Arionkoder

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the Managing Partner for research at Everest Group, the leading research firm covering IT, business process, and engineering services and related technologies. In my role, I oversee many areas of the organization with an eye towards ongoing alignment of our capabilities with our business strategy. In this context, I am sometimes involved in technology projects that meaningfully advance our capabilities through technology.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Arionkoder?

We had implemented Salesforce.com for CRM over ten years before and made some revisions over the years, but avoided any more meaningful changes to the object structure. ArionKoder worked with us to help implement a new object plus optimize a range of other use cases.

SOLUTION

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

We had a pre-existing relationship with the founders of ArionKoder and after some basic diligence on their resources, we were comfortable with their capabilities.

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

The project can be broken into two broad buckets. First, there were a range of minor enhancements to develop/improve forms, clean-up the logic on some fields, etc. The second was a more cohesive development of an object to help us both forecast and track actual completion of projects. This needed to tie to our financial system (Intacct) plus be easy for our teams to enter information, edit information, and be reminded about the need to enter/update information. ArionKoder interviewed us to understand the requirements in detail and then proposed some approaches and implemented and tested the preferred approach.

Describe the recruitment process in detail.

After expressing initial interest, we immediately interviewed the resource being recommended to explain our environment and assess their ability to effectively work with our needs.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The project was successfully completed and in the rough timeframe and budget we expected. During the effort, we refined our requirements and asked for more user testing, so that created some minor delay. In comparison to other Salesforce developers we have worked with, the work was more timely.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Our working model was effective and simple...ongoing dialogues, screen shares, etc. The developer was able to take directional input and successfully problem-solve ways to address.

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

The resources appear to be pretty sophisticated and able to own objectives that are not initially well defined and work to bring greater clarity to them.

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

Our needs were fairly simple and did not require a full-time resource, so we utilized the developer on a half-time basis. Although the resource was easily able to develop and apply the relevant knowledge about our situation, if we had had a more aggressive/sustained volume of work, it may have helped things move faster overall due to reducing competing work demands upon the resource. But this was a known factor upfront and something we were willing to accept.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the president of Turnco LLC, an oilfield services company. We have corporate offices in Houston, Texas.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Arionkoder?

We wanted to develop some software products for the oil and gas drilling industry.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Arionkoder provides us with custom software development services. Initially, we provided them with a significant amount of industry-specific documents related to what our end customers use to make decisions and any information that would be useful, including mockups and ideas. After that, we identified our objectives and main KPIs of the project. From there, they proceeded with building the software from scratch.

Currently, their team is helping develop and design the software using ML-based technologies and data science. The software provides real-time feedback to the customer while they’re drilling for oil and gas wells.

What is the team composition?

We work with several people from their team, including a project manager, a customer success manager, UI/UX specialist, and front- and backend developers.

How did you come to work with Arionkoder?

It was through a recommendation from a business colleague.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent about $250,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in June 2022, and it’s still ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

This is a multi-phased project, and they’ve already completed some of the phases in a timely manner. Also, their work has exceeded our expectations.

How did Arionkoder perform from a project management standpoint?

They’ve been excellent at meeting deadlines, staying on budget, and communicating with us. We use Miro and Figma as our collaboration tools. For communication, we mainly use Zoom, phone calls, and Slack.

Their team also handles issues well. For instance, some parts of the project weren’t properly defined on our end, and they were able to quickly find additional talents to fill those gaps for us.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their biggest strength is their communication skills.

Are there any areas they could improve on?

No, I’m very happy with their performance and everything they’ve delivered so far.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

You’ll be communicating on a regular basis, so you have to make sure that you have the availability to work with them.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the CEO and CTO of a precision oncology decision support platform company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Arionkoder, and what were your goals?

We engaged Arionkoder for the user centered design and development of our oncologist analysis and treatment  module. The scope included domain analysis, prototype design and software product development.

Our goal is to develop a version 1.0 of the product that can be tested in a few cancer clinics by practicing oncologists.

SOLUTION

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

Arionkoder was referred to us by a former colleague who was also a customer of the firm. Our decision was based on the strength of their design thinking approach and their technical credentials, as well as the recommendation from our former colleague.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and technologies used.

The work included a four week design and user testing process, and segued into the development process. The project uses AWS natural language processing (NLP) and AI technologies and is tablet based. UI framework used is Iconic

How many people from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

The core team consists of:

• a product manager
• a technology manager
• UI designer
• a tribe leader

Development team includes four to five developers.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

The design phase of the project is complete with the primary deliverable being a click through prototype, produced in Figma.  The prototype is an excellent representation of the product functionality, and we will use it as a demo for customers and potential investors

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timeliness.

Arionkoder's project management style is everything one would expect from a state of the art Agile development team.  They instituted weekly status meetings, design reviews as needed and bi-weekly sprint demos.

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

They are, without a doubt, a world-class design and development firm. Their approach is pragmatic, focused and efficient.

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

The initial design session used Miro as a framework for design and ideation.  The associated process didn't totally work for our project, as our team had time an schedule constraints that prevented full participation.  The Miro process did produce a number of good ideas, but there was no mechanism for tracking those ideas through the design process, so some concepts had to be revisited and reincorporated as the design process moved forward.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the senior director of engineering at RepTrak, a corporate reputation management company. We track companies’ reputations via consumers and other population groups for a variety of Fortune 2000 companies.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with arionkoder?

Our product offering is currently an interactive experience on a website, so when a client wants to buy data from us, we display reputation data graphically through a web-based experience. However, a lot of our clients expressed an interest in having programmatic access to our data.

We wanted to be able to provide the same type of detailed score and score breakdown-level data via a programmatic API that would allow our clients to hit our API and download data offline and load it into their own internal BI platform. We didn’t have the sufficient internal staffing capabilities to develop this software, so we decided to hire another company to help us.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We reached out to arionkoder with the goal of staffing up a team dedicated to our offline data software project and bringing the product, which is a custom software that allows programmatic access for data, to market within a time period of a few months. So, with the exception of leadership services, the majority of the work was entirely done by arionkoder team in terms of implementation.

Additionally, arionkoder provides support for our infrastructure by automating new software builds to help our engineers build and release code more efficiently.

We're at the point of the project where we're ready to release the first phase of the product to production, but we're still working together to add more features to the product.

What is the team composition?

arionkoder assigned two tribe leads to this project, who are our main interaction points between teams. We also work with two backend engineers and one DevOps engineer.

How did you come to work with arionkoder?

We came to work with arionkoder through a word-of-mouth recommendation. We ultimately decided to work with them because they’re reasonably close to our time zone and we also have employees that are based in Argentina, so it made sense to make that connection as well.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent around $100,000 so far.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in November 2021, and the engagement is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

I can definitely say that we are consistently meeting our deliverables. One of our goals for this project was to build a team by the beginning of this year, so I’d say that arionkoder definitely exceeded our expectations in terms of the amount of time that it took them to find qualified candidates for the project.

The second goal was to have a functional prototype put into production sometime in the first quarter of this year, and we’re less than a month away from having that done so I already know that we’re going to meet that goal as well.

How did arionkoder perform from a project management standpoint?

We actually didn’t ask for a project manager because we’re running that role internally, so I’ve been splitting the management duties of the team with their tribe leads. However, I can definitely say that arionkoder has performed well in terms of project management. The team does a really good job of tracking the status of the tickets and making sure that they’re all updated. They’re also excellent at identifying and raising issues in a timely manner.

We’re following the agile development model, so we usually do two-week sprints to meet sprint goals and measure our sprint capacity. The fact that the arionkoder team has been able to consistently move at a rapid pace is great, so I don’t really see any issues from a project management perspective.

So far, our communication has been great. We use Jira as our ticket tracking tool, Confluence as our internal documentation repository, and Slack as our main communication tool. We also do daily Zoom stand-ups, weekly team grooming meetings, and bi-weekly sprint planning meetings.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The best part about working with arionkoder is the quality of the resources that they were able to help us find. I would, without question, hire any member of their team as a full-time employee if I could. Of course, that's not the way our relationship works, but I think it's one of the best compliments I can pay somebody that I work with through a third-party consulting organization. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

Early on, we had the opportunity to interview all of the people that we worked with and there were a few instances in the interview process where some of the prospective candidates didn't align properly with what we were looking for in terms of skills. The arionkoder folks worked that out very quickly, so we were still able to build the team as per schedule.

Another thing that I’ve noticed is that we do have to be more explicit and intentional in terms of communication because their first language isn’t English. I wouldn’t really say that the language barrier has been a big problem — we just have to put in more effort in order to avoid miscommunication.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I believe that it’s really important to effectively communicate what you’re looking for and the specific milestones that you’re trying to achieve. That is true with any project, but it’s even more crucial when you’re working with third-party contractors because you can’t assume that they already know your business and your needs.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there

I’m a general manager at a money transfer company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenges were you trying to address with Arionkoder Consulting?

Our company has about 7 million transfers a year with a high volume of transactions, but our information management and technology processes still had weaknesses. We wanted to provide our management team with tools for information analysis, so we needed consulting to implement business intelligence within our organization.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They assessed our needs regarding business intelligence implementation and presented a project proposal which we are implementing now. At first, they met with our team and provided consulting services for us. At the moment, they’re implementing a Tableau system.

What was the team composition?

About 5–6 people have been involved in the project. There’s a project leader, a product architect, an operations officer, and someone in QA as well.

How did you come to work with Arionkoder Consulting?

They were referred to us by a couple of our shareholders. We contacted them, and they presented a proposal. We analyzed that proposal and chose them, considering their experience and skills.

How much have you invested in them?

We’ve spent $70,000–$90,000 with them so far.

What is the status of this engagement?

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

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

This project has allowed us to improve our processes. The system hasn’t been implemented yet, but we expect that we’ll be able to make faster decisions for our business once it’s up and running.

How did Arionkoder Consulting perform from a project management standpoint?

They great; they proposed a schedule with bi-weekly sprints, and we’ve been able to comply with all the established milestones timely. Here in Uruguay, it is very common for projects to take longer than originally planned, but they’ve been rigid with that, and we value it.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their project management is impressive.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Although they’re part of our planning, we’ve had meetings that were not very relevant.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the COO at Genia Laboratorio, a specialized genetic laboratory.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Arion?

We were one of the two genetic laboratories in Uruguay that the government asked to manage the COVID-19 tests. We needed to make it where our website allows for clients to book appointments for taking the sample.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Arion developed a website that allows people to schedule their appointment for their COVID-19 test. They also developed all the interfaces we needed to connect the website to our software. We designed the user interface on our side and the functions we needed, but their team handled all of the development.

What is the team composition?

Initially, we were in contact with the CEO directly. Afterward, we were in contact with the technology director.

How did you come to work with Arion?

Arion approached us on a project when the pandemic started. We decided not to move forward with that project, but when we decided to implement our website, we called them.

Their proposal stated that they'd get paid for every appointment that is made on the web. They did their development at risk by charging us a smaller amount for every transaction that was made to schedule an appointment. It was a really interesting proposal for us and we decided to accept it.

How much have you invested with them?

They receive about $5 for every transaction, which comes to $10,000–$50,000 total.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in April 2020 and it's ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The site has been working well, especially after we made some improvements. Arion even added some additional capabilities. We’re now taking samples by car as well as in a shopping center for people who were working there, which was the initial project we were going to work with Arion on. 

How did Arion perform from a project management standpoint?

Working with them is very easy. Our teams use Jira to communicate. They have a good response time when issues arise. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

The services they provided and their response times have been very impressive. We’re very satisfied.

Are there any areas they could improve?

The first development worked well until the number of transactions began to increase. We struggled through some performance issues and they immediately reacted. They even proposed stuff to improve the site without us asking for it.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

We had the functionality we wanted from the system well-defined. When we talked to them, we knew what we wanted. That helped us a lot.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the co-founder of Intraprop, a small real estate agency.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Arion?

We wanted to create a web-based platform. We had no prior experience in software, so we needed a partner who could develop the solution.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They developed our responsive single-page application (SPA). The team developed the SPA using React.js, backed by REST API developed in Ruby on Rails. It was deployed to AWS Cloud using several components, including CodePipeline, EC2, RDS, ElasticBeanstalk, and Amplify.

They did the design of the landing page as well.  We wanted a platform that would allow agents to make their own experiences on that platform. We had created a mockup of what we wanted and gave it to Arion.  At the kickoff of the project, they made an MVP so we could evaluate our business idea.

What is the team composition?

We worked with a project manager, a coder, an architect, and a designer.

How did you come to work with Arion?

Some friends recommended Arion as a good partner. 

How much have you invested with them?

We spent about $16,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from September–November 2020.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

They delivered great work. From day one, they were really on board with the idea. They understood that we didn’t have any experience with technology. They tried to make everything much simpler for us. The final product is what we wanted. They did things that weren’t in our budget because they cared about the product and understood what we wanted.

How did Arion perform from a project management standpoint?

We started with email and then made a group on WhatsApp with the project manager. We had three sprints. Due to different things we wanted to add, they had to make another sprint and were two weeks late. We had daily communication with the project manager. We had contact with the other members of the team once a sprint ended.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’re very work-driven. They know how to develop and make software working side-by-side with us. It was a great accomplishment.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They didn’t know how little we knew about software. Sometimes we had differences in our conversations because we weren’t well-versed in the field. They did quite well, but we had some differences in some specifications.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

They’re a great company to work with. Be specific about what you want and don’t want.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CIO of a logistics company in Uruguay. We have truck fleets and facilities for the transportation, agriculture, and industrial businesses.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Arion?

We wanted to address our capabilities to scale our truck operations in Uruguay, Argentina, and Paraguay. We needed software to scale above 100 trucks working at the same time with multiple points of operation.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Arion worked with us to build a system to standardize some technical concepts, logistics requirements and we scaled with advances in software optimization tools with systems that scaled well with numbers above 100–200 units moving at the same time. They develop the software using Python.

What is the team composition?

We work with a team of three core developers from Arion. They also assigned leads to manage the project.

How did you come to work with Arion?

One of the stakeholders in Juango knows a lot of people in the industry with backgrounds in engineering and multinational corporations. He knew companies working on machine learning and optimization. We reached out to Arion and we found a great match with them.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve invested around $80,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Arion in July 2020, but the project began in March 2020. We are still working with them and we just finished phase one of the project and we are now already starting phase two.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We have seen results as expected for the proof of concept or MVP and soon we can start dispatching on a large scale. We already know that we need to standardized a lot of components from our side so we can feed the system with more precision. We are already seeing the utilization of the system, we haven’t replaced everything as of now, but we’re already existing and in progress.

How did Arion perform from a project management standpoint?

Arion and our company have three-week sprints and every two weeks we have meetings. We use a version of scrum with sprints. For project tracking, they use Jira. For internal purposes, we use spreadsheets for project tracking.

What did you find most impressive about them?

There are two sides. First is the impact for our organization in terms. They helped us change things that maybe we wouldn’t change without some external entity asking some tough questions for us. Second is the advanced programming tools that they are using impressed us, and we look to incorporate some of them to our own people.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I think knowing a bit more about the industry, but it’s hard to say because every industry has very detailed technical specifications. It’s a part of the process for the client to standardize and collaborate with a consultant.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

My advice is to prepare and make everything ready six months before starting work with Arion. In our case, what we did was great, but obviously, it was not enough. Until you have the external entity asking you questions, you won’t see things in perspective. Preparing ahead of time will prevent the project from being stranded along the way.

You also need internal leadership in both economic and political leverage in your organization to change things that seems fine, but in 5–10 years, there might be a paradigm shift that you will not be ready for.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a consultant at MVD Consulting.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Arion?

We needed someone to develop an MVP app that would gain traction and fidelity from customers.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Arion developed an MVP app for both Android and iOS. 

What is the team composition?

We worked with three teammates: one architect and two senior developers.

How did you come to work with Arion?

We did some scouting around and came across them. We realized we were similar in the way we felt our product needed to be developed.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent $70,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked with them from April–July 2020.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We had many ideas and they brought them to reality. The quality of their work was amazing. Whenever we had questions or wanted something, they delivered. We felt heard.

How did Arion perform from a project management standpoint?

Arion delivered earlier than the deadlines. Their communication was very good, quick, and horizontal in the sense that we could involve as many people as we needed to.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They were a tech partner who understood our needs and transformed them into a product.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, I have no suggestions. It’s not common to have a team that can be so punctual. They were an amazing find for this project and future projects.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Be ready to be iterative and transform your ideas into something technical that you aren’t expecting.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Our company develops B2B software for enterprise clients, that analyzes communications data using AI/ML techniques and surfaces insights through a specialized dashboard.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Arion?

We were in need of an experienced front-end web developer who could supplement our small, but fast-paced team to quickly deliver a new product feature. The consultant worked on a core feature of our product, as well as improving existing parts of our UI.

What were your goals for this project?

The feature was built over the course of a month, working in an Agile team. Because of the speed of development, the consultant had to quickly adapt to new designs and product requirements.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

Arion was referred to us by another company we worked with, Montevideo labs. After several rounds of interviews with the consultant, we decided that they met our needs and had the suitable experience for the role.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

The consultant started with several design-focused projects for our customer UI, including redesigning existing components, and creating animated components. They then worked on a core product feature, utilizing APIs built by our backend team to create a UI for this new feature.

What was the team composition?

The consultant worked closely with a backend engineer, and product owner, as well as a design consultant to deliver the end product. The consultant was a key part of the product development process, from creating the key project requirements, to design feedback, to implementation.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Our product was developed quickly and within the estimated timeline. It has enabled us to present a new key feature to existing and prospective clients, and will likely have significant impact on our future sales funnel.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

The project was managed internally, but the collaborative nature of our team meant that the consultant had significant input into both the product and process.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Our consultant operated the same as any other full-time employee for the duration of the contract and there was no discernible difference in terms of quality.

Are there any areas for improvement?

We had a very positive experience with our consultant and wouldn't have changed a thing. The only downside was that our consultant was scheduled to move onto another project after ours and we were not able to extend their engagement to an ongoing basis. We would however certainly work with Arion again!