White Lotus Order Solutions BG

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the CTO of ValueNet, a leading German Financial and HR consultancy firm specializing in tax remunerations. ValueNet offers its enterprise clients a fast and efficient way to manage and optimize the “tax-free extras” for their employees. It has more than 200 B2B customers and 100 employees.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire White Lotus Order Solutions BG, and what were your goals?

We were looking for a reliable software development company to maintain and develop our Customer and Back-Office Portals.

The portal’s feature would include a “Bonus Delivery System” as well as a “Company Tax Optimization Calculator” which would help us extend our network of partners with the largest tax-related company in Germany.

SOLUTION

How did you select White Lotus Order Solutions BG and what were the deciding factors?

We were looking for a reliable long-term partner which can both manage and develop the portals keeping up with the fast expansion of VN and evolving environment for a reasonable price.

As Bulgaria is one of the most attractive IT outsourcing destinations in the EU, we searched for a partner there. WLOS immediately understood our core needs and developed a team of people perfect for working on them – the Developers already had vast experience in the financial sphere and the Project Manager was fluent in German which facilitated communication.

The deciding factor was WLOS’s team attitude towards their work and quality of communication

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

WLOS is responsible for managing and developing the main IT product VN-CUSTOMER-PORTAL as well as the VN-BACKOFFICE-PORTAL which is used by our internal team.

The scope of work of WLOS is to Manage the projects – understand and develop functionality requirements, maintain and develop documentation, maintain and update ticketing system, maintain and improve management processes depending on the goals, ensure on-time delivery of functionality, ensure clear communication between developers and project environment, planning of functionalities, maintain smooth development.

Develop the technical functionalities – create technical requirements, maintain current code, develop new functionalities, test functionalities, connect APIs, set-up and maintain servers, reduce technical dept, improve code quality and scalability. Advice VN on technologies which can help VN in its goals The projects under WLOS supervision are product projects and they constantly evolve in response to VN customers’ and BackOffice’s needs.

Thus the key deliverables for WLOS are end user satisfaction and stable, quality management and development. The technologies which are used in those two projects are: Architecture - GIT - Docker - Docker-compose - MAKE FrontEnd - AngularJS 1.7 - Gulp - NPM - SCSS BackEnd - Flask Framework on Python 3.7 - Made Middleware on Python 3.7 Additional - AWS Cloud Services

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

There are 4 people in the core team, including PM and Tester.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

During the 1.5 years of work together, we were able to move forward with modernizing our internal organization through the VN-BACKOFFICE-PORTAL. This has helped us raise efficiency and keep up with the expansion of the userbase of the VN-CUSTOMER-PORTAL.

Through the VN-CUSTOMER-PORTAL, we were able to attract new customers and double in size. This was supported in full by WLOS and VN can even directly contribute the successful partnership with a major financial company to the quality work done by the WLOS team.

In general, there were no problems with the deliverables, management is smooth and able to handle extreme situations. As a consequence, we were able to improve customer satisfaction and boost loyalty among our clients..

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

For our projects WLOS advised and we agreed to use the Scrum Agile Management Style. The sprints are two weeks long and the deliverable is a version. There are 15 minutes dailies every day in which the Project Owner participates.

Every Wednesday the whole team plus the Project Owner have a 1 hour planning meeting. Project Manager and Project Owner meet additionally on Fridays and Mondays to further discuss functionalities.

The team uses JIRA for ticketing and tracking and Confluence for documentation and timelines. WLOS defined the following process for management:

1. Project Owner defines in JIRA a special type of ticket ( Project Owner Idea ) when a new functionality is to be created
2. Project Manager creates a document for the functionality
3. Project Manager, Project Owner and Team Lead go through the requirements of the functionality until they reach a scoped working version which is prioritized versions of the other functionalities which are InProgress or InToDo.
4. Project Manager and Team Lead divide the working version into User Stories, which are then estimated, prioritized and put into a sprint
5. During the sprint the Devs work on highest to lowest priority on the user stories and deliver a tested version by the end of the sprint.
6. The version is validated by the Product Owner on the STAGE environment and any amendments are discussed and developed
7. The version is put on live This management style allows the Project Owner to be fully informed on the progress of the development and respond rapidly to any questions from the team.

It also enables him/her to have a clear understanding when a certain functionality will be ready for internal planning with the other departments. WLOS enforced writing documentation in Confluence which vastly improved development efficiency by reducing the amount of miscommunication and improving traceability of the requirements.

Their communication style is friendly and they were always ready to react to the constantly changing requirements.

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

WLOS and the people working on our team take pride in their work and follow up on their word. If a problem or an urgent issue occurs, the team responds fast and works dedicated to solving it while keeping me informed the entire way.

They are transparent and we appreciate that they do not sugar-coat the issues and focus on the solution not on blaming or explaining. They take ownership of our problems and solve them in a long-term sustainable way striking a very impressive balance between quality and speed of execution.

What impressed us the most is the feeling of support and trust we have when we work with them.

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

For me the retrospective view on sprints are not visible for me enough, so that i had not everytime an overview of progress, speed and effectivity.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the Vice Principal of a private school. We aim to give kids a proper education, have high standards of learning, and develop in them skills they’ll use in the future.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with White Lotus Order Solutions BG?

We needed to adapt to the digital era. Schools are very traditional organizations, but now they need to upgrade their services to a digital world. We have to provide solutions to problems very fast.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

The biggest service was that they developed and designed our WordPress website. Our old website wasn’t interactive, so they created a new look and feel. They uploaded all the information and determined how it would flow. They also act as our IT consultant, helping with updates. We run most of our IT problems through them. They’re very helpful.

They also developed internal software that helps us with timetable design and creation. It’s a very big problem for us (and most schools). Managing lots of kids’ schedules is complicated, and the software helps. Most of the software on the market doesn't do the job right, so White Lotus combined our knowledge with basic features and help computers can provide, like class information.

Our partnership isn’t as intense now since the website and software are done; it’s mainly consulting on digitizing other areas of our operations. They’re still very useful.

What is the team composition?

I’ve worked with 2­–3 people.

How did you come to work with White Lotus Order Solutions BG?

A friend of mine recommended them to me. When I met with them, they seemed motivated and capable of doing the job.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent between $60,000–$80,000 so far.

What is the status of this engagement?

We’ve been working together since April 2019.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The website is well-made. It’s fast and it’s never crashed. The software helps us ensure classes don’t clash together, as well as count the hours of students and teachers. We can also divide classes into multiple groups. For what they were hired to do, they did everything we wanted.

How did White Lotus Order Solutions BG perform from a project management standpoint?

I would recommend them. I haven’t worked with many other firms, but they understood our problems and tried to solve them. Even if we have different solutions in mind, we have a constructive disagreement. We primarily communicate over email, phone calls, and meetings.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The intensity of their work was good. When they saw a problem, they put all of their efforts into solving it.

Are there any areas they could improve?

You can always improve communication.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Go and meet the people in-person. Have open communication with them and describe your expectations and problems without trying to solve it for them. They’re specialists.