Avenga

BACKGROUND

Could you briefly describe your organization?

I work for a company called Cove Financial. We’re a real estate company that buys homes for folks who otherwise wouldn’t qualify for a traditional mortgage.

What’s your position?

I’m the chief marketing officer.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

Could you describe the business challenges you were attempting to address when you began the relationship with Perfectial?

We had a number of challenges. Like a lot of companies these days, we do almost all of our marketing digitally, so we have a variety of websites and a lot of ad technology tasks. We approached Perfectial to help build out various Web properties as well as use them for the development of our APIs [application programming interfaces], integrating with other web partners, things of that nature. They’ve provided us with a lot of technical development.

SOLUTION

Could you describe the scope of one of your larger, more complex projects?

We have a very specific scoring algorithm that we use for all of our leads. We drafted the algorithm in-house. They helped code it and deploy it into an API. Also, we tasked them with building out dynamic thank you pages on our website so that the thank you page a user might receive would be customized to them, as opposed to the generic thank you pages most users receive. This involved a lot of work around dynamic XML [Extensible Markup Language] pages being generated on the fly based on how the lead had scored just a page or two beforehand. It was a very important component for us and well done by them.

How did you select Perfectial as your solution partner?

One of our ad technology partners is DataXu. We use DataXu for a lot of our ad targeting initiatives. Their CTO recommended Perfectial to us as a quality development partner.

When was this project completed?

It’s an ongoing endeavor. We’re consistently updating and modifying our APIs and algorithms. They help us determine how and to what extent those changes are, and then deploy them.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

In terms of results, could you share any statistics, metrics, or user feedback you’ve received that would demonstrate the effectiveness of the work they’ve delivered?

A lot of their work is done behind the scenes. With APIs, they integrated a very large Web property, 5 million unique visitors a month, with us using our APIs. We’ve gotten great feedback from the end-users and stakeholders. The APIs worked extremely well. There were zero issues with performance or usability.

When working with Perfectial, is there anything you’d consider unique about their approach or development methodology that distinguishes them from other vendors?

They’re very agile. What I like about them is that they have rigor where they need it, but they’re also very flexible. If we need to jump in, interrupt a sprint and say that X or Y has just become an immediate priority, they’re on top of it almost immediately. I find in a lot of other firms, they say they’re agile or they say they can adjust but, in practice, they really don’t have the personnel to handle the incoming changes, whereas Perfectial does. All the guys there are willing and able to drop one project on a dime and start another if it’s absolutely critical. I love that about them.

They can hack it together when needed. If I tell them, “hey, to do this one quick and dirty and keep it cheap,” they can absolutely deliver. They also have some pretty good long-term, strategic vision. They’ve been able to offer some key insights into areas our own team hadn’t considered before, which is always a plus. I like having that balance with a technology partner because, at the end of the day, they’re more than just code monkeys. You don’t often find firms that can handle both small and large projects, especially without sacrificing efficiency or quality.

In retrospect, are there areas you think they could improve on as a service provider, or are there certain things you’d do differently before initiating a project with them?

I think they’ve gotten better over the months that we’ve worked with them. They’ve launched a lot of tools and dashboards for us to stay in the loop. Early on, that was one area that they were a little weak in terms of keeping us updated on their day-to-day progress, on individual projects. But, it’s gotten much, much better.  

BACKGROUND

Could you briefly describe your organization?

Contraqer is a cloud-based procurement management service.  In a nutshell, we help our clients purchase goods and services. We manage the entire procurement lifecycle: vendor selection, RFQ generation, quote comparison, PO generation, invoice tracking, packing list tracking, returns management, credit memo administration, etc.

What is your position?

I’m the CEO and founder.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

Could you describe the business challenges you were attempting to address when you began the relationship with Perfectial?

When we started working with Perfectial, we were a very young company – less than a year old.  While we were well funded, we had grand plans for what we wanted to offer our clients.  To accomplish our vision and scale as quickly as desired, we knew we needed to work with an offshore partner to get the greatest bang for our buck.  In previous roles, I had worked with offshore firms in India and Argentina so I knew what to expect and felt comfortable going offshore.

SOLUTION

Could you describe the scope of this project in greater detail?

We started development in January of 2013. Initially I worked with an onshore team with which I had a lot of history to define the development methodology; select the tools; define the processes & configuration; and build mock objects and services. Once we had a good idea of where we were going and how we were going to get there, I hired Perfectial in February of 2013. I asked them to come in and start the actual coding based on my conceptual design. They did provide some strategic oversight but the majority of their initial work was custom development. Fast forward to the present – the onshore team is gone and Perfectial is handling both architecture and development.

In terms of UI/UX, I hired a separate onshore company to help me with the branding and UI design. I did this not because I thought Perfectial couldn’t handle the work but because I have an almost 20-year relationship with the other company. We know each other very well and they know exactly what I am looking for and how I want it delivered. Over the course of the last four months, I’ve been pushing more and more of the UI work to Perfectial, starting with small projects. Given the positive results, I’ve been given them more, larger, and more complex UI work.

How did you select Perfectial as your solution partner?

I went back to two of the previous vendors I had worked with -- one was an Indian company based in Bangalore and the other was an Argentinian company based in Buenos Aires. I was going to pick between those two but one of my close business associates suggested that I check out Perfectial. He had been working with Perfectial for about four years and was extremely satisfied with the results.

I had a standard questionnaire that I sent out to each company. The document covered the requirements and project goals. The proposals I received were definitely strong but the proposal submitted by Perfectial really stood out in terms of their experience, ability, and desire to work in my chosen environment, which was the Microsoft Azure cloud.

We began working together in February of 2013. I started with a very small team of three developers. That was it. I wanted to have a lot of hands-on experience with them and really get a feel for how capable they were. We started off with a three-month contract and I could have cut them off after that, but I was generally quite pleased with what they delivered. I had hired an architect on my end to perform code reviews and he was also impressed with the quality of their code. I’ve been slowly expanding that team over the last year to a point where I now have nine Perfectial techs working full-time on our project.

When was the most recent project completed?

It’s an ongoing effort. We’re cutting releases every two to four weeks.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

In terms of results, could you share any statistics, metrics or user feedback you’ve received that would demonstrate the effectiveness of the work they’ve delivered?

I don’t have any hard statistics that I use. SLoC is a terrible way to evaluate development teams.  And function points are really squishy. I track story points. There has been a steady climb to good number – about 1.1 story points per developer per day with minimal regression defects. It helps that our unit test coverage is about 60% and we have over 1,000 Selenium tests for the code base so the developers know quickly if they have broken something.

There is another very soft metric that I can point to. We’ve done well over 300 demos to prospective clients. We have been invited back to continue the discussion in over 98% of those cases. If the product looked terrible or did not work, that would not be the case.

When working with Perfectial, is there anything you’d consider unique about their approach or development methodology that distinguishes them from other vendors?

Many firms are wedded to their processes and tool kits. In contrast, Perfectial is extremely flexible in terms of adhering to my preferred toolkit and development process. They’re willing to bend over backwards to do what the client wants. The CTO, Ivan Kohut, actually came over to visit and spend some quality time with us to get to know us. And our team lead at Perfectial came over for three weeks to work shoulder-to-shoulder with us.

In retrospect, are there areas you think they could improve on as a service provider?

Everyone says the same things about external development partners -- they should work faster with higher quality and cost less.  I think that is more of an aspirational goal than a criticism.  In terms of actual critical feedback, I really don’t have anything significant.  There is one small thing.

When we were first starting to work together, I wanted to interview everyone before the project kicked off.  Initially they put too many developers in front of me whose English was not adequate to pair with someone in the United States who wasn’t able to speak Ukrainian or Russian.  It took us a little while to get to a point where they understood that language skills are not optional.  You may have someone who’s technically brilliant but if s/he can’t communicate, s/he can’t be on the team.  I will say with the last five or six hires, I haven’t been introduced to anyone who wasn’t proficient in English.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company, your role and responsibilities.

My role is CTO. I’m responsible for all our technology stock and our products. Brandify is essentially a startup. Myself and a colleague founded the business four and a half years ago. We help businesses build and maintain a strong online brand or online presence. It is a very technology-driven approach. If you go to Brandify.com, we’ll tell you the current online brand of your businesses across Facebook, Foursquare, Google, and similar sites. We give you recommendations on how to improve it. It is a technology platform that allows businesses to discover their current online presence on social media.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What was your goal for working with Perfectial?

The goal was to have a partner that could help us build and maintain the technology platform.

SOLUTION

Can you please describe their work in more detail?

It is primarily design architecture, design development, QA, and project management. Essentially, everything associated with our product lifecycle with the exception of product management, which is what we do here internally was included in the scope.

How did you select Perfectial to work with?

We actually found them originally through Elance. We talked to many people in various different locations. We basically selected them based on their previous expertise, their knowledge of the Microsoft technology stack and their approach in general. Price obviously was a factor as well.

Did you just consider offshore firms?

We looked at offshore, so the usual suspects: India, Eastern Europe, and the Philippines.

Can you provide a sense of the size of the initiative with a general cost range?

Right now, we have five full-time resources. Today, we have five full-time resources dedicated to us from Perfectial. They are working eight to 10 hours a day, five days a week for our projects.

When will the work be completed?

The work is completely ongoing. We have peaks and drops. We may add an additional two resources this month for three or four months. We may then take them back off and go back to a core group of four or five. Overall, this is ongoing. It is a live constantly evolving product.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Do you have any statistics or metrics you could share about the success of the work?

There is a couple of things. The biggest metric for us as a startup business is we were acquired at the end of the year of last year. For us, that was a success. The Perfectial team built and maintained that platform for us and made sure it performed as expected. They were also involved to some degree in that acquisition process because it was a due diligence period and obviously they wanted to know what the technology and architecture was.

That team still works with us and now does work for the acquired business as well. It is very high level. That is what we would consider success. Broadly how we benchmark Perfectial is that they deliver on time. We’ll ask them for estimates. We expect them to deliver based on those estimates. We expect them to deliver quality code. Most importantly, we expect them to be innovative. That is something we value with Perfectial that we did not find with other outsourcing companies.

I have a lot of colleagues that work with outsourcing companies in India and other places. The big difference we found with Perfectial is that they’ll use their initiative. I don’t have to provide a 500-page detailed spec. They know our platform well now. They know what works and what doesn’t work. They’ll suggest to us different ways of doing things. Essentially, they’re part of our team. They’re not just an outsourcing company that will basically only do what you put in a spec. That is a huge difference. That is what we value most about that team.

Is anything else unique or special about them that stands out as different from other IT firms?

I think their knowledge of the Microsoft technology stack is excellent. They are extremely good in Windows Azure, for example. They are probably one of the few organizations in Europe that technically understands that platform as well or better than anybody else. Obviously, we valued their initiative and the fact that we feel that they’re part of our team, not just another bunch of bodies sitting somewhere and coding. Their professionalism is unique. We met them. They are highly professional, very trustworthy. All those are important things when you’re working with an offshore company they possess.

Looking back on the work so far, is there any area that you think they could improve upon or something you might do differently?

There are a million things you might do differently in retrospect. Nothing really springs to mind. They have evolved with us. We started working with them three years ago. They were a smaller company, with fewer people. They weren’t as sophisticated when it came to project management and QA, which they are now. They seem to be very successful. We have other colleagues and other business that we’ve referred to them that now work with them. The company has grown quickly. They have evolved as they should have. Now, there is nothing of note really that I would change or do differently.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company.

My company is an online advertising software company.

What is your role and responsibilities?

I am the founder and CEO.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What was your goal for working with Perfectial?

Our goal was to help scale out the software that we were working with for the company. Perfectial helped us increase scalability and reliability of the software.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their work.

Perfectial did software development, reporting development, Web development, API [application programming interface] development, release management, and a few other items. Their software development, Web development, and database work is core to their business. I haven’t worked on other projects with them outside that scope.

What was your process for selecting Perfectial to work with?

I worked with a few outsourcing firms and was trying a few firms with smaller projects. I came across Perfectial and liked their work, plus the attitude and culture of their company. I have used them for multiple projects outside of JasperLabs, and I’ve recommended them to other clients and companies. I really enjoy working with them.

Can you provide a ballpark figure for the size of the work that they’ve done for you?

It has ranged from tiny projects that take a week of work for one person up to a six-month-long project with three or four people on them. The scope and timeframe is fairly broad. I get the sense they are trying to move into a marketplace where they’re working with larger companies and corporations. Their sweet spot, where they are very effective, is in the small- to medium-sized enterprise where they potentially have direct access to the chief technology officer or the head of engineering. They would be able to work on some of the core systems of a company. I think they’re most effective in that capacity.

Is the work ongoing?

The work is ongoing, and we have no plans to stop the projects. All other clients I have recommended them to are still working with them. They have a good track record of starting projects and maintaining the client relationships for a long period of time.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Do you have any statistics or metrics to track improvement from the project?

I don’t have any specific statistics. The general feedback has been that they are extremely efficient at getting work completed and out the door. Their chief technology officer is one of the smartest people I’ve met. They are constantly looking at new technologies and are abreast of everything that’s going on in the technology space. It's nice to get their input when it comes to architecture and how we should introduce new features. I think of them more as a partner than a group of people that I give requirements to. It's more of a collaborative process, and I take their input seriously and want them to be part of the development process from the beginning. That helps form the shape of the project and the underlying system that they’re implementing. It's quite different from other firms that I’ve worked with.

Is there anything unique about them that really makes them stand out, compared to other companies?

I’ve worked with a fair number of firms in Eastern Europe and India. Generally, there is a real difference there. I don’t think every firm is the same, but Perfectial is more in line with how I work in California in terms of development practices.

They are very involved in collaboration, helping to figure out the back story of the business, and what the most appropriate solution should be for the problems, based on their business domain knowledge. That is very important in software development.

Looking back on the work so far, is there any area that you think they could improve upon or that you might do differently?

This is something that they have already started to improve upon. Before, it was a little less constrained with respect to project management, but during recent projects, they’ve been staffing a project manager on each project. As they’re getting larger, keeping up with the organizational aspects is very important for them. I believe they’re making investments in ensuring that each project is staffed appropriately with a technical project lead to help guide things and make sure that all projects are on time and moving along as expected.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Product Owner

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

We needed support on our front and backend.

SOLUTION

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

I believe it was price-point and pre-existing reputation. While I wasn’t the initial hiring manager / decision maker, I personally hired two people from Avenga, and our current CTO Thiemo B.(also on CC) continues to hire from them.

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

Scope of work was initially:
 

+ Backend work (Kotlin / Java):

• Vitalii B.(junior)
• Yarusolav R.(junior)

+ Backend work (Fullstack C#)

• Mykola M.(senior)
• A further candidate pending contract.

+ Frontend work (Angular + HTML + CSS + Javascript):

• Vlad L.(senior)
• Vitalii K.(senior)
• Michael M.(senior)
• Maksym Y.(senior)

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

• Vlad - Senior Frontend
• Vitalii - Senior Frontend
• Michael - Senior Frontend
• Oleksandr - Senior Backend

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Excellent work by the team. They were all exceptionally professional and brought in their expertise.

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

Scrum-Lite was used with MS Teams as the principle method of communication.

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

From the supporting team (Khrystyna, Anzhelika) to the principal workers, everyone was always professional and helpful.

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

No. They were perfect, and we would recommend them to others.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I head engineering for few products within the company

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

We had need to expedite our product development. We hired Avenga to provide experienced staff for these projects.

SOLUTION

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

We had reviewed 3 vendors and narrowed down to Avenga based on their track record and costs.

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

Design, develop and test the product features

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

The team size was around 30 including:

• project leads
• scrum masters
• developers
• architect
• testers

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We were able to launch the product on time and have been able to get new features in the committed time frame.

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

Their project management was good, we had all meetings per scrum. We also had a short weekly status meeting to provide us with where the project stands, any risks that we need to be aware of, etc.

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

The team is easy to work with and, for the most part, keeps their schedule.

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

There is one area of automation where they should figure out how to speed it up

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Software Development manager at Amdocs Digital UI

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

Drupal and Digital transformation

SOLUTION

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

We researched out over the internet and with amdocs recruitment looking for specific set of skills that very hard to find.

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

Drupal as decoupled CMS Integrated with VueJS deployed over the cloud.

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

30 Developers

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Increasing sales and customer experience

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

We are working very close with the customer to define the solution and using Slack Jira and Acquia to keep communication and code.

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

It's a very unique way to manage CMS and content that giving the customer more controls over headless CMS as well open source free of license and cloud ready deployment.

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

more advanced UI Framework.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I´m a Project Manager in a Telecommunications company. We offer connectivity and connectivity related services.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Avenga?

We hired Cloud Developers and Software Engineers from Avenga to supplement our existing teams and enhance our skill profile.

SOLUTION

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

We evaluated candidates, available skill sets and value for money against competitors and existing partners.

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

Avenga colleagues work in the context of building and maintaining connectivity related software components.

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

An Account Manager is our main point of contact for demand management, recruiting and commercials, supported by a Project Coordinator. We work with 4 Software Engineers and Cloud Engineers.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Improvements of cloud based services and automation. Improvements in SRE, monitoring, alerting. Delivery of functionalities and new features.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Two separate organisations work together and deliver parts of a joint outcome. For this, effective communication channels were set up. In addition, weekly reports are delivered with content related and commercial parameters.

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

There's a high commitment from their developers towards their work and our company.

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

There have not been any major issues. Feedback from both sides is given on a regular basis. Small improvements where done this way.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Director of Engineering at Within3

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

The project was to create a private native iOS application that mirrors feature parity with our web platform.

SOLUTION

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

We provided Avenga with a set of product ACs and designs and they worked on these in scrum sprints to complete features according to the roadmap.

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

A senior iOS architect, two senior iOS engineers, a team lead and iOS QA.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Avenga completed all of their deliverables in a technically sound and timely manner. The app us currently used in production and is highly stable and performant.

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

Avenga was a pleasure to work with. They were very organized and professional and communicated progress and issues daily through Slack clearly. We also met with them weekly via zoom to review the progress each week and deal with issues that came up.

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

Everyone we've dealt with was highly skilled technically and also a pleasure to work with. They went above and beyond to deliver an outstanding product on time.

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

No - all went well!

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the IT program manager that worked with Avenga on this project.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

We had tried to work with a different vendor on this project. The vendor was unable to understand our requirements and come up with a solution. We hired Avenga to come up with a solution and implement it. The timelines were very tight and we needed a vendor that was reliable and was able to deliver the project on time and budget.

SOLUTION

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

• Factor #1: Previous Experience with Avenga
  I have worked with Avenga in a previous company and have always been very impressed with the high quality of work they did. This was a very important factor in selecting them.
• Factor #2: Availability of Qualified Staff
  We needed staff that was qualified to work on custom Salesforce applications. Avenga has highly experienced staff in all areas we needed: Developers, Testers, Business Analysts, Architects and Project managers.
• Factor #3: Historically proven to deliver projects on time & budget We wanted a vendor that would deliver the project by early April 2022. The timelines were very short and the project was critical to our company's transformation.

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

The scope of work included building a custom salesforce application that was intuitive, easy to use and integrated with our current Salesforce CRM module and two other internal systems. Project Steps:

1. Submit RFP to Avenga team to go over project scope and desired timelines
2. Review proposal provided by Avenga
3. Kickoff project; meet the Avenga team
4. Requirements planning
5. Feature demonstrations/acceptance
6. Go live

Key Deliverables:

• KOM
• Requirements
• Architecture/Design
• Detailed requirements
• Agile delivery methodology
• bi-weekly demonstrations
• Test cases & hypercare support

Technologies Used:

• Salesforce
• JIRA
• MS Applications

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

Team size was around 7 people:

• Architect
• Developers
• Project manager
• Business Analyst
• Quality Engineer
• Salesforce Administrator

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

First release went live on time delivering the full project scope. End users provided very good feedback. The quality of the work was excellent and the service provided by Avenga during hypercare was exemplary. The whole team went above and beyond and we couldn't have been more pleased about them. We are gearing up to extend the project with them for subsequent releases.

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

Communication was done via email, remote calls, Teams, and JIRA. The project management was excellent. Avenga's project managers are very professional and all their updates and presentations follow PMP best practices. Timelines were always met and any potential risks to the project deliverables were promptly identified and mitigations were put in place to ensure the project was successful.

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

Their resilience, talent, and ability to deliver on time were impressive. There are so many other things such as everybody's communication style was very professional, they always think about all options and work to provide the best solution for the customer and their ability to adapt and pivot when changes come up.

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

N/A