Clers

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I’m the co-founder and CEO of ASPIRE. We’re building a global human capital tech platform for empowering enterprises to engage, recruit, onboard, and manage top talent with the support of AI analytics, behavioral science, and blockchain protocol.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire TecSynt Solutions?

We engaged them to analyze and design the scope for the MVP, beta version, and full platform. We don’t have tech team in-house and required a well-versed and fully-capable team to take over the project management, tech design, UI/UX, and blockchain protocol.

What were your goals for this project?

Our first objective was to design the full scope for the MVP and beta product, which will allow us to release the platform to the market, onboard our first clients, and start applying the science and tech to match the right talent to the right company.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

We reviewed proposals and analyzed the approach of various companies from all over the world, including the U.S., U.K., India, and Ukraine. We were looking for a company with a deep understanding of the tech space, that had all the relevant capabilities in-house, and that would understand our vision and be able to take ownership of the project as if they were our in-house team.

TecSynt Solutions met all those criteria and more. They were flexible, understanding of our needs and challenges, accommodating, committed, and driven to deliver the best possible solution in the most cost-efficient way.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

They designed the entire SRS document, all user stories for the MVP and beta version, and completed all wireframes. Additionally, they helped us assess partnerships with third parties for additional features such as invoicing, payments, assessments, etc. They designed, completed, and implemented the ASPIRE blockchain demo and designed the necessary smart contracts to allow us to test the flow on an Ethereum test network.

What was the team composition?

They assigned a project manager with industry relevant experience, which was a huge bonus. We were also assigned a business analyst, a UI/UX designer, a blockchain engineering lead, and a support team.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any information that demonstrates the impact that this project has had on your business?

We are ready to start coding the product based on the specifications and various analyses that their team prepared. The demo they delivered has helped us demonstrate the blockchain’s functionality. We now have a wide range of documents explaining our tech and application in detail, which we can use to present to potential investors and clients.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

Project management is excellent. We have regular team meetings as well as ongoing communication via different channels such as Skype, email, and phone calls. We also have access to their internal project management tool.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Their communication, creative and proactive approach to identifying solutions, and ability to understand our problems stand out. They also challenge us on concepts and display a great level of flexibility both in terms of delivery and costs.

Are there any areas for improvement?

There’s not much we can see that could be improved at the moment. In hindsight, we could’ve developed a quick demo sooner of the product based on our specs to show it to potential investors and clients, but their work has been great.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the founder of OneATM, which is a small marketing agency.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with TecSynt Solutions?

I was an employee of another company when I worked with TecSynt. We needed a website update for a specific flow to attract more clients. We also needed to upgrade our app, which had several serious crashes that our internal team couldn’t fix.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They made several major updates within the website and app in order to fix existing issues. Unfortunately, I am unable to disclose any specific technical information.

What is the team dynamic?

We worked with a product manager as well as 4–5 people on their team to accomplish the task. The process was quite good as we had worked with them over 4–5 months, and they finished a lot in that period.

How did you come to work with TecSynt Solutions?

We are in the same city. I received referrals from friends who work at another company.

How much have you invested in them?

We had spent below $30,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in June 2016 and finished the project in October last year.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The main metric would be the speed of the website as well as the quality of work on specific scripts. Since the update, they’ve started to work three times faster. The quality of work on the mobile app is another metric because TecSynt’s team was able to upgrade it for us.

How did TecSynt Solutions perform from a project management standpoint?

It wasn’t as good as I would have wanted, but it wasn’t bad. We mostly communicated through Skype, JIRA, Basecamp, Trello, and Slack.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their specialists suggested ways of improving certain areas that we hadn’t paid attention to, which was a big surprise for us. Their price was also impressive, as we’d expected to spend more money for the results we got.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Communication was good, but we had a problem with one specific person who occasionally didn’t understand the things we needed. We changed over to another person, and it was good.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am a technical project manager for Guzman y Gomez, a chain of Mexican restaurants in Australia. We have 94 restaurants—80 in Australia, 6–7 in Singapore, and 3 in Japan. We are expanding aggressively, with a new restaurant being opened every three or four weeks.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with TecSynt?

I have been working on the development of an app and its technical support infrastructure, including APIs and the various technologies we need for keeping the web and app ordering system up-and-running. 

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

TecSynt was brought on as our primary app developer. We had an existing web app, based on which they wrote native iOS and Android versions from the ground up. It’s an order-ahead app which gives users the ability to browse our menu, purchase from it, and make payments. Orders are sent to our location. Our API interacts with the point-of-sale system, sends orders through, and allows users to walk straight in and pick up the food.

There is also a loyalty function which works with in-store purchases as well. Users can make profiles and accrue points, which are held by our point-of-sale system, Oracle MICROS. We have a middleware API layer which the app talks to.

At the moment, apart from the teams which deal with our point-of-sale system, which doesn’t really touch on the app, all of our development is outsourced. We have different teams for Android and iOS, QA, API, and web development. It’s a big hodgepodge, and it has changed over time. We adjust as we need to.

How did you come to work with TecSynt?

We found them on Upwork. They were engaged by my boss slightly before I started. There was a shortlist provided to us as Upwork enterprise customers. We went through a series of interviews and chose TecSynt. Their owner is an awesome person. He’s lived his whole life in the digital space and gets it on a certain level, which is definitely the case for TecSynt as a whole. They’re a tech company rather than a sales organization.

How much have you invested with TecSynt?

The cost of TecSynt’s work has been around AU$250,000 [$186,000] for the first order of the project. They assigned 6 full-time developers for three-quarters of a year. We maintained this configuration until the first launch of the app. We have moved down to using 2 developers.

What is the status of this engagement?

I started working with TecSynt in March of 2016, but I believe they had been engaged prior to that. The app was launched in August and has been running ever since. We’ve just released a new iteration of the app, and there have been regular releases since the beginning. TecSynt continues to work on it in an ongoing capacity. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The apps developed by TecSynt are being used extensively, with thousands of transactions going through them, amounting to tens of thousands of dollars every day. People are using the app for convenience, so, if the app wasn’t of a particular quality, they would get mad at us. We’ve managed to develop a nice and stable product which works well.

We have over 200,000 active users in the loyalty program, and there are around 6,500 daily active users across both platforms.

We use other metrics to judge the app. We have 99.5% crash-free users across the last 3-month history of both apps. We have an internal rating system with average scores addressing a range of things like in-store and in-app experiences. The app regularly scores around 4.1 or 4.2.

How did TecSynt perform from a project management standpoint?

We had internal project management, so we didn’t use this service on TecSynt’s end. We have worked with their project managers, though, as well as with the rest of their management. We’ve never really had any problems; any time we needed to work something out, we stepped down, had a chat, and made a plan. Even when there were disagreements, they were amicably worked out. One of TecSynt’s project managers stepped in quite a few times when we had PMs missing on our side. He proved to be a capable, logical, clever person.

I am working directly with the developers for setting up timelines and the expectations of delivery.

What did you find most impressive about TecSynt?

Leading up to the first launch of the app, there were some extreme time pressures. There was downward pressure on me to get the app out, and we needed to make sure that the first release was right. The lengths that TecSynt went to in order to support that were fantastic. All developers put in an extraordinary numbers of hours, as did the managers. They put the right processes in place to support their people and handle the load. I was very impressed with this, given that it wasn’t really TecSynt’s problem, and they would have had every right to say they couldn’t do it. In the end, it was a success, and I’m forever grateful to them for that.

I also appreciated the malleability shown in building our team. TecSynt found the right talent for our team right away. We’ve had a couple of developers leave on short notice, but TecSynt did a great job of getting back out there and finding a replacement at the technical level we required. Their willingness to support us in changing and adjusting the shape of the team has been great.

Are there any areas TecSynt could improve?

I have found Eastern Europeans to be a bit taciturn at times. We need to drag words out of them now and again, but it’s a relatively minor complaint. TecSynt’s setup is that we interface with the project manager, who then carries requirements back to the technical team. We’re often at an arm’s length, but, because developers are so tightly integrated in our case, we haven’t experienced this problem to a great extent. They could also tell us when their public holidays are ahead of time.