VAO

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CTO of Geobiz, a geodetic company. We mainly work for the Polish government and a few clients in the UK and Germany.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with VAO?

We were looking for IT services.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

When we scan terrain, we keep the data in the AutoCAD format. VAO made a converter for us so it can be displayed on the web. They prepared a special engine to analyze the data and convert them to a web view. They also created a special mobile version. Usually, our clients have to have software from us to see the scan, but now we just send them a link and they can log in a password and see everything on the web and even on a mobile device.

We worked together. We have a liaison with the government that acts as our project manager, and she provides all the wireframes, designs, and mockups, which she gets from an external agency. They do the development in PHP and Laravel. They also use three.js, OpenGL, MySQL database, and MongoDB.

What is the team composition?

They have their owner, one web project manager, one mobile project manager, and 11–12 developers.

How did you come to work with VAO?

My wife introduced me to the owner of VAO. We invited them to a meeting with the government and decided to use them. We got investments from our government for 50% of the project, and they have to also agree on who our IT partner is.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent $620,000 USD so far.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in April 2018, and the work is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

They proposed us a solution that is 20% cheaper than what we thought it would be.

How did VAO perform from a project management standpoint?

They are right on schedule.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They were able to make it so our data could be viewed on mobile devices.  

Are there any areas they could improve?

We had some issues with the first project manager, but they changed them after three months and the new person is great.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO of a startup that builds a chatbot automation platform. Our platform converts content into dialogue that can be played out on any messenger app such as Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp. We use the chatbot for products like city guides or museum tour guides.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with VAO?

We needed a partner to develop our application.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

VAO built our application from scratch. We gave them the idea and a briefing with initial ideas for UI. They started by building our MVP and then moved on to create the whole chatbot automation platform.

They used several technologies including PHP and MySQL. They had to develop APIs for dialogue flows for WhatsApp, for example. They continue to build out the platform, adding tools such as voting, selfie uploads, and newsletter functions.

What is the team composition?

We work with three developers, a tester, and a project manager.

How did you come to work with VAO?

My co-founder had worked with them on projects for 12 years.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent between $50,000–80,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in October 2016 and it’s ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

I was skeptical at the beginning that they could build the natural language capability for the chatbots but it worked very well. We’re really happy. VAO has met our standards; otherwise, we wouldn’t continue to work with them.

How did VAO perform from a project management standpoint?

We have milestones to make sure everything is developed on time and on budget. Our tracking allows us to see feedback from customers and make fixes as needed.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Coming to this without an IT background, I was skeptical about sharing a briefing and waiting for them to build. It’s a huge investment. They built something that works and that people can use. I have confidence that we worked with the right partner.  

Are there any areas they could improve?

Sometimes I would have liked to get feedback a little more quickly from them. When they’re working on something that takes a lot of time, it would be helpful to have feedback that, for example, they’re working on it and it will take another week. That type of communication increases our confidence that everything is on track.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

No, I don’t have advice.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the owner of a 10-person startup that is working on new technologies.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with VAO?

I was looking for a company that could help me implement a virtual reality (VR) project.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

The project we worked on with VAO was a CRM for advertising agencies. The platform is built for both mobile devices and the web. We developed an environment where users could create virtual reality versions of their products. The technologies we used include VR3D, Laravel PHP 7, HTML5, CSS3, WebGL, JavaScript, and MySQL. They helped us develop some custom software as well.

What is the team composition? 

We worked with 10 people from their team. VAO assigned us a project developer along with six backend and three frontend developers.

How did you come to work with VAO?

We were looking for a partner and VAO responded to our tender. They made a good offer, so we started a collaboration.

How much have you invested with them?

The total cost was around $660,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked with VAO between September 2017–August 2018.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

VAO was very helpful, and I appreciated their approach to our project. Instead of waiting in a queue, I got an immediate response anytime I had a problem, issue, or question. They always promptly tried to help me, which is how I prefer to work.

We plan to launch the site in about two weeks and then start selling our services. We’ve tested the platform with users, and everyone’s been pleased with it so far. I’m happy to have collaborated with VAO.

How did VAO perform from a project management standpoint?

They’re very open; we could call them anytime. We could also connect with them via email or collaboration platforms. I don’t recall any situation where I was left alone to deal with an issue. Our communication was very good.

What did you find most impressive about them?

VAO is innovative and has great ideas. I was a little surprised by the way they showed me what my project should look. They thought of a much more convenient style than I initially conceptualized. Thanks to their input, the project environment is even better than I could have imagined. They gave us many unexpected solutions that worked out nicely.

Are there any areas they could improve?

VAO should continue what they’re doing. They have a lot of satisfied clients, especially me. If they don’t lower their standards, everybody should be happy.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Sygnity is the third-largest software company in Poland and offers solutions for the public, utilities, and finance sectors. During the engagement with VAO, I was the lead technical architect and was responsible for international projects for Sygnity International. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire VAO?

Our business primarily uses 2 technology stacks: Java and .Net. From time to time, we need to have different pieces developed, so we hired VAO to manage PHP and Drupal tasks.

What were your goals for this project?

We needed to build sophisticated web pages for testing different audio samples and recording user profiles. Our client selected the technology to build this solution and needed it to match other pages in PHP and Drupal. 

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

We searched for a partner with experience in web page development based on Drupal and PHP technology. We also wanted the vendor to be able to work with international clients (specifically English speakers) and have a flexible workflow to accommodate different time zones.

Describe the project in detail.

VAO designed the layout of the web pages, created an infrastructure, implement their designs, and launched the site for the client. During the project, we had daily meetings. Within 2 weeks, we had a demo for the client. Due to VAO’s knowledge of Drupal plugins and functional design skills, the client approved their designs quickly. The implementation went smoothly from the user-facing web page to the administrative web page. VAO prepared and executed the whole process well.

Explain how the solution addressed your business challenge.

The Drupal web page based on the AWS [Amazon Web Services] infrastructure allowed our client to gather users’ audio profiles. Using AWS ensured future scalability and let us meet all functional and nonfunctional requirements.

What was the team composition?

The team included 7 people, although not every person was involved for the entire project. I acted as the project manager, IT architect, and Scrum master. The client supplied a subject matter expert and a product manager, and VAO assigned 3 software developers and a frontend designer. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The solution successfully allowed our client to gather data about users’ audio profiles. By analyzing the data, the client could tune the audio filters based on their planned audio products.

How effective was the project management?

VAO provided excellent project management and communicated clearly. We had no misunderstandings. I felt like we’d been working together for years.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

VAO’s agile approach allowed us to approach their employees directly, which made them seem like members of our own team. They adjusted quickly to our schedule and requirements. They supported our team with their expertise in different topics and technologies.

What tips or recommendations do you have?

Involve VAO in the discussion about the requirements. They have extensive Drupal and PHP knowledge and can suggest great solutions to minimize expensive implementation steps. 

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Grupa Cogito is a publishing house. We have produced educational magazines and books for kids and teenagers for 24 years. Schools buy them for their students. I’m CEO of the company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with VAO?

We don’t have an internal IT team, so we needed a good company that could help us with our online shop. We were looking for someone to develop our online shop and help us to increase sales.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We needed them to develop our online shop. They gave us advice and suggestions on how to run the business as affordably as possible. They developed a system to collect information about our clients and showed us how to use it. They also showed us how to connect our shop with other systems, which was very important; we don’t have those systems done yet, but we’ve talked about them for the future.

The online store offers books and subscriptions. Our clients can choose from what number they want to start their subscription. We wanted it to be very user-friendly. We wanted to connect it to our blog and our system of documents. We did the design ourselves. They built the shop on Magento, which is important because we want to sell electronic books and because there are a lot of opportunities to connect with other systems. We also changed our internal systems, and I know Magento will work with them.

How did you come to work with VAO?

I wanted to find someone who I could trust, so I did some market research. Our business partner recommended VAO to us. We are very happy.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent almost $60,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in November 2016. The product is working, but we are still working on it. We still need to improve the e-books because our clients want more options.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Our online shop is working well and we have what we need. They designed it from the user experience side.

How did VAO perform from a project management standpoint?

They performed well. They have a project manager who understands what I’m saying and translates what the IT guys want to tell me. They have a tool that we used so that we could give them feedback. I was happy with the schedule and terms we agreed upon.

What did you find most impressive about them?

In our second meeting, they made a huge map of what we wanted to do. We didn’t know everything we could do, so they opened the doors for us. They showed us that we had a lot of opportunities that we didn’t know about. The people at VAO are good listeners, and their suggestions can be really useful.

Are there any areas they could improve?

The program they used to organize the process was not very user-friendly. It was too technical for regular people. I needed some time to get used to it.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We are a Polish human resources training consultancy operating with international brands like Kraft Foods, AIG and Skoda. I am the chief executive officer of the company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with VAO?

We had a requirement for building a website which would help us acquire new sales leads, and find new sales channels. We were looking for a team which could help us find the right solution. We were focused on Drupal, and wanted to use this platform for the new site, but didn’t have an inhouse IT team. We had a basic information website in place.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

VAO developed our new Drupal site. It has a CMS which allows us to make any kinds of changes, and it features registration forms for our training courses. It has resources divided into branches, which allows us to share our experience with customers.

What is the team dynamic?

The team consisted of four developers and a project manager.

How did you come to work with VAO?

We had worked with them previously, on another project, and knew that VAO was a stable partner. We were looking for someone who could maintain a long, stable relationship.

How much have you invested with them?

The total cost of the website rebuild was around $7,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with VAO in March 2016. The website was launched at the end of that year, around December.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Our clients appreciated that we provided a new tool for them. In the backend, we can manage a list of clients registered for courses.

The new site is ranked better on Google, thus easier to find. We also use Google ads to generate new leads, and it’s working. VAO has a partner for this, and they were involved in the process for consultation.

How did VAO perform from a project management standpoint?

They made it easy to prepare everything, and used tools like Slack and Google Docs. VAO uses the Agile process, which made it easy to manage the work.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They pay attention to quality and project management. I’ve appreciated the communication channels. They made it easy to go through the project and be on time. They have no problems in terms of Drupal development. A good description for VAO’s team would be Drupal ninjas. They are a reliable partner which we can definitely recommend as an IT vendor.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We’re a property crowdfunding platform based in the UK. We do property investments on a crowdfunding model so you can invest small amounts in different sorts of property investments such as buy-to-lets or developments. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with VAO?

We needed a development company experienced in creating crowdfunding and financial sources platforms. Because a lot of the work we do is in financial services, we needed a company that had that background and experience. 

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We didn’t have anything built, so everything was done with VAO. One of the bigger projects we did was setting up microsites. We had some disagreements about which domains and SSL [secure sockets layer] certificates to use. They suggested which certificates we should pay for, which would reduce the overall price over the year and would allow us to have unlimited domains as long as we pay the yearly fee. In that regard, they know what they’re doing. We don’t normally give them really technical tasks, but whatever the feedback they give us is always much appreciated.

They were used to working with platforms with a financial background. This actually showed when we integrated MANGOPAY as an online payment provider. We spoke to other companies in similar industries. They had difficulty integrating the MANGO API on their platform. However, our developers did an almost seamless integration. There were some technical issues, but that was because of MANGOPAY itself; they still had bugs to fix on their side. What our developers were able to do was automatically create e-wallets for new users. Investors were able to invest within minutes of registering, rather than waiting 24 hours to upload their social IDs and fill out all the relevant information for the KYC [know your customer] check. In that regard, they helped the platform become more streamlined.

The project manager is Przemyslaw, but we call him Zem. For whatever we need to do on the platform, we normally send him a brief, and he goes through the brief with his development team. They normally get back to us with a quote. Then, from our side, we go through their suggested changes and feedback. We do extra changes or more updates and get a final quote and a delivery day.

How did you come to work with VAO?

Our CTO Sam has worked with VAO on several other projects, so it was through that connection that we found them.

How much have you invested with VAO?

I don’t have the actual figure of how much we spent on building the platform, but I’m more aware of all the projects I’ve worked on since then. The prices are very competitive. We’ve compared them with some other developers. Because they’re based in Poland, we do benefit from the cost as well. For example, if we’re doing a heavily enhanced change on the platform, they typically charge between €2,000 and €3,000 ($2,249 and $3,373) per project. They don’t charge anything less than €2,000 to make everything worthwhile. We try to get as many changes as possible and send that in the brief so they can give us an overall quote.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in 2014. The platform has been live for about three years now, and we’re more or less done. A lot of the work was done before I started at CrowdLords. What we’re doing at the moment is enhancing the platform. We’re looking at improving the overall experience for the investor. We’ve done all the groundwork for making a working platform. Now, it’s just making users stay on the platform and have a good investment experience. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We tried to make our platform seem as simple as possible because we understand a lot of our target market are over the age of 40. Many of them prefer simplicity. When you actually make the investment, that is where the site really shines: you can view your e-wallet, see how much you can top it up by, or withdraw your funds to any bank in the world. From that point of view, for the user, it is a pretty interesting platform. It doesn’t seem like there’s much going on in the frontend, but everything happens in the backend of the platform. However, we are working with the developers to create a more technical portfolio for our investors. Once they’re done with that project, we can really say that VAO does good work in financial services.

The platform performs really well. Whenever we do need changes, it realistically takes at least a week to two weeks to figure out all the bugs, but then we have no issues after that. We do have a couple of issues where a user will have difficulty registering or signing in, but most of the time, it’s something like a browser or cookie issue. We don’t really get any technical problems.

How did VAO perform from a project management standpoint?

They’re pretty good and approachable. They normally deliver their projects before the deadline. We communicate over Skype or emails. I’ve met the developers in person once, and they’re great guys. Their communication is on point. Sometimes, there are issues such as national holidays that hinder communication, but otherwise we do touch base quite often.

What did you find most impressive about VAO?

Even if you’ve got a simple problem and ask them any questions about it, they normally give you really good answers. They show you how you can do it yourself (e.g. setting up new pages on the website). There was a way to do that, but I wasn’t sure how. Zem gave me the instructions on how to create pages, how to catalog them, how to set up the links, and how to do the SEO stuff. They do their best to show you how to do things. There are things which I think aren’t big but are actually crucial changes. They normally do those without charging us. It will take half an hour to an hour to do those changes, and they normally just do those for us. They’re pretty good with small things like that as well.

Are there any areas VAO could improve?

They used to have this project management tool called Eventum. They really like using that because, from a technical standpoint, it is really good. But, because my job isn’t fully in IT, I use email more. After discussing it with the developers, we decided that communicating over email was better than their project management tool. For the record, I do use their project management tool just to make sure that they also have a proper log of all the projects we’ve worked on. 

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We develop web and mobile applications based on client requirements. We work with financial and medical organizations, both private and public.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with VAO?

We mainly use our internal team but also collaborate with other companies like VAO for bigger projects.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We have worked with VAO on developing Android and iOS applications, as well as a web PHP interface. The backend server was developed using Java, with some additional frameworks like Spring and MyBatis. We used a MySQL database.

We used around 10 resources from VAO’s side, including four mobile developers, four backend developers, one frontend developer, and one project manager. I was responsible for project management on our side. We also had a scrum master from VAO, who was only responsible for managing daily scrum meetings.

VAO’s team took part in our client meetings, during the requirements gathering process. They were able to provide technical knowledge and help us deliver information. Since our specs came from the client, there were no marketing components involved.

How did you come to work with VAO?

We made public posts on various portals in Poland asking for a company which could help us with functionality development for an application. A few companies were interested in our offer, but based on our requirements, VAO was the best fit.

How much have you invested with VAO?

The cost of VAO’s work was around 250,000 Polish Zloty [US $64,382].

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with VAO in January 2015. The project took one year to complete. We are considering using VAO as a partner for future projects, but we don’t have any ongoing work at the moment.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Because we had a Scrum project, much of the management was left to VAO. They did everything without our involvement, working fast and efficiently. We only checked the work at the end of sprints, which was convenient. Everything worked correctly in the end. We have been very satisfied with VAO.

How did VAO perform from a project management standpoint?

Working remotely is different from working with developers in the same office as us, and it has been our biggest challenge. We used communication tools like Slack and Skype for daily standup calls. We used the Scrum methodology and used JIRA for the process. We also used Atlassian Bamboo for building applications, especially on the backend portions. We used Confluence for taking notes and describing projects, and also used Git repositories.

Estimates were stuck to by VAO, but our client came up with new ideas during the project run, so we added additional items to some sprints. VAO’s team has had to work harder than usual in some cases, but there were no delays in the project. The project was due in January 2016, but the final version was actually completed a few months before that, giving us time for integration testing.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We are a Fortune 500 company working in IT and software security. I am one of the account managers in the IT security team. We ensure that customer security projects are completed and supportable. I am also creating and presenting high-impact data analysis on support history.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with VAO?

We have a legacy software system which my company is looking to move away from.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

I was in contact with a project manager who communicated internally with the team. I’m not sure what the size of the project team for VAO was.

We have customers for which we provide technical support. We keep track of software versions and the number of licenses. We do analysis on this data to see where we can expand, mainly in Poland, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic.

Our goal was to build our own solution, and the VAO team developed new software with this customer information. There’s functionality for sorting out data according to number of licenses and sorting for other versions. It was a platform for internal use to get more analysis on our end versus something more client-facing.

For the first couple of months, we gave them access to the legacy system we had. This system was developed by a different team years ago and taken over by our company. VAO became familiar with the system and derived requirements out of it.

Then, the project was split into three phases. We were getting feedback, and there were several changes done in the meantime. At the very beginning, the requirements from our side were not well-defined.

The platform was built on Drupal system, and there was also support for an iOS and Android mobile application. The system enabled us to collect customer data including number of our software installations and software types and versions. All data that was gathered was used for internal reporting such as improving customer satisfaction, suggesting software upgrades, etc.

The project manager was very good and experienced. He helped us properly define what we wanted.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with VAO in 2015. Our relationship with VAO has transitioned since we changed some strategic objectives. The relationship ended early 2017, once the final product was handed over to our team.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

It works just fine, and we are using the system. This is a web-oriented development, so there is nothing really to complain about when it comes to performance, speed, or anything. There’s no large data processing or anything in the background. It’s for reporting, filtering, and customer information. The legacy tool was slow because it was designed for WindowsXP. Now there’s no support for WindowsXP, so we are platform-free, and I think that was a plus.

How did VAO perform from a project management standpoint?

One of the biggest strengths of VAO has been gathering requirements and defining scope, which was also important — taking our business context into account and considering the wide range of users. Although only my department was involved in and affected by the project, we were constantly identifying and managing other stakeholders. In the end, this helped a lot and reduced significant risks.

Due to complexity, we supported project management framework with additional tools. Those were our internal systems. VAO was very flexible regarding the tools to be used for the project. VAO used GitHub in order to check in code.

What did you find most impressive about VAO?

When we agreed on the requirements for a phase, VAO kept their deadlines. In the beginning, we didn’t have clear requirements, but when something was scheduled, they stood by the schedule, and that was impressive.

VAO demonstrated outstanding software development skills. I also appreciated their approach of promoting a single point of contact. This makes it much easier to manage projects and reduces the number of communication channels. They could assist us during project life cycle, and a lot of issues were resolved with the support of the team at VAO.

Are there any areas VAO could improve?

Not really, VAO has gone the extra mile in assisting us. They were very helpful in explaining all technical and project management issues. There was always somebody to contact and to discuss any outstanding issues or tasks.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We are a small UX design business. I’m one of the co-founders. I manage clients and the user experience process.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with VAO?

We are designers and we look for other technical partners. We don’t do any deep level technical implementation ourselves. VAO is one of our technical partners.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They do the technical architecture and implementation for work we do for our clients. They’re very good at technical results. They work with PHP based technologies.

How did you come to work with VAO?

They were recommended to us a number of years ago. We made contact and sent briefs and went through a purchase process based on that.

What is the status of this engagement?

We’ve only been established as a business for two and a half years and we’ve been working with them throughout that period.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

They’re good at what they do. They’re located in Poland but they communicate well in English. They deliver on time and at a good price. We don’t measure their work specifically because what they do is part of a larger project.

How did VAO perform from a project management standpoint?

We use Skype and Skype chat to keep in touch.

What did you find most impressive about VAO?

They’re very good communicators and are always available.

Are there any areas VAO could improve?

They could keep us informed on what other projects they’re doing. I would like to fully understand their capabilities.