apreel

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m an executive at a large insurance company. I’m responsible for corporate business, corporate insurance, strategy, and projects.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with apreel?

We hired them to digitalize our corporate insurance process. We had an island system that wasn't connected with our legacy system and was obsolete. The old system was very difficult to develop, so we had to replace it with a new one.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

apreel built a process management system from scratch for us using Camunda. The frontend is custom, and behind it is the Camunda system that manages our processes. The software handles the end-to-end processes of our corporate insurance business, from insurance policy issues to product and pricing management, to claims handling.

For example, one of the program’s functionalities is supervising the work of the engineers who visit factories to do risk assessments. apreel also included a feature that provides underwriting guidelines and prevents them from being exceeded. The system also manages the pricing and allows us to connect with the brokers. apreel developed functionality that enables brokers to use portals to access the policies they issue online. 

We’ve taken them on for another two years, and apreel is currently in the second development phase.

What is the team composition?

I work with Pawel (CEO & Co-Owner), Maciej (Co-Founder), and a project manager. 

How did you come to work with apreel?

We had an existing relationship with them. apreel used to work with us on smaller projects, and they’d done a good job. When we needed to develop the system, we initially looked for a packaged solution and determined we had to create it from scratch, so we decided to tender the project. 

We invited apreel for the tender. We assessed many different areas, and apreel scored pretty high. Although other global companies participated, apreel ultimately won due to their quality and our reference from previous experience. They also had a very good price.

How much have you invested with them?

So far, we’ve spent around $6 million–$7 million.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started this project around March 2020, and the engagement is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

apreel exceeded the original scope of the project. Right now, 80% of the applicable business is already implemented into the system, which is more than we agreed on. When we started, we wanted the system to be operating within eight months, and apreel met that timeline.

They developed a new, modern solution. For example, brokers had to ask us for the insurance policies in the past, and we had to pass the information via email in a manual process. Now, that process is fully online and integrated into our legacy systems. Overall, we’re very happy with apreel.

How did apreel perform from a project management standpoint?

They work within our within budget. Although I’m not involved in the project’s nitty-gritty, I believe they use Jira for project management. The team shows me reports using PowerPoint presentations.

Since we’re in the same area, we have in-person meetings with them regularly in my office. If there’s a need, they send me an email or call me, though they don’t do this often because we haven’t had that many issues.

We have extremely good contact with the project manager, who’s directly responsible for this project and works with us daily. Sometimes he even jumps into development. For example, when the Russian Invasion of Ukraine started, he did some development overnight, integrating databases so that we could ensure our Russian clients weren’t on the sanctioned companies list.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I’m most impressed by apreel’s agility. They don’t need many specifications; we don’t have to explain anything to them because they’re knowledgeable about our business and how it works. Our cooperation is very smooth. 

We’ve worked with a previous vendor that had many junior employees who had to be taught a lot, whereas apreel knows their stuff. Additionally, they propose newer technologies compared with other companies that walk the known path. The apreel team looks for new and modern solutions — that’s why we chose them.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I don’t have anything to complain about. Although I don’t know what will happen in the next two years, up until now, our satisfaction is extremely high.

For them to grow as a company, they need more projects. Most of their references come from body leasing, which they do quite well. However, doing more projects like ours, where they develop the scope, might help them. That would take time because they need more references in this area, though. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

My advice would be to see who from the apreel team you’ll be working with and check the people dedicated to your project.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CTO of NetGuardians, Inc., a Swiss software company developing a big data analytics platform. We use AI to prevent fraud; we can detect most fraudulent activities.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with apreel?

When it comes to recruiting software engineers who can work globally, the Swiss market is dry. We needed to build our team in Poland.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We have a specific setup with apreel — it’s not a provider/customer experience. We want the ten software engineers in Poland to feel like they’re working for our company, so apreel recruits them and provides all the services down the line, from legal and administration to finance and recruitment. Additionally, they take care of softer HR activities.

In summary, apreel provides the proximity HR services, and then our company in Switzerland offers the corporate HR services. They have the best of both worlds because we manage to make them feel part of our company, but they also feel that they’re in a little cocoon that apreel has built in Poland.

The team provides high-end custom software development. They use the latest technology in both the big data and machine learning world — they use Java, Angular, Hadoop, Apache Spark, Apache Flink, and Apache Kafka. Additionally, we came up with our own software development methodology and culture.

The people we hired in Warsaw started working on an existing team. For ten years, we had many people working on the project in Switzerland. They’ve been really helpful because they didn’t have to focus on methodologies, frameworks, etc. It was all in place so apreel could focus on the human part of the job. They made sure to find people with the right skills, and they’ve been tremendous in doing so.

At our company, we work with three development teams — there’s one in Singapore, one in Switzerland, and one in Poland. They all work on a common backlog, but they have an individual team and sprint backlog. When the Polish team states a feature, they implement it down the line from A-Z throughout our platform’s software stacks. Consequently, they need to understand the function specification, do the architecture and design, build the feature, test it, and finally deploy it. Overall, they do development, DevOps development, architecture, and design.

What is the team composition?

We have a software development team leader, an architect, a tech lead, and seven developers. Our main point of contact is the team leader.

How did you come to work with apreel?

We chose them after meeting a few different companies. They had the most convincing offer. When they presented themselves, we liked how they addressed the market, treated their people, and put everything in place. That’s what I wanted for a nearshore team.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent €2 million (approximately $2.2 million USD).

What is the status of this engagement?

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

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

They provide yearly benchmarks explaining and defending how we should pay them, which one we should hire, and by what deadline. Every single time, we can challenge them with all the benchmarks from all the companies that we know in Poland, but they’re always absolutely accurate and fair. That’s important because providers usually push their figures up a little bit to make more money. However, apreel doesn’t do it, which is rare.

How did apreel perform from a project management standpoint?

We do the project management on our side. We communicate via their website and email. Additionally, we speak with their resources via our own tools.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We trust them. The few times we’ve challenged them on what they were telling us, we’ve found that they were completely fair and straight every time.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, there isn’t anything that I’d have them improve.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

There are many ways to work with them. If you’re looking for the same setup we have in Poland, give it a try. They’re an excellent option to build a nearshore team in Poland.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am responsible for ensure we have the right profiles on the project to be able to deliver on our roadmap

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire apreel?

We needed to find qualified developers who are able to join existing teams and quickly learn the domain the architecture and start contributing building new features.

SOLUTION

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

I had work on another project with developers who pointed me to Apreel

Describe the project in detail and walk through the stages of the project.

Building a cloud based application supporting medical devices

Describe the recruitment process in detail.

We conducted training of Apreel's recruitment team, to ensure they where able to "sell" the project to candidates. Each candidate did a self-assessment, based on the result, they were invited for one or two interview, before we accepted or declined the candidate

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We are very pleased with the candidate Apreel lined up for interview. apreel continuously delivers qualified candidates according to the pace we asked for.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

The project is 100% remote, and all the developers are very qualified and could contribute to the team within one to two weeks.

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

The easy to do business setting up contract and come to an agreement. The speed an quality of candidates they find and present for interview.

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

No, it was an impressive process from first contact with Apreel and until the first developer was on-boarded.