Azumo

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Managing Director of Franklin Park

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

We invest in private equity funds and co-investments on behalf of institutional investors.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Azumo to accomplish?

• Migrate on-prem systems to Azure cloud
• Improve system resilience (improve technical debt)

SOLUTION

How did you find Azumo?

• Online Search
• Clutch Site

Why did you select Azumo over others?

• High ratings
• Close to my geographic location
• Company values aligned

How many teammates from Azumo were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

Azumo was tasked with moving our exisiting on-prem SQL server to Azure SQL while updating all associated custom applications connected to SQL Server and, when possible, improve/clean up legacy code.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

We successfully migrated our systems with minimal disruption and we are well situated to consider new frameworks for future products, both internal-use and client-use.

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

We selected Azumo partly because of the time zone similarity. That proved to be a boon. Via Teams, our firm and Azumo were in near constant communication. Azumo has always been responsive and able to move quickly within their organization when they needed to adjust skill sets.

What was your primary form of communication with Azumo?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

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

Azumo puts a premium on quality led by JP, Chike and Mariana. They value honest communication and they care about their client's products.

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

If we had the budget to bring them "in-house" we would!

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

 I am the CTO of a sports company 

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Real-time predictive analytics for live sports for sports betting and media applications

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Azumo to accomplish?

• Resource augmentation

SOLUTION

How did you find Azumo?

Online Search

Why did you select Azumo over others?

• Pricing fit our budget
• Great culture fit
• Good value for cost

How many teammates from Azumo were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

• General staff augmentation 
• Python development for custom software for real time solutions 
• Django backend development for internal tools 
• React frontend work to add new features 
• Automated web testing 
• Pipeline automation for python software

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

We were able to offload React work from our team with the Azumo resources which helped us reallocate our internal resources to critical internal projects. We have been able to move in and out resources for different needs (automation, pipeline updates) as we needed based on short term milestones.

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

Their project management team is in constant communication with me to provide updates from their side and check satisfaction on our side. They are very responsive to requests for new resources or modification as needed based on business needs.

What was your primary form of communication with Azumo?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

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

Azumo has been extremely flexible which helps a startup like us. This flexibility allows us to tackle new and differing priorities as the business needs. Each individual is vetted on their side, and then we are also able to meet with that person to ensure it is a good fit.

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

Azumo has always been responsive for any issues brought up. They address the issues appropriately and immediately.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am a manager at Washington STEM

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

ashington STEM is a statewide, education nonprofit leveraging STEM for social change, removing barriers to credential attainment, and creating pathways to long-term economic security for systemically underserved students.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Azumo to accomplish?

• Create an online calculator to help users determine the feasibility of a child care business.

SOLUTION

How did you find Azumo?

Online Search

Why did you select Azumo over others?

Good value for cost

How many teammates from Azumo were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

Azuma designers worked with us to create an easy to use interface. Then their developers made sure the data was in place. They worked with us through multiple iterations and were very responsive to updates we requested. We now have an online calculator we can share with our community to help users understand the inherit costs involved in opening a child care business in Washington state.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

• We have a final draft of the calculator URL.

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

We had frequent communication from a project manager who made sure any questions were asked or answered in a timely way.

What was your primary form of communication with Azumo?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

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

Their team was enthusiastic and delivered what they promised on time. And they easily responded to all our questions and changes throughout the process.

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

Not that I can think of.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the Product Lead at an AI-powered health screening solution that gives you a way to monitor your team’s health every day — so you can have peace of mind. With us, businesses can easily screen their employees, visitors, and guests for their health before they come to work.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

We were looking for a reliable partner to help us build our health screening platform. Azumo came in with unique offerings and quickly deployed a pod of frontend, backend, and QA engineers. They helped us build a scalable and secure platform.

SOLUTION

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

They came in as a reference from one of our advisors. After multiple project discussion and capability assessment calls, we found Azumo as the right parter for us. The biggest factor that went their way was their nearshore team that was right in our timezone.

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

Azumo was responsible for the end to end development of our platform. They handled project management to a certain extent, implementation, and maintainene. They stack we agreed with was Node, React, and AWS.

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

There were 5 people on the team. A partial BA/ PM, TL, 1 Frontend Engineer, 2 Backend engineers, and 1 QA.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We were able to launch our platform in an agreed timeframe and within the set budget. Our solution was highly scalable and secure. Azumo designed the architecture in a way that the platform could comply with relevant needed compliances.

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

They used Jira as the project management tool. Slack and Google Meet was mostly used for day to day communications. The team was responsive and in our own time-zone. This helped to launch the platform in time.

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

We found their responsiveness and time-zone alignment as the key factors to success. Also they have a pretty streamligned project management process in place which ensured timely deliveries of the features. The FO assigned to us was a key in project success.

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

They are a very good and professional team. We didn't see many areas of improvement, especially in our case.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the President, COO of a technology company that specializes in providing a Medicaid workflow solutions.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Azumo?

To supplement our internal development staff to support break fix and project development of our internal SaaS based software solution.

SOLUTION

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

They were a referral from an employee that had worked with them in the past at another organization.

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

As the outsourced development team, we were assigned a project manager who coordinated all the work assignments, deliverables and sprints for the development and break-fix work alongside our internal project manager. they attended daily stand up meetings, utilized our systems and acting as if a full time employee of our company.

Describe the recruitment process in detail.

We worked with their CTO to provide details on the qualifications and experience and then they built the team to support us satisfying the requirements.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We were able to clear a 3 year backlog of tickets with their support and complete 2 major client implementations within the client timelines

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Seamless as their project manager ensured that the team members were being directed internally while working with our team throughout the day to ensure deliverables were being met.

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

Their ability to fit so well within the team and our company culture is impressive.

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

continue to look for ways to bring on new talent and combat the competitive space they are in.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am a systems engineer at a biomaterials startup. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Azumo?

We had a legacy data system that needed to be modified and repaired. The project was outside my skill set for the time allotted, so we brought on Azumo to accelerate the project. 

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Azumo repaired our old data system and built a new one; they worked within the legacy system, which was hosted on Heroku, in Python and Flask. Azumo’s team made minor frontend changes as well. They also made some suggestions on how to fix the system internally. Azumo integrated work order tracking, data capturing, process sequencing, and logic generation features in the system. 

What is the team composition?

I worked with three teammates from Azumo, including a project manager and a senior and junior developer.

How did you come to work with Azumo?

I searched online for black-owned software consultants in our region and found Azumo. 

How much have you invested with them?

We invested around $25,000–$30,000 with Azumo. 

What is the status of this engagement?

Our engagement with Azumo was from September–December 2021. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

I don’t have any specific metrics, but Azumo’s new automation and systematic data system to house our time series data is a massive benefit. The system is scalable for future efforts — it’s been a considerable upgrade for us. Their team did an excellent job implementing changes and suggesting how we can continue to make changes and the approaches we can take in the future. We’ve had a very positive experience working with Azumo. 

How did Azumo perform from a project management standpoint?

Azumo used an Asana board to track project management, which they’d crafted from Google Sheets we were initially using. We had biweekly, half-hour calls to discuss the project and had other calls as needed; we also used Slack to communicate. They were very responsive and set realistic project timeline expectations. 

Azumo also provided different cost models — we chose a week-by-week exploratory pricing structure. I did have several questions about how we were being billed between the junior and senior developers, but I never asked them. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

I haven’t worked with many consultants before, so I’m not exactly sure what distinguishes them from their competitors. However, Azumo was very professional, knowledgeable, and had excellent communication. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

We’re pleased with the work Azumo provided, so I can think of nothing for them to improve.  

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I’d advise customers to allocate internal resources to ensure they have enough teammates to coordinate with Azumo to ensure they’re not slowing down Azumo’s work. 

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the founder and CEO of a real-time events application.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Azumo?

I hired Azumo to assist us with our application’s UI/UX and backend development.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We started by providing Azumo with a very low-fidelity mockup. Their team took that to the next level and turned it into a high-fidelity design that investors could look at. They also built the mockup against our application’s prospective user flow. 

Azumo also suggested that we have two frontend developers, one who would use Swift for the iOS version and another who would utilize Ruby for the Android version. We also got a third developer for the backend of the Android app, and they used React. 

What is the team composition?

We worked with around three people for this project: two frontend developers and one backend developer, who also happened to be their CTO.

How did you come to work with Azumo?

They were actually referred by a good friend of mine. Before I went ahead and hired them, though, I fi\rst looked into who they’ve worked with previously. I was very impressed with my findings and by the testimonials of their past clients, so I decided to start our partnership.

How much have you invested with them?

We invested about $4,200.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked with Azumo from September–October 2021. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We’re now looking at getting $300,000 in convertible funding because of Azumo’s high-fidelity mockups. We’ve also landed a pilot program with the College of Marin and are now in the works with The UC System. They did a phenomenal job of giving us that pipeline on top of developing our mobile apps. They went above and beyond and even uploaded the mockups to Anima on behalf of our team, which they didn’t have to do. 

How did Azumo perform from a project management standpoint?

They did amazingly on this front. All of our questions were answered concisely. We did daily scrums to go over our development progress, and we found that we were actually exceeding expectations. The scope of the work was good for six weeks, and they were able to do it all in four. 

Azumo also set up our Jira, Slack, and Figma accounts for no additional costs. We used these as our main project management tools. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

The most impressive part of their service was the end result. They were able to produce a high-fidelity mockup that anyone, especially investors, could play around with in order to better understand our application. It made it easier for people to have a basic comprehension of what the data will look like without having to go through a cumbersome experience. The user flow was concise and ultimately led to venture capitalists and angel investors taking a chance on us.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, I have nothing to say in this aspect. They have an impressive portfolio, and I would know seeing as I’ve worked with numerous tech companies myself. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Azumo knows what they’re doing, so listen to them and allow them to get you to the next step. They’re a very knowledgeable team and they’re worth every dime.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m an executive at a technology startup focused on blockchain-powered workforce management solutions for the entertainment industry.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Azumo?

We were trying to design our initial blockchain solutions through a team’s expertise.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Azumo provided architectural design for us. We met with their team a couple of times to give them a background of our business and what we were trying to build. After that, they came back to us with a proposal, including how long it would take, the steps of the process, and their fee structure. From there, they assigned a sub-team to work collaboratively with us to build the solution starting from the information we provided them. They tagged on a detailed technical document that included the front- and backend blueprints and other instructions on building the product to finish the process.

In terms of technologies, they used Hyperledger Fabric, React, and Flutter.

What is the team composition?

We worked closely with Juan Pablo (CTO), an analyst specialist, and a couple of members from their team that jumped on the calls periodically.

How did you come to work with Azumo?

We found them through a Google search and decided on them due to their positive reviews.

How much have you invested in them?

We spent $5,000–$10,000 with them.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from June–August 2021.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Our internal technical advisors tested their work, and it passed their requirements.

How did Azumo perform from a project management standpoint?

Their project management was great; communication was good, they met every deadline we established, and they stayed on budget. In terms of tools, we used Slack and Google Docs.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their professionalism and honesty throughout the project were outstanding; they never tried to push particular solutions. Also, they were patient in explaining everything to us — we don’t have a technical background, so they translated all of our requirements into technical concepts.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I don’t think there’s anything they can improve on.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Spend more time upfront in the engagement so you can outline your goals. They have great expertise to help you accomplish your needs.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the CTO of Big Run Studios, a social mobile game company in the real money and free to play games spaces. We have a growing portfolio of live games and continue to push hard on innovating in the space.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Azumo?

Our challenge is to grow the business from a game developer to a developer and publisher. While we found success by developing games that are published by our partners, we want to expand on that success by self-publishing, thereby taking a larger portion of the entire business.

We hired Azumo to build out our entire data strategy. We consulted Azumo to determine which technologies to build on, what to focus on in the short term, and what to leave until after proof-of-concept.

With Azumo, we have been able to built out a full, end-to-end data pipeline: data lake, warehouse, reporting, and alerting layers that heavily inform our business decisions and support our user acquisition efforts.

SOLUTION

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

I have worked with Azumo at two game studios now (NCSOFT and Big Run), drawing on their web-engineering capabilities. We already had a great working relationship via the web engineering efforts, and when they mentioned they also had data science capabilities, we decided to try them out.

After a short and very successful trial period, we moved forward with getting more resources and putting our data pipeline wholly on Azumo.

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

We came to Azumo with a high-level proposal of what we were trying to accomplish: we wanted to collect our own end-user analytics, generate reports quickly, and make decisions on that data. Our focus was providing meaningful data to the user acquisition organization, so that they could better target ads. Azumo provided some feedback on initial technologies to use, and we moved forward with an MVP.

With Azumo's help, we moved forward standing up a data lake on S3, an warehouse layer on Snowflake, and a reporting layer on Sisense. Once we were able to make preliminary reports from user behaviour, we moved on to integrating data output from Adjust to help us track campaign data.

Now, we are continuing to tune the pipeline and reporting as we continue to rollout new games.

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

We started the project with a part time data architect and a full-time data engineer. At this point we have two full time data engineers, a part-time project manager, and a part -time data architect.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Progress is very easy to demonstrate, as we now have comprehensive, near-real-time reporting on many of our live games. Previously, we had only a few basic aggregate trends that were out of the box with Firebase. We have, as a business, been able to make important decisions about ad spend and development focus.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

The workflow started quite smoothly as we were all fairly heads down on the different pieces. As we scaled the team (and the games), we hit some rough spots where too many requests from our side were hitting data engineers on Azumo's side (separate requests from product owners, UA, CEO/investors, etc).

This is when we onboarded the part time project manager from Azumo, and now we're back to smooth sailing as he has been able to funnel the requests into a prioritized funnel.

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

The people are great, simple as that. Again, I sought out Azumo having worked with JP at a previous company (NCSOFT), so I knew his team would be a good tech and culture fit for what we were doing at Big Run. They are all great to work with and excellent at their jobs.

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

Azumo doesn't typically work in the gaming space, and so their data team has had some growing pains in learning to see insights specific to game publishing. This is the largest area of improvement I see for Azumo.