Creole Studios

What was the scope of their involvement?

Creole visited us at our office in Kenya, where we provided them with a simple framework, and discussed the challenges we were facing in regards to what we wanted to build. We provided spreadsheets with the names of our clients, along with floor plans of the houses we were building, in order for them to get an idea of what we really wanted.

They developed a CRM system that can tell us what we need, in terms of construction site materials, with the click of a button. We are also able to use it in order to determine the amount of labor we’re supposed to bring for particular projects. We can see the number of empty or vacant houses for sale, along with the amount of money we can expect to receive. The system has different areas for assignments, construction, and sales.

What is the team composition?

I’ve interacted with the CEO, the COO, and their head PHP coder.

How did you come to work with Creole Studios?

We were looking for a company that would give us a custom solution, not an already ready-developed system. Through a discussion with them, we saw they had fair prices, and that they could deliver within promised timeframe. If we had any issues, like bugs in the system, we felt that they would address those in time.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent between $25,000-$50,000 so far.

What is the status of this engagement?

We’ve been working with Creole Studios since May 2017.

What was the scope of their involvement?

One of the projects is a combination competition website for a music company. We work with Creole on their requirements.

There are multiple templates and themes. They can do something promotional for the artists, singers, or their songs. Or they can create a mini competition for users to participate in by logging in with Facebook and submitting images. They can also submit a YouTube or Muse video so users can vote for them. There’s a search feature and filters for popular items or most votes.

On the backend, they can also fill out an artist profile, display the artist’s album or chat through the pages. People can set the competition start and end date in the backend and decide who is actually the winner. They can also locally export a CSV file to analyze or make a record for the music company.

Creole does the whole flow. They create wireframing for the whole project, finalize the design, and do the coding. We are having further discussions for add on-features, for instance, integrating posts with Facebook or Instagram.

The second project involves Stripe payment integration. It’s a custom solution for an e-commerce site. I’ve also asked them for quotes on a few other jobs that are pending our clients’ decisions.

What is the team dynamic?

They assigned at least 5–6 people for this project. There was 1 project manager leading the whole project, 1 frontend programmer, and 1 backend programmer. There are different people for wireframing and design as well.

I talk with 1 of the directors and the CEO on handling the project, because they care about this brand. They put more effort on this project.

How did you come to work with Creole?

They reached out to me 1 ½ years ago through email or LinkedIn. We had a discussion and I asked them for their portfolio to view the details. At that time, I was looking for different companies for outsourcing and I did some comparison. I thought they were suitable to work with.

Before our first project with them, I had a friend who needed mobile app development, which our company doesn’t do. I talked for a while with one of Creole’s directors and thought their advice was good, so I passed them on to my friend. They created the app, and my friend said the whole flow was very smooth. That’s why I decided to try them for the project for the music company as well.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent $5,000–$6,000 for the music project, and the total cost for payment integration with Stripe was about $6,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in June 2017 and the work is ongoing.