Amana Asia Pte Ltd

Please describe your organization.

We are a software development company working with clients and on our own products for various industries. We have six full-time employees and four freelance programmers. We are based in Singapore.

What is your position?

I am the business development manager of the company.

What business challenge were you trying to address with Amana Asia?

We engaged Amana Asia as a consultant for application development. They specialize in mobile apps, and we needed that kind of expertise.

Please describe the scope of their involvement in greater detail.

We have worked jointly with Amana Asia for certain development projects. One of our products is a GPS tracking system which can be integrated into our software. We have worked with Amana Asia on integrating it into our products.

Amana Asia is experienced in developing mobile applications, while our expertise is in web systems. Consumers are more likely to use mobile apps, so we've engaged Amana Asia for Android and iOS development. We have also worked with them on solutions for tracking staff attendance and for reviewing transactions.

We have engaged Amana Asia for analyzing the performance of our web portal, looking at speed issues and the effectiveness of certain tools. Because of their experience in web-app development, we have also consulted them prior to committing to customer requirements.

How did you come to work with Amana Asia?

One of my directors knew Amana Asia's team from other projects and introduced them to our company. We have had a good relationship with them so far.

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

The cost of Amana Asia's work has been S$300,000. [$210,000 USD]

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Amana Asia in April 2016, when our own company was started.

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

I don't have any concrete metrics, but the overall customer feedback for Amana Asia's work has been quite positive. Clients have been more than satisfied with the mobile applications, including their designs, user experience, and functionality.

How did Amana Asia perform from a project management standpoint?

Amana Asia is a professional company. We usually deal with a single key person who manages the group of programmers. We have face-to-face meetings and also use WhatsApp, Skype, and Teamleader for project tracking.

What distinguishes Amana Asia from other providers?

Based on my personal experience of working with Amana Asia, I can say that they are very knowledgeable, professional, and able to meet timelines. My overall rating is very good.

Is there anything Amana Asia could have improved or done differently?

No. At the moment, Amana Asia is quite good.

Please describe your organization.

We provide custom application development for SMEs [small and medium-sized enterprises] in Singapore. We target customers for specific applications in the service industry, food-and-beverage industry, and so on. Our company is two years old, and we have a team of experienced IT developers. I have 20 years of experience in the Singapore market, while the average experience of our programmers is 10–15 years. We are using both local and outsourced resources. 

What business challenge were you trying to address with Amana Asia?

We were developing a solution for the pest-control industry. We needed a mobile application which technicians could use on-site and have new information automatically updated on our servers. 

Amana Asia is one of the companies we've known for many years. We approached them, got a proposal, and moved forward. 

Please describe the scope of their involvement in greater detail.

Amana Asia developed a mobile application for our backend system. We were given the source code for the app, so everything belongs to us at the moment. We have worked closely with Amana Asia, giving them guidance on every screen of our app.

Our platform allows pest-control companies to organize scheduling, including for recurring services. Technicians receive notifications about current jobs through their mobile devices. Before and after starting a job, they can take pictures, write comments, and send them to the office via the app in order to update their status. Customers can sign-off on jobs digitally through the app. An invoice is generated immediately and sent to them.

Amana Asia’s development team is based in India. We communicated with them through designated contacts from Amana Asia and received deliverables via a web server for our developers to test. Amana Asia's team also communicated with our own customers directly in order to have a smooth process.

How did you come to work with Amana Asia?

One of Amana Asia's key people, as well as one of their programmers, had worked with us on other projects. We were happy with them, so we included Amana Asia in our shortlist for the current job. Based on their previous work, we selected Amana Asia.

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

The cost of Amana Asia's work has been S$50,000 [$36,000].

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Amana Asia in March 2016. The work was completed in December and is now within the user-acceptance testing phase with our customer. We plan to use Amana Asia for similar projects in the future, including a similar solution which will work on mobile and desktops across a number of operating systems.

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

Amana Asia's app hasn't been made live on the customer's side yet, but from what we've identified, it will definitely increase their productivity.

How did Amana Asia perform from a project management standpoint?

Communication-wise, Amana Asia has been okay. But, since their team is based in India, it can take a bit of time. They provide an online communication board which we can use to get in touch with our contacts. The customer has also been included in the discussions.

What distinguishes Amana Asia from other providers?

Amana Asia has been very flexible, even in cases when our customer made a mistake. Amana Asia reworked areas without any issue. Their key person for our communication with the developers was also very good. Amana Asia collected requirements perfectly.

Is there anything Amana Asia could have improved or done differently?

The communication and requirements-gathering process on Amana Asia's side has definitely improved, which I have noted. They have become experts in this area.

They should also focus on the software lifecycle for any development project, even smaller ones, to identify how long each part of the process will take.