Cabot Technology Solutions, Inc

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the IT director for a family-owned chain of independent specialty grocery stores and garden centers. We offer local food products that are hard to find at mainline supermarkets.

For what projects/services did your company hire Cabot Technology Solutions, Inc?

Our managers and buyers needed a custom iOS application to report item movement and sales. This solution would allow our buyers to access this information in an ad-hoc reporting scenario at buying shows.

What were your goals for this project?

We wanted to provide our buyers with the information they need as quickly and easily as possible while on the showroom floor. 

How did you select this vendor?

We originally found Cabot on Elance while evaluating the profiles and portfolios of several different developers.

Describe the project in detail.

Our project involved developing a frontend mobile app for iOS that reported data contained in a web server. Cabot built the CMS [content management system] and developed the app.

What was the team composition?

We were assigned a project manager who documented all of our requirements. The developer also participated in our conversations after a statement of work was established. 

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

Our app is for internal use only. After it was completed, our users found the app to be incredibly easy to use and intuitive, which were some of the main goals of the project.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

We communicated easily with the Cabot team. They provided a portal through which we could track project milestones and completion. The portal also simplified our final assessment of the app and allowed us to work through any remaining issues before completion.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

I was most impressed with how quickly they started working on our project. I never had to wait for the Cabot team to be available. 

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I'm the owner of a corporate wellness business. We work with small businesses to help them develop wellness programs for their employees.

What challenge were you trying to address with Cabot Technology?

We were looking for a company with expertise in app development to build a mobile app for us.

What was the scope of their involvement?

They've developed an app for iOS and Android, which is designed to implement the entire wellness program. It provides education, videos, articles, and transfer rewards that the company is offering. We connect with wearable technology to help monitor the employees' fitness. Everything will be a one-stop shop via the app and the users will be able to track their participation. Cabot managed both the development and the design.

What is the team composition?

Asha Kumar [Project Manager, Cabot Technology] is our project manager and she has a team of 8–10 people underneath her.

How did you come to work with them?

They were recommended to me by a colleague who worked with them in the past. After I talked to them, I felt comfortable hiring them.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent $20,500.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in September 2017 and the project is ongoing.

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

I've been very happy with the results they've produced. The build-outs of the app that they sent us worked well and the feedback we've received so far has been positive. The app looks very professional and well-done, like a product delivered by a big company that has been around for a while. 

How did they perform from a project management standpoint?

They're always quick to respond and very easy to get a hold of. We do Skype meetings every two weeks to go over the progress and we email about everything else.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Working with them has been a positive experience. They've been good at following up to make sure there's clarity about everything.

Are there any areas they could improve?

As far as the most practical feedback, I'd say the language barrier and the time difference were a minor inconvenience (I'm in Ohio and they're in India), but it hasn't been a big issue at all.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Be very clear and make sure you fully understand what you want so that you don't have to go back and make changes to what you originally wanted to be produced.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I'm the QA [Quality Assurance] manager at a software firm with an internal team that does payroll and taxes for homeworkers. 

What challenge were you trying to address with Cabot Solutions?

We were looking for a QA team to do manual and automated testing for us at an affordable price.

What was the scope of their involvement?

The Cabot Solutions employees make up my entire team. They are either doing manual testing on tickets coming in, regression testing, or they are automating and running automation of existing platforms.

We're creating a software that will be used by our in-house clients. Our clients in the field report various issues to us, which is how the ticket is formed. After we verify the ticket is valid, it goes to a development stage and Cabot Solutions writes test cases. When it's fully developed, the ticket comes back to us and we test it - whether it's new features or bugs. 

We also provide to our clients W2s and Schedule Hs for their employees at the end of the year, in all the states including Washington DC. The Cabot Solutions team verifies that all the forms are correct, as every year there are changes, and that everything is working. 

What is the team composition? 

I have a team of 4 people.

How did you come to work with them?

My old boss initially did some research and found them for development work. At the time, I added some Cabot Solutions resources to my in-house team.

However, I had too small a team for the projects we were working on and a new boss offered me a larger offshore team. This was a better choice, as I got 4 employees instead of having a smaller local team.

How much have you invested with them?

We've spent about $750,000.

What is the status of this engagement? 

I started working with them in July 2015, and it's an ongoing relationship.

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

I work hand in hand with the automation team because I'm writing the framework and the common functionality. The manual team is almost completely autonomous when it comes to testing tickets. If they have questions, they always reach out to me.

How did they perform from a project management standpoint?

They are excellent. We had some communication issues early on (they're an offshore team, so that's inevitable), but we worked through those issues and everything went smoothly. We have weekly Skype meetings and use email to communicate.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They work long hours especially when they know something needs to be done. When we're delivering to our production systems at 7pm their time, they're online and ready to help. I never have to ask them, they just do it on their own.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

They seem very willing to listen and take the advice given to them to move forward and improve their process. I have been very satisfied with them. 

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the co-founder of a company that brings new technology to the restaurant industry. We were established in April 2016.

For what projects/services did your company hire Cabot Technology Solutions, Inc?

We needed mobile expertise for our prototype launch, but we didn’t have that in-house. We’ve kept our staff small to focus on growth.

What were your goals for this project?

As a startup, we needed to keep our costs down while bringing our prototype to market as quickly as possible.

How did you select this vendor?

I collaborated with Cabot at a previous firm and was very impressed with their work. After interviewing several staff augmentation firms, we found that Cabot had one of the best prices and that they were willing to meet our specific needs as a startup.

Describe the project in detail.

Once we selected Cabot, we brought on two developers to help us start developing our prototype. We used marvelapp.com to put together an initial design, then their designer took our wireframes and put them into proper assets. After we’d put together a project schedule, they began development of the various screens and backend elements.

What was the team composition?

Initially, we worked with a designer and project manager to convert our wireframes to proper screenshots. We worked with two developers and brought in a QA [quality assurance] resource at various times to verify that the new development was working as designed.

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

We were quite pleased with all of the outcomes of the initial prototype, which was completed in six months. Not only was the project delivered on time, but we also gained mobile experience and knowledge from our collaboration.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

We were quite happy with their staff augmentation. We used Slack for our daily communication and ongoing discussions. We also had weekly calls to discuss progress and any questions that were easier to answer in real time.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

I was impressed with their designer's ability to take our wireframes, convert them to proper screenshots, and quickly convert those to assets that we could load into the project. Cabot was supposed to focus on development, but their designer helped us save money and get a faster turnaround than we could have gotten elsewhere.

Are there any areas for improvement?

There are no areas of improvement that I could think of at this time. We were quite happy with everything.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We provide an analytics solution to help sales and marketing operations and SaaS [software-as-a-service] companies with their planning and execution in terms of how many people they need to hire, and how much money they have to spend on what and when in order to hit their goals that lead to revenue growth. Companies run through the year using the plan as a guide and make course corrections as needed. I’m one of the co-founders and the CEO of sales.

What challenge were you trying to address with Cabot Technology Solutions?

We knew there was a market challenge with this and couldn’t find any other solutions. People were using Excel and other apps. We had done a lot of market research and we decided that we had a good idea of what the product had to be. We have a technical background but aren’t developers. We were looking for someone who could take these goals or requirements and build an actual product.

What was the scope of their involvement?

It’s a SaaS solution and it was built on Microsoft Azure because Azure has a special program for startups that we are a part of. The frontend is .NET and the backend is SQL. They had 3–5 developers working on the project. At one point mid-project, they started to fall behind. We had critical timelines to hit so they had to put more developers on it.

How did you come to work with Cabot Technology Solutions?

We spent quite a bit of time trying to find the right partner. We used a combination of references and Google searches. We found Cabot along other people. We went through almost a 3-month process where we talked to the technical teams. We shortlisted a couple of companies and asked them to give us some background references. We did background reference checks on our own and we found things that we were not very comfortable with.

With Cabot, it was more of a combination of the fact that they worked with us diligently through the whole process, and out of everyone we spoke to, they seemed like the best fit in terms of both technical and non-technical reasons.

How much have you invested with Cabot Technology Solutions?

We spent between $30,000 and $60,000. It was a pretty significant investment. If you look at us as a startup, we are entirely bootstrapped, and a significant amount of our expenditure last year went into building the platform.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in January 2016. The development began May 1^st and the project was supposed to be finished in August 2016 but wasn’t completed until December. A part of the agreement we had with them was for them to provide maintenance, but our real focus at this point in time is getting some more commercial traction before we spend any more time and resources on the project. As customers start embracing the solution, there will be a series of things we would want to do on the product side, and till that point we would re-engage with Cabot.

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

The feedback we got from a lot of the customers was that it’s very intuitive. People love the interface and everything. If I had to be fair, I think I would give credit to my co-founder and my team versus them. I’m not trying to belittle what they did, but most of the heavy lifting was done by my co-founder. Cabot was able to take what we gave them and they were able to implement it.

How did Cabot Technology Solutions perform from a project management standpoint?

We used JIRA for our entire project. We communicated using Skype on a daily basis. Once a week, we would have a call with the project manager and his boss. We would also use Dropbox at times.

What did you find most impressive about Cabot Technology Solutions?

I haven’t had much experience working with developers so I can’t think of anything off the top of my head. What we found is that there are a lot of companies like this, and the moment you start digging into details is when the façade falls off and you find that people are not what they claim they are.

One thing we liked about Cabot was that they were authentic and we trusted them. We knew they were at least trying. That’s a big deal because we found out that a lot of times companies tell you one thing but then they don’t try at all.

Are there any areas Cabot Technology Solutions could improve?

I would say that the time management is something they could’ve done better. They did try to rectify it, but they missed the deadline. Unfortunately, as a startup, it does have an impact on us because we missed our time to market.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Cheers Events is a social and corporate event planning company. We handle award ceremonies, business stage sets, themed events, and anything else the client is looking for. We're also a destination management company, so we can provide transportation to and from airports, museums, and so on. Our themed events can feature actors playing pirates, cops, and so on; they have set designs, props, and lighting. I am the CEO and owner of the company.

What challenge were you trying to address with Cabot Technology Solutions?

We contacted Cabot to create a customized in-house software program for us to write and plan our events. The challenge was that there were many programs out there, but none were a perfect fit. I needed a mix between a proposal generator, an inventory system, and file storage. We basically needed to combine our event organization solutions into one central hub, which could then be used by our planning and logistics teams.

What was the scope of their involvement?

I sent Cabot Technology Solutions everything related to our project, including Excel spreadsheets, intellectual property, and the system we were using at the time, which was a combination of a few solutions including Google Drive, an online calendar, and spreadsheets. Based on these, Cabot Technology Solutions created a custom solution. Cabot's approach was simple and easy to understand. I have been in contact with four people from Cabot Technology Solutions' team, including developers and our project manager. We have a conference call with them every two weeks.

How did you come to work with Cabot Technology Solutions?

I researched different existing applications and realized that a perfect solution would have to be custom built. I looked online for software developers. It all came down to customer service. Cabot Technology Solutions offered a no-risk and no-obligation engagement, as opposed to other providers, where simply getting a quote would have cost me $5,000. Cabot Technology Solutions took my information and provided a rough quote, which would give me an idea of what I was getting myself into.

We had working solutions in place, and we wanted to maintain that standard. There were major things slowing us down within the process, like having to retype a lot of information. We needed some automation, and we showed Cabot Technology Solutions' team our system so that they could see what was and wasn't working about it.

I never considered local options, since it was likely that they would be using Indian developers anyway. The choice was ultimately based on the developer's ability to understand what I was asking for. Mike George, Cabot Technology Solutions' VP of global sales, is a good bridge for the language gap. Whenever I had a technical problem which I couldn't relay to the people who were actually coding, he was able to step in and understand both sides well.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Cabot Technology Solutions at the end of 2016. We have completed 70% of the work. We've finished the foundation, but we're working on smaller quirks in the system. We plan to go live with the system in the summer of 2017, when our slow season starts, and populate the program by October when the busy period starts.

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

I won't have any metrics until we've gone forward with the program, but I know that the solution will end up being a cost effective choice for me. If anything, simply being able to roll out proposals faster will be helpful.

How did Cabot Technology Solutions perform from a project management standpoint?

We mainly work with events suppliers and hadn't had any experience with companies like Cabot Technology Solutions. They've been great in terms of responsiveness and delivery times. They were always available and able to keep up with the changes. On the phone, there is a sincere tone and willingness to take care of the customer. There were a couple of issues and deliveries which we needed to modify, but Cabot Technology Solutions always resolved them well. There's never been a case of their team being resistant to accommodate our requests.

We used Skype, Teamup Calendar, and a few other applications for communicating with Cabot Technology Solutions, including screen sharing software.

What did you find most impressive about Cabot Technology Solutions?

This was my first foray into developing custom software, so I don't have a comparison for Cabot Technology Solutions, but I do have a lot of knowledge in working with suppliers for various aspects. Their team is way above average in general. Cabot Technology Solutions has gotten back to me in a timely manner, and they're very fair with pricing when it comes to unexpected situations. I understood that I couldn't know what to expect from a contracting job like this, and Cabot Technology Solutions made it a point to confirm this. There were going to be some changes which would end up costing more, and they were upfront about that.

Cabot Technology Solutions was also willing to accept that the cost of doing business involves putting in some work up front during the proposal process. Certain other companies weren't willing to do that. That was a major selling point for Cabot Technology Solutions.

Mike George has stood out through responsiveness and responsibility. It was good to know that he was available for difficult situations. I would highly recommend Cabot to anyone who has a custom software need.

Are there any areas Cabot Technology Solutions could improve?

Training developers to be more engaged with customers would be an improvement. People who code are wired differently than sales people, and I don't know if it's possible to improve the communication with them, since, beyond the language barrier, they have a different way of thinking. They're very knowledgeable in their field, while I'm not, so there's a learning curve for both sides. I've had to learn certain keywords and to be specific. I'm sure that this comes up a lot, and it's why Mike has to stay involved. That's the only negative from Cabot Technology Solutions' side, and it's not really a negative. I didn't know any better myself.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We are a United States-based firm providing specialized database administration services to Fortune 1000 companies. We have been in business for the last 5 years. I am the CEO.

What challenge were you trying to address with Cabot Technology Solutions?

We needed to enhance our web presence. 

What was the scope of their involvement?

We engaged Cabot for website work, including adding mobile capabilities as well as SEO [search engine optimization], content marketing, and Google pay-per-click.

How did you come to work with Cabot Technology Solutions?

We found Cabot through a referral, but we also made Google searches.

How much have you invested with Cabot Technology Solutions?

The cost of our engagement with Cabot was between $10,000 and $15,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked with Cabot in 2015 during a 3-month period.

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

Our project was successful. Cabot's team went above and beyond and showed an obsession for customer success. Cabot was willing to do whatever we asked for.

What did you find most impressive about Cabot Technology Solutions?

Cabot has been a great team to work with. I would definitely use them again, and I highly recommend Cabot to anyone in need of a technology partner.

Are there any areas Cabot Technology Solutions could improve?

I can't think of anything.

What tips or recommendations could you share that might increase the likelihood of success with Cabot Technology Solutions?

I have nothing specific to recommend. Cabot has a well-organized approach to engaging and onboarding customers, so if a client follows that process, they will be in good hands. 

Please describe your organization.

Our company allows women to book in-home or on-location hair and makeup appointments from a network of vetted freelance professionals.

What is your position?

I am the CEO of the company.

What business challenge were you trying to address with Cabot Technology Solutions?

We launched in 2013 with a website. When we first launched, we were really the only business of its kind. Nobody else was really trying to be an Uber for beauty service delivery, which is kind of how this market has evolved. As the market became increasingly crowded, it moved towards being almost entirely app-based, and there were a ton of articles being written about the space pretty much exploding. There were companies coming out of the woodwork from all around the country, trying to be an Uber for beauty service delivery.

We're more kind of an Airbnb. We're less on demand and more of a marketplace. We realized quickly that in order to be included in the buzz we needed an app for iOS, given that most of our users for our target market have iPhones. So, there were articles coming out, and in order to meet the deadlines and be included in some major publications, we kind of needed to checkbox that we had an app. We engaged Cabot to help us with that project.

Please describe the scope of their involvement in detail.

They did iOS development for us, but they didn't do any design work.

How did you come to work with Cabot Technology Solutions?

We found them on Elance. We had worked with offshore teams before, we had worked with full-time employees, freelancers, IT [information technology] as a shared service. We really experimented with a number of different IT service providers in our short two-year history, and we had actually been burned before by an offshore team, so I was a little wary to start the process again. At that point, we did have a full-time CTO, but he didn't necessarily have specific iOS experience. We realized quickly that outsourcing this specific project would be our best way forward.

I spent a lot of time vetting potential service providers. I think I probably interviewed about 15 or so, after they passed my initial screening. To me, the most important thing was speaking to past clients, to make sure that they had actually delivered the work that they had shown me in their track records that they had delivered. For me, communication was also a really big thing. It was pretty easy to tell who had the technical chops, but for me responsiveness and communication were as important as the actually ability to execute.

I had worked previously with a development team in India that had really oversold me on the customer service side of things and ended up really dropping the ball when it came to actual service providing. They would schedule meetings purposely, with an appreciation for the time difference, on their schedule. Even though I was the client, I was meeting with them at 2 a.m. in the States, and it was because they really didn't prioritize me at all or cared much about the client experience. That was important to me, speaking to past clients of the potential service providers I was considering, and making sure that customer service was important.

Could you provide a sense of the size of this initiative in financial terms?

I think it was around $5,000, if I remember correctly, definitely less than $10,000. We were very much a bootstrap company and, at that point in time, a team of three.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them about 15 months ago, and the project has been completed. I would certainly work with them again. It was a very self-contained project. Our main focus has been and continues to be the website itself, and the cross platform integration is very much in focus for us now, so we really want to nail the desktop experience before further massaging the app experience. If it did come to having to farm out discreet pieces for our various platforms, I would certainly engage Cabot again.

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

I don't really have any metrics to quantify the success of the projects, but I would say they delivered the exact agreed scope of the project. For them, a lot of it was execution based. We had designs already from a design team that we engaged, and our CTO was essentially handing over the APIs [application programming interfaces] to be translated to the app. Not that there wasn't room for error, because there certainly was, but they were essentially executing very specific plans. They did exactly what they said they would do. Any feedback on design would be unfair to contribute to them because they didn't design the user experience, or the interface or any of that.

How did Cabot Technology Solutions perform from a project management standpoint?

They were truly top notch. I was really impressed with especially Shareem. They were incredibly communicative and timely. I know that especially with technology and development, sometimes it's very hard to give deadlines. You almost don't really know, until you really get under the hood, how long something can take, but they were very good at making estimations that were satisfactory and that they were actually able to deliver against.

We had a phenomenal experience. We used email, Skype, and G-chat to communicate. They always felt accessible and available, even though we had a huge geographical distance between us. Especially when you're a bootstrap company, and $5,000 is a ton of money to you, it's nice to feel that it's being taken seriously on the other end, too.

What distinguishes Cabot Technology Solutions from other providers?

I think Cabot Technology Solutions's communication skills are truly top notch, the best that I've come across, and I've worked with a couple and I've considered working with several. By far and away, Cabot has stood out as a company that really knows how to project manage, to work closely with their clients, to reassure their clients, and make their clients comfortable with working remotely. I think that's a scary undertaking for a lot of startups. You're trusting somebody with your baby, and you're paying them what can feel like a ton of money without ever seeing them and without every meeting them. I think that Cabot makes that as non-scary as possible, I guess.

Is there anything Cabot Technology Solution could have improved or done differently?

This is a tough one, but I know that we ended up having some technical glitches. Our app is appointment based, and the clock was set to some random time zone that ended up causing trouble. To make a very long story short, it was probably something that they could have accounted for. It certainly was a very minor thing, but not explicitly called out in the scope. This is something that I had to get used to, working with any freelancer, especially offshore freelancers. You need to be so specific and direct in your instructions.

Cabot is good at taking instructions, but they might not necessarily go beyond in terms of thinking what is outside of what this client is telling me. It's hard as a client, especially if you're nontechnical, to think of all of the things that you have to think of and account for that go into an IT project. Cabot is a really good task taker, and they're really good with instructions. There were some bugs that resulted from them not really pushing to think, "What has this co-founder not thought of, as a nontechnical person, which could potentially cause errors later on?"

Please describe your organization.

We are a small Danish development bureau that focuses on developing value-added mobile solutions and exploiting the potential of the mobile platform by utilizing new and existing technologies.

What is your position?

I'm a partner at the company.

What business challenge were you trying to address with Cabot Technology Solutions?

We were developing a quiz application. In the face on the European financial crisis, we looked at alternative solutions in order to stay competitive and to stay ahead in the market. At first, we had to offer more competitive prices on our projects due to the downsizing of development projects in the Danish market. We looked through various online sourcing markets and posted a project on one of them. Cabot responded, not as first mover, but as best mover, and we saw that they were the best firm in terms of communication, understanding, insights and maintaining a balanced sales approach.  

Please describe the scope of their involvement in detail.

We started with a concept project, testing Cabot's development skills, project management, and QA [quality assurance] on a smaller quiz app project. That went well and the projects thereafter became larger in scale.

Could you provide a sense of the size of this initiative?

The project was in the $10,000 to $49,999 range.

What is the status of this engagement?

The initial quiz app project conveyed to us that Cabot could handle larger-scale projects, ultimately resulting today in the fact that we actually have Cabot as our primary development partner.

How did Cabot Technology Solutions do from a project management standpoint?

The original project with Cabot was very successful, which gave us the confidence to extend our relationship with them for additional projects. On many occasions, they have been extremely accommodating when we have a client that wanted a last-minute change.

What distinguishes Cabot Technology Solutions from other providers?

No matter what technological challenge we face, Cabot Technology Solutions always has a resource within their grasp because of their multiple in-house skills, and because of their great support and availability. Even if the resource had to travel one or two hours to office in non-office hours, Cabot always came through. Cabot never left us hanging.

Please describe your organization.

We are a national rehab hospital in Downey, California. We receive patients with disabilities, and we serve the county of Los Angeles and as part of that we have a big research component. We develop technologies and interventions for improving mobility for people with walking dysfunction, people in wheelchairs, people with stroke, and brain injury.

Throughout the years, we've developed the knowledge base to understand and evaluate people with walking impairment better and a lot of that knowledge base needed to be converted or made into something that can be distributed to interested parties and users easily.

What is your role and responsibilities?

I'm the director of engineering research.

What was your goal for working with Cabot Solutions?

The idea was to develop an app that embodies the knowledge base specifically in gate analysis looking at how people walk normally as well as how people walk with an abnormality and impairment. Our center has been working in that area for the last 45 to 50 years. We've taken that information and implemented it into a mobile app that can allow a student or clinician to learn the basic components of walk gate.

We partnered with the developer and this was part of a research grant that we had gotten to develop these things. The developer worked with us in implementing this app, which consists of the identification of all the faces of gate and multimedia assets that show the basic component of gate. We were able to release the app a little less than three years ago. We've worked on another version that has more content and it facilitates analysis of impaired walking in addition to normal walking. We're in the process of releasing that now.

Please describe the scope of their work.

It was mobile app design and development and implementation and release. The mobile app is for iOS and Android.

What was your process for selecting Cabot Solutions?

I found them through Elance. I decided they're pretty good, and I stayed with them.

Can you give a sense of the size of the initiative?

It was from $15,000 to $20,000.

When was the work completed?

The second phase is going to be completed in the next week or so [July 2015], but we have two more phases to add.

Do you have any statistics or metrics on the project?

The results are less measurable.

Are you satisfied with their performance?

Very satisfied. They're very prompt. They have grown and their capacity to get quick projects done has improved dramatically since 2013. We began the engagement at that time. 

Their staff seems to be more experienced. The technology changed, and they've been able to keep up with it. They do a very good job of troubleshooting. They seem to be very responsive.

They created this document for me that describes all the work plans. That was very helpful. 

I sent them the use case document, and they turned that into a more formal document. I don't know if that's standard procedure or if that was extra. That was very thorough, and I believe is rare with offshore firms.

What differentiates Cabot Solutions from other partners?

Cabot Solution seems to go beyond coding. They take interest in the needs of the customer. Cabot seems to do their research beyond just a typical group that implements. They went beyond what I would have expected.

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

We started with iOS and then we also did the Android app and it seems like two years ago it was much more straightforward for Cabot to develop the iOS applications. Now, it seems the table has turned. It seems Cabot is much more adept at doing Android.

I would have liked to be able to implement the app into a tablet, and they seemed to be restricted just because of the requirements. Back then, it took more effort to program or to build the app into different Android platforms. They were going to charge me more for that. I think technology now would allow them to accommodate more devices. The app that I worked with them on is only designed for the smartphone version. They could easily have implemented it into a tablet, which is much more popular now than two years ago. I don't have anything else specific, and that feedback is relatively minor.

Programmers come in and out and one thing that I found positive with the turnover was that there was always one person there that I can turn to. While they may have gotten new people or people have transitioned out, it was good to keep in contact with them. 

From my end, I would have worked more on getting all the assets that I needed to get to them ahead of time. There were delays in completing the app because of us. We did a fair amount of the graphical design. I think that would have contributed to the delays.