CUBESOFT

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

We are an all-in-one business solution for photographers. We provide photo and website hosting services and a platform for selling images.

What is your position?

I'm the product manager. I'm involved in managing the company's various apps for iOS and Android. I'm also responsible for certain features within the web application. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with CUBESOFT?

We have both a client-side app as well as one for photographers. The goal was to achieve parity with our iOS applications by creating a new application for the Android market. 

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement in detail.

CUBESOFT is our Android contractor. They developed both of our Android apps. They handled the project from start to finish.

How did you come to work with CUBESOFT?

CUBESOFT were working with us before I joined, so I couldn't say exactly. A previous employee had hired them.

Could you provide a sense of the size of this initiative in financial terms?

Each project was less than $10,000. But, together, our investment was more than $10,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

The work is almost complete. This is an early cycle project, so whenever we will have more work, we will contact CUBESOFT. I am confident that we will have multiple projects for CUBESOFT in the future, but I can't say for sure.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

General satisfaction is good among our primary users. The ratings are typically four out of five stars on the app stores. It varies with each release, but people are happy. I would say that our applications have been well received, but don't get excellent reviews since people have high standards.

We have almost no downtime on the apps. Any negative user feedback is typically due to hardware changes that occur. If our manufacturers change their hardware, that will cause problems with our software if we don't react fast enough and make the appropriate changes. It wouldn't be fair to blame any negative feedback on CUBESOFT because it's out of their control.

How did CUBESOFT perform from a project management standpoint?

We're generally satisfied with CUBESOFT. They're based in Poland, so the time difference makes the typical release cycle a bit longer because of the back-and-forth communication around changes.

CUBESOFT generally responds very well to feedback and are able to understand our requirements. Talking on the phone is actually rare as a result. Everything is done electronically, and they're engaged well with our bug reporting system and respond to any errors reported in the Android console. I'm very satisfied with CUBESOFT as a whole and like working with their remote team.

What distinguishes CUBESOFT from other providers?

He is the only Android contractor I've worked with, so I couldn't compare.

Is there anything CUBESOFT could have improved or done differently?

I gave them many feature specs using screenshots. An area for improvement would be focusing a bit more on the details of the UI [user interface] and letting me know if something is not possible due to inherent Android limitations as I, myself, am not a developer. This would help my team avoid future problems.