Aristek Systems

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the CTO for Accelerate Learning, Inc., an online provider of science and math curriculum.

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

Aristek was brought in to provide the development services required to support and meet the needs of clients of any size. This included the transformation of a product that was not built to scale, only allowed manual onboarding of clients, no SSO capabilities, required immediate UI/UX rework, content/assessment LMS LTI sharing capabilities, ability to interface with state departments to process and fulfill orders, create a new website... it was a startup transition.

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

Aristek had provided similar services to my former company Lumen Software, Inc, of which I was the CTO and co-founder. They had provided the services that supported our All-in-One SIS (Student Information System), Special Education IEP, LMS, Library Management System, State Student ID System, Lumenation middleware platform, and solutions adopted by Novell. The choice was easy after having worked with them on successful, complex, high-risk, large-scale solutions.

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

The scope of work was extensive with extremely condensed timelines to meet market opportunities. Automated onboarding solutions, SSO (MS SAML, LTI SSO, LDAP...). Content integration with IMS LTI protocols, ThinCC, QTI, and today Grade Pass Back, Deep Linking supporting all IMS compliant LMS solutions to levels they supported. Created Order System that processed X12 and custom APIs with states and their depositories to process/fulfill orders with physical product orders/tracking with vendors.

This has transitioned into the creation of a new state-of-the-art product platform using the latest technologies to provide online/offline processing, responsive design (device agnostic), 3D\AR production, robust content authoring methods, WCAG A-AA, and more. For all projects, there is a structured Agile process (Scrum or Kanban). Project specifications are created.

These are reviewed by an Aristek Business Analyst who eventually creates a model /wireframe. Upon stakeholder acceptance, the Business Analyst establishes within Jira Epic/User Stories. Tasks from which estimations are provided. Upon acceptance, the dev team organizes the Jira tasks and begins the dev process.

All source codes are to follow Project Code Standards and pass Code Review. Delivery of the code after QA testing (Automated, Manual, Regression) goes by CI/CD processes. All code submissions are subject to vulnerability tests. The current technology stack we use is PHP, RoR, JS, C++, React, SPA, PWA, LTI, SalesForce API, NetSuite API. Our system supports 5m+ users and is horizontally scalable.

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

There are 2 Senior PM's, 6 Team leads, 29 developers, 6 business analysts, 14 QA, 2 UI/UX, 2 System Support

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

We were able to meet 100% of client requirements from the largest to the smallest within first four months of starting, in time to meet the sales season. This resulted in approximately a 45% market share the first year within the only state the product was released. Today we are in all 50 states offering customized solutions in most of them. The company was acquired in 2018.

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

Aristek is an integrated resource within our organization structure to provide all involved in the process with optimum use of their time. We have scrums with Sr Project Managers daily, with Business Analysts if needed using Skype or Zoom. The different dev teams all have their own process at their level. Jira is our primary means of project management. As a whole, we work very diligently to meet timelines, and in the early years, these were all "by this date" projects. Aristek has always provided a great pace and quality results. The SDLC process we have created over the last twenty years has proven to provide quality, continuous service to clients without any major disruptions.

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

Their ability to mold a product development process to meet our needs and those of our different products with a great pace and a commitment to quality. They are always responsive at all levels and thoughtful about what they are working on. We have had tremendous growth spurts over the years and they have provided quality, skilled individuals to meet our needs in a timely manner over the last 20 years. We have required mathematicians, 3D\VR\AR, artists and they have facilitated these requirements as well.

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

With the startup pace, the first 4-5 years of documentation were not a priority. However, we have been using Confluence as a part of our process now to rectify this.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I’m Head of Information Technology at Druzhba OJSC, the main oil pipeline Russia-Europe, which is a complex technical system.

For what projects/services did your company hire Aristek Systems?

We needed someone to modernize our existing automated contract execution management system and to realize system functionality, which allows automate commercial accounting of oil products. We were looking for a vendor who could do the heavy lifting without much intervention from our side.

What were your goals for this project?

The solution had to reliably reproduce the functionality of the older system and extend functionality with new features and client hardware/software platforms.

How did you select this vendor?

We initiated the RFP procedure and Aristek Systems’ offer was the most suitable for us. We invited them to document our requirements as we explained them. Once we saw that Aristek easily understood what we wanted, we decided to work with them.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

Aristek Systems designed, developed and created the architecture of our new modernized system with transition of all the old data. They added new complex functionality with telemetering equipment interaction. They also crafted he UI/UX and developed both desktop and mobile versions. They used PHP, JS and other stable technologies.

We use this new management system on daily basis and it has around 500 functional modules.This system provides online monitoring and controlling of oil&gas transportation streams and handling of contracts execution to the user.

Aristek Systems built it from a scratch after 2 sprints of planning, business analysis and mock-ups creation.

What was the team composition?

Twenty seven people were involved in this full-cycle development project.

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

We provided them grateful review on our corporate sheet, which copy you may ask them at any time.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

There haven’t been any problem with PM. The team is accessible, supportive, and sensitive to my timelines and constraints. They’ve delivered most things on time except for one or two instances, but those delays were due to changes in scope. Overall, I’m thrilled with Aristek Systems. We communicate via email, phone and video calls. Every time our communication is very effective.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

During the collaboration, Aristek's team had established themselves as reliable, professional experts with a modern view on customer requirements and requests.

The company has all the needed opportunities to develop a qualified software, what was proved with those quantity of work they have done and still have been doing for our enterprise.

Within the process of software development Aristek Systems' specialists care about all the wishes as much as it's possible, all the tasks are made high-performed and in time

Are there any areas for improvement?

They’re always on step with all modern technologies that are good for creating ERP, CRM and other complex SW for almost all domains.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the owner

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

We hired Aristek for mobile app development services.

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

I received a quote from the business development guy, Eugene Senko, and we started our collaboration from there.

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

The team had to develop a cross-platform mobile app for my productivity system

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

5-7 people

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

We had 10 000 users in the first month

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

We had a series of video calls with different team members. Despite communication challenges with project manager, we were able to complete the development and ship the product.

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

I was really impressed by the dedication of the bd manager, Eugene. Great communication, quality negotiations.

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

Timeline and price estimates