Ascendro Technologies

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We are an IT services company based in Germany. Our main customer is a premium automotive company, and we work on several important applications and other projects with them. I lead our DevOps team with this client, and some of our services come with 24/7 support.

What challenge were you trying to address with Ascendro Technologies?

I hired them for a workflow assistant tool. As we supported more and more projects, we needed to monitor several environments with incident tickets to resolve. The tasks were coming in too quickly for us to handle all of them, and several other factors made it necessary to hire additional forces.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We built the environment as a web application in the LAMP stack. We needed about 2,000 hours of work, and we're still making new feature requests. The software manages projects and workflow. It gathers incoming incident tickets from Jira, ITCM, and email and sends them to one dashboard to handle all those requests. Additionally, they support the onboarding process for our operations team. There is a checklist functionality attached to each ticket to lead team members through the process.

What is the team composition?

Our main point of contact was a project manager, and they provided a team of about four developers.

How did you come to work with Ascendro Technologies?

They were recommended by our CEO. We had experience with their team in the past, and they understood our needs very well.

How much have you invested with them?

The cost came near €75,000 (approximately $85,000 USD) for the contract.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working on this project at the beginning of December 2018. The tool has already deployed and is in use, but we are still submitting changes and feature requests to them.

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

The tool was launched just a few weeks ago, so we're still waiting for KPIs and metrics.

How did Ascendro Technologies perform from a project management standpoint?

They performed very well. They were self-organized, and my contact was always available when I needed him. Most of the issues were managed internally, and they reacted well to changes and requests. Our primary forms of communication were email and Skype.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The developers made their own decisions about ways to improve processes, and they got deep into the material to make suggestions. Their initiative was very impressive.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Nothing comes to mind. There is always room for improvement, but I don't have any specific points to mention.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Describe all your tasks and needs in great detail, and double check to make sure they understand your needs.

Please describe your organization.

Samsung is a well-known electronics manufacturer. We've just made the announcement for our new flagship device, the Galaxy S7. We have created a program for US-based developers which will hopefully be extended on a global level. It enables developers to work with us on a more personal level when making apps and getting them to the Galaxy App Store. Our team acts as the foundation for getting an app Store-ready. We've created an ecosystem, from the ideation point, all the way to monetization, helping with various support items and documentation. Our goal is to get the app developer ready for prime-time. The partners in our network range from companies like Uber, HBO, Yelp, CNN and Expedia, to indie developers. The market is fragmented, 80% of it being composed of smaller-sized firms. This is the area in which we want to invest more heavily, as we think there's a lot of good property coming out of it, which can create a unique experience for Samsung consumers. We want to bring out a set of games, functions, and features that are only available on Samsung devices. We also want to create a unique experience around bigger brands by facilitating their presence on our store and making those apps run perfectly on a Samsung device.

What is your position?

I am the head of developer programs. Two years ago, when I set up this division, we focused more on internal applications, like Samsung Hub and Samsung +. Over time, as we learned what the specific issues of our developers were, we created a more service-centric approach which we're now rolling out. I'm responsible for it on all levels, making sure that it's being used by as many entities as possible in order to create a unique approach for developers.

What business challenge were you trying to address with Ascendro?

When we started our endeavor, the big issue was managing the information required for the forty different devices coming out every year: smartphones, TVs and so on. On top of that, we had to deal with different maintenance releases for each device. We needed a tool that was smarter than an Excel spreadsheet.

Please describe the scope of their involvement.

When we engaged with Ascendro and showed them the problem and they developed a server-side infrastructure using mostly PHP, that would allow us to access the necessary information, run statistics, and see progress levels and application portfolio launches for each device.

We considered extending their involvement in other areas, but due to a restructuring phase, we decided to use internal developers. This is not a reflection on the quality of their work.

How did you come to work with Ascendro?

The size of our project deemed that we would have to create a business case and have three comparable proposals. Ascendro came out on top in terms of capabilities, understanding, and their ability to react to our challenge. Every other big firm wanted to receive the complete structuring of the information upfront. We wanted to have an Agile process, and wanted more help from the developer, as we also have to run our day-to-day business. Even though this task was vital to our core, there are only so many hours in a day that can be spent on it. Ascendro was capable to bridge the gap that other firms had an issue with. From a pricing point of view, Ascendro looked to be the better choice.

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

The cost is confidential. It was a fixed-price project, which made it easy to calculate. We also created change requests which were billed by time and material.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started our project in February of 2015 and the first wave was completed in August. The work was delivered in December.

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

I don’t have any real metrics or figures to share. We’re not large enough to really be measuring things in that way.

How did Ascendro perform from a project management standpoint?

We've known their company since 2006, and have worked on several projects together. I have been involved in different capacities in past projects, so I knew exactly what to expect from Ascendro. From a reporting structure, there was a single person ahead of me. Because the division was mine, it was easy to maintain the agreed-upon team structure.

From a project management point of view, they used the documentation that we put together for helping them in their day-to-day activities. We constantly reviewed how good our communication format was for helping their team achieve set goals.

We used an internal communication infrastructure. We tried to be as prescriptive as possible due to lack of time. We used Balsamiq for wireframing, and Skype for exchanging documentation and conference calls for showcasing features. We had both team and single communication sessions.

When the work reached a certain maturity level, we had our team collaborate directly with the developers for any issues.

What distinguishes Ascendro from other providers?

The big difference between Ascendro and other developers is that they understood our limitations and were able to accomplish their work just the same. Another differentiator is their ability to deliver work that wasn't discussed in detail. I asked them for source code quality management functionalities. They provided the necessary information, started automation testing, and so on. 

Ascendro was very accommodating throughout the whole engagement; it was very impressive. They don't simply stick to the given engagement, staying out of the way if we need anything else, but rather analyzed what our requirements were and determined what they could do to engage on that level. 

Is there anything Ascendro could have improved or done differently?

Because we were stressed for time, some of the features that we requested were less understood that what we would've wanted, which resulted in double iterations. It's hard to qualify this as a limitation of Ascendro. There was not enough time to write a proper user story. Even within these circumstances, they were available to handle anything that went wrong.

Please describe your organization.

We design and manufacture women's clothing that we sell primarily through our website. We also distribute our merchandise through a number of boutiques, through Amazon, and other channel partners.

What is your position?

I am the CEO [chief executive officer] of the company.

What business challenge were you trying to address with Ascendro?

We needed an offshore team to manage the Magento platform we use for e-commerce.

Please describe the scope of their involvement.

Our platform uses an older version of Magento, which Ascendro have assisted in migrating to an enterprise version. They also helped us clean up the code for it, have developed additional functionality and worked on its design. Ascendro have also worked on our site's SEO and interface design.

Since we started working with Ascendro, we've begun selling through Amazon. Ascendro helped us set up the process, making it completely automated. They've developed the necessary structure for working with Amazon, which has been extremely helpful.

We have an in-house reporting system which they've integrated into our Magento system.

Based on our needs, our team consisted of between two to six developers. We also had a UI designer, an SEO/SEM person, plus support and QA staff assigned to us. For UI and SEO/SEM work, we interacted directly with the specialists. The other work was handled through a project manager, excepting certain tasks where there had to be direct interaction.

How did you come to work with Ascendro?

They were recommended by a mutual acquaintance. I felt that they were the right company to take our company to the next level.

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

The total cost for their work so far has been around $200,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in January 2014. The relationship is ongoing.

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

Overall, they did a great job. It's hard to quantify results since our work is ongoing and has involved many different projects.

How did Ascendro perform from a project management standpoint?

They did a great job, and their English skills are very good. They have a principal in Canada who liaised with us, while their main team is based in Romania.

We communicated through Basecamp for project management. We also used Redmine for issue tracking on smaller projects. Our work process was very good from this perspective.

What distinguishes Ascendro from other providers?

Compared to our previous vendor, Ascendro is very methodical, very attentive and very reliable. following a standard development process. It's not an Agile process per se, although it does involve parts of that methodology. Overall, they have their own process in place, which is much less ad-hoc than what we were used to.

Is there anything Ascendro could have improved or done differently?

We've never had any issues with them.