Alluxi

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the co-founder of MISEbox. We’re a training and operations platform that restaurants across the country use to drive their revenue. We also help improve the relationships of our stakeholders with their employees and guests.

What challenge were you trying to address with Alluxi?

We needed technical services to continue the development of our SaaS product. 

What was the scope of their involvement?

We were without technical resources, and Alluxi stepped in as our main development team. In the beginning, we provided insight into how our product works through live demos and extensive documentation. During the initial onboarding, we tried to give them a "softball project' but quickly realized we needed to address some critical bugs and infrastructure issues. 

After that, we moved through triage and bug fixing and have successfully built new features, functions, and improved some elements of the existing UI and processes. Now I’ve got a small team that I’m able to scale as I grow. We also anticipate that they’ll heavily deal with design, development, and architecture work.

What is the team composition?

We work with a senior architect and junior developers when needed.

How did you come to work with Alluxi?

I engaged with Alluxi through a service called Symbiosis, a third-party recruitment matchmaking service that reaches out to companies who need development services. Then, that company is in charge of finding development shops nearshore to match the technical needs of their customers.

When I interviewed Alluxi, they were great, and we decided to partner with them.

How much have you invested with them?

Our engagement is ongoing and the cost of services scales appropriately for the work we need.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our partnership began in February 2021, and we continue to collaborate.

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

The first major project we needed help with was a critical bug that was affecting the core function of our platform. That turned into a tremendous project resulting in our migrating from Heroku to AWS and retooling much of our tech stack. We ended up saving some money doing that and resolved the issue.

Since then, we've built new features that our clients love and continue to improve every day.

How did Alluxi perform from a project management standpoint?

I love working with them, and I’m really excited about where we’re going. Startup businesses like us need a lot of handholding because we don’t have an organizational infrastructure yet. That’s why having a team like Alluxi that's fully ready to act as if they’re internal employees has been impressive. 

MISEbox is a complex software, and they were patient and thoughtful as we worked through their onboarding experience. They provide helpful feedback and suggestions as to how we should manage certain tasks. This clear direction and communication style are a welcome change from my work experience with past developers. Furthermore, they always give valuable insights on what to improve in order to increase work efficiency.

What did you find most impressive about them?

It’s very clear that their founder is what sets them apart. Not only is he great at what he does, but Gustavo is also understanding and empathetic as compared to other developers I’ve worked with. He’s also organized, proactive, thoughtful, and patient — and that has helped because we’ve had so many technical questions. Overall, Gustavo believes in what they’re doing and their particular focus on startups has been very helpful. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

They have literally nothing to improve because they haven't made any missteps yet. I’m shockingly impressed with their work, so I don’t know how they can be better. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

If Alluxi is helping your business, you're in good hands. They can help you figure out what’s the best solutions for you, and they’re also a good choice because they have developers that can build your products. 

The team also understands that there’s a user story that needs to be met, and they’re not just interested in the technical specifications, but the real-world results of their work. 

Please describe your company and your position there.

We are a Software Solutions' startup focused on helping Telecommunication Service Providers better serve their end-customers while maximizing the network's monetization capabilities.

For what projects/services did your company hire Alluxi?

As a complementary solution to our WiFi backend, a customer was looking for a Mobile App that allows their end-users to automatically connect to their public WiFi service as well as to locate the nearest WiFi hotspot. We hired Alluxi to help us with the development of this Mobile App.

What were your goals for this project?

A fast and responsive App that can run on iOS and Android which provides an easy/soft experience to end-users.

How did you select this vendor?

We knew Alluxi from earlier projects we worked with them (backend related).

Describe the project in detail.

Mobile App. iOS/Android. Key features: - Map (Google) with the location of WiFi Hotspots. Hotspots location provided by our backend. - App to configure OS Connection Manager with the proper username/password to automatically connect to the WiFi network (WPA2/EAP authentication) - WiFi Speed Test tool

What was the team composition?

Alluxi brought 2 key persons for the activities. 1 PM/Lead + 1 Dev

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

The project was executed on time and satisfactory. App worked as expected and we were able to overcome all the technical difficulties encountered in the path.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Good. we used a classical follow-up weekly meeting with frequent interactions (email/WhatsApp) when required.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Their openness and flexibility to feedback and requests stood out.

Are there any areas for improvement?

Continue improving on the tools/languages used. Mobile App dev seems to be a complex area, especially due to OS/SDK restrictions and changes. Evaluate start to deploy native Apps.

Please describe your company and your position there.

We are a web software development firm, founded in 2005, and we are focused on developing Fintech and Bigdata projects. I am the director of the company.

For what projects/services did your company hire Alluxi?

We have been working with Alluxi, in different projects since 2014, his team has participated with Backend developers with Python / Django, also frontend developers with different technologies, including AngularJS, React

What were your goals for this project?

Among the main challenges of this project, were to develop an online peer to peer loans platform for the Mexican market, highly intuitive, with outstanding performance, and a functional and easy-to-use administration panel.

How did you select this vendor?

We were able to validate their technical and operational capacity in different calls and remote meetings, which generated great confidence in Gustavo and his team, in the end all the necessary factors were aligned to be able to select them, technical capacity, cost of their services and a great availability To take the challenge.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

Our team was in charge of planning, UX UI design, and from there the Alluxi team was responsible for executing the development of each of the functions, the project was taking shape and reviewed weekly, the Alluxi team helped us at each stage from development to launch, until now they are responsible for maintenance.

What was the team composition?

The team was made up of 2 developers from Alluxi and a project manager, who was in charge of being the communication channel with our team with which we had a fluid communication and a high commitement level.

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

Working with the Alluxi team made this project possible to develop, because we could reach an agreement with the costs and times, so that we could have a profitability for both companies, and in the end offer a high quality result to our client. The project is currently operating and processes an average of 500 loan applications weekly, and is constantly growing

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

The project flowed with slight delays in its original plan, we were able to identify critical issues in time and in those we focused on solving them in the early stages of the work plan. We met weekly through Zoom, we used version control with Github, we organized all our documentation on Google Drive

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Its technical capacity to execute our ideas, and the great availability to address and solve the problems that arise in such a project. Together, we accomplished a lot and make a great team, so to continue working with Alluxi. THey're an extension of our Software Development team

Are there any areas for improvement?

It seems to me that one point to improve may be administrative control, which did not have a big impact on the success of the project, however, if it generated small additional costs.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO of We are the Robots Inc., a software development firm based in Mexico City. We are specialized in educational and enterprise solutions with opensource software.

What challenge were you trying to address with Alluxi?

We were looking for a specialized company that could work specifically with Python and Django for one of our customers. 

Our customer is a Canadian company that was were looking to develop a CRM. They had a very large education consulting services platform. We’d already started with this project, but our developer left.

What was the scope of their involvement?

They custom-developed a CRM using Python and Django. The business rules, commission rules, and customer experience are customized. 

The business methodology covers all of the engineering processes, from the conceptualization to the maintenance and support.

We launched the first version, and then we renewed our contract with our client and Alluxi to continue working on the project.

What is the team composition?

We started off with two developers, and now there are five developers.

How did you come to work with Alluxi?

We found them online three months before we had to launch. They had the expertise in Python and Django that we needed. They accepted and tackled the challenge and then delivered.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve invested over $1 million.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in September 2015, and the work is ongoing.

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

They were able to deliver the requirements on time, and the code is excellent quality. The solution is unique because it delivers value to the users, consultants, and directors of the company. 

The client is very happy with the results, as are we. Our client wasn’t using a CRM in 2015, and then they had a 100% adoption rate across the whole company (150 end-users have adopted it). 

We use a tool that gives us very specific code quality reviews, and they have very good code quality. They’ve have covered our code quality reviews using the best practices for both back-and frontend development up to 90%. They are in the top tier of code quality providers we’ve worked with. 

How did Alluxi perform from a project management standpoint?

Their project management has been very good over the last two years. (At first, it was a little rocky because we were trying to understand our client’s end-users.)

Over the years, we’ve developed a very clean, optimized methodology. Their requirement gathering and development processes are very agile. We have an assigned project manager on their side that’s in contact with our project manager. 

We’ve developed a very trusted, profound business relationship over the course of a few months. They are always very supportive and responsive. They’re very prompt to reply to any questions regarding new or current features.

They’ve been able to understand all of our business goals, features, and rules. They’ve also been very careful about understanding the needs of a CRM that is evolving constantly. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

They maintain a very good balance between an affordable price and quality. This helps us add value to our processes, our expertise, and account management. 

Also, they’re committed to the project, and they don’t give up. They try to find a solution and work hard.  If something seems impossible, they use engineering to make it possible. They don’t run away from challenges—they tackle them. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

They could improve their onboarding for new engineers. They are constantly acquiring new talent, but they could do better about introducing us to the developers.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

They’re problem solvers. Define the project with a general scope and then work together to process the way they’re going to solve the problem. Trust them because they have the expertise and an engineering mindset. After you’ve defined the solution with them, work out the best way to find the costs, the schedule, and the scope of the project.