our client and our internal team appreciate their quick reaction and availability.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

UNL Solutions LTD is a competent and reliable technology partner. Their team is driven to develop their business to a global level, and they never compromise on their quality of service. Above all else, they do what they do to satisfy the client.

Are there any areas for improvement?

No, there’s nothing to improve. We’re absolutely satisfied with their service.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the CEO of The Edge Software Consultancy. We are an SME group based in Gilford, UK. We work with customers from the West Coast of the US, as well as from Shanghai and elsewhere. We specialize in solutions for the pharmaceutical and biotech market.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with UNL Solutions?

We were looking to meet peak demand for the customization of our software. We sell enterprise solutions, and there’s often a lot of integration and customization work involved. We wanted access to resources during peak demands and looked at offshore possibilities.

Our product is called BioRails and was built using the Ruby on Rails framework. Actually sourcing good resources in the UK is a challenge since there’s a big market for them. We’re also located in Gilford near central London, which also poses challenges.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We needed to meet peak demands for integrations for Ruby on Rails software. We generally write plugins with scientific intelligence incorporated to facilitate the storage and processing of data in our database. We use an Oracle relational database on the backend and Active Record on the Rails side. The frontend is written in JavaScript (including jQuery) and embedded in the same framework. We use 2 developers and a tester from UNL Solutions’ team, all of whom are based in Belarus.

How did you come to work with UNL Solutions?

I’m not sure how we came across them, but I was attracted to UNL Solutions partly because they’re a UK-based company with programmers in Belarus. We had a discussion with Serge, their founder, and got along well. UNL Solutions seemed like a company we could work with, which proved to be the case.

How much have you invested with UNL Solutions?

The cost of UNL Solutions’ work has been between $50,000 and $100,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We have been working with UNL Solutions as an embedded part of our team for around 18 months since 2015. We completed our integration projects but have retained their testing input, using a single tester from the original 3. If we reach a future peak demand, we will come back to them.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or impact of the engagement?

In terms of qualitative feedback, we’ve gotten some good-quality developers from UNL Solutions. Communication-wise, they have improved during the project. This is often a worry when going offshore, but UNL Solutions fit well within our teams. Three of the resources were full-time, only working on our projects for an 18-month period. The tester is still onboard and has been working with us for about the same time.

How did UNL Solutions perform from a project management standpoint?

All of our development is managed from our end, who works directly with the resources in Belarus. We use the Atlassian suite, including JIRA and Confluence for project tracking. We allocate tickets to the developers and testers, and time is tracked. This system has worked well for us.

What did you find most impressive about UNL Solutions?

In terms of management, we had weekly and biweekly calls with UNL Solutions to check on progress, ask about any issues, and make sure that we were happy with the work. The process was straightforward, and we were given access to resources for a 1-week evaluation period before getting into any charged work. If there was a suggestion of needing to change resources, UNL Solutions provided a period of handover where we got 2 resources for the price of 1, essentially. In terms of management, they’ve been great.

Are there any areas UNL Solutions could improve?

When we started, we had some communication issues in terms of IT infrastructure. We were using Skype, and the audio was simply too noisy. As soon as I mentioned this, UNL Solutions bought its team headsets, and everything was resolved. Apart from this, everything has been seamless.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am one of the directors of Website Express Ltd.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with UNL Solutions?

We needed a frontend developer who could help with our current workload.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We are using one frontend Drupal developer from UNL Solutions. He focused on implementing themes for both Drupal 7 and Drupal 8 websites, which is what we specialize in. The developer communication was straightforward, and there were updates on a daily basis. We were able to send them design requirements, and they pretty much got on with it. There wasn’t much handholding on our end, which was exactly what we needed.

How much have you invested with UNL Solutions?

They worked with us for the good part of a year, on multiple projects. We had a dedicated developer on a monthly basis throughout that time. I can’t think of what the monthly price was.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with UNL Solutions around March 2016. The work finished in March 2017. We don’t use them for ongoing maintenance.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

The quality of implementation is very good. UNL Solutions was able to match the implemented design closely to Photoshop or Sketch files provided. This is key for delivering solutions to our clients. In terms of metrics, we don’t really keep anything.

One of the sites UNL Solutions worked on was submitted to Awwwards.com. It just missed out on an honorable mention.

How did UNL Solutions perform from a project management standpoint?

They did have a platform in place, but we preferred to send the team files and keep communication over Skype and email. It was pretty fluid and straightforward.

What did you find most impressive about UNL Solutions?

Their reliability. We can engage with UNL Solutions and tell them when we will need them to work on our tasks, including on days when they would normally be off. Conversely, we could also tell UNL Solutions to stop the work during periods when our own team was off. That was a unique point for us.

Are there any areas UNL Solutions could improve?

Not off the top of my head. We were happy with the service.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Client provides B2B e-commerce websites that are fully integrated with their clients' SAP landscape. I am the Vice President of Operations and Development, responsible for our IT operations and DevOps.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with UNL IT Solutions?

It was essentially a lack of resources. We were more of a services and delivery-oriented company, not a development shop. While we did have internal developers, their primary focus was implementation and business analysis. We weren't mature in terms of development, and needed to start separating those responsibilities, building out a team that could support our implementations, especially as we came to grow fast in the market. We made the decision to look externally, rather than hiring individual developers.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Our platform is completely built using Ruby on Rails. We have a web-based solution which is hosted in the cloud, connected to the SAP systems on customers' premises. We have the budget and infrastructure in place to support this, but our core product is customized by each client within their implementations. UNL IT Solutions was brought in to take over the core code support effort, making global enhancements as well as customizations on a customer-by-customer basis.

We initially only used one resource from UNL IT Solutions, but have ramped-up to 13.

How did you come to work with UNL IT Solutions?

Our CEO got connected with UNL IT and forwarded their contact information to me. After several conversations with different offshore firms, UNL IT looked to be a strong candidate for filling our needs. I interviewed some of the resources directly and determined that UNL IT Solutions seemed to provide a unique location for developers and had skillsets which aligned with our goals. That, combined with price, created a perfect trifecta for us, leading us to choose UNL IT Solutions.

How much have you invested with UNL IT Solutions?

We've spent several hundred thousand dollars a year working with UNL IT.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with UNL IT Solutions in February 2015.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

We've added 8 clients to production since UNL IT Solutions has been onboarded. They've successfully navigated the whole implementation process, bringing our customers online.

We've also released several new versions of the product, and met our SLA [service level agreement] with clients for every single month since UNL IT Solutions has been working with us. There were no discrepancies in terms of our availability and application functionality. All the metrics point to the fact that our collaboration with UNL IT Solutions is hugely successful.

How did UNL IT Solutions perform from a project management standpoint?

UNL IT Solutions' responsiveness has stood out. We have calls every single week, going over any issues or news, and figuring out what we could be doing better. Whenever we asked UNL IT Solutions for a new resource with a particular skillset, they usually deliver 3-4 resumes within the same week. Typically, staffing is one of the hardest parts of any project, so being able to solve this through a simple Skype message has been a breath of fresh air.

We have a unique structure of having a team lead for each of our groups within UNL IT Solutions. I manage each team lead directly. This has made managing the time zone difference and language barrier much easier.

What did you find most impressive about UNL IT Solutions?

The quality of UNL IT Solutions' resources has stood out to me. Having worked with other offshore teams in the past, I sometimes went through a struggle, constantly swapping out resources, or having them leave the company. This is a typical challenge for this type of arrangement. During our year-and-a-half engagement with UNL IT Solutions, we've never requested to have a single member of the team replaced. Every resource provided was qualified and performed as desired.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I’m the founder of a security company. We're working on an identification platform for enterprise business customers. Our tool helps to identify if the caller ID is authentic for inbound call centers. It helps to detect fraud and increase profit

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

We wanted to develop MVP for our startup having a very limited budget. So we were looking for the most talented developers at the best price for our company.

SOLUTION

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

My co-founder worked with them at a previous company, so he already knew UNL Solutions and its work quality. So we decided to work with them because of my colleague previous good experience.

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

UNL Solutions is our only software outsourcing house, so we work with them through every challenge. They built our website, made all the frontend development work as well as everything on the backend (e.g., the database and infrastructure). Now they're working on the programming for our matching algorithm.

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

We work with between 1–5 developers over the years.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We used the product they built and got into a startup accelerator called the Y Combinator with it. So as we're scaling our business, we work with UNL Solutions very tightly

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

Our goal was achieved so I'd say that the workflow was effective

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

I'd mention two aspects. First, UNL Solutions really knows what they’re doing, and that’s what you need in this industry. Secondly, it’s their communication. They’re great at getting back to us and making sure we feel comfortable and satisfied with what they’re doing."

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

They’re pretty good with everything. Whenever we've had an issue, they've been 100% open to correcting and improving it.