Crombie

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a project manager at an international pharma marketing and digital innovation agency. Our main focus is on the development of 3D technology, augmented virtual reality, mobile apps, among other projects.

What challenges were you trying to address with 4R Soluciones

We just finished a project with them in which they developed the front end and back end of a platform for one of our clients.

What challenges were you trying to address with 4R Soluciones?

We just finished a project with them in which they developed the front end and back end of a platform for one of our clients.

What was the scope of their involvement?

They developed our platform.

What is the team composition?

I’m not completely sure as work directly with the project manager but it should be around five people.

How did you come to work with 4R Soluciones?

They contacted us, I honestly don’t know how they found us, but they were prospecting us for about a year. When a project came up I contacted them and they send a proposal and a budget, we found the price quite accessible. More than anything we really liked how professional their proposal. That made me realize how professional they are and to decide to work with them. 

How much have you invested in them?

We invested $3,000 USD

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in November 2019 and we have continued working with them in other projects.

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

I can´t say anything but good things about them. They’re great, very professional, very fast, and their work is flawless. We’ve had great results and it is just great for us to count on suppliers we can trust. Also, they’re based in Argentina, so we are far from each other but despite that, we have been able to work very closely, we don’t even feel the distance.

How did 4R soluciones perform from a project management standpoint?

We haven´t used any specific tools but they are always on time; they sometimes even deliver the projects early. Their project management has been great.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They are great at everything. If I had to pick something, it would be that they are super fast and they know what they are doing. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

I couldn’t say anything.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We’re a software development agency, working with our own and with external resources when needed. I’m the general manager.

What challenge were you trying to address with 4R?

We’ve been working with them for more than 10 years and normally outsource with them, especially for projects with the LAMP stack. That’s their area of expertise.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We usually work with them solely for stack projects. In these cases, we do the design, and they work on the development. We also supervise the end results of the products. I know they do mobile developments as well, but we’ve never worked on a mobile project with them.

What is the team composition?

There are four developers involved with us.

How did you come to work with 4R?

We went to Argentina with the intention of finding a partner. While there, we interviewed several companies and chose them.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them around 2004–2005, and the work is ongoing.

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

The results are very good in terms of the price-quality ratio. On the projects we work with them, we take care of the QA as it’s not something they’re specialized in. They deliver quality products on time, meeting our requirements and high standards.

How did 4R perform from a project management standpoint?

We create very simple schedules and try to agree on deadlines that work for all of us. Normally we don’t have any problem with them on that side—they tend to be very precise. As for project management tools, I don’t know what they use internally. We use scrums and sprints.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The communication is great—we have multi-channel communication. We place great trust in them as we’ve been working together for so long. Our relationship with them is excellent.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They could develop more expertize in other stacks, but I understand that there isn’t much on those. It’s an idea that could work for them though.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

No, I can't think of anything.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I work at Smedia, which is a development agency that develops custom apps.

What challenge were you trying to address with 4r Soluciones?

We’ve worked with them on many different projects. The most recent ones were mobile applications.

What was the scope of their involvement?

They developed mobile applications using a variety of different tools and technologies, including Symphony, Unit, and Bootstrap.

What is the team composition?

It depends on the project, but around three to six people are usually involved.

How did you come to work with 4R Soluciones?

They came to us asking for an interview. From there, we established a relationship with them.

How much have you invested with them?

$50,000 USD per year.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them around 8 years ago and the work is ongoing.

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

They've worked out really well; our clients are very happy and that’s why we continue having even more projects with them. They're great at communication, meeting deadlines and producing high-quality work.

How did 4R Soluciones perform from a project management standpoint?

We've used Trello and Asana. The communication with the project managers is very efficient. I trust them because they always deliver on time.

What did you find most impressive about them?

With them, everything works. When we receive a final product we can be sure it’s been tested, that it works, and that it will stand the test of time. That's very valuable for me.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the COO of a software development agency based in Argentina. We mainly work with clients in the U.S. but have some in Argentina. We specialize in blockchain technology, internet of things, web development, and mobile app development.

What challenge were you trying to address with 4r Soluciones?

We have our own development team, but sometimes, we have work overloads and need dev support. 4r helps us on these occasions.

What was the scope of their involvement?

One of the projects we did with them involved PHP’s Symfony, JavaScript, and SQL. We also worked with them on a blockchain project using ReactJS, Out JS, MongoDB, and Solidity.

What is the team composition?

We’ve worked with two to four members of their team.

How did you come to work with 4r Soluciones?

I’ve known them for a long time. A friend recommended them five or six years ago, and we’ve worked on several projects together since.

How much have you invested in them?

We spend around $120,000 per year on their services.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them since 2012 and the collaboration is ongoing.

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

They deliver quality work at a convenient and reasonable rate. Plus, they’re very professional and have the right skills for the projects we face. This assures us that the people they propose for a certain position will have the required skills for the specific project.

How did 4r Soluciones perform from a project management standpoint?

They’re good at meeting deadlines, and the person we work with the most has great communication skills.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They have an impressive balance of technical proficiency and management skills.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They could boost the quality of their deliverables by having a more formal QA process.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I currently work as a freelance digital producer for advertising agencies. For the last five years, I’ve specialized in platform development. Now I work in project management and UI/UX platform design. 

What challenge were you trying to address with 4r Soluciones?

My last project with them was at the studio where I used to work. We designed an apartment rental platform for an important real estate company. This company mainly rents apartments to traveling businessmen, and have several buildings in Buenos Aires and other countries. We designed the platform, and they implemented it using a challenging tool called Airtable.

What was the scope of their involvement?

They used a lot of different technologies to build this web platform. They used frontend technologies like HTML and JavaScript for animation and used PHP to connect with Airtable. They also worked with the Airtable code, since it was the structure of the database.

What is the team composition?

It was a team of four throughout the project: three developers and the project manager.

How did you come to work with 4r Soluciones?

I met them in 2010, when they were working for an agency where I also worked. We had a project together, and I liked it. Since then, I’ve had a constant relationship with them across all the agencies and studios where I’ve worked.

What is the status of this engagement?

It started at the beginning of 2017, was implemented in varying phases, and ended at the beginning of 2018.

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

They are committed and dedicated to their projects. Software development is sometimes unpredictable. I have plenty of experience with this kind of project, and you never know how they'll turn out. No matter the setbacks, they are constantly committed to the project. I enjoy working with their team because they deliver great results on every project.

How did 4r Soluciones perform from a project management standpoint?

They're always reachable, and our communication is great. They’re open to adapting to my methodology and collaborating on any element of the project.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I’m most impressed by their commitment and their teamwork capabilities. They are very well-versed in development, and can solve almost any problem I give them.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the CEO/Founder of a software development and web development company that works with clients around the US.

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

We partnered with Crombie for web development, including Wordpress, PHP, React and front-end development. Our goals were to develop projects on-time and on-schedule with our clients.

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

We searched for potential partners through clutch and identified Crombie as a possible partner. After evaluating our options and talking with the team at Crombie we felt comfortable to start working on projects with them based on our common approach to developing software.

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

We usually have kickoff meetings to discuss the project objectives with the team. We then break the tasks down into tickets with detailed information and then we use our standard tools for collaboration and communication, i.e. Slack, Bitbucket and Jira primarily.

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

We have worked with five of the people at Crombie. An account manager, a project manager and three of their developers.

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

Crombie helps us deliver projects at scale and fits seamlessly into our process. They have been responsive and a good partner for us.

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

They request feedback on their team regularly and are very responsive to our needs, whether that is over email, zoom, slack or google chat.

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

They understand what resources we need from a skills and expertise perspective and get what makes us successful as a partnership.

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

There really aren't any areas for improvement at the moment.

Please describe your company and your position there.

BLCK® Creative Intelligence Studio. A world-class, award winner - over the top - Creative Intelligence Studio based in Monterrey, Mexico. Specialized in Branding, User experience, and Social Media. I'm the CEO.

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

The development of a brand new WordPress-based blog platform and connecting the services to the past blog also developed in WordPress. Basically the integration of a new template with new features, new look, with all the past articles from the old blog.

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

The WordPress theme. Crombie was the only vendor that accepted the challenge of working with WordPress.

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

Develop a WordPress theme based on our UI/UX design and our frontend development and connect with the prior blog for our client. Visualizing all past content in the new theme and a brand new set of features.

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

Two people: Lucas (Head of Production) and Laura (Project Manager).

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

The overall result was satisfactory. We had some communications issues in some parts of the project, but the Crombie team was always very professional and on point. Very satisfied with the outcome.

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

In this aspect it was very old school, communication only by email, there was no project management platform to be in control. Sometimes we got lost in communication because of the number of emails.

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

They always find the way to resolve complex situations. No matter what. They worked very well and very respectful with my in-house team.

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

Communication.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the Technical Director of an agency that does work for a number of clients from small to large.

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

We hired Crombie to help us create a front-end heavy website in a tight timeline. This project made use of advanced scroll effect features on top of WordPress and ACF.

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

We had reached out to Crombie before as a potential partner after finding them on Clutch, and had identified this project as a good chance for us to work together.

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

We had a kick-off meeting to show off the comps and animation details. We made use Slack for communication, Bitbucket for the code repo, Invision and Sketch for the designs, and WordPress, Wow.js, and Scroll Magic for the codebase.

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

We worked with an account manager and a developer directly on Slack and in Zoom calls.

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

We were able to drive the project to a succesful completion. We had struggles due to the complexity of the front-end experience which caused us to have to revisit our designs and make major changes. Crombie was responsive and supportive through all of our requests.

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

We had Zoom calls twice a week or as needed, and communicated on Slack as well. We had an initial deadline, which Crombie helped us hit, and we maintained ongoing work beyond that initial launch for further tweaks and work on the site.

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

They had existing knowledge of scroll-based experiences using Scroll Magic, and they were incredibly flexible with our variety of changes throughout the execution.

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

We could've used more help in the scroll effects / motion / animation - getting the 'feel' just right. This was expertise that we were missing ourselves, and could have helped us out on the project. I don't believe this was a shortcoming of Crombie as much as our own lack of experience in creating such involved/advanced experiences previously.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the Director of Technology at a Digital Agency. We offer a full suite of services including Software Development, Branding and Marketing.

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

We had a significant project that had been started. Since we didn't have any in-house developers that can work on this full time we hired Crombie. By doing this we were hoping to meet our milestones and get this launched on time.

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

We contacted our partners for web developers with the VueJS skillset and were able to shortlist 3. After interviewing them, we chose Crombie based on past projects, english communication and time zone.

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

We had a meeting where we onboarded the new hire and walked him through the application. We looked at all outstanding tasks and what needed to be done to ensure the application met its milestones.

After completing some of the milestones our team reviewed the code. The code met all our standards and we were pleased.

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

At the beginning we were given a Project Manager and Web Developer. After a week or so the Project Manager started to fade away and we were able to communicate directly with the developer.

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

We are very pleased with our web developer. He takes part in our meetings and completes all the features. We consider him part of the team.

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

We had stand ups three times a week with the developer where we'd identify the next deliverables and any roadblocks. We used Slack to communicate on a daily basis, Git as versions control and Gitlab where our repositories and feedback lie.

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

They gave us a developer who was able to communicate, use our tools and workflow to meet key milestones on time.

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

None

Please describe your company and your position there.

We are a Digital Production Agency servicing Brands and Creative Agencies across North America.

For what projects/services did your company hire 4r Soluciones?

Ability to flex up and down with staff as dictated by our pipeline.

What were your goals for this project?

Deliver an outstanding website for our agency client.

How did you select this vendor?

Building on our on going relationship with 4R we partners on the WordPress theme development portion of the project.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

WordPress, HTML5, Javascript & CSS Development.

What was the team composition?

Account, Tech Lead, QA from the WAV end and PM, Dev and QA from the 4R team. Highly collaborative.

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

On time delivery. Cutting edge CMS implementation which enabled structured and manage content publishing.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

Very communicative. Clearly understood requirements and managed our local team effectively.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

The ability to develop with quality with very little instruction was impressive.

Are there any areas for improvement?

Lessons learned and advancements to our best practices is core to our business. Our study in delivery on this project has enabled us to refine our approach to web development at scale with a tighter focus on collaboration between teams, specifically in planning development at the component level versus the page level.