Cobalt Sign

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the chief development officer at VARANIDEA.

What challenge were you trying to address with Cobalt Sign?

We were trying to develop a very complex mobile application, so we partnered with Cobalt Sign to do this.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Prior to development, Cobalt Sign conducted very detailed R&D, which made for about 65%–70% of the work. We then provided them with the original wireframes and a general project scope, and they came back to us with their processes and structure. Once we had agreed on a final scope, their team went into developing a very robust app for iOS and Android. In order for the app to be cross-platform, they did native coding. 

What is the team composition?

We’ve got a crew of seven people working with us full-time. This includes Marco (Software Project Manager) and one of the owners whom I’ve known for a long time. 

How did you come to work with Cobalt Sign?

We came across Cobalt Sign when we were looking for some local development companies, but we did not select them for that past project. However, I reached out to them again for mobile app development because I knew they were a perfect fit for it. They had the skills, capabilities, and security credentials that we were looking for. 

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve invested around $85,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We began working with them in January 2021, but we signed contracts in June 2021. It’s an ongoing project.

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

Thus far, Cobalt Sign has hit everything on time and within budget. It’s just been great because, through their R&D work, we’ve been able to figure things out that don’t exist in our document. It has also helped make the coding of the app pretty straightforward. We’re still in development, but we now have an application that is rock-solid. It’s very smooth and free of any bugs or crashes. 

How did Cobalt Sign perform from a project management standpoint?

They’ve performed extremely well on this front. We have a very dynamic, amorphous process, but Cobalt Sign does a great job of controlling and managing the situation to stay on task at all times. Overall, I have a very positive experience with this team. I’ve seen them interacting with other clients and I’ve heard of customers who are very happy with their work. We just get along very well, and know and trust these folks very much. 

Their team uses Jira, and we hold weekly scrum calls via Zoom to see how they’ve progressed with the R&D components. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

What really stands out about Cobalt Sign is their great camaraderie, positive attitude, and ability to find the right talent. They really get into the weeds because they also produce their own applications and therefore have pragmatic experience when it comes to that process. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, I don’t think there’s anything they can do differently. They’ve really helped us navigate the black hole that exists in this project through their R&D work, and they’ve figured out how to solve some very hard problems.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Go meet with Cobalt Sign and get a feel for them as people. The main thing is to have a clear understanding of your project and of the mobile app development process. Their team will make a lot of great suggestions, so even if you’ve only got a rough idea, they’ll still be able to bring it to life for you. 

Be open, ask questions, and allow them to dig in and verify what you really want to accomplish. You’ll find that they’re very success metrics-driven that way. 

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the vice president of CRIO Vest, an education nonprofit. I’m responsible for the projects developed for the educational sector in cooperation with the labor market and the public authorities.

What challenge were you trying to address with Cobalt Sign?

Our objective was to support the vocational schools to work together with the employers and students. We wanted to develop some tools to support the communication between the students, the tutor from the company, and the teachers from the school during their internship.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We hired them to develop a mobile app to support the cooperation between students, tutors, and teachers. They developed the app for iOS and Android from scratch. Cobalt Sign also was willing to work together with the tutors and teachers to understand what their needs were.

From there, they developed the tool to support the teachers and the tutors to work together and identify the competencies of the students. This means a tool for cooperation to agree on competencies that are established in the curriculum from the school, which aren’t always in accordance with the competencies that the employers need. 

First, they developed this tool to support the negotiation between the tutors and the teachers. Then, there was another component of the app supporting the students during their internship.

What is the team composition?

During the project, there were two people in direct contact with us. There were another three people working on the programming side of the app from their team.

How did you come to work with Cobalt Sign?

I was almost disappointed because, even though we’re working in Romania and have several IT companies and departments at the university, it was very difficult for me to find a company that was willing to work with us. 

By chance, I found Cobalt Sign. They’re a very young company but absolutely enthusiastic. I’m not an expert in the language of the IT sector and they really had the patience to understand what our needs were, which was amazing. They really dedicated a lot of time to meet face-to-face with the people who are going to use the application and I appreciated that a lot.  

What is the status of this engagement?

Our collaboration ran from January 2017–September 2018.

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

I’m very confident with their service and the work they did was excellent. However, I had some difficulties later on because the educational system didn’t find the resources to extend the usage of the tool.

They piloted the tool in several schools in Romania, Germany, Belgium, and Italy and we got good feedback. But, they didn’t further develop the application because of the relevance to the educational system.

How did Cobalt Sign perform from a project management standpoint?

They had a really interesting system to follow the deadlines. Initially, they had a quite clear schedule to implement different steps and followed that. There were just a couple of times we had to change the schedule.

They were flexible and respected the deadlines. Sometimes they accepted extra work when needed. During the pilot session, we realized we needed to modify something and they worked with us. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

They invested time and resources to really understand our needs and know us as a client. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

There is the possibility to transform the idea of a mobile app and to put it on the market to sell it. This may be my fault but I didn’t get any suggestions from them. I never imagined selling it as a product on the market, and in that respect, I would have appreciated suggestions from then. 

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the CEO of Moonsense, a next-generation behavioral data acquisition company. We give enterprise customers the capability to incorporate a greater understanding of user behavior into new and existing applications to prevent fraud, improve account security, and more.

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

We hired Cobal Sign to develop a cross-platform mobile application called Moonsense Recorder. This app is designed to enable rapid prototyping with mobile device sensor data for a wide range of use cases.

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

We learned about Cobal Sign from our network. They have a great reputation and they have been able to deliver on the project greatly exceeding our expectations. The key selection criteria were expertise in using Flutter to develop mobile apps and a track record of achievements.

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

We started with discovery meetings going over a series of mock-ups prepared by us. Arthur and his team have been able to quickly make the right technology choices to implement those requirements. We used an iterative development process and the team was able to make progress very quickly.

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

We engaged with three people while working together. Arthur coordinated the project at a high level and provided technical guidance while Marco and Vlad took on the implementation work. In addition to being an individual contributor, Marco also took on project management responsibilities. This setup made it very easy for us to work together while in different timezones.

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

Within 3 months our app was launched on Product Hunt and ranked as the #3 product of the day. We saw a couple of hundreds of new sign-ups and received valuable feedback from potential customers. https://www.producthunt.com/posts/moonsense-recorder

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

They shine at project management and that's very important in order to work well across timezones. We used email, Slack, Figma, and JIRA to coordinate and collaborate. They can operate very well using an agile working style.

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

They have excellent mobile development skills, and a pragmatic attitude to problem-solving. They possess the right amount of project management given the complexity of the project requirements.

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

We've been super happy to work with Cobalt Sign and we would do it again in the future!

We are a form & survey building platform that helps companies of all sizes digitize and automate their data collection workflows. 

We hired CobaltSign to develop the first iteration of our mobile app. 

There were some specific goals: 

• Make it both for IOS & Android
• Allows users to view their forms, fill them and then check their submissions

We evaluated several companies but we selected CobaltSign because of their portfolio and their unique approach. Initially, it was a quick-to-market app with a limited set of features. The target was to fit in a short timeline (about a month) to launch on the app stores and a fixed budget, so we proposed a cross-platform solution that was a good fit.

A few months after that, we added a set of new features. What was done overall: we created the app design (based on their company branding materials) and implementation, worked closely with their API team, and also assisted in the creation and set up their Google and Apple app store accounts

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

The apps are published online and their download counts are increasing. On top of that, they are used by our customers. 

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

The workflow was very effective, they reacted quickly and were proactive in suggesting solutions.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Their friendliness as well as the way they guided us in choosing the best technical solution.

Are there any areas for improvement?

None that I can think of right now.