Blocshop

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the director of new business for an ERP systems manufacturing company called Asseco Solutions. Our products are primarily focused on SME and enterprise-level companies.

What challenge were you trying to address with Blocshop?

We were looking at ways to provide value to our existing customer base and technologies that were not part of our legacy systems. Not all customers are going to buy these big ERP systems so we wanted to provide customers the option of selecting individual applications they want to apply to their system.

What was the scope of their involvement?

What Blocshop did was deliver a prototype to an approach called domain-driven design. It’s an ERP architecture that breaks down certain aspects of our legacy systems into specific domains.

We believe that customers will only be looking to acquire individual business applications that cover a certain process or processes. Domain-driven design allows customers to make those tailored application purchases.

They traced individual tenants of these standalone business applications that we extracted from big ERP systems and helped us identify ways to integrate the new platform into our existing ERP products. We also received an admin tool so that we could configure our product domains ourselves.

What is the team composition?

We primarily worked with at least nine members from the Prague and Tbilisi teams. They have about four teams in total, and I’ve worked with all of them.

How did you come to work with Blocshop?

Initially, I was working with both Blocshop and another company to have them both deliver a prototype so that I could choose which company had the best overall approach.

One of the reasons why we hired Blocshop was their experience working with Microsoft’s approach. They also had an inspiring agile workflow, and the team understood that we had a limited budget going into the project. They really catered to our situation so that I could bring back the most value to our stakeholders and Board of Directors.

How much have you invested with them?

We invested approximately €150,000 ($180,200 USD).

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from January 2018-August 2018.

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

Blocshop showed us that it was possible to break down these individual applications in a manageable and agile way. We’re a 30+-year-old company supporting these massive old products, so we didn’t have the flexibility to get it done. They had the expertise and experience that our internal team didn’t have.

The way Blocshop worked was totally refreshing. They really helped me get the most value I could bring to the stakeholders on the board. They’re all happy people who are part of a happy company culture and contribute beyond what’s required of them.

How did Blocshop perform from a project management standpoint?

It was a six-month project that was broken up into two-week sprints. At the end of each sprint, we’d review their deliverables, flesh out the value, and identify what made sense for us to continue working on.

For the Prague team, we met up with them face to face since their office is just a 10-minute commute from ours. We connected with the Tbilisi team via conferences in Zoom and Slack for project communications.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We were impressed with the turnaround times. They always delivered what was promised on time and on budget. Their creativity and flexibility allowed them to provide additional support that wasn’t originally part of the scope. I believe they genuinely enjoyed the challenging aspects of this project and were interested in solving them.

They also have a diverse set of skills that they’ve cultivated so that they can appeal to a larger potential customer base, so there’s a lot of value to find with them.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I can’t really think of anything because we probably wouldn’t have continued if we were unhappy with the way they worked. Their coffee could be better though.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I would encourage people to understand the value proposition that Blocshop has. You’ll be getting a good, solid, and dedicated team that’s not going to fluctuate on you. Try to appreciate the fact that you’ll be getting a stable core of developers. You’ll basically be hiring an extension of your workforce.

If you’re looking to develop cloud-based applications or migrate some of your business systems into the cloud, they have the knowledge for it, and they’re relatively agnostic which means they can adapt and push up to Amazon or Azure seamlessly. They can give you a lot of great ideas beyond what you may typically come up with internally.