CleverLabs

Please describe your company and your position there.

We help our customers improve their eCommerce/warehouse fulfillment process and optimize their shipping. I'm one of the founders and CTO.

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

Clever Labs builds new integrations, tools for customer onboarding, reports, and other administrative functionality.

How did you select CleverLabs and what were the deciding factors?

We'd worked with Belarussian developers previously. Our experience was very positive and we liked the value that we got for our money. After evaluating several options, we decided to work with CleverLabs because of their experience with Ruby on Rails framework, and because they have a local representation in Utah.

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

CleverLabs has helped build many part of our platform. Here are a few of projects they've completed: API call logging system - collecting and sending logs into our EFK cluster. Amazon, USPS, BigCommerce, ShipStation, FedEx, PitneyBowes, eBay, Etsy, Konnektive and other integrations Payment systems integrations Onboarding, Reporting and audit UI Shipping labels and scan forms automation. Shipping Adjustments Report, with further performance improvements.

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

We work with five developers at Clever Labs.

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

Clever Labs helped us scale our development capacity quickly and at a price we could afford. They are committed to delivering quality code and are great to work with.

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

Project management is done in the US. CleverLabs developers work on the tasks that we send them. Occasionally we have video calls with them to discuss complex problem. Our local Clever Labs contact coordinates daily calls and code reviews.

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

CleverLabs developers really care about what they do. They ask good questions and provide helpful feedback on the tasks that we send them. They are concerned with quality and always deliver good tests.

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

We are very happy with what we get from Clever Labs. That said, there is always room for improvement.

Please describe your company and your position there.

Through use of technology and automation we make medical and ancillary insurance benefits affordable to small employers. I'm a Director of Engineering and I am with the company since its very beginning.

For what projects/services did your company hire CleverLabs?

CleverLabs helps us build our benefits administration platform from the ground up. They work on pretty much every software development project we have: they augment our on-shore development team.

What were your goals for this project?

The primary goals of Decisely are to build a reliable and secure benefits and HR system and maintain it long term. To do that we had to establish very high code quality standards and robust development process.

How did you select this vendor?

Before we decided to partner with CleverLabs we evaluated 2 other vendors in India. CleverLabs services were a bit more expensive, but with CleverLabs we didn't have to hire a lot of people from the very beginning: they let us scale our development team organically. We started with just one developer, then added one more and over time grew our CleverLabs development team to 8+ people. In our decision to go with CleverLabs this important factor played a role too: I personally know the founder of this company since 2003 (16 years). He used to be my manager at my first software development job and I trust this man could attract the best of the best around him, which is what eventually happened: a huge win.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

The primary application is the benefits administration system: complete with onboarding, enrollment, reporting, EDI and integrations with recruiting system and several payroll vendors. CleverLabs developers helped us build, test and support every part above.

What was the team composition?

We currently employ 8 CleverLabs developers and one QA engineer full time. All of the developers are senior developers.

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

Our software allows our operations to service a large number of small business efficiently, so that we can scale without having to hire hundreds of people. At same time our customers absolutely love to use our software to hire, onboard and terminate employees. This kind of seamless experience would not be possible without the experience and dedication of our CleverLabs team.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

All developers are split into 3 teams - managed by on-shore development/project managers (all are named "Alex" BTW). This arrangement works really well for us, because each smaller team is capable of taking on about 2 decent size projects at a time.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

All of the developers CleverLabs hired are very passionate about their craft. Every day working with them we feel that they care: they love what they do and they're doing their best to build awesome software, so that everybody loves to come to work every day. CleverLabs developers are never shy with their feedback and ideas for improvements. Thanks to them we still love to work on our codebase, it doesn't feel like a 4 years old product - it still feels brand new. Their written and spoken English skills are very impressive too: all of them are great communicators and it is never a problem to talk to them, even though their first language is Russian.

Are there any areas for improvement?

There is not much they could improve or I can't think of anything right off the bat. One potential area for improvement is their work day schedule. CleverLabs developers are allowed to come to and leave office at any time: as long as they put in roughly 8 hours of work a day. Although we would love for them all to come and leave at about the same time - we never feel lack of availability. It feels like these guys are always ON. In most cases we get instant response any time of the day. :)