Aimtraction

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the founder of a B2B SaaS business that provides trading and portfolio management software for investment management sector in North America.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

We have an enterprise product and needed senior Angular developers to augment our existing development team. Due to the nature of our software, we need resources that have expert level knowledge in Angular. The goal is to build new features in the application and also maintain existing features.

SOLUTION

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

Interviewed a few agencies and selected this one. They seemed to have strong knowledge of Angular and also Alex (CEO) and Andrei (Sales) were accessible and approachable. They cared about our product more than what we typically see in the market.

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

It's an ongoing development for our product. We have weekly sprints and evaluate the results of these weekly sprints. All our work with Aim Traction is for Angular development.

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

Two senior angular developers. Looking to add another one in near future.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We measure the outcome of our collaboration by code quality and meeting sprint deadlines. Considering we have a large existing codebase, its key that developers focus on code re-usability. Aim traction has been able to do mostly do so.

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

We use Azure DevOps for project management and Slack for communication. We don't do daily standups. Its something on an as-needed basis. Sometimes we talk more than once a day too. The team is accessible.

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

They care about our product as much as we do. At the end of the day that's what matters. They are reasonable people.

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

We are satisfied with our collaboration. Some areas of improvement could be better English coaching for developers.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I'm the head of development of a SAS-driven growth property management software.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with AimTraction?

We were looking for a company that could deliver us an integrated platform with the right technology. What we wanted was a full-on app that is manageable from our side, and eventually deployable to Android, iOS, and can be used as a web app.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Aimtraction is designing our system and is integrating all our APIs — at one point they suggested Letts Pay as a potential solution with API partners. One of the things they also suggested was a separate fixture wallet, which is a completely separate wallet outside of banking so that we don't have to follow banking rules — but that feature is offloaded to a third-party vendor that costs less. 

Each property having a digital wallet was one of their suggestions, and they’ve linked them to the API. It’s easy to click through for the user, but from a technical point of view, we use Letts Pay’s core API that’s integrated into our platform — which is based on Firebase and Google.

We’d done some in-house and had an external consultant to help with the UI/UX, but AimTraction came along and started helping with the front- and backend design aspects of the project. We’re using Angular and Ionic for the frontend, and Firestone and Firebase for the backend.

Apart from that, we have native versions of a mobile app for both iOS and Android, which we’re still working on. At the moment, we have a web app, and our roadmap looks like it will be occupied by mobile app development in the next 3–6 months. The core will use Firebase and Firestone as our backend, to make a seamless switch to a native app from a web-based platform.

We're working together to make sure that everything we offer on the web app is seamlessly integrated into an iOS or Android app — when we do make the switch, most people won’t be able to see the difference. This was our plan from the start because we’re trying to break the mold in the market.

What is the team composition?

There were up to four people working on this project with us. Two were full-time senior developers, and the other two are still working with us. At the moment, we've got two senior developers, one is a full-stack developer for Angular and Ionic, and the other is a senior developer for frontend Ionic.

How did you come to work with AimTraction?

I found them on Upwork. I'm not sure if you're aware of the website, but that's where you can find companies or individuals that can help you complete projects on various different skill sets. I filtered about 5–6 companies that I wanted to look at, and to be honest, Alex (CEO) impressed me the most. 

We spoke for over a month about our projects, scope, and business and I was amazed by his knowledge set, and what he could bring to the table. That's why we've been working with them for nearly 7–8 months now.

How much have you invested with them?

At the moment, we're totaling over £55,000 GBP (approximately $76,633 USD).

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in December 2020, but we engaged with them a little bit earlier on for the scope and the feedback. The partnership is still ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

I’m the head of development in the company, so we earn certain targets on version releases. One of the things I really like about that company is they don’t just say yes and be done with the project. They'll come back with other options and if it’s possible to readjust our original timeline and rebuild what’s left of the software that doesn’t make it to the major releases, they will make the compromise.

Their main deliverable and KPI was to release two versions of the app for us, and they’ve made two big API integrations for us last February. The app is currently in version 2.4 so changes are coming in very rapidly. Moreover, My team with AimTraction has actually identified issues with a third-party API and we've managed to fix it and provide feedback for them.

We have a rigorous testing phase, so we do one round of testing with live systems before we release it to the public. Right now, we’re working in a standard agile fashion. If it doesn't work, then there's no release, and there will be a continued improvement.

How did AimTraction perform from a project management standpoint?

They met the deadline for the second version of the product, which had a February release date. It has the core capability of our web app at the moment. The only time we failed was with version 2.2, but that wasn’t in our control — it had more to do with our third-party API partners. We’re still working with them and if there’s a potential delay, it’s still quite easy to deal with because Alex and the team will tell me the causes and effects.

In addition, if we are to release a version with certain items that aren’t tested, they tell me exactly what errors we're going to face with the end-users. We work as a team so we use Microsoft Teams for our communications. I also use the Monday software and another SAS-based software where we can draw the integrations that we need.

Communication is basically every morning and any time of the day when it’s needed. We also chat on Microsoft, and I can call Alex up anytime whenever I'm experiencing any complications. Our interactions are very open, as we consider them a part of our team and not just a third-party deliverer of the software.

What did you find most impressive about them?

What I find impressive is they come to me for issues. Sometimes, I’ll have a set agenda in my head of how I think a solution should look like, but once we go through our business plans, AimTraction is able to quickly see where we can garner more revenue from a technical perspective — they’re also able to determine whether something is used as a best practice or not, which is quite important.

Most consultants will just simply deliver the solution you ask for. However, AimTraction will tell me if something isn’t a good idea, and will come back to me with recommendations. They’re not afraid to object and they’ll even provide me with good reasoning as to why they’re objecting.

Are there any areas they could improve?

At the moment, they're doing fantastic compared to the other 15–20 companies I've worked with. We might experience something they could improve on in the future but for now, I’ve not seen anything bad about them.

Any advice for potential customers?

The main thing I would say is to take them on the journey of your business plan. Do not just give them a brief to design a technical solution, you need to take them through your software and vision because they’ll be able to assist you in designing it out. That's how we’ve been working with AimTraction. I show them the business logic, and then they can come in with their technical expertise to deliver a solution.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Development Manager

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

Continued development of our flagship product, creating new features to drive new opportunities in the market and replace legacy functionality

SOLUTION

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

We have an in depth screening process and the candidates sent passed the tests

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

Angular, scrum

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

3, developers

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Made a positive contribution to the project

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

Scrum

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

Their high-quality candidates were the most impressive.

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

no

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the new CTO who inherited this project in a company where we provide crowd sourced testing solutions for a variety of web based clients.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire AimTraction?

They were brought in to develop an Angular front end to a new client portal, where the back end was developed in house.

What were your goals for this project?

The goal was to launch new features to freshen up the user experience.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

The company has used Aimtraction in the past and it was a continued relationship through previous projects.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

They worked on providing the entire angular front end and delivered tasks and userstories to further the interface development while working together with the inhouse back end API developers.

What was the team composition?

We had a single front end developer who was placed into the scrum team on permanent basis.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The project has been out on hold due to Covid-19

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

Internal product manager handled the project management

What did you find most impressive about this company?

The developer was always on time and involved in daily stand ups and delivered what was expected.

Are there any areas for improvement?

I only joined the project towards the end, but anecdotally I could observe that more early planning and story reviews with the back end developers could have been beneficial.