Aspire SoftServ

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the customer excellence manager at Abzooba, an AI software company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Aspire SoftServ Pvt. Ltd.?

We were initially looking for someone to provide us with frontend development for a product we were building.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We hired Aspire Softserv to supplement us with frontend development, which then evolved into them providing us with web development. They incorporated AngularJS and used WordPress as the leading platform for the build.

They worked closely with the marketing team to implement their feedback into the final product.

What is the team composition?

We worked closely with a senior manager but throughout the partnership, we’ve worked with around 6–7 web developers

How did you come to work with Aspire SoftServ Pvt. Ltd.?

We connected with Aspire Softserv through my manager.

How much have you invested with them?

The project cost was about $250,000–$500,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from July 2019–April 2022.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

They’re a flexible and knowledgeable team who has vast technical expertise in their field. Even though they were vendors, they seamlessly integrated with our team so it was a consistently smooth process thoughout the partnership.

They took ownership of the data management and transfer, as well as implementing daily scrums, which made us comfortable working with them.

How did Aspire SoftServ Pvt. Ltd. perform from a project management standpoint?

They were excellent from a project maangement standpoint as they were highly communicative and responsive the entire engagement.

We initially communicated through Zoom, but we eventually moved to Microsoft Teams.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We were impressed with the team’s experience and diverse range of expertise.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They’ve been excellent since day one, so I can’t think of anything they need to improve on, besides try to get more clients.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I would just advise you to be open and transparent with them when it comes to sharing your requirements and expectations.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We’re a website SaaS company for information, security compliance, tools, and service. We sell B2B and are in the space of small and medium-sized businesses that handle consumers’ private data. They’re required to follow FTC safeguard rules, which require them to do numerous things to protect the consumer’s private information from a regulatory standpoint, and our platform provides those tools.

I was the CTO, and I’ll be the chief information and security officer and chief compliance officer going forward. I’ll retain control of the site’s architecture, but now I’ll be more client and prospect-facing. Also, I’m one of the founders.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Aspire SoftServ Pvt. Ltd.?

Our architecture didn't change much, but the challenge was finding seasoned developers familiar with our highly sophisticated CMS based on Liferay. We needed someone to configure and build our site using all the features. Overall, our goal was to have a high-functioning, high-feature capability website. Additionally, we wanted to use MariaDB because it had database encryption capabilities for free.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Aspire SoftServ has provided custom software development services. They’ve extended the application with plugins, creating custom portlets and servlets in JavaScript.

We tell them what we’re trying to accomplish from a user perspective, and they come back with the dashboard view. They’ve built a stoplight indicator, which is a red, green, and yellow dashboard that allows our clients to visualize where they stand from a compliance standpoint. That’s how we show and convince our clients that they’re non-compliant, and if they proceed with the tools in our system, they can head towards their journey of compliance.

It’s a portal technology; we have public-facing and private walls and login for our clients to access their individual accounts. Aspire SoftServ does most HTML work, and they continue to do maintenance.

At this point, we mostly do small feature changes. We haven’t finished an e-commerce component that requires custom code and payment integration. It appears that it’s ready to go, and we’re under the gun to figure out when we’ll do it. Also, we’ve discovered that our closing process for most of our clients is a deliberate effort via email instead of driving them to our website and asking them to enter their credit card data. It’s one of our non-trivial projects, but we’re on a pause, unsure of how to proceed.

What is the team composition?

We started speaking to the owner. He was acting as a high-level project manager. Then, they successfully grew the business to the point where he needed to assign a project manager. Early in the first year, we had someone carefully getting our specifications and handling them to a programmer to deliver, so we began with one developer doing 90% of the work.

Later, we graduated to a couple of people working part-time. In general, we’ve probably had seven programmers deployed to our project, depending on the number of hours we were requesting. Most recently, we’ve had two full-time people.

How did you come to work with Aspire SoftServ Pvt. Ltd.?

First, one of my partners looked for the platform and came up with Liferay because it was a magic quadrant leader on the Gartner magic quadrant. Then, we sought development companies that focused on it. Aspire SoftServ was one of the few Indian companies focused on Liferay as a top skill set. At the time, the prices were very reasonable, so we began using them.

Additionally, they had numerous resources, the depth of staff to manage the database and operating systems we utilized, and familiarity with Linux implementation and MariaDB.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent about $160,000–$180,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

They’ve been helping us since January 2015.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We’ve done a waterfall development and had an agile development interaction between us. After major deployments, there have been minor updates, including small specifications to tweak and enhance the site. We rarely push a deadline because the estimates are usually unknown. However, we trust their ability to do certain things.

We’re often surprised that they complete something in 1–2 hours. Other times, it may take a few days or past a week. Nonetheless, they’re good at communicating what they find and what they’ll need to proceed. We’re happy with their performance; we depend on them, and they haven’t disappointed us.

Moreover, they’ve done an excellent job listening to what we’re trying to build as an interface. We’ve been pleasantly surprised with their design efforts, which have come forth in things like our dashboard, a critical popular component of our system.

How did Aspire SoftServ Pvt. Ltd. perform from a project management standpoint?

They’ve done pretty well. We loathe putting a fixed timeline unless some particular situation requires it. We trust the development team to do an excellent job, so we ballpark the amount of time it’ll take. We’ve experienced that if we come in from the far end with our estimate, the programmer may produce low-quality work to meet the deadline, and we refuse to do that. However, whenever we’ve needed to deliver something for a client on a fixed timeline, Aspire SoftServ has met the date every time.

On the rare occasion that we need to call them, they prefer to speak, but we prefer emails. They do a good job understanding our instructions — if there’s anything vague, they promptly get back to us with questions about making it more specific. Miscommunication is pretty rare.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Right now, they’re in the catbird seat with the number of programmers who know Liferay. In the US, it’s challenging to find companies like Aspire SoftServ. If we looked for a WordPress programmer, we could find one easily. Unfortunately, Liferay is a platform that has matured in large organizations, so the people working with it are probably employees of large institutions. Not many contractors or independent programmers are available. However, Aspire SoftServ always has somebody with 3–5 years of experience ready to put on our project.

Are there any areas they could improve?

The hours of operation between the US and India are always challenging. We get what we pay for, which is a people working in their country’s time frame. They work into the night, which means our early morning. Occasionally, we can catch them finishing their day, but if we want to communicate with them early, it’s usually 11:00 p.m. or midnight in our time. That wouldn’t have been such a big deal in my youth, but now I require a lot of caffeine to stay up late.

However, it hasn’t been a problem. If we need to call them urgently, we can still contact the project manager directly. They answer all the time, considering our needs. We don’t want to abuse their work, but if we find something broken by accident, we need their assistance to get it right. They’ve understood that we sometimes need to do work in our time frame because our customers are online, but it has been very infrequent.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

No, I don’t have cautionary advice. We’ve enjoyed working with Aspire SoftServ. They’re straightforward, careful, and caring. Also, they’ve bent over backward a couple of times to help us, so they’ve been excellent partners to us. We owe them more than they owe us.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the COO of SimplrOps. We provide enterprise software solutions to service providers and companies that have WorkDay or SuccessFactors implementations. Put another way, we provide automation and operation solutions for these HR management systems. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Aspire SoftServ Pvt. Ltd.?

Hiring resources is one of the most important and challenging tasks for company owners and founders. We don’t pursue any external investment, so we need relatively cheaper alternatives for building and growing our product. As a result, we’ve hired Aspire. 

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Aspire has built our entire flagship software. My brother and I are business partners, and we’ve built only 1% of the software. From there, we’ve handed it out to the Aspire team. With our directions, they’ve moved the product forward. They work based on our detailed requirements, which we deliver through Asana.

In terms of technologies, Aspire has used the MongoDB, Express, Angular, and Node (MEAN) stack, along with Python. They’ve also incorporated other technologies to solve some of our product’s problems. 

What is the team composition?

We initially worked with only four people from Aspire; now, we work with 14 people. They consist of software engineers and QA testers. One of them is also a software solutions architect. 

How did you come to work with Aspire SoftServ Pvt. Ltd.?

Aspire came to us through a reference by somebody who knew them in the past. We ended up interviewing and hiring them. The most important criteria we had was the capital that we needed to infuse into the engagement; we didn’t have much money to pour into development. Aspire offered resources at a low price compared to their competitors. In other words, pricing was the main factor in our decision to engage them. 

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent about $1 million. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We started the partnership in March 2019, and it’s ongoing. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

One of our customers is a big consulting company, and we’ve had a threefold increase in revenue since we’ve worked with them as Aspire supports us. 

How did Aspire SoftServ Pvt. Ltd. perform from a project management standpoint?

We do the project management component of the engagement. However, we do rely on Aspire on their project leads; we create a plan for them, and they manage the plan’s execution. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

Aspire has extremely competitive pricing. On top of that, their resources are highly motivated individuals. Some of them have grown with us so much, and their commitment to us has been phenomenal. These have been the most successful aspects of our relationship with Aspire. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, there aren’t any. They’ve performed well and done everything to our satisfaction. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Make sure that your documentation is clear for Aspire. They’re not the subject-matter experts on the products that they develop, so make sure you give them clear instructions in terms of what needs to be done.