DataArt

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a data and operations consultant for Aula. We’re a startup in the education sector that has created a virtual learning environment SaaS product. Partnering with higher education institutions, we provide their education platforms.

What challenge were you trying to address with DataArt?

We had to migrate a large amount of data, but we didn’t have the capability in-house to manage a migration of this size.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Everything was based in Google Suite and the different environments that DataArt needed access to —certain university systems and our systems.

We had quite a strict timeframe of two weeks in terms of when the content needed to be migrated. And the DataArt team hit the benchmark two days before they were meant to.

They were experts in data collection and arranging it. Their analytics suggestions really helped us streamline the process of the project.

What is the team composition?

We worked with a project manager, and then there were eight consultants that worked under the project manager.

How did you come to work with DataArt?

They did a previous project for us that went very well, and we reached out to them when we encountered this specific challenge. Once again, we were very impressed with DataArt’s level of service and the timeframe in which they delivered.

How much have you invested with them?

This project cost around £9,000 pounds (approximately $12,000 USD).

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked with them on this project from March–April 2021, and they remain available if we have questions.

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

It was all about the deliverables for us. We needed the work done by a certain date, and it was done before that. In terms of time saved for us internally, it was around 3–4 working days.

DataArt also pointed out potential improvements in terms of our processes, adding value beyond the task of migration.

How did DataArt perform from a project management standpoint?

Communication happened over email close to 100% of the time, and there was a phone call to kick off the project. The project management was done well. They sourced a team in-house for us over the weekend; our call was on Friday and we started on Monday. DataArt as adaptive and agile regarding staffing.

Throughout the project, the project manager was available whenever we needed him. We were never waiting for work from them. In terms of connectivity, they were very organized. They understood what our needs were.

What did you find most impressive about them?

DataArt’s best attribute was their ability to understand our process and implement what they needed to do from their side. They understood what we needed quickly and put together a team that was fit for purpose. DataArt’s expertise came in handy, and they delivered to a high standard.

They were really easy to train; the whole training took about two hours, which was very impressive. Everybody knew what they needed to do and at what time. Everything was delivered exactly as expected.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Perhaps having resources that can work in more than one time zone would be helpful. All of DataArt’s team members were in one time zone, but it didn’t impact what we needed. This would be my only suggestion, allowing us to address issues whenever they arise.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

DataArt was great to work with and really easy to get a hold of. We would definitely use them in the future.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a program manager for Pharos Data Ltd, an IT service provider in ferry reservation and distribution technology. Products include an API for ferry connections, as well as a booking engine that clients can plug into their website.

What challenge were you trying to address with DataArt?

We took on a new client who wanted to use one of our existing products, but they needed quite a few enhancements to it. In addition, we needed to build connections to new ferry operators through our API. This involved both front- and backend development under a tight deadline.

What was the scope of their involvement?

DataArt provided Java developers for the frontend development of the website. They also provided a .NET developer to help build connections to ferry operators. 

We’ve since had someone from DataArt continuing to work on the project, as we’re constantly developing it.

What is the team composition?

At the height of the project, we worked with two Java developers, a .NET developer, a project manager, and a tester. Over the years, I’ve worked with about seven developers.

How did you come to work with DataArt?

This happened before I joined the company, but I believe they were at a travel fair. My predecessors did some work with them and arranged a proof of concept.

How much have you invested with them?

My company has spent $250,000–$500,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

The initial project was from June 2015–March 2016. Our work together is ongoing.

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

Their work was delivered on time, to budget, and to a very high standard. We now have a product that is easy to maintain and scalable. It’s easy to add new clients and ferry operators to the system.

In the last 12 months, we added a major new client that had additional requirements, and we needed to have enhancements done to the system. It was very easy for DataArt to add an extra resource to help make those changes.

How did DataArt perform from a project management standpoint?

They’re very organized and do well with project management. We work closely with DataArt’s team and have weekly meetings. All work is tracked through Jira.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I’ve found many things to be impressive about DataArt, including their professionalism and ability to deliver. They’re also able to increase or decrease resources as much as needed. I’ve found that all of the developers have an excellent work ethic. They’re very willing to please and add ideas. On top of that, they’re all friendly people.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, not really.

Any advice for potential customers?

Go ahead and work with them.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CTO at Doddle. We build technology for logistics firms and retailers.

What challenge were you trying to address with DataArt?

Originally, we were looking to build a bespoke solution for parcel handling. We then looked to augment some in-house development with a DataArt team to give us the ability to scale up when needed.

What was the scope of their involvement?

DataArt has been working with us on creating the platform. We started with a discovery phase where the team looked at a problem statement we gave them. The output was a set of requirements and a project plan.

We work largely with the JavaScript stack, which includes Node.js, and they built out an Android application for devices with built-in scanners. Currently, we work on a fixed-resources based model where we have allocated resources from DataArt who work in scrum teams with our own resources.

What is the team composition?

We work with 15–20 teammates.

How did you come to work with DataArt?

I’d had previous experience working with DataArt. We looked at a couple of options, but the benefit of DataArt was that we knew them quite well. We knew their stakeholders and that they could distribute their resources around multiple geographic locations, which was important. 

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent a few million dollars.

What is the status of this engagement?

We began working with them in about January, and our engagement is ongoing.

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

Our customers are happy with the solutions we’ve provided them, and the stability of those solutions. DataArt has frequently helped us deliver some of the projects on time and to our customers' satisfaction. 

How did DataArt perform from a project management standpoint?

We’ve had a number of different project managers. It’s been a good balance of continuity and change, and their communication is good. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

The fact that they’ve become culturally in tune with our organization is impressive. DataArt has managed to understand the culture of our organization and adapt to it. We’re a small company, so at our stage of growth, a lot of things change based on our core customers, so we needed to be adaptable.

They understand the importance of clients at certain points of our evolution. They feel like a part of our team as opposed to an outsourced team.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They should stay at the front of the pack in terms of technology. I mentioned that we work with Node.js and React, which are relatively new technologies, and DataArt has been good at finding resources in those spaces. 

However, they could keep their developers at the forefront of those technologies. There’ve been one or two times where it took a long time to find the right resource.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Communication and collaboration are important. Put in the time early on to communicate what you want to achieve and what’s important to you as an organization. Additionally, build the right feedback mechanisms for the shape of resources you want. 

The quicker you can establish communication around exactly what kind of resource you want, the better. For example, give DataArt feedback on why particular candidates don’t work for you.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a product manager for Proactis. We’re a medium-sized enterprise providing an online procurement system as spend management solutions.

What challenge were you trying to address with DataArt?

We could easily hire developers, but it was also easy to lose them because it was a fluid market. We had constant churn. As a result, we initially contacted DataArt to provide stability and long-term work.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We almost exclusively engage DataArt as a source of developers. We mainly worked with junior developers but also had 1–2 senior developers on our team. We had a few QA resources from DataArt work on our projects over the years too. 

Throughout the years, they’ve worked on different applications. The applications existed but needed business-driven enhancements. In other instances, they updated and replaced legacy technology.

Their team also helped us to innovate e-invoicing. They were heavily involved in creating an electronic invoice processing solution. I was also responsible for a catalog management solution. The team from DataArt input a search algorithm using search engines.

What is the team composition?

At the moment, our company works with at least four people from DataArt. Over the years, I’ve worked with about 20–30 different people from their team.

How did you come to work with DataArt?

At the time, our CTO recently joined the organization and previously worked with DataArt at a different company. He said that their team was worth a try.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent over $200,000 on their services. For a few years, we spent £10,000 (approximately $12,900 USD) a month on the partnership.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with DataArt around December 2007, and our engagement’s ongoing.

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

Over the years, we’ve worked with great people from DataArt and have had a positive experience with them; hence, we still work with their team. The fact that we’ve worked with them for many years speaks for itself.

The resources from DataArt have been direct and honest. If they don’t know what to do, they tell us. If there’s a problem, they tell us and then we solve it. Their developers are bright and hungry for challenges. Their worth ethic and enthusiasm are positive traits.

How did DataArt perform from a project management standpoint?

Generally, I directly interacted with small teams. When we had a bigger team, DataArt assigned a team leader who would give us weekly feedback. We also had daily stand-ups with their team. Communication has never been a problem. We’re also happy to be able to track their progress.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They have strong technical capabilities. If our resources don’t know how to tackle a challenge, they’ll find another person from DataArt who will come up with a solution.

Also, they give honest and open feedback. Their team will tell us if there’s a problem instead of trying to hide it.

Are there any areas they could improve?

There’s room for improvement in every organization. As with any organization, there has been inconsistency. We had a few plodders as well as superstars working with us. We occasionally had developers on the project for a long time who become tired. We normally addressed that by talking to DataArt and moving them onto a different project.   

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Build a real partnership. If you work alongside them, you’ll get the best out of them. Work closely with them.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CTO of Atlantic Therapeutics and we produce a medical device for the improvement of female pelvic floor health, specifically in the treatment of incontinence.

What challenge were you trying to address with DataArt?

We were moving to a new product that is connected to various smartphones and a number of cloud-based services. We had no previous knowledge of applications or their implementation.

What was the scope of their involvement?

DataArt specified an application that would enable us both to control the device itself and communicate with a greater ecosystem, which enables us to store both medical device and commercial data in a HIPAA and GDPR compliant manner. Although the project was on hold for a period of time, we will continue to use DataArt going forward for maintenance on the application. We want to have a regular refreshment of the application itself on a regular basis.

What is the team composition?

There were various stages of activity so it depends, but at most we dealt with between 9–11 of their staff. However, the main exchanges and interface were between about 2, including Julie (Director of Business Development).

How did you come to work with DataArt?

It was really about web reviews and there were a lot of discussions around other businesses using the application generation, but DataArt came up a number of times. After review, we decided to go with them.

How much have you invested with them?

It will have cost about £250,000 (approximately $318,000 US dollars).

What is the status of this engagement?

We began working together in August 2017 and the collaboration is still ongoing. That is due to internal company reasons; we had a hiatus on the project.

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

We’ve had great results from our point of view and we’re really comfortable with them.

How did DataArt perform from a project management standpoint?

They’ve been informative in the areas that they’re knowledgeable in and have been able to direct us so that we have the correct support going through the project. The individual relationships are strong and personal. The communication has changed a little over the last few months, but initially, we used to do a lot of face to face communication. Now we use either Zoom or Microsoft Teams, and we also use the telephone as well. They’ve always been somewhat ahead of the game and really great at managing deadlines, which isn’t something I often say. I think on a timely basis they’ve been first class.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I think it’s the fact that as a business we’ve been able to describe ideas and thoughts to them, and they’ve been able to integrate the mechanisms into development so we’ve been able to include them in the application. They’ve been extremely supportive in helping us integrate ideas we didn’t understand how to.

Are there any areas they could improve?

We did have to modify the English on the application so it is suitable, but that not a complaint. Just something we had to do.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Be in a strong position to specify clearly what the outputs needed are.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the CEO of a software development company with headquarters in London, England. We have 10 employees and sell throughout the UK, mainly through resellers

For what projects/services did your company hire DataArt?

The project to develop an omnichannel contact center system was very ambitious for a small company and team and whereas we had made significant progress on our own, we reached a point where we wanted to speed up development, especially of specific features for delivery to customers. We hired DataArt to add resources and help us achieve these goals.

What were your goals for this project?

We needed additional resources to augment our small team and rather than go through the risky, time consuming and potentially costly process of recruitment of new internal resources, we decided to use the services of an outsourcing company. This would give us immediate additional resources with the flexibility to scale up or down as required.

There were various areas of development of the product that DataArt got involved with over a two year period and the goals were varied:

• speed up the development of new features
• employ DataArt skills to review and contribute to design
• refactor/restructure code
• fix bugs
• introduce formal QA to our processes

The expected impact on our business was:

• to be more competitive in terms of additional product features available earlier 
• to create a more reliable system through formal QA and bug fixing
• to become more productive internally by applying more formal processes as part of the external interaction

How did you select this vendor?

I was introduced to DataArt by someone I knew and became familiar with their customer engagement ethos and attitude to collaboration which I liked. They are very customer focussed and are flexible and accommodating in the way they interact.

We had a poor outsource experience quite sometime earlier, partly because of our own issues, so I had a good idea of what I was looking for to make a success. Because of this, I didn't feel the need to review other companies at this stage. The plan was to start on a well-defined feature development requirement and to review its success or failure to determine whether to proceed further. I made the decision to start working with them and to continue after the success of the first project.

Describe the project in detail.

The first project was to capture a video recording of the user's screen as they handled a customer service call using our contact center system. It was a well-defined requirement and not entirely trivial, especially with regard to performance.

The work was done on time and materials rather than on a fixed cost basis. There was an initial period of about 2 weeks for DataArt to review the spec. and get to know our existing system.

The project then took about 5 weeks to complete. We provided the requirement and context within our existing system and modules and DataArt contributed to the design, choice of 3rd party products, development, and testing. There were regular stand-up meetings to review progress and detailed reporting by DataArt on work done, problems encountered and resolved.

What was the team composition?

An account manager, project manager, senior software developer, and QA were appointed within DataArt. We had me as the overall management resource from our end, and a technical lead to the interface on all technical matters.

Communication was mainly with the project manager but communication with the developer was also initiated from either side when required. As further work was done subsequent to the first project, the team grew to 3 or 4 developers and 2 QA's at one point.

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

The video recording feature was delivered on time, met our requirements and was delivered by us to our customer to their satisfaction. Further work undertaken was generally of a high quality with very good communications through the project managers and directly with developers.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

DataArt helped us structure our workflow to be more efficient and productive. As a small team we were used to working fairly informally and working with DataArt helped us formalise our processes. This has had long-term knock-on benefits for our organisation. We used Jira to formally communicate requirments, bugs and progress.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

The most impressive thing about DataArt was its customer focus, friendly and helpful attitude. They have the willingness to be flexible in terms of changing requirements and priorities. And they are dedicated to achieving customer satisfaction. The technical abilities of their staff were also of high quality.

Are there any areas for improvement?

None that come to mind.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the co-founder and CMO of Zesty, a digital health company. We build software for hospitals so patients can manage their appointments and view their test results. We basically build patient portals for NHS hospitals.

What challenge were you trying to address with DataArt?

We needed development support.

What was the scope of their involvement?

They help us with a lot of projects, including giving advice on technology platforms and databases to use. They’ve done quite a lot of design work for us. They handle the early stages of product design to wireframes to initial concepts and all the way through to storyboards and actual coding and implementation. 

They do custom web and app development. In 2016, they helped us launch a consumer platform. For this, they built the front- and backend applications. In 2017, they launched all of our iOS and Android apps that they had designed, built, and tested. They built the first one in Swift, a native iOS language framework. In Android, they used Google Play. 

From 2018 and onward, they’ve been helping us reiterate and improve our enterprise app which is the one that we sell in NHS hospitals. For our enterprise platform, they’ve been part of the team. We have an in-house development team but we also used a couple of people from DataArt and they’ve played a big role on the team to develop the platform. We don’t engage them on a project by project basis but we engage them all the time. 

What is the team composition?

My point of contacts are Julie (Director of Business Development) and another person who is a partner and director. On a daily basis, I speak with our point of contact for resourcing and project management. Beyond that, there’s a couple of developers that we work with regularly.

How did you come to work with DataArt?

We were introduced to them through one of our VCs. We started to engage with them and assigned an initial project. We saw that the design, delivery, account management, and project management was very good. We then started to increase the scope and amount of work we do with them. That then led us to a place where they started to have one or two people on retainer for a month. At that point, we did a pricing analysis and started to look at market rates and quality. 

Our lead architect and software engineer started to think about how we’d build our team to how we’d combine in-house versus outsource developers. That’s when we took another look at DataArt’s capabilities.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent $1 million.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in December 2014 and the relationship is ongoing.

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

We’ve been really happy with them and the quality of their work is very good. Since they have a very wide range of clients, they can always advise on the latest blockchain, AI, or CRM system. Their width and breadth of information are impressive. Their work has been delivered very successfully. We’ve been happy with the results we’ve seen and they’re a key part of our team. 

How did DataArt perform from a project management standpoint?

They have an office in London, which we like. We do a lot of catch up calls on Zoom and on the phone during daily standups. Every two weeks, we have check-ins where we go to their office or they come to us. We have a good relationship and they always deliver. Their estimates are always fairly accurate. They’re very professional and organized. We get very accurate reports on activity and where we’re at in the project. They have a well-run organization.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their ability to support a company through its lifecycle journey and growth period is impressive. They can scale up and down as needed — they’re flexible. They plan things very well and are very efficient. For the small to medium size clients, you get the discipline of a large client because that’s the way they work.

They’re an important provider for us and are almost a utility. We know that the costs will be fairly accurate. I also like that there doesn’t tend to be any surprises. If they say they can do it, they can do it.

They’re very flexible, professional, and knowledgeable. They have a lot of clients from startups all the way through to very large corporations. They bring financial, e-commerce, retail experience to healthcare. They then take very disciplined, risk-averse, security data protection principles from healthcare and apply it to their other industries. They cross-pollinate very well and we like the ability to scale up and down. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

They could mix it up a bit and have more sales dinners or sales conferences where we can meet people from different industries. On the PR side, they could talk and advertise a bit more about what they do. Their culture is very process- and delivery-focused, which is great as a client because you know the DNA around the company is delivery. However, there is no newsletter or conference or webinar that would let us know the projects and technologies they’re working on. They could do more outreach to existing and prospective clients.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Write a good brief. Be clear on what you want them to do. They’re very good at interpreting a brief and your requirements but you need to take a lot of time upfront explaining exactly what you want.

Please describe your company and your position there.

We are an insurtech company building tools for insurance agents in the commercial property & casualty space. My position is head of product.

For what projects/services did your company hire DataArt?

We hired DataArt to assist us in preparing our platform to offer e-forms to our users. Specifically, the work that they did would allow us to digitize a standard set of forms. The feature allows our users to complete an insurance form online and then output the data into the industry-accepted format, allowing our user to download the form into an editable PDF document.

What were your goals for this project?

The goal of the project was to build a tool that ingested data that was provided in the format supplied by an industry organization and to transform that data into a file that conformed to our specifications. This tool would save our company many person hours of having to manually perform the activity on a form-by-form basis.

How did you select this vendor?

Our company put together description of several projects that we identified were suitable for outsourcing to a vendor. We shared this document with two companies and had a series of meetings with each to review the scope of work. Both companies returned with proposals that provided information about their capabilities, their approaches to tackling each of the projects, and their estimated project costs. The CEO and heads of product and technology were involved in evaluating the proposals and in deciding on the vendor. We went with DataArt because the combination of their industry experience, technical expertise, cost, methodologies, and flexibility in structuring the engagement was superior to the other firm we considered.

Describe the project in detail.

DataArt was responsible for delivering two items: 1) a set of data in the format that we specified, and 2) code that we could use to process a large set of data that would result in outputting the data into our desired format. Initial meetings were set up to review our Web app so that the DataArt team could understand our product and could obtain context for the work they were undertaking. Subsequently, we provided them with sample sets of data that they could use to test approaches for processing it with the objective of transforming it and outputting it to our desired format. While this was going on, our company was seeking ways to obtain the raw input data from a third party. After we were able to secure the data, we made it available to DataArt. This forced DataArt to revisit their approach because the new data source provided data in a different manner. They were able to adjust quickly and were able to achieve the project goals despite our initially having them go down a different path.

What was the team composition?

One software engineer (full-time), one technical architect (part-time), one project/delivery manager (part-time), one subject matter expert (part-time).

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

Within a few short weeks, the DataArt team was able to deliver on the project ahead of time and under budget. The delivered set of data and the code were of high quality.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

We had daily check-ins and we used instant messaging to communicate between check-ins.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

The DataArt team was quick to understand our needs and they spent the time ensuring they fully grasped the objectives of the project. In addition, their technical skill was high, as was the quality fo their work.

Are there any areas for improvement?

Given the limited scope of the project, there probably could have been less oversight and participation from their project delivery / engagement management folks, but given they completed the project ahead of schedule and under budget made the addition of those folks a nice to have.

Please describe your company and your position there.

Sharpfin develops the state of the art wealth management platform, Sharpfin Wealth Management Suite which targets external asset managers, banks and family offices. I myself am the CEO and founder of Sharpfin.

For what projects/services did your company hire DataArt?

We have been using DataArts services as resources in our web/frontend development with various consultants. We also assigned one of their consultants for a longer project when we upgraded our frontend framework from AngularJS to Angular.

What were your goals for this project?

The solution should work the exact same way afterwards but with the new technology and use features from that. Within this project we also implemented i18n to make our solution support multiple languages.

How did you select this vendor?

I have been working over many years in many company constallations with DataArt and I know for a fact that they always deliver high quality services to reasonable prices.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

We have been using three different web developers from DataArt with expertice in AngularJS, Angular and Bootstrap. We also let them to an UI/UX-review of our solution a couple of years ago.

What was the team composition?

The team always consisted of one web developer from DataArt and our backend developers within Sharpfin.

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

The project was absolutely crucial for our current scalability of the product. Without this upgrade we would have had a much more costly setup which would have been much harder to scale.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

We managed the project ourself.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

The constant high quality of their consultants was impressive.

Are there any areas for improvement?

Not that I can think of. DataArt delivers what you pay for and more. Always friendly always professional.

Please describe your company and your position there.

PSI is a clinical contract research organization that specializes on running clinical trials of new pharmaceuticals. I head up global business development at PSI.

For what projects/services did your company hire DataArt?

Clinical trial is a complex project ranging over a number of years and millions of dollars, involving multiple vendors and partners. Estimating the cost of this project is a complex task, therefore we needed DataArt to help us automate the budgeting tool.

What were your goals for this project?

Improve the speed, efficiency and accuracy of budget calculation, as well as inter-departmental collaboration.

How did you select this vendor?

Through competitive bidding

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

Full-cycle of software development:

• Discovery phase
• IT consulting
• Architectural design
• UI/UX, software development
• QA
• Deployment
• User training
• Support & maintenance.

What was the team composition?

PM, solution designer, solution architect, business analyst, front and backend developers, testers, technical writers, development operations, management oversight

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

I can't tell you enough how happy we are to be able to produce accurate study budgets in the minimal timeframe and have them sharable and reviewable by company stakeholders and a clear, transparent manner. This has been a GREAT accomplishment by both DataArt and PSI teams.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

As the vision of the project evolved, their PM team remained agile, flexible, accommodating, and creative.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

DataArt is very service-oriented, which is rare in tech companies. We have managed to built a great relationship.

Are there any areas for improvement?

Can't think of anything