Accedia

Please describe your company and your position there.

Sun Technosystems is a South African software development company, founded in Sandton, Africa, that specializes in software development and consulting services. The company also provides business facilitation services for large enterprise clients on the local market. Its portfolio consists of leading international Financial,Telecommunication, Information Technology, Marketing, Media, and Advertisement organizations.

The Managing Director of the company, my role is to facilitate the relationships between our subcontractors and business clients. This means that I help both parties achieve quality communication, unmatched service offerings, and on-time release of developed solutions. In addition, I consult our business partners and clients on the best approach to reach their goals and grow their organizations further.

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

We and Accedia partnered around the common goal to deliver quality offshore software development services and resources. As a company with experience in facilitating business relationships for our local clients, we aim to assure the best outsourcing services and the best communication that are not deterred by the large distances. Since the beginning of our partnership, Accedia and we have collaborated on projects for different businesses in various industries. One of them is a leading financial institution in South Africa. Accedia has executed many projects for them, mainly in the spheres of enterprise application development and IT consulting services.

In general, Accedia has contributed to the successful implementation of both internal business and external customer-facing applications for our business partners on a group, department, and subsidiary levels. Our goals were and still are to allocate the best software development service providers that can support our clients in delivering immersive user experiences for business and end clients on the territory of South Africa. Thus, we are constantly on the lookout for technology partners that have expertise with the latest technologies and experience from particular industries.

Accedia’s track record of successful projects with global clients from manufacturing, finance, and energy, among others, has made them the perfect choice. I can honestly say that we have lucked out by having them as our partners and thanks to their dedication and professionalism, we have continuously reached and surpassed business objectives.

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

We facilitate business relationships with carefully selected international service providers on behalf of our clients. Accedia had the highest success rate, previous experience with local businesses, offerings flexibility, and ability to respond on time to changing circumstances. Thus, some of our clients, picked them as a provider of choice and us as the company that can represent said provider on the local market.

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

Our team is collaborating with Acccedia on multiple projects that require different technology expertise, industry know-how, and have different durations. Thanks to our facilitation efforts and the great professionalism that Accedia showed, our clients received the support they needed to deliver innovative solutions. Currently, Accedia is engaged in multiple development projects through which the leading financial institution will be able to provide superb financial services to its end and business clients. Some of the projects involved the implementation of cutting-edge web applications with a Microsoft .NET stack of technologies. Their end goal is to optimize the contribution and investment processes. The platforms not only make them more efficient but also more flexible. The solutions save time and effort for users and enable them complete freedom in managing their finances, as well as a detailed forecast of their future investments and expenses.

Accedia is also engaged in the development of an innovative web portal that offers a responsive user-friendly channel through which users can access their whole financial data and projections for the years to come. The platform includes many stand-alone applications that are also integrated with the mobile application, allowing users on-the-go access to their financial data, comprehensive reports, and recommendations for efficient management of future expenses. In the course of our collaboration, Accedia has continuously demonstrated proficiency with Microsoft .NET framework, web technologies such as ASP.NET MVC and ASP.NET Web API, collaboration solutions (Microsoft SharePoint and Dynamics 365), data analytics (Microsoft SSRS, Microsoft SSIS, Microsoft SQL Server) and the Microsoft Azure cloud platform.

The company has proved to be an invaluable partner to our business clients with their Microsoft technology expertise and professional approach. The consultants at Accedia have supported and continue to deliver quality user experiences for our partners through the successful integration of enterprise knowledge, the latest data security standards, and cutting-edge technology frameworks.

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

Our usual setup includes designated Project managers (PM) who facilitate the relationship between our end client and the subcontractor they have hired through us. When working with Accedia, we also apply the same practice and so far it has worked well for all sides. The PMs on both sides – ours and Accedia’s establish a communication channel that delivers feedback quickly and efficiently.

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

Accedia’s commitment, expertise, and professional attitude have helped our partners in developing strong business and client-facing innovative solutions that offer quality services and address properly day-to-day user needs. As a clear indicator of success, I can offer the request of one of our biggest clients to continue the collaboration with Accedia and their preference to use this partner on bigger and more complex projects. The track record of successfully executed projects further confirms their value as our partner and provider of choice for our clients.

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

We sustained multiple communication channels to cover day-to-day questions and feedback pertaining to general objectives, projects-specific, and relationship-wise matters with Accedia. Thanks to the different means of collaborations and a dedicated PM on each side, I can say that we are upholding good workflow dynamics and so far have managed to deliver all solutions on time.

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

Accedia stood out with their dedication, professionalism, and agility to start immediately, undertake short-term engagements, and scale team up and down depending on our client’s business needs. Accedia has gone above and beyond to support all our clients in delivering innovative solutions for the local market. Thus, not only do they offer unmatched by local partners' development services, but also show an ability to stay flexible to our client’s changing requirements.

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

Throughout our collaboration, Accedia has delivered on its promise of quality services. They exceed our expectations, keep us informed of any changes, and are an essential part of the teams of our clients despite the distance, the cultural differences, and the work ethics. Currently, I am not aware of any areas for improvement that need to be addressed. On the contrary, I can confirm that they have quickly adapted their own team to the new “remote-only” way of communication and this has had no impact on our collaboration.

Please describe your company and your position there.

MobiSystems has been a leading provider of mobile productivity and business applications for over 19 years. Our solutions extend the usability of mobile devices across platforms, allowing for enhanced desktop-grade productivity regardless of location.

The company’s portfolio of products which includes OfficeSuite, File Commander, Oxford Dictionary of Englishe, Aqua Mail, Talk & Translate, among others, has realized over 500 million individual and enterprise installs in 195 countries.

Our OfficeSuite flagship app has been named Google Play Editor's Choice, and been ranked as the top app in the business category with over 1million reviews. OfficeSuite has also received PC Magazine's Editor's Choice and InfoWorld's Best Office App awards for Android. MobiSystems was founded in 2001 and is entirely privately held.

For what projects/services did your company hire Accedia?

One of our products - a mobile app that lets publishers monetize on their e-book portfolio, has been developed in partnership with Accedia, who supported us with iOS expertise which was scarce at the time.

What were your goals for this project?

We set to deliver a native experience to readers with access to user-generated books free of charge and the ability to read straight on-the-go. Accedia’s focus on usability and achieving a polished experience provided value that supported our goal and quickly resulted in positive user reviews.

How did you select Accedia?

We had already been acquainted with the leadership at Accedia and decided to explore their capabilities alongside other companies from Bulgaria. We needed a company large enough to provide a consistently high quality of services but also flexible enough to match our own fast growth.

What also weighed in on the decision, was the fact that we could use this collaboration as a ground for transferring iOS development skills to our own team, equipping us to maintain the product on our own.

Describe the project in detail.

The project covered end-to-end implementation of the native iOS application. The core work revolved around the development of several features. This included the option for readers to download and import book files from external publishers, supporting a few digital formats.

Another key differentiator was creating a personal account for the benefit of maintaining of a collection of favorite reads. The mobile solution was further integrated with the book resources database for easy management of our readers’ personal libraries through an intuitive interface.

We entrusted Accedia with the entire iOS part of the work, yet they still worked in collaboration with Android development on our side, which worked out quite smoothly.

Throughout the whole project, the team at Accedia spent a significant amount of time working with our product management team, to stay in line with evolving requirements and newly acquired user knowledge.

We followed Scrum with daily standups for the dev team and bi-weekly progress demos followed by planning. Those sessions engaged our project and product teams with management stakeholders, which provided timely feedback that the development could use as input at every iteration.

What was the team composition?

We started with 1 and continually grew the team to 3 iOS engineers from Accedia, all of them quite experienced and knowledgeable, which resulted into crucial knowledge transfer to our team. The design, web & backend development, and QA we did ourselves.

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

To date, the app has been downloaded over 60 000 times on iOS. Further, thanks to their progress with complex ad platform integrations, the team of Accedia left a firm base for monetization – publishers are now able to earn money based on ad revenue and subscriptions.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

We used multiple communication channels to cover day-to-day questions and feedback as well as general matters, project- and relationship-wise. We were positively surprised by their open attitude towards challenges, they also came forward with ideas on how to optimize the implementation of certain features than what was originally envisioned.

The technical project lead they assigned was a game-changer – this streamlined communication for non-trivial matters and made us rest assured that our objectives were communicated and understood by the entire team at Accedia, working with us.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Their team stood out with their product-oriented mindset – they took the idea and helped us elevate it for a successful Go-To-Market. On top of the intuitive interactions on the frontline, the team at Accedia made sure to secure solid app performance by building a clean iOS architecture and introducing CI (Continuous Integration).

Thus, the app was set to function seamlessly as data and user base grow, as well as to accommodate more features over time.

Are there any areas for improvement?

They did an outstanding job, even completing planned work ahead of schedule, which left us room for perfecting the details. One thing that I know they are working on is smoothing out transitions so when new team members are introduced, work continues with as little as possible disruption.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the President of the Bulgarian Organization of Voluntary Blood Donation (FB: БОДК / BOVBD) - a Nonprofit Organization, devoted to promoting voluntary, non-remunerated blood donation in Bulgaria and raising awareness about the issues of lack of blood and blood products, which are needed every day in Bulgaria

For what projects/services did your company hire Accedia?

We didn’t hire Accedia – they offered us their voluntary help. When the COVID-19 pandemic started, the number of blood donors in Bulgaria plummeted by more than 30%, which caused significant problems.

From 2013 until the end of 2019 our organization was using a mobile application, available only for iOS devices, which was a part of our Donate blood project for providing help and encouraging voluntary blood donation.

Accedia contacted us in April 2020, offered their help and we began to work jointly on the entirely new mobile app that we needed.

What were your goals for this project?

The goal of the project was to create a completely new application, covering both iOS and Android devices, with a modern design and adequate functionalities, which would allow people in need of blood (for themselves or others) to register a call for help, and also for volunteers to register as potential donors that could be contacted by us in case of need.

An important part was that it would have an administrative section for our team, allowing us to obtain immediately all the necessary information for each and every call for help and efficiently search for, find and notify potential donors, send them relevant information and finally communicate the donation to the person in need.

How did you select Accedia?

In fact, we were approached by Accedia at the beginning of April, following the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown in Bulgaria. They have found out about our old app and noticed the problems we were having and offered to develop a new one as a part of their pro-bono efforts to help.

The partnership started from there and developed throughout the project.

Describe the project in detail.

Through several meetings with team members from Accedia, we were able to explain and convey to the team what the necessities of the Organization with regards to the app were, what functions were essential, which of them could be automated and which - not and how the system needed to perform.

A basic timeline for the project was established, and work proceeded, with scheduled meetings with various team members on a regular basis, in order to complete separate stages of development.

Accedia team members sent inquiries about certain issues and functionalities, which our team had to review and complete, in order to best explain the necessities of the app and how it should function.

Several meetings were held so that stages of the project could be presented and commented, and various adaptations and amendments resulting from those were also completed.

The final version was also presented interactively so that functionalities could be tested and the app was uploaded and launched in the end of June 2020.

What was the team composition?

Accedia devoted a team lead and several developers, plus a design specialist.

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

Within 5 months after our new app was launched, it has been downloaded over 1200 times. We have over 400 new registered voluntary blood donors. We have also received over 150 calls for urgent help through the app and managed to successfully assist in over 90% of them.

This is even more important and impressive, given the situation of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has severely reduced the number of voluntary blood donors and has significantly increased the need for blood donation in Bulgaria.

The new app was presented by us in different TV, radio and online broadcasts and was rated highly by both the media and the people.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Communication was effective. The team at Accedia quickly realized that the project was different from what they anticipated, but did not back down, listened to our requirements and our feedback and tried to comply with our needs as best as they could. Meetings were held regularly and our remarks and feedback were taken promptly into account.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

First of all, it was the willingness to commit resources and effort to help out a Nonprofit organization, especially at a time when many companies were encountering difficulties in their own work.

Further, they showed a good understanding of our needs and did not back out of the project when obstacles were encountered or when they found out that it was different from their expectations and predictions, unlike other companies we have worked with before.

Are there any areas for improvement?

There is always room for improvement. Communication can be even more efficient, a planning stage might be more detailed in order to make sure that fewer issues appear further into the project, especially given the fact that a professional team is communicating with a Nonprofit team which lacks knowledge in the tech field.

From a design standpoint, it is also possible to be better. We believe that Accedia would keep their ongoing technical support and updating of the app, fixing issues that turn out during its use and adding new features that would become necessary in our day-to-day work.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the global IT business intelligence manager for a luxury brand operating in the leisure and tourism sector.

What challenge were you trying to address with Accedia?

We were interested in finding a partner that could help our larger company achieve a full digital transformation by focusing on the data warehousing and business intelligence side.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Our company had an existing environment that we worked with at the time of the project, but very quickly realized that we needed to upgrade the whole environment in order to have better reporting and more integration of services through the cloud. Their team helped us to build that new data warehouse and the corresponding reporting tool in the cloud using Microsoft.

What is the team composition?

Initially, there were three people from their team working with us, including two seniors and one junior developer. We have scaled up and down depending on our requirements since then, with the most being six and at the moment closer to four.

How did you come to work with Accedia?

We had a previous partner that we had been working with but wanted to raise the standard of quality in the work and reporting that we were getting. We wanted a group in Eastern Europe that that had not only expertise in data and BI reporting, but that had a can-do attitude and a mentality geared towards automation, and we also wanted a company that was big enough to handle our needs but small enough that we were an important client to them. We saw a lot of that in Accedia, so we decided to move forward with them.

What is the status of this engagement?

The partnership started around May 2017 and is still ongoing.

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

The success of their work is primarily measured by our users receiving their products, and by the deliverables we ask them for getting delivered both on time and on budget. The reports that they’ve given us as a result of the work have been critical in guiding our company on this journey, so we’re very pleased with their work.

How did Accedia perform from a project management standpoint?

We have a daily standup call with their team, and I have a longer weekly call with their project manager, so we are always on the same page about what progress we’ve made and what we’re focusing on going forward.

Because we have two different teams working in different time zones, there can occasionally be communication issues, but they have done an excellent job of working together with us to resolve anything that comes up before it causes us any problems.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I’ve been very impressed by the attitude that they bring to every challenge we face as a part of the project. They’re not a huge company, but they are always willing to take on whatever we give them, and to bring in any extra hands that they might need from the rest of their company as necessary. Their actions consistently demonstrate the proactivity and empathy that they possess.

Another huge bonus I’ve noticed that is frequently overlooked is that they’re willing to train replacements for employees who leave their team on the rare occasion when that occurs. Oftentimes, the prospect of training a new person is left to the client, but they will actually go out of their way to find a replacement a month or two beforehand and put them in the project to make sure they’re up to speed before they need to be doing the work.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I don’t think there’s anything negative that I have to say at all.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We’re in the telecommunications and broadcasting industry, and I’m the head of digital in one of the business units here. I look after all the integration of all our digital platforms, like our websites and mobile apps.

What challenge were you trying to address with Accedia?

We were trying to address our lack of skilled resources, particularly pertaining to specific technologies. We wanted to augment our existing teams for a number of complex projects.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Two cloud engineers are helping us with the cloud mediation program. Using AWS, they’re implementing standards, policies, and processes to make sure that we can best manage our projects in the future. '

Some other developers are assisting us in rolling out new capabilities for the platforms that we’re currently working in. They use Node.js and .NET, and we follow an agile methodology and adhere to the Kanban approach.

What is the team composition?

We have four resources at the moment: two cloud engineers and two developers.

How did you come to work with Accedia?

I had engaged with them before at a previous company. They demonstrated a wide range of expertise and had showcased expansive experience working in the European market.

How much have you invested with them?

We spend somewhere around $8,000 a month.

What is the status of this engagement?

We began working together in November 2019, and it’s an ongoing partnership.

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

So far, they’ve done great work. We hold weekly meetings with their team, but they’re on track to deliver what’s required, from a cloud component.

How did Accedia perform from a project management standpoint?

We use Microsoft Teams and Azure DevOps to manage and monitor their work. They’ve done well.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They have an impressive range of skills. They’re senior developers who have excellent capabilities. They’re also eager to come in and fill any technical gaps to ensure that we don’t fall through with any of our project deliverables.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, nothing comes to mind.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

They cover a wide spread of technologies, which has been a highlight of working with them. Their work ethic is also great, as they conduct themselves professionally and work at the highest level.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

My organization is a parent company of a number of local newspaper entities in the US and UK. I am the head of media engineering, so I drive the construction of digital products for our organization.

What challenge were you trying to address with Accedia?

We were going through some tremendous changes as we transitioned our organization from Print to digital. The specific challenge I was facing is that we have a team in India that we outsource some of our work to, and the offshore model requires a lot of time put into the communication and management of the work. I wanted to transition that engagement to a team that could operate a little bit more autonomously.

What was the scope of their involvement?

What Accedia did for us was twofold: one is to provide specialized Java expertise to help us build enterprise backend services for our organization, and the other is to work as a full-stack engineering team that handles the development of entire products that we manage.

Their involvement with us has scaled over time to the point where we can give them projects to tackle and just handle the management of timelines and clarifications while they break down and tackle on the work within their own team.

What was the team composition?

At the height of our demand, we had nine of their engineers working with us, but we’ve scaled that back during the pandemic and are between 4–8 active resources for the most part.

How did you come to work with Accedia?

One of my peers was working with them and was very much enjoying the relationship, so he recommended that I explore the possibility of working with them. We have them a test project to begin with and have been working together ever since.

How much have you invested with them?

The total cost of the engagement has between $1 million – $2 million.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them around February 2018 and the project is ongoing.

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

The way we measure our success is against the roadmap that we build with our business partners, and we can see how each project moves us further down that roadmap and whether or not we fully delivered against our goals for that scope of work. We continue to work with them largely because of the significant benefit that they are able to deliver to our team in meeting those goals.

The other main metric we track is our revenue stream, which my general manager and I are constantly monitoring to see the impact of our various products and services. There are a number of smaller processes going on underneath that and we always hold retrospectives to make sure we are turning around individual tickets and things like that, but at a higher level we have seen more than the revenue growth we are targeting, so we’re very pleased with the results.

How did Accedia perform from a project management standpoint?

The model they follow is that they assign a technical lead who acts as the project manager. They liaise with the technical lead on our side of the business, and they work together to coordinate the flow of the work.

That management is part and parcel with their services and that level of proactivity has been reflected in the questions and clarifications they have for the context of our business problems, and the out-of-the-box solutions that they deliver.

Underneath the project lead, they have a number of engineers, QA, and operational resources who figure out how to break down and complete each of the tasks. Those team members attend all of our standups, which helps us to make sure that all of us are consistently on the same page.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The process that they follow in bringing on resources is incredibly rigorous and lasts beyond the initial stages of your engagement, so we haven’t had any issues with the people they’ve put onto our teams. The level of trust we’ve developed with them because of that consistency and performance is a huge asset to the work. They have built a partnership with us that goes beyond just the terms of a contract, and that has worked incredibly well.

Are there any areas they could improve?

We constantly discuss what they can be doing better or differently, and they are always incredibly willing to learn and improve no matter who’s fault the issue may have been. Given that attitude, I really don’t have anything I wish they were doing differently.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

You have to approach it as a partnership. Do your due diligence, and really take the time to figure out how you’re going to communicate your goals and walk through the process with them so that they understand what you are looking for and have a chance to deliver that.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am a product manager for a retail finance company under a larger parent organization.

What challenge were you trying to address with Accedia?

We needed to expand our development resource base for some work on a product that we were conducting. The work itself was relatively small, so we decided we wanted to bring in a team rather than hire in-house for the project.

What was the scope of their involvement?

They supplemented our development team in making limited changes as needed throughout an iterative process as we evaluated our customers’ interests and needs for our product. The product itself is a retail originations platform that’s built in Web Forms, which is a legacy stack that comes with a number of technological limitations.

We are moving towards an MVC framework with them, although we are taking one step at a time throughout the process. They helped with that migration, primarily in terms of functionality but with some elements of design as well.

What is the team composition?

We started out working with a team of ten, and we reduced that down to about 4–5 at the beginning of 2019.

How did you come to work with Accedia?

I wasn’t involved in the selection process that led us to our team, but they have been our development partner for quite a while now.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent over $1,000,000 with them over our years of working together.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our work with them started around January 2016 and is still ongoing in a mostly maintenance occasional upgrade capacity.

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

The main success metrics were the delivery of the projects they’ve worked on for us. Everything we’ve built together has been released and remains in the ecosystem of our products. All of their work has been done with a purpose and supported the core of our business, which has helped them to become a real part of the culture of our organization.

From a metrics perspective, the velocity of the team and the amount that we are able to achieve has very much improved over the course of our engagement together. The fact that we were able to bring them into our day to day operations as well as we have is a testament to the strength of the relationship between our companies.

How did Accedia perform from a project management standpoint?

We handle the project management aspects of the project almost completely. From my perspective, however, they did a good job of sticking to the deadlines that we laid out for them and making sure that we stayed on track toward all deliverables.

The teams communicate primarily over Slack, either voice and video call or messaging about anything that needs to be discussed in the process of the day-to-day. We had a very set regime in terms of our agile approach to the delivery, so there were regular weekly standups and every-other-week retrospectives. They did a great job of being totally open and communicative throughout all of those processes.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their ability to learn and adapt is consistently one of the most impressive aspects of our work with them. Flexibility is an often-overlooked quality in outsourced vendors, I think, but Accedia was able to adapt to the needs of our business in all regards, whether culturally, strategically, or procedurally.

They were able to strike a really good balance between following our instructions and challenging the reasons why we made various decisions in order to help make the product the best it could be. Fairly early on into our relationship, there wasn’t much difference between the two teams because of their ability to work within the unit almost seamlessly.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I think that they could challenge ideas a little bit more in the early stages of their projects. There is certainly an aspect in which the people you’re working with are your clients and the customer is always right, but at the end of the day you’re building software, and that has to be a joint effort. We developed that level of collaboration over time but having it even earlier could have helped us get up to speed more quickly.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Regardless of who has more knowledge of the history of the project at the beginning, you need to make sure that those people have the expertise to take the lead in supporting the new people coming on board. You also have to make sure that those joining the project are gaining the knowledge and skills that they need in order to be successful in their roles.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the systems support manager at a financial institution that provides administration for pension and provident funds. This includes good healthcare, insurance, and investments.

What challenge were you trying to address with Accedia?

We needed them to build a fund accounting system that could generate and audit working papers and financial statements. Then these papers and statements are submitted to a financial services regulator.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We’re a big company, and I’m only speaking from my experience and on behalf of my specific division’s project with Accedia. Essentially, we had an existing system that was developed in-house, and Accedia had to build on top of it. They added several new features and increased functionality so users can navigate and utilize the solution. These additional functionalities relay important information that wasn’t there before.

This has been an evolving project. Many things have been deployed, and we’re continuing to build the system. The more we use it, the more requirements are needed and developed.

What is the team composition?

There have been several different people over the years.

How did you come to work with Accedia?

I can’t speak to my company as a whole because I’m just one small cog in the wheel. Our group, the IT department, was looking for developers to come and assist because we couldn’t find the right resources.

How much have you invested with them?

I’m not the one who makes the payments. We’ve probably invested around $5 million so far.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our ongoing partnership began in May 2013.

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

My role is on the support team for business users who use the system we developed. Since its deployment, we've seen an increase in efficiency. What’s more, the turnaround time for producing financial statements for the board of trustees and the regulator has been optimized. Doing the submissions used to be a very manual process, and now it’s completely within their hands. Users can do it as they please, bringing flexibility and efficiency to the process.

How did Accedia perform from a project management standpoint?

Accedia is always clear, precise, and reliable. They consistently deliver what they say they will. There has never been a time when they’ve said something can’t be done. When I ask if something is possible, they come back and give me the solution or an alternative.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I’ll reiterate that their efficiency is excellent. What’s more, they’re up-to-date with technology and everything new in their industry. If they come across a problem, they research it and find a solution for us.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, I can’t think of anything.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Be clear and concise in explaining what your requirements are. If you’re transparent about your objectives, Accedia will achieve them.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a senior manager of application development with a dairy product company.

What challenge were you trying to address with Accedia?

They serve as our professional service provider for our website, progress.com, and we originally brought them on to enhance and modernize the site as well as build an inventory management and customer ordering app for our stores.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We started by providing them with a walkthrough of the existing website so that they could get a good picture of the state that everything was in at that point. We shared access to our environment and the business requirements document that laid out what we were looking to accomplish with the project.

Their team did some preliminary research and then came back to us with guidance on how they wanted to approach the work. They used Azure DevOps for the whole build cycle and worked through the project using sprint methodology.

The site itself is a hybrid based on the .NET platform. It utilizes the bootstrap framework for the architecture of the site itself. The app is built for both Android and iOS using our website's native script presentation platform combined with Angular and bytescript.

What is the team composition?

Peter (Project Manager) was our main point of contact, but we also interacted with their lead developer and his team of about three others.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent about $200,000 in total.

What is the status of this engagement?

The project started in October 2019 and we are continuing to finish up the work.

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

So far, we are very happy with the way the design and development process has gone. They were able to provide all the functionality requirements we requested of them, and the project is now in the QA and user testing phase with a planned pilot in the second or third week of April.

How did Accedia perform from a project management standpoint?

They have been pretty good at communicating how their time is being utilized on a weekly basis. We have daily status calls, and they always make sure they have hours overlapping with ours despite the time difference so that we can stay up to date. For smaller things in between calls, we tend to communicate mostly by email.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their skillset is definitely a huge plus. They have website and device experts who have worked in all kinds of technologies and have a broad range of experiences. We are a small team, and device app development is a completely new area for us, so we have benefited significantly from being able to learn while working with them.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They could've utilized testing tools to reduce the number of defects.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I work for Thomas Concrete Group. We’re an independent and family-owned group producing and distributing high-quality, ready-mixed concrete to both commercial and private customers. We participate in building many advanced projects and operate in the US, Germany, Poland, and Sweden. We have around 2,500 employees at the moment, working internationally.

I work at the mother company of all our daughter companies on the local market. I’m a business development analyst, so my role is to identify areas of improvement in ways of working, additional services, or digital solutions we can provide to our customers. I’m most often responsible for leading many of our development projects.

What challenge were you trying to address with Accedia?

During the last two years, we’ve been working on establishing a so-called business collaboration platform on which to provide different kinds of digital services to our clients. We had the goal of establishing a model web portal and mobile app where we could share different kinds of information with our customers. This was all in order to make our collaborations easier and more efficient.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Accedia developed our app for iOS and Android. It has push notifications and a fingerprint-signing functionality.

What is the team composition?

We’ve had a team of 3–4 people working on different services as well as a project manager. The team composition has varied, but we’ve tried to keep the same people.

How did you come to work with Accedia?

Essentially, we were looking for a partner with experience with Microsoft Azure products and native app development. We received a recommendation to consider working with Accedia. In the end, we decided to go ahead with them and utilize their services.

Our team visited them in Sofia, Bulgaria and met their management team. During this visit, we saw they had a very good spirit and company culture, which matched well with ours. We also saw that they had very good technical skills and a willingness to learn new things. Accedia wants to be at the forefront when it comes to technology and what it's used for, as do we. Overall, it was a very good match.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve invested between $100,000–$250,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Accedia in April 2019, and our partnership is ongoing.

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

We already have a couple of hundred users on the collaboration platform and feedback has been very good. From my perspective as the person directly working with the Accedia team, I’m very happy with their work.

How did Accedia perform from a project management standpoint?

Accedia is very good at delivering on time, and they have a great project management style. We’re using Microsoft Teams as our communication channel. They always keep track of what’s been done and what’s left to do. It’s easy to have a good collaborative partnership with them. We speak the same language, and they’re always willing to help out with technical questions. It’s very important for us to have that kind of technical skill from our consultants.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Accedia delivers on time and according to our requirements. They’re living up to our expectations. Their team works toward fulfilling our business requirements, and they’re the ones with the technical understanding to do that. We do the business analysis work, and they help us realize the technical implementations needed.

Are there any areas they could improve?

It’s important for the development team we’re working with to have an understanding of the business case and how the end-user is going to use the service we’re developing. That’s something we could communicate better and Accedia could improve on.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

One thing I’ve seen as a big advantage is trying to keep the same team members. We’ve mainly worked with the same people for quite a long time now, and every new project we start is easier. Our teams know how to communicate how everything should work. It’s very easy to work and collaborate together.

Team consistency is also good because the people we’re working with know the solution, so it’s easier for them to build new services upon the platform. However, if we bring in new people, they’ll have to learn our solution and technology. It’s more efficient to keep the same team.

Another important point is to get a good project manager from their team. We’ve had a very good project manager who’s made everything successful.