Algoworks

Introduce your business and what you do there.

My dad and I have created a social media app during the COVID-19 pandemic called 4té.

What challenge were you trying to address with Algoworks?

We hired Algoworks to design and develop our app.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Algoworks designed our social media app, handling everything from the design to coding. We initially presented them with our idea. Then, they created a spreadsheet outlining milestones to make the project happen. Simply put, they built on our ideas, making the development process a joint effort.

At present, the Algoworks team is building our website. It’s not a major project, but the site serves as a homepage for users. Beyond that, the team connected us with a great marketing company who helped design our screenshots for the app store. This was an added bonus which apparently came with our service. We then hired that company to manage our Instagram page and they have been doing a great job.      

In terms of features, our product is a talent app targeting users aged 13–35 years old. Users can go to our app to showcase their talent(s) and get their names out there. What sets us apart is that we don’t have an algorithm that prevents our users from being discovered. Users can also challenge each other on the app. Furthermore, our app is black-owned and created by a father-daugher team. 

Moreover, we’ve asked Algoworks to develop a back-end site where we can monitor all of our users. We can also add more genres, remove users, post banners and see metrics. Overall, we want to make the app a safe space for people to showcase their talents without feeling pressured or bullied which happens a lot on other social media platforms. The app is created for both Android and iOS devices. 

What is the team composition?

We worked with a great hands-on project manager, but he’s no longer with Algoworks; he’s moved on to another field. We’ve also worked with their great design team on our color schemes, icons, logo and page layouts. From there, we’ve collaborated with their tech team, which has done all the coding for our app. Overall I would say our team has consisted of at least 7-10 people.

How did you come to work with Algoworks?

My dad and I researched teams online; Clutch was one of the websites we used to find recommendations and app developers. We then interviewed about five companies, and Algoworks had the best presentation. It was informative, and the team was friendly. They also had great reviews; they were incredible right off the bat. As a result, we went with them. 

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve invested around $36,500. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in June 2020, and they delivered the app in April 2021. However, the engagement is ongoing; we’re still working with them. 
 

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

We can’t share any quantitative metrics now because we’re still working on the app’s marketing. However, we do have around 50 users, and our friends and families are excited about the product. They’ve even provided suggestions which we have implemented since. Overall, the quality and look of the app have generated positive feedback from them.

How did Algoworks perform from a project management standpoint?

The team has been amazing. They’re always hands-on, and their team members are go-getters. If they are unsure on how to do something, they research and find ways to do it. In other words, they never say no; they always find solutions, which is amazing. My dad is well-versed in the corporate world, and he notices many things. However, he loves the Algoworks team. He’s truly happy with them and so am I.      

What did you find most impressive about them?

Algoworks takes on the project as if the app is their own. They’re excited about it. Moreover, the team is extremely communicative — if they see something interesting, they’ll tell us about it. If we see something wrong, they’ll fix it so we don’t have to worry about it. 

On top of that, they’ve had the best pricing for the project. Other companies have quoted us around $100,000–$150,000. In addition, their VP is great. He takes time to talk to us. His team members are also great problem-solvers.

Are there any areas they could improve?

The new project manager isn’t as communicative as our previous manager. As a result, we suggest that if we’re transitioning to a new manager, it’s better if we can meet them virtually first. That way, the transition will be a bit easier. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Go for it — engage Algoworks. You’re not going to get a better team, a better price, and a better quality of work.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the owner of a social service provider that focuses on child welfare.

What challenge were you trying to address with Algoworks?

I needed their expertise in mobile app development.

What was the scope of their involvement?

I’ve initially discussed my project goals with Algoworks’ team, and they’ve asked industry-related questions to understand the core of our product and the complexities of the child welfare system. Upon completing this stage, they’ve launched the development process, ensuring that the platform is iOS- and Android-friendly. Additionally, Algoworks has integrated features that enable in-app notifications.

We’ve recently launched the platform, and upon its go-live, we’ve identified areas for improvement. They’re currently working on accomplishing the updates, and we’ve scheduled the app’s relaunch soon.

What is the team composition?

I work with about six resources from Algoworks, with their senior delivery manager as my main point of contact.

How did you come to work with Algoworks?

I had a vetting process and decided on shortlisting 10 companies. Out of all their competitors, Algoworks stood out because of their related experience and proven knowledge of handling sensitive information.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent at least $50,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our ongoing engagement with Algoworks started in August 2019.

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

We haven’t introduced the product to our target audience yet, so there are no quantifiable metrics to share at this point. From our perspective, Algoworks has cooperated well with our team to address technical issues and implement changes to improve the efficacy of our platform. Upon our launch, we plan to gauge their team’s performance through the user feedback and the number of downloads we’ll secure.

How did Algoworks perform from a project management standpoint?

We mainly communicate via email, phone calls, and Zoom meetings. Algoworks has phenomenal project management skills — they’re always willing to accommodate our queries and concerns.

What did you find most impressive about them?

What I find the most appealing about Algoworks is their adaptability. Apart from having a website that a universal audience can comprehend, they also integrate themselves easily into our processes.

Are there any areas they could improve?

We can benefit from more fast-paced timelines, but I understand that it’s difficult to achieve in any development project.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Be specific in outlining your needs, and communicate transparently with their team throughout your engagement.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a correctional officer for New York State, and I’m the founder of FAKE IT, a photography editing app.

What challenge were you trying to address with Algoworks?

People have to buy new smartphones every four years because the battery dies, and it’s difficult to find replacements. Whenever they buy a new smartphone, they install new apps, so we wanted to leverage this by creating apps to compete in this market.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Algoworks helped me create a photography app for Android and iOS. Initially, I provided them with information about what I had in mind. After discussing the project, they gave me examples of things that I might want and need for my app.

From there, we selected which features would better fit what I wanted, and they helped me take the project step by step until completion. They were also in charge of designing the logo and the advertising collateral for the app.

What is the team composition?

I worked with a total of seven people from Algoworks. Initially, I contacted Sufal (Associate VP of Sales), and then I started working with Manish (Senior Delivery Manager), Ramneet (Associate Project Manager), and Arpit (Head of Mobile App Development). 

How did you come to work with Algoworks?

I was looking to create something affordable, and I discovered that Algoworks’ development services were almost half the price of the development services we found in the US. I had seen their website and some examples of their work, and it all looked very good; I was really impressed. They offered what I was looking for.

How much have you invested with them?

I spent around $14,800. For the work that Algoworks did, their price was very good.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in July 2020, and we finished the app in August 2021. However, I want to take the time and add more features to it in the future.

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

The work that Algoworks did was very good, and the app is great; it speaks for itself. The team was very professional, and they always completed the workload on time. The people I communicated with were very astute, and they knew what they were doing. I’m happy that I found them.

How did Algoworks perform from a project management standpoint?

I was very satisfied with Algoworks’ project management. As I also work for New York State, I sometimes can’t make it when I schedule an appointment. This issue was especially frequent this last year because some of my co-workers got sick, and others decided to retire, so we were short-staffed. However, Algoworks was very patient and willing to work around my schedule, which was great.

We used Basecamp to manage the project and communicate. I could connect with anyone from their team using that tool. Additionally, we used email.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Algoworks’ patience was impressive. They had to work around my schedule, and my mind was changing all the time, so I appreciated their patience very much.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No. They were a complete team, and they did a good job.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Communicate your idea clearly and stick with it. Additionally, acknowledge that sometimes the people working on your project will be in a different time zone.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO and co-founder of CoupleUp, Inc., a social app.

What challenge were you trying to address with Algoworks?

We needed someone to design and develop our app.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Algoworks designed and developed our social app for iOS and Android and currently helps us along with the rest of the processes. We’re now in the phase of working out the bugs, and the app will go live this week.

What is the team composition?

There’s a project manager and a lead developer from their team involved in our project.

How did you come to work with Algoworks?

I found them through Clutch; I chose them over the ten companies we looked at because we felt Algoworks was the best fit for us.

How much have you invested with them?

We've spent $24,000 with them so far.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in September 2020, and the engagement is ongoing.

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

We’re delighted with the result of the work that they’ve done so far; we haven't received anything but good feedback on the app.

How did Algoworks perform from a project management standpoint?

We use Basecamp and Figma as project management tools. This was the first time we built an app, and they're fluid with the work and patient with us.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The way they walk us through the process is outstanding. They're also friendly and talk us through everything as they mapped it out. They tell us alternate ways to think about handling the project and help us think through our decisions. It feels a lot more like a partnership than someone just doing what we ask them to do.

Are there any areas they could improve?

The COVID-19 pandemic played a role in it, but we thought it would only take three months, and it's taking longer.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Don’t design anything ahead of time. Let them help you through the process — they know what they’re doing more than you do, especially if it’s your first app. Also, use their suggestions to make a better product for you — they’re very friendly and have our interests at heart.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I was the VP of software engineering for a software intelligence company until a month ago. A competitor recently acquired the company, so now, I’m the VP of software engineering there.

What challenge were you trying to address with Algoworks?

We were experiencing a significant turnover in our team, and we figured out that filling those deficiencies would take time. We needed to make sure that we had the engineering resources to keep the lights on, at least for maintenance purposes. Hence, we engaged with Algoworks to get qualified software engineers in India to help us with that situation.

We also wanted to supplement our engineering team to develop new features and functionalities. We were severely limited in terms of budget, so being able to access talent at a lower cost was a strategic decision for us — it greatly expanded our bandwidth.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Algoworks primarily provides software engineers in the DevOps area. The technologies that they use are Python, PHP, Node.js, React, and Salesforce. They use other technologies for QA automation and cloud technologies like Docker.

What is the team composition?

The team size has fluctuated, and we’ve worked with about 78 different people from Algoworks.

How did you come to work with Algoworks?

I’d worked with them around 2009 when I was in another position. Algoworks was smaller back then. We’d lost some Salesforce expertise and needed to make changes to one of our apps. We found out that local talent was pretty expensive, so we decided to try out Algoworks because they specialized in Salesforce technologies.

By the time we engaged with them, we hadn’t done any outsourcing successfully, so we had a trial period. Our director of professional services and partner integrations was very skeptical about using offshore resources, but that project went well. We were very happy with their work, so we decided to expand the team and include other resources and technologies.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent around $700,000–$800,000 over the last two years.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Algoworks around October 2019. They’re still working with us, although their team’s size has reduced since our recent acquisition. The app that they’re helping us develop has changed, as well as the technology stack.

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

Some of my direct superiors have been very impressed with the skills of Algoworks’ team. One of their resources, in particular, has become our to-go person thanks to their skillset.

How did Algoworks perform from a project management standpoint?

We’ve managed most of our engagement internally because Algoworks’ resources are integrated into our teams. They use the same set of tools as us: the Atlassian set of products (Confluence and Jira), GitHub, Slack, and Google Meet.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Algoworks' team has honesty and integrity, and they offer good value for our money. Often, when we engage with bigger providers, we won’t have the same level of engagement. However, we can pick up the phone and call Algoworks if we need more attention in a particular area.

The quality of their resources is great, and there was hardly any turnover in the beginning. There was some turnover later on, but they were able to bring in new resources and do the knowledge transfer themselves to make the lesser impact.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Algoworks’ team members used to be spread out across different teams, so there wasn’t much coordination, and COVID-19 had an impact to an extent on that aspect as well. We wanted to have more coordination between the team members so that, if something new came along, they wouldn’t be reliant on the managers and other members on our side to get up to speed. However, they’ve made some improvements about that.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

What you put in is what you get, so my advice is to fully integrate Algoworks’ resources into your team and have constant communication with them. You should ensure that they’re part of your meetings and processes.

Additionally, you should ensure that all the documentation is available, so Algoworks can come up to speed. This was a mistake from our organization; we lacked documentation and designs. Supplying that was a way to make sure everyone was on the same page. Once we started doing it, it became easier to integrate them, considering the time difference.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I work for one of the largest and probably one of the most well-known bearing manufacturers in the world. We’ve been around for 110 years, and we have about 44,000 employees and 100 locations worldwide. Basically, if it spins or turns, there’s probably one of our bears in it. We do everything from helicopters, jet engines, Ferris wheels, and cars to little components that are in medical devices and lubrication systems.

I’m the head of analytics and digital solutions for North America. I’ve been here for four and a half years, and my job is to use technology and data to help optimize everything that we do — find better ways to communicate, get more sales, increase customer satisfaction, operational efficiency, and so on. Anything that we can use data or technology for, we try to solve problems with that.

What challenge were you trying to address with Algoworks?

We really had two problems, and they were kind of combined. One was that we didn’t have a good way to communicate with employees or customers, so we were trying to find a way to do that. However, when COVID-19 happened, we shifted the focus and realized that we didn’t have a good platform to get information out, get feedback, or just have general conversations internally.

The company is divided into administrative and manufacturing jobs. Office people have connections to a lot of systems, like emails and SharePoint. They get a lot of information and have access to a lot of things much easier than someone on the production floor. Therefore, we wanted to find a way that we could seamlessly talk to everybody in the same way and make it effective.

From there, we also wanted to see how we could connect those people to our customers because even without COVID-19, we needed a better way to bridge that gap. We wanted our customers to have an easier way to talk to customer solutions or an engineer. We were looking to create a mobile solution for that, and that’s why we approached Algoworks.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We had a very nebulous idea. We didn’t know what we wanted or what it would look like. We approached Algoworks with what we thought was important, and then we started to work with them on designing the solution.

We had a development team here, but they weren’t versed in mobile applications, since we do more web development, data science, engineering, and visualization. We do some work on responsive web apps, but nothing truly mobile.

Therefore, we worked with Algoworks to formulate the vision or strategy for the application. Some of the stuff that we did came from our systems and required information from us, so we broke up the scope. They worked on the frontend design and did all of the mobile technology, and my team worked on the backend. We took care of the APIs on that side, and they took care of everything on the frontend and some of the middleware. Then, we met regularly to pull all of it together and have regular releases.

The app was built in native script, so it natively renders the appropriate way on either iOS or Android. We used lambdas to do some of the work and APIs in between, and our information sits in AWS.

What is the team composition?

When we started, we probably had between 4–6 people, and it was a mix of different types of front- and backend developers. We had a project manager, a tester, and so on.

How did you come to work with Algoworks?

You can throw a rock on Google and you’ll find a ton of companies, but for us, it was about finding the right mix of attitude, amount of people, and type of work they’ve done, so we talked to a lot of companies.

I’ve been in development for many years now, and with some of the bigger companies you just kind of feel like a number — you aren’t going to get their attention. We knew that if we threw enough money at them, they would dump people on the project, but we had a really good feeling when we talked to Algoworks. Their rates were very competitive, they had the tools we needed, and they were able to be very agile, which was important for us.

Also, we talked to some other companies, but based on the location of some of the data that we could deal with, we didn’t feel comfortable with working with the development team of some areas.

How much have you invested with them?

The initial spend was around $50,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in February 2020, right before COVID-19 and the lockdown. The development hasn’t really wrapped up, but the actual release of the app was 2–3 months later. We’ve actually kept them on, and they’re an extension of our team now. We continue to enhance the app as they do other work for us.

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

I don’t think we could’ve done it on our own without them. They were definitely helpful. As for statistics, we started targeting the US market, which is about 4,000 people overall, and we have a 40% adoption rate. That’s pretty good because the app isn’t required for people to use and it’s a company-driven application, so people are skeptical.

We’ve also gotten feedback from our customers saying that they like using it and they want to see enhancements in the future. It could actually become the way they interact with us, so it has put us on the customer journey of how we do customer self-service.

How did Algoworks perform from a project management standpoint?

It was a mix of things at times. We had our own tools when we first started with them. We were using Jira and they were using Basecamp, but then we switched to Hive. Since we were already working with our system, we converted them over to ours so they’d use everything in our system. It made it easier, but at first we were moving so fast, we were just using whatever we could to get through the project.

In that sense, we were a difficult group to work with. We weren't good at writing down requirements or articulating what we wanted. There was a lot of stuff on the fly, change of ideas, and trial and error. We didn’t make it easy on them.

Algoworks assigned us a project manager to try and solve that, but somebody on our side was kind of doing that, so it was a little messy at times. We also traded requirements via a spreadsheet.

What did you find most impressive about them?

For the size of the company, their responsiveness and skill sets really distinguish them. We talked to a lot of companies, and we got a pretty personalized deal with them. I spoke to the president many times, and if we had a problem, we could send an email and he would call us to try to help resolve things.

Even from the development side, I’ve worked with a lot of offshore teams in the past, and they pretty much only did the requirements and that was it. Algoworks went above and beyond; there were times when their lead would work all night to make sure that we hit deadlines or fixed a bug. That level of responsiveness was something really important to us, and they definitely came through on it.

Are there any areas they could improve?

The first couple of weeks were a little bumpy, but I don’t think we made it easy for them.

I’d like to see some additional services or areas that they cover, but that wouldn’t be for this project, that’s for other needs that I have. Aside from that, I think they did a great job.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

It’s good to have a clear idea of what you need because they can help you figure that out, but you’ll get to the solutions faster. We kind of fumbled through that and had a serious time crunch.

Additionally, talk to them and find out what they can do because it wasn’t until later on in the conversation that we realized that they had a UX department. Thus, getting them involved and understanding the full breadth of their services earlier on might be more helpful.

In a similar way, setting up the rules of engagement might be useful. In the beginning, we were probably the cause of some of the slowness and back-and-forth. If we would have agreed on how we were going to work, everything would have been smoother.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the director of web strategy and operations for a NoSQL database provider.

What challenge were you trying to address with Algoworks?

We wanted to scale our web development team. We wanted to build out web development and QA resources to stay within our budget.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Algoworks supplements our in-house web development team. They also offer QA resources that we don’t have in-house.  

What is the team composition?

We work with 7–8 people from their team at any time ranging from full-stack developers, QA leads, frontend developers, solutions architects, and backend DevOps specialists.

How did you come to work with Algoworks?

I’ve worked with them in the past through other companies. We also did a full RFP process and a POC to see if they could deliver. From there, we started off with them as a backup component.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent $500,000–$1 million.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in January 2019, and our work is ongoing.

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

They help us scale at a lower price. We were able to double our team hours at three-fourths of the cost. Algoworks also completes all tasks on time.

How did Algoworks perform from a project management standpoint?

We used Jira and Slack to manage the project.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their flexibility and ability to find the right resource stands out. They were able to find and onboard a full-stack engineer to support our project management platform.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They could have their own project management tools, rather than relying on the ones we provide them. It would also be great if they could offer more flexible hours, too.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

My advice is to give them a shot. Make sure that they have the resources that you want and need. You’ll be able to scale and build a relationship with them.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I work at a company called WorkFront. We’re a marketing works management company. We track the work that marketing teams do. I’m our senior technology manager for the customer experience team. I handle all the technology for our customer support, customer success, professional services, and training teams.

What challenge were you trying to address with Algoworks?

In early 2020, we transitioned a bunch of our web properties — our support site, training, and customer community — to the Salesforce Community platform. Our community came from a different platform, and one ability that Salesforce was lacking was robust weekly and daily digest functionality. It didn’t include posts that had been applied to today but were created on a different day, or it didn’t display all the content. A lot of the customers didn’t like these new email digests, and we started to see community usage trail off. We reached out to Algoworks to create a new system for generating and delivering digests.

What was the scope of their involvement?

The deliverables were functional code we could implement into our production environment that would take all the required posts and send those to whatever customers signed up for them.

What is the team composition?

We had 4–5 people on our weekly calls ranging from a project manager and developers to members of the sales team.

How did you come to work with Algoworks?

Someone on our business development team had worked with Algoworks at a previous company. We solicited quotes from 4–5 different partners, and the way that Algoworks talked about the project and understood what we wanted to achieve stood out. Their cost was far and away the best as well.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent around $15,000 with them on this project.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together on this project from September 2020–January 2021. Since then, they’ve completed one other small project, and we’re currently working together on a larger project.

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

We saw a 10% increase in community engagement after rolling out the new email digest.

How did Algoworks perform from a project management standpoint?

We used a combination of tools. Because WorkFront is a work management platform, we used our own tool for tracking the project. It was out of the ordinary for them, but they were happy to do it. The communication around progress and bugs happened through there. We also had a weekly call, as well as as-needed email communication.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They were a lot more affordable than other options. Additionally, they had a strong technical understanding of Salesforce and were able to handle issues.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I wish they’d had a better handle on our project management system. I really have to dig for something because they’re very good. This would be the only area to improve in.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Be upfront with your expectations. They were prompt and forthright with what was possible and what they could accomplish.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a lead solutions architect at an energy solutions company. I support our commercial and special services organization.

What challenge were you trying to address with Algoworks?

We needed generate transactional net promoter score customer surveys (TNPS) to our customers.

We had an extremely manual process where we extracted information from our cases in Salesforce.com as well as our service projects from another application.

We also needed to determine which customers needed to receive a survey project based on the last time they were surveyed. Then, we needed to collect their responses and calculate a TNPS score. We were having issues sending out the right number of surveys. We were also having issues with customers sending back responses.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Algoworks was our partner to migrate our entire survey process from our existing third-party platform into Salesforce.com. First, they generated a full document with multiple solution approaches. They set up the timelines for when we could expect deliverables.

Then, we went through the full design and development phase. We jointly created a testing plan for our user-acceptance testing in our sandbox. Once that was complete, we pushed it live and they assisted with the documentation.

What is the team composition?

We had a dedicated project manager. We also worked with an account manager and 1–2 developers.

How did you come to work with Algoworks?

We found them on the Salesforce AppExchange. I reached out to multiple survey partners and Algoworks was the most impressive to me during the pre-sales process. I was impressed with how quickly they were able to grasp the details of the requirements based on my RFP and scope of work. They were able to proactively determine and fine-tune the scope prior to signing a contract with us.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent around $10,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in November 2020, and we wrapped up in January 2021.

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

We can send out surveys automatically now, which saves us two hours of manual effort per week. We’re also able to send out customized survey templates. Additionally, I was able to exit a $5,000 annual contract with another survey provider that I don’t need anymore. Finally, our survey response rate is much higher.

How did Algoworks perform from a project management standpoint?

We met multiple times per week until we completed development. They used BaseCamp to track bugs and I set them up with guest access to our Microsoft Teams environment.  Communication was primarily through email, instant messaging on Microsoft Teams, and phone calls. Algoworks made themselves available at any time.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their professionalism and expertise stand out. I was impressed with the fact that they were able to present multiple solutions to my problem during the pre-sales process, too. They were the only partner that did that.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I did have to reach back out to my project manager after the conclusion of the project to ask where some of the code was located. They could’ve provided that information beforehand. They were very willing to work with me after the project wrapped, free of charge.

Otherwise, nothing comes to mind. They were very forthcoming with any issues. If I had to do it over again, I’d do it the same way. I fully intend to reach out to them for some larger scope projects.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

My advice is to be sure of your scope prior to reaching out to any vendor. Be sure you’re fully aware of what your user requirements are.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the product manager of Finexio, a B2B payment company focused on account payable.

What challenge were you trying to address with Algoworks?

We wanted to create some dashboards, features, and API calls, with the purpose of sorting data and refurbishing some of our data sets in Salesforce. We went to Algoworks because they specialize in Salesforce projects.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Algoworks handled several Salesforce and Formstack implementations. Several projects were for third-party API integrations, including Mastercard, probablepeople, and SmartyStreets. The latter is for validating and cleansing addresses.

What is the team composition?

There were two project managers, two QA resources, and several Salesforce developers involved. We had two sprint teams during the busiest moments, each with 4–5 members. There were around nine people from Algoworks involved in total.

How did you come to work with Algoworks?

They were already working with the company when I joined. I believe that the head of product at the time interviewed several contractors and found Algoworks to be the most competitive. Their company was less expensive than other providers, and they had a large team, not just 1–2 consultants. They were well-organized and able to run proper biweekly sprint ceremonies. I wasn’t the decisionmaker at the time, but that’s what I heard from my head of product. 

How much have you invested with them?

The total cost was around $65,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our main engagement was between October 2020–February 2021. We had some small projects with Algoworks before then. The project was supposed to take 7–8 months, but we reduced the time to five months. I worked with them for four of those months. We introduced two sprint teams to reduce the project length.

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

Algoworks did good work. They focused on the timeline and were well-prepared. We had some disruptions with an API provider, but Algoworks investigated the matter and communicated directly with the provider. I felt confident working with them, and it was a positive experience.

The delivery time was great and so was their accuracy, scoping skills, and ability to solve unexpected problems. The QA was good, and the quality of communication was good to great.

How did Algoworks perform from a project management standpoint?

The overall communication was good. We used Google Drive for lengthier documentation and Asana for project management.

What did you find most impressive about them?

It’s their dedication and flexibility. Algoworks went above and beyond.

Are there any areas they could improve?

We had an API connection issue but that was the provider’s problem. Algoworks spent time investigating the problem and found the root cause. Their general quality of service is quite fine. They could improve on the problem definition area. Our scope was confusing at times.

Even though they did their best, they could’ve asked more questions to clarify the problem and they could’ve provided more feedback. Usually, consultants aren’t very good at that, so maybe I’m expecting too much, but it would be excellent if Algoworks could improve.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

Algoworks can be a great partner for someone who wants to develop something quickly and defines the problem well. We do need to do our own research because Algoworks very much depends on the client’s job description and intent.