Alty

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the head of the project team at Halyk Bank, the largest bank in Kazakhstan.

What challenge were you trying to address with Alty?

We’re trying to build our ecosystem. One of the key components is the travel segment. We wanted to create a mobile app that was different from typical banking products. We needed to find the best partner who could help us go through this project, which would challenge us.

We needed them to create the best user experience.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Alty did market research in our area for popular services, main goals, type of software, and what kind of user cases are in our market. They made several prototypes and a lot of customer experience and test cases. They showed all the options to the bank, and we chose what we thought the best way to do the project was.

Then, they started to develop the mobile app for iOS and Android. The app shows banking products like different loan types.

What is the team composition?

There were 10 people.

How did you come to work with Alty?

Our partner showed us several developers. We also knew about the main Alty project that was for a huge online bank in our region.

Their team had a very good portfolio. They also showed us very good skills in customer experience and how they’re understanding the market along with people’s needs. That’s why we chose them.

Their price was reasonable, and their quality of work was very high level.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in November 2019, and the project wrapped towards the end of October or early November 2020.

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

Everything was ready in March 2020, but we decided to launch it in the summer due to pandemic restrictions. After a few conversations with Apple, we launched the iOS version in September.

The team at Alty made everything clear from the start to the end. When they finished the project, they made very good documentation, materials, source code, and artifacts from the project. It’s very easy for my colleagues to work on it and to develop it themselves. That was one of the key ingredients in our agreement.

We have around 80,000 clients. Our market share is around 3%, but we will do some other business decisions to invest in this project more. Our goal is to become the main player with the market share in three years and have 50% of the market.

How did Alty perform from a project management standpoint?

Project management was perfect for me. I work with a lot of other companies, and they all have a lag in their time zone and language. Despite this, Alty worked perfectly.

They use Jira for their own purposes. We had daily calls with them about statuses and issues that arise. We didn’t face any big problems because we spoke every day. We had a very clear delivery from them.

If there are any issues, we see it right away. We don’t see their whole kitchen; we only see the results, and I like that.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their team has a very good experience, and they’re very skilled in terms of the UX/UI. Even some companies from London don’t show me this level of professionalism.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Their team could work harder on developing their own people to make them experts in their area. I believe that they make very good products and create very good value, but they can improve it by creating some community and start connecting companies.

For example, I’d be happy to work with their clients in Ukraine to become their partners in our market. We’re a very conservative bank. They could improve how they perform on the market because they’re very closed to the public.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Have a very good backend team on your side. You will need more power and the ability to approve Alty’s proposals. When you work with these kinds of creative companies, you’ll need someone who can approve their ideas.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a product manager at Zakaz, a food delivery company.

What challenge were you trying to address with Alty?

We are expanding to foreign markets and needed to develop a mobile app.

What was the scope of their involvement?

They developed our mobile app (a native iOS and Android app). We gave them product requirements, but we didn’t have any technical specifications. They created a concept and prototype. Then, they developed it and did user testing. 

The first stage was completely with the designer. He analyzed all our business requirements, our system logic, and the design details. He didn’t just look at the UX/UI, but also how the app would work in our business and technical environment. 

Then, we did a lot of user testing. They built a really good testing flow, created a bunch of prototypes, and wrote scenarios for testing. Their team found relevant users and got a lot of insights on the first page. They built a clear architecture for our developers to use in the future. After that, we wanted to move the project in-house.

What is the team composition?

There was a UI designer, the CEO (for all high-level management and finance issues), a project manager, three iOS developers, three Android developers, and one QA. There was also a UX designer who has since left the company. 

How did you come to work with Alty?

I did research on the Ukrainian market and my professional network. I received a few recommendations for Alty. A banking app they built is a benchmark in our country as it’s one of the best apps in general in Ukraine. 

We discussed the project with them and they showed us a few cases. They looked really professional, and we decided to work with them.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from February 2019 until August 2019.

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

They produced a really great prototype within two weeks. Their designer is really smart and possibly the most experienced guy I’ve ever met in Ukraine. Their user testing techniques saved us a lot of time and money. We don’t need to rebuild a lot of features.

We stopped the project with Alty because we had a financial limit. Our in-house team has taken it over, and we’re in the final delivery stage. In a month, we will publish our applications and I’ll have metrics then. 

I believe it will be great. Now, we have a working website along with the mobile version. Most problems that decrease the conversion rate are solved in the app.

How did Alty perform from a project management standpoint?

The project management was normal. I was in contact with the project manager for any issues. We used a chat to communicate.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They do design particularly well. The design is really cool and top-notch.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, there’s nothing I’d have them improve.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I don’t have any advice.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We develop cost optimization solutions for the shipping and offshore industry.

What challenge were you trying to address with Alty?

Due to numerous challenges in the shipping industry at the moment, we decided to outsource our development work to Alty.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Alty is involved in the development of our project, based on our design specifications. The collaboration started with a discussion on the product specifications.

We’ve finished the testing on version 1.0, and they’re currently finishing version 1.1, which we hope to release in a few weeks. They’ve also developed mobile applications for iOS and Android.

What is the team composition?

They assigned six people to our team. I mainly communicate with the project manager, speaking almost daily at the beginning, which we later reduced to once a week.

How did you come to work with Alty?

After we decided to outsource our development, we did some research and went through a bidding process. We sent requests to several companies, assessed their offers, and found Alty to be the best fit for us.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent $50,000–$200,000 so far.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in February 2018.

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

We have an internal IT consultant who did an initial assessment of the code and advised that it could be accepted as it was. It had a few bugs, which were corrected. I didn’t have any problems in terms of communicating about and fixing those.

How did Alty perform from a project management standpoint?

We were pressed for time, but there were no delays, and everything was done according to the schedule. Our communication is quite good—if the project manager doesn’t have an answer to my question, he brings it to the team and then gets back to me. It’s convenient to have one point of communication to address all my concerns.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We plan to assess the final code one more time, but so far, I cannot find anything that I could report as negative. We’re happy with them, and we’ll continue the collaboration.

Are there any areas they could improve?

We only worked on development, so I cannot speak about areas like UI/UX design. They used a very strong developer for the work and I have no improvement areas to mention.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

They’re quite flexible, in terms of being able to work on either a fixed budget or an hourly basis. Someone that wants to work with them should sit down and be as detailed and specific as possible about what should be in the scope of work.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a co-founder of Monobank, a mobile bank that launched in November 2017.

What challenge were you trying to address with Alty?

We didn’t have our own design team yet and needed UI and UX development, as well as help with our iOS and Android apps.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Alty worked with us from the beginning of the project until just before our launch to build UI and UX for our mobile application. Since we didn’t have our own design team at the outset, they designed the initial 70 to 80% of the app.

To start the project, we had a few virtual meetings to discuss our approach and then divided the application into blocks. Alty created wireframes, and after they finished one block of UX, we had a meeting to see if any changes needed to be made. After getting the return for UI, they prepared designs for developers to begin implementation.

What is the team composition?

We worked with three team members directly. Suite team members were most involved, but we’d also occasionally work with an additional designer.

How did you come to work with Alty?

I’ve worked with them several times before, in both the banking and media industry.

How much have you invested with them?

I’d estimate we’ve invested between $50,000 and $100,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked with them from February 2017 through the summer, at which point we’d created our own design team to bring our outsourced work in-house.

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

The work they’ve done has been a great success. In the six months that the app’s been live, we already have 250,000 customers and growing by 2,500 customers per day. We have great reviews from the Android and iOS stores, many of which point out our exceptional UI.

How did Alty perform from a project management standpoint?

Alty’s communication is just as strong as its design work. They were able to express their knowledge of UI and UX while still taking into consideration our business perspective.

They also kept in regular contact with us; we had meetings about once a week while also communicating daily via WhatsApp.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’re able to communicate with and take input from everyone involved in a project without compromising the quality of their finished product. I really appreciated their willingness to incorporate everyone’s perspective.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Trust Alty’s ability to make great products and consider them a part of your team, not just designers who take direction. If you involve the team in your decision-making process, they have a better idea of your goals, which enables them to tailor the UI and UX to your customers.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I'm the founder of a FinTech startup that operates in lending.

What challenge were you trying to address with Alty?

We needed to bring a product to market in a short timeframe that we couldn't support internally right away. We looked to supplement and augment the team with developers from an outsourced firm.

What was the scope of their involvement?

The scope was UI/UX [user interface/user experience] design and frontend development for our web application, and design development for static web content. We started with one lead designer, junior designer, lead developer, and QA developer. In the course of the work, we wound up using four developers and a QA developer, and we added more staffing along the way.

How did you come to work with Alty?

I got a bunch of references for many different firms including Alty, interviewed other people that had used them, and found that Alty was the best fit because of their prior work, references, and the type of technologies that they had used. I interviewed the people that would be on our project on the development side on technical expertise, and then with the design and management side, on communication, project management process, and workflow. That's how we wound up working with Alty.

How much have you invested with Alty?

It’s been $60,000 so far.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started collaborating with Alty mid-January 2017. The work is ongoing as we’re still using them.

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

It’s not the type of application that's open to the general public, so traffic is not a good general indicator for us. We’re an enterprise software business so we only sell to people that are subscribed to our platform and can access it. The key indicator for me and the reason why I got them onboard was that I needed a specific project done with a definitive go-live date, which was this past week. Alty was very committed to my timeline and did a good job, even when it took ramping up from one to four developers. They found the resources to make it happen within my timeline while preserving a reasonable quality of work and a QA process. We did go live with that product a week ago. So far, it’s working.

How did Alty perform from a project management standpoint?

Alty fared well. When you get a firm and outsource this type of work offshore, there's a chance of language barriers and different time zones. Then it's very critical to see that there are a good workflow and project management discipline in place, which they had.

Alty had some tools they used in the past, and we have some of our own that we want to use. On the design side, we went to their choice of Basecamp for the project management. We used InVision for design feedback loops. On the engineering side, we have an infrastructure that we prefer—JIRA for project management and Bitbucket for code repository.

What did you find most impressive about Alty?

Alty's team takes pride in their work, which is very difficult to find. It's hard enough to find it in your own employees, so it's very hard to find outside. Their commitment is not just to a timeline or project tasks, but they're committed to doing things well. That's a big differentiator.

Are there any areas Alty could improve?

I've had a really good experience so far. For the types of things that we stumbled on, I wouldn't necessarily fault them for it because it's the function of getting things done with an offshore shop. There are many things that they don't have a cultural context for. They don't live here; they're not the average American, so they don't necessarily know the concepts that will resonate. It’s hard to expect a Ukrainian shop to have that native understanding of that. It was our role in this type of process is to be able to educate someone like them on our product, the environment in which we operate, the type of users that use our stuff, and the types of things they may think or care about.

It was also getting a rhythm of communication in place. Because we had a tight timeline, it was imperative for us to get people to build rapport quickly. That took some effort initially, but I think we got to a good phase quickly enough. We were working on a very tight timeline. We had three months to launch, and they made it happen.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Droom Technology operates in the automobile marketplace, offering an e-commerce platform on which sellers and buyers can transact. Our product is similar to eBay, but with a focus on the automobile sector. We have 250 employees.

I am the head of product management for the company. I am responsible for our website and apps.

What challenge were you trying to address with Alty?

We had used Alty for building the first version of our website and were very impressed by their designs since day one. As our company evolved, we added different modules to the existing platform, without ever looking at it as a cohesive product. We needed a partner who could look from the outside, give us a third-party perspective, and help with the UI/UX [user interface/user experience] redesign.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Alty is very strong on the user experience side, taking a lot of time to understand what we do and what our product is. Only after Alty gained a good understanding of this, did they start the design. We haven't used them for the actual frontend coding.

How did you come to work with Alty?

I spent a lot of time with our CEO deciding on what needed to be done, and what the weak areas in our organization were. We looked at different agencies online, looking at their clients and work. Since we had already worked with Alty, we looked at their company and found that they were still one of the better performers on the market. We were impressed with the designs Alty shared with us, and the conversation we had was the ultimate deciding factor.

How much have you invested with Alty?

The cost of Alty's work was between $50,000 and $100,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our collaboration ran for close to six months, during which we revamped our platform from A to Z.

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

I don't have any numbers off the top of my head, but we have experienced a lower bounce rate on the cart checkout step. We also track negative feedback from sellers and buyers and saw a significant drop there as well. People have a better understanding of our site's transaction process.

How did Alty perform from a project management standpoint?

Alty's team was very easy to work with. Their approach is user-friendly and it takes geographic differences into consideration.

What did you find most impressive about Alty?

We've appreciated Alty's responsiveness and timeliness. The schedule was fully discussed and everything was delivered on time.

Are there any areas Alty could improve?

Most of the work went okay, but there were a few pages which even we didn't know how to implement. We have different offers and promotions to manage and wanted to create a unified design. There was a lot of back and forth with Alty's team, and there was one section in particular which I thought could have been done better. We eventually came to a satisfactory design, but it took more time than expected.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Slate is a product design and development consultancy based in Los Angeles. We specialize in building digital products for leading media and entertainment companies. I am the founder and CEO.

What challenge were you trying to address with Alty? 

As our relationship with Lionsgate grew, additional target devices and requirements were added to the scope. We partnered to expand our near-term capacity.

What was the scope of their involvement?

The scope of the project was designing and developing a high-profile subscription video on demand [SVOD] service for a leading movie studio in Los Angeles. iOS and Android development services were provided by the partner as well as product management. 

How did you come to work with Alty?

We have had a long-standing relationship with the company due to one of our early engineers living in the Ukraine. We chose them due to their track record and because we could trust them to deliver under demanding time constraints.

How much have you invested with Alty?

We have invested in the tens of thousands.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked with them 6 months during 2016.

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

Our metrics are confidential. Here’s a link to some press on the launch of the service.

What did you find most impressive about Alty?

We don’t typically work with outside partners.

Are there any areas Alty could improve?

None.

Please describe your organization.

MacPaw is a leading, independent software development company for the desktop and mobile world.

What is your role at the company?

I'm the VP of business development.

What business challenge were you trying to address with Alty?

Alty developed our mobile application and integrated it with our web dashboard.

Please describe the scope of their involvement in detail.

Everything was done by Alty. It was full cycle development. Services that were provided include roadmap planning, user story layouts, mockups, front-end development, mobile development, and design.

How did you come to work with Alty?

The quality of Alty's previous products is all great. Additionally, they have a very good reputation.

Could you provide a sense of the size of this initiative in financial terms?

Our project was between $15,000 and $25,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

The project wasn't too long. It lasted from July to September of 2015.

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

Everything was on time. The quality was great. We would be happy to work with them again in the future.

What distinguishes Alty from other providers?

The Alty team is extremely flexible, and they work to find the best solution for each client.

In hindsight, are there areas in which they could improve or things you might do differently?

No. There is nothing I can think of. Everything was good.

Please describe your organization.

Our company runs a software as a service application called Casual.PM. It’s an online project management service. We are fully online and have an iPhone app.

What is your position?

I’m a founder.

What business challenge were you trying to address with Alty?

Our customers needed a mobile application because at first we only had a web application that did not support the mobile platform.

Please describe the scope of their involvement in greater detail.

Alty did all our iOS development. They also designed the look and feel of the app, basically the user experience and design.

How did you come to work with Alty?

We actually knew the Alty team pretty well before going into the project. We work in an office near theirs, so when we faced this problem, they were one of our first considerations. We compared Alty with a couple of other teams, but they had really good development quality. They were fast, and that’s why we chose them.

Could you provide a sense of the size of this initiative in financial terms?

It was not a really big project; it was under $10,000.

How did Alty perform from a project management standpoint?

The Alty team has really careful development processes in place, so it was always transparent to us what was going on.

What distinguishes Alty from other providers?

Their attention to detail and focus on processes is what stands out most about Alty. They have this great iterative process for gathering the requirements for the design, they give you feedback, and they do testing and give you the ability to test the application.

Is there anything Alty could have improved or done differently?

We only had one problem that showed up late in the project; it was just one bug. They were so far along without any issues, so it wasn’t a big problem.

Please describe your organization.

We are the largest bank in Ukraine - PrivatBank. We have more than 2,000 branches. We have more than 15 million customers in Ukraine, and our market share is above 50% in terms of credit cards, debit cards, deposits, and corporate customers.

What is your position?

I’m the head of our mass payment and money transfer business.

What business challenge were you trying to address with Alty?

We have lack of design qualifications in-house. We have more than 1,000 guys working in our IT department. We do all of our programming in-house. The programs were lacking line syncing and good aesthetics. When we understood that, we started looking for companies in our market that could help us with launching new products for our customers. We tried different companies, and one of them was Alty.

Please describe the scope of their involvement in greater detail.

The first project that they built for us was an iOS and Android application for new payments. They built it from scratch to release. They made a prototype, designed it, and then they programmed it. It was a success. I was the one who brought Alty to PrivatBank, and after my first project with them, my colleagues also started contracting them for their projects. They have now done more than 10 projects for PrivatBank.

Mainly, what Alty does for us is develop prototypes and interfaces for many different types of projects. They developed an interface for our self-serve kiosks. They also developed a couple of projects for our internet bank, and they developed three or four mobile applications for us.

How did you come to work with Alty?

I knew the head of the team from my old days in a different company. I contracted him personally for developing an iOS application for CitiGuide in Kiev. When I was tasked with finding a team for my new company, I reached out to Alty.

Could you provide a sense of the size of this initiative in financial terms?

The average cost for most of our projects with Alty is $10,000 to $50,000. For some of the bigger projects it could be over $100,000.

What distinguishes Alty from other providers?

Alty knows how to balance between hearing the client, the client’s wants, and mixing those with their professional opinion. Sometimes, when your contractor listens to what you want and just does as you say, the result is bad because you don’t get that professional input. That’s one extreme and the other extreme is when your designer doesn’t consider any of the client’s input. Then you have results that you don’t want because it’s not the project that you envisioned in your mind. Alty can balance their input and our input strongly. They listen carefully and then they add their experience on top of our ideas.

Is there anything Alty could have improved or done differently?

I think it’s the time that they need to finish a project. In my opinion, they’re not very fast, but maybe it’s a downside of their detailed approach. They try to find out as much as they can about an area, and they work to do a lot of interviews with our customers and bank branch managers. Those efforts are time consuming. They do a lot of testing and that’s also time consuming. I wish that everything was a bit faster, but I’m not sure if it’s possible.