42 Coffee Cups

Please describe your company and your position there.

Managing director at research firm, Opimas, specialized in financial services markets.

For what projects/services did your company hire 42 Coffee Cups?

42 Coffee Cups was responsible for creating our publication platform which allows for our research reports to be accessible to our clients. A key challenges was to support the various format in which we publish content (e.g., word, pdf, excel, video). Another challenges was to link our research platform with our CRM system as we offer different level of subscription to our clients and we had to ensure that only relevant reports were accessible to readers based on their subscription.

What were your goals for this project?

The goal was to have our research platform and CRM system integrated to have a clear understanding of the researche that were popular with our clients and adapt our research agenda accordingly.

How did you select this vendor?

Good feedback from previous clients + quality of proposal .

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

We provided a design outline, and some basic guidelines and principles on how the platform should work. We also provided an Microsoft Access file that described how the client data and report data should be tied and the type of information that should be captured. The team was quick to respond to our request and made suggestion in the best way to approach it.

What was the team composition?

The project team was around 4 people

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

The platform that eventually emerged has been a clear differentiator to acquire new clients

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

We communicate via Skype. The project manager was very realistic in term of deliverables, deadline, etc, and alway communicated swiftly any technical challenges that had arise unexpectidely. Despite being offshored, the project went very smoothly something that I had not experienced with previous project that were executed by competing providers.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Their understanding of our objectives and priorities and how to achieve them efficiently was impressive.

Are there any areas for improvement?

There is little improvment that come to mind.

We offer a computer-assisted translation service that helps translators do their jobs better. We offer tools that will automate translation work with a high degree of effectiveness. We target the European and North American markets. We are a small startup. I am the founder and CEO. We are based in Paris, France.

When I started the concept a couple of years ago, I hired a French development firm. They are a large and reputable firm, but failed miserably. The development of our platform is extremely complicated, the specs document we set to firms was more than 80 pages. I was not satisfied with the work ethic and attitude of the French team, so I looked for an offshore firm. French companies weren't willing to help a startup and take a chance.

We needed a scalable team that could offer between three and 15 top-notch developers based on need. We did a lot of research and spent a couple of months narrowing down our shortlist. About 15 firms responded to our RFP [request for proposal], but only two stuck around after we sent the intimidating requirements document.

We ended up with 42 Coffee Cups because they were the only company that was willing to accept the immense challenge. They never said anything was too difficult or impossible. They just got the work done.

We started the engagement by giving 42 Coffee Cups two small projects as tests. The first was easy and the second very difficult. They passed both tests with flying colors. I was really impressed, so we started the main engagement.

At first, they didn't want to meet regularly with me and give me code piece by piece. I forced them to meet with me regularly on Skype so I could communicate with the project manager and coding team. They use the agile methodology and were extremely flexible with our changing requirements. The project just kept growing.

The project took more than one year with a full-time team of four to 15 developers. We also had a former coder who became the main project manager [and] who was with us the whole way.

I have a strong relationship with the owners of 42 Coffee Cups and my project manager. They are problem solvers and just get things done. They don't make excuses even though I was really tough on them. 

These guys are development experts, I cannot stress enough how difficult this project was. We had top firms from all around Europe who wouldn't touch this engagement. They were willing to keep close communications with me, which is rare for offshore teams. They weren't as secretive and more transparent than most Russian firms I've dealt with before.