CST

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the founder, owner, and investor of a startup organization in Bulgaria. We’re developing a tournament administration platform for footgolf and golf.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

My background is in professional golf management and the hotel industry. I had the idea for the platform so I engaged with CST to build it.

What was the scope of their involvement?

The CST team didn’t know much about golf, so I educated them on how the game is played and how results are recorded. They designed the platform from a technical point of view, based on my explanations of how it needed to function. At the beginning of the engagement, we spent long hours on the phone to discuss specifications and requirements. 

The platform exists as a web-based and hybrid mobile application. They develop it in Python and other state-of-the-art technologies. We chose to develop it as a hybrid because it would be easier to make it work properly on a wide array of devices.

What is the team composition?

We’re working with five people from CST comprising three developers, a project manager, and the company owner.

How did you come to work with CST?

They were referred to me by a friend in Switzerland who’d worked with them.

How much have you invested with them?

The cost so far is nearly €180,000 (approximately $215,000 USD).

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with CST in April 2015, and the platform went live in 2018. It’s a never-ending project though, so our collaboration is ongoing.

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

We found out that there’d been a misunderstanding after the first three months, but we resolved it. They’re quite fast-thinking, and they’ve since become knowledgeable about golf platforms. We’re tracking the usage of the platform, getting more and more people in, and starting to scale.

How did CST perform from a project management standpoint?

We’ve become good friends over this five-year collaboration, and we trust them. They think more or less as though they’re the project owners. Their team fully understands what I want and where I want to go. They provide great input on how to do the work in the most efficient manner, without overcomplicating things.

Their work is professional, and they stick to the deadlines and budget. We know exactly where we are with CST. I’ve never met them in person. Everything has been done over Skype and Zoom.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’re flexible, trustworthy, straightforward, and honest. It’s easy to talk to Angel (CTO & Project Manager). If we have a misunderstanding, we can clear it up easily.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Developers think like developers, so they’re not too customer-service-oriented. There’ve been times when I asked them to change something like a color or font, and they told me that they couldn’t do it before finishing a technical task. I come from the customer service field, but I can understand how people in the programming field think.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

Clients need to have a clear understanding of what they want, and they need to challenge the development team. There were some misunderstandings because CST didn’t understand the golfing field, so I had to educate them on it.