Xenoss

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

CEO at Magecom, Magento e-commerce solutions development company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

We had a request from our client to develop an AdTech solution from scratch, that would streamline the creation and management of ad campaigns for eCommerce retail businesses.

We didn't have such expertise in our company so we decided to find a partner for this project. The solution would analyze user behavior and build audience segments for improved targeting and engagement, as well as help with pricing customization.

SOLUTION

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

Xenoss was recommended to me by a friend that had previously done business with them and had been more than satisfied with their services. We liked Xenoss team’s communication and thorough approach from initial stages and decided to partner with them

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

They have composed the technical team for our project, which let us jump right into the development quickly. They collaborated with our internal dev team to build an AdTech solution that analyzes customer data to enable highly precise ad targeting capabilities, conduct sales forecasting, and perform dynamic pricing optimization.

The analytics served to implement a strategy of highly targeted customer discounts.

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

We worked with a team that consisted of 7 people: back-end engineers, a data scientist, a DevOps engineer, data engineers, and a product manager.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Xenoss has significantly strengthened our offering to the clients. Their domain expertise, highly competent team, and excellent project management enabled fast and seamless product delivery.

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

We worked with a small dedicated team, the communication was always clear and transparent. We would get frequent updates on the progress and were always informed about any decision making.

For a communication channel, we used Slack and Google Meet and for project tracking, we utilized Git and Jira.

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

We were impressed with the seniority and competence of both the company leadership and the development team. We had no doubts when it came to their recommendations. They have exceeded our expectations in terms of speed and quality of the delivery.

Are there any areas for improvement?

We are very satisfied with Xenoss's services. From my standpoint, I don’t see any areas of improvement they need to address.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the COO and co-founder of a gaming ad tech company. We’re one of the leading gaming and entertainment ad technology businesses out there.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Xenoss?

The biggest challenge was sourcing quality engineering talent within London. We used a variety of recruitment consultants, headhunters, and referrals. The challenge was that the through-put of candidates was low as well as the caliber of candidates.

We had to think outside the box and start an engagement with a firm like Xenoss. We were pulling talent from the Ukraine which seems to have a larger and more easily accessible talent pool than in central London.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We stipulate the roles and lay out what the individual will be doing. Then, Xenoss finds candidates. They do communication and software testing with the candidates to ensure they’re actually good. Once they’ve passed all of those tests, we quickly move to an interview process. If our team in London likes the candidate, then they join us. We work hand in glove.

The key deliverable was to create less of a single point of failure. We totally integrated the team in Kyiv into our existing engineering team. They work as one. That gives us the resilience to call on more labor if we need it. Now that we’ve been working with them for over a year, we’re looking to extend that relationship and build out a larger team to begin to look at project work too.

What is the team composition?

We currently work with nine individuals.

How did you come to work with Xenoss?

We were looking for a developmental company that understood the business sector we operate in; this was critical. I spoke to 20 firms and narrowed it down to 4–5 ones. Ultimately, we selected Xenoss because they were very down-to-earth and matter-of-fact. We knew they’d deliver on what they said they would.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve invested about $500,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our ongoing engagement started in November 2019.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We have a detailed and complex technology platform. They’ve taken our platform and distributed that knowledge very successfully among the team of dedicated engineers who work on it in Ukraine for us. That itself is a big achievement. We now have a distributed team who can work on a myriad of projects within our existing platform and develop on it. We’re satisfied with their work.  

How did Xenoss perform from a project management standpoint?

They’ve performed well with project management. There’s always a danger of being overly optimistic on timelines and the ease of completing something. There have been significant amounts of drift and delays in completing things. However, that’s as much to do with how our projects tend to be a moving target as it is a lack of quality project management. Actually, most of the project management is controlled directly from London.

We utilize Slack, Status Hero, Jira, and GitHub. These tools give us a powerful way to communicate and measure what and how code is being written as well as QA processes. We work effectively because we use these tools.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I’ve been impressed with their sector knowledge. It’s refreshing to work with people we can instantly talk at a very high level about ad technology and not have to explain an acronym or what something means. This saves us considerable amounts of time.

Are there any areas they could improve?

This is more of an industry-wide and geographical challenge but more and more companies are doing what we’re doing. Therefore, the available pool of quality engineering talent in Ukraine is beginning to go through the same problems as everywhere else in the world.

It’s because companies are spreading their nets wider and wider. I had hoped we’d be able to find amazing engineering talent easier than we are. It’s easier in London but still more difficult even in the last 12 months.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Have a minimum of one internal project manager 100% dedicated to working alongside them.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the head of product for an ad-tech company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Xenoss?

We needed a product built because were doing a big restructuring of our entire system. Our company decided to basically rebuild our whole product. We already had customers and we were facing enormous growth and new business at the time. So there was a lot of pressure to deliver the software very quickly.

We had to make some judgment calls about what to prioritize, speed, or quality. We made a decision early on that we just needed to get things ready built so that we could restructure and improve it and worry about the problems later on and this ended up being a characteristic of our entire approach.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Xenoss is developing custom software for us, an end-to-end management and distribution solution. The product includes creative previewing and approval, dynamic lead generation, data visualization and processing, and optimization process. This is an ongoing engagement and we've been working with them for quite a while now.

They predominantly use Node.js and React technologies. We also built some measurement technology in Java. We formed a habit of trying to strip everything back to the most fundamental parts and to deliver that rather than evolving our approach.

What is the team composition?

The team from Xenoss is about 13 people. They have four small teams with a pooled QA and dev ops resource and they provide everything from architects, to team leads, to front- and backend Full Stack engineers, dev ops, and QA.

How did you come to work with Xenoss?

Xenoss was referred to us by a friend from the industry who had worked with them in the past to build software.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve invested between $1,000,000–$2,000,000.
 
What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Xenoss in November 2018 and the engagement is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We measure the effectiveness of the whole product engineering and organization by the growth in platform usage and engagement. We've seen healthy growth in usage quarter on quarter. Our business has grown since we started working with Xenoss by an enormous amount and much of that has to do with the software that they’re developing. It’s hard to put a figure on it.

One of the big questions with the engineering function is how do you measure success. It’s very difficult to use things especially when you’re working at a pace as we’ve deliberately made. Xenoss helps us in a number of ways and we can visit them periodically with consultants and people who can audit what they’re doing and the feedback is always positive.

How did Xenoss perform from a project management standpoint?

Project management wise, they perform very well. Xenoss has a slightly unusual way of structuring, but it works well for our purposes. They have a technical manager that oversees the product organization in London and a technical team in Kiev. They’ve reacted to our growth and generally done a very good job of making decisions on our behalf but also involving us on important decisions.
 
What did you find most impressive about them?

Xenoss keeps on solving challenges we put in front of them and these are challenges that anecdotally, other businesses have tried solving but are not successful.
 
Are there any areas they could improve?

Xenoss is very collaborative, but sometimes they are less responsive. It took them quite a while to recommend the new structure that works better.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

My advice is to be very thorough with your requirements and be very comprehensive with your product deliverables. Always keep an eye on your objectives and don’t assume a partner can read your mind at all times.