Business Automatics JSC

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO at a technology development company. We specialize in custom software and web app development.
 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Business Automatics JSC?

We needed a team to help us build a customized cloud-based payroll system for our company.
 

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Business Automatics JSC developed our web-based platform in PHP with an SQL database. It’s fully secure, and many companies can use it simultaneously. The payroll system features two options for clocking hours at work. The staff attendance monitoring module can link to a fingerprint reader. It sends data through the cloud-based system and generates clear reports on employees’ check-in and check-out times. The platform also stores and prints paychecks and tax forms. 

Rather than building a product for a specific client, we can use the same system for different accounts. Modifying the first version to accommodate an array of client requirements took a bit longer to get right. Business Automatics JSC continues to build more custom plug-ins for our payroll system.

What is the team composition? 

I’m in contact with Michael (CTO/Senior Project Manager, Business Automatics JSC). Our discussions are mostly regarding the requirements and monitoring of the process.

How did you come to work with Business Automatics JSC?

We found Business Automatics JSC on Elance.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent about $20,000-$25,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We’ve been working together since August 2014. The payroll system took a year and a half to build. Our engagement is ongoing. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Thanks to Business Automatics JSC, we now own the only fully cloud-based payroll system in Suriname. The payroll system we built together exclusively links directly to a time attendance hardware with fingerprint reader nationwide. We’re currently selling the system to some clients in our country. At the moment, we have 10-15 companies and 300-400 employees using our software every month. 

How did Business Automatics JSC perform from a project management standpoint?

We used Bitbucket for software management. All the software we’ve developed is stored in a central repository. We use a ticketing system to address issues and track requirements. Initially, we documented most of our communication in a requirements document my company made.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Having been in business for a long time, Business Automatics JSC is a team of highly skilled programmers. I found them very reliable about money. They do all the programming first, and clients pay them when they’re satisfied. We have a very strong working relationship built on trust.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Since many programmers with different skill levels worked on the software in the beginning, not every part of the payroll system is built equally. They struggled at first to find the right resource to assign us. 

Now, we have one specific developer from Business Automatics JSC committed to our project. Due to our teams’ language differences, it can feel challenging to describe our requirements sometimes. 
 

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the executive VP of IT for OneTouch Direct, a contact center.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Business Automatics JSC?

Being a call center, our staff mainly uses a computer telephony integration (CTI) application. Our automatic call distribution (ACD) product—Avaya—calls the CTI app and is routed to an agent. The app is aware of the phone events, so it can answer when appropriate, and the agent can perform telephony functions through the application. The app also displays a script for the agent to read to the customer.

We’d purchased another product to integrate with Avaya 10–12 years ago, but the provider pulled out of North America. We had to choose between building our own solution or spending another $1.5 million on a CTI application. We decided to build our own.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Business Automatics is helping reskin the app’s UI. It’s primarily JavaScript and runs on a Sencha framework, but we’re transitioning it to React.js. They started working on API development, but I moved that in-house because we have an internal developer fluent in RESTful API development. I just wanted to have it closer to home. We also handle the SQL Server database ourselves.What is the team composition?

We’re working with a main developer, who’s been on the project since the beginning, and a junior developer, who was brought on for a lot of the reskinning effort. I trust what they’re doing, and I can go to the main developer if I’m looking for ideas to implement. The junior resource has been doing a great job with our UI’s usability. We had six people between the UI and API projects at one point, but we pulled the API work back to our side.

How did you come to work with Business Automatics JSC?

I found them on a web marketplace looking for offshore teams with experience using Sencha. There weren’t too many people with that knowledge, but Business Automatics was one of them.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent $350,000–$400,000 so far.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Business Automatics in September 2014. The documentation for the current project goes back to the beginning of 2015, and we worked on another project before that. This is a monster of a project, so development is still ongoing. We’ve been rolling out the application to portions of our enterprise over the last year and are now cleaning up some features so we can expand the app's use.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

It’s hard to quantify at this point, but the app is certainly bringing different things to the table; it does certain things much better than the old app. For example, the old app was single-concurrent-call, so if an agent was on a call, they couldn’t answer another one. They could pick it up on the phone, but the CTI app wouldn’t recognize the second call as an event. We’ve built a feature where agents have the option to put the current call on hold and answer the second one. When they do that, it’ll pop in another frame with a different script. The agent can now pop back and forth between calls and scripts.

They’ve also been instrumental in the code promotion process. We’re PCI-compliant, and they’ve been flexible in documenting the change management and promotion processes so I can have evidence for PCI audits.

How did Business Automatics JSC perform from a project management standpoint?

I manage this particular project, and we’ve used Jira from the beginning, We meet almost every morning at 9 am EST for standups, and any exceptions are because I have to reschedule. Business Automatics is always there, ready to communicate. If they have a question or find an issue, they don’t wait for our next meeting to reach out. 

When we push to production, we have to do it during off hours. Being a call center, some of our programs go till 1 am EST, so we have to push code between then and 6 am. Business Automatics is there with us, getting everything done overnight. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

Interestingly, Business Automatics wasn’t familiar with contact centers when we started, so they had to both learn our business—what problem we were trying to solve—and do the development. There was a learning curve, but they came to understand what we were trying to accomplish. They’ve been true partners in the development process.

The biggest thing for me is that they’re collaborative. I’ve worked with other offshore teams in the past, and whatever I wrote on the specification was exactly what I got back, right or wrong. Working with BA is similar to having our own development team down the hall. There’s a lot of give and take, and they suggest different approaches.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, I don’t think there are. We worked out their kinks in the beginning, and now that they know our business they’ve gotten better and better. I can’t imagine asking for anything more. To be honest, Business Automatics is ahead of us now; they’re delivering faster than we can match on the API and QA side. Right now, we’re more of a bottleneck than they are.

Having said that, there are technologies they may want to get into. We’ve had ideas ourselves about introducing AI and voice analytics, but those aren’t in this team’s wheelhouse yet.