DevCom

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We’re a social and data development company that provides investment management services. I’m the CEO.

What challenge were you trying to address with DevCom?

We wanted to find a competent, reliable software development partner.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We’ve worked with them on three major projects over the past six years, each of which has grown in complexity. The first was a simple database system. The second was a more complex online database system in Microsoft SQL. The last, and largest project involves database development and geographical data development in a cloud service. They also work in HTML.

What is the team composition?

The team size varies, depending on the project. We always have a project manager who oversees a team of 2–5 developers.

How did you come to work with DevCom?

A partner of ours worked with them on a programming project and felt they’d be a good fit for us. The recommendation came during a search process, but after we interviewed them we didn’t feel the need to speak with other companies.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in 2012 and have worked together on a per project basis ever since. They’re a development partner and do work for us all the time.

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

If we can build sophisticated software that runs well for a low cost, we consider it a success. They’re specialists in making efficient, inexpensive software that can process data quickly and correctly. When the idea and the logic work, the software writes itself. They know how to go in and fix errors without destabilizing the whole program. They have a good understanding of development and design and they create useful programs for our users.

How did DevCom perform from a project management standpoint?

They are good listeners and they work hard. They're respectful and they take us seriously. We have a good collaboration and we communicate frequently.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’re perfect for our needs. We have a strong knowledge of our market and our users and can communicate with DevCon to help them fulfill their programming and software mission.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They’re perfect with small projects. By their nature, larger, experimental projects make estimating overall timelines difficult, since restrictions and problems arise as part of the process. DevCom has no major limitations and can do a lot of things. If they want to grow in the West, they should grow their team to better engage in sophisticated debates with their clients.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Start with a small project to get to know each other and build on trust and performance. They’re good at isolating business problems and providing technical solutions for companies that are unsure of what they want.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the chief sales and marketing officer for Del-Air Heating and Air Conditioning, the largest residential air conditioning company in Florida.

What challenge were you trying to address with DevCom?

We didn’t have good lead management, and we needed someone to build our CRM.

What was the scope of their involvement?

DevCom built our CRM and also worked on our mobile sales platform and business intelligence capability. They’ve done a lot of simple integrations to improve the data flow. They bolted SugarCRM onto our Hitachi FSA to capture leads in both systems and to track our customers’ actions. We now have the capability to have a status for customers across their whole life with us.

What is the team composition?

We work with a project lead and account manager.

How did you come to work with DevCom?

I’d worked with them at a different company. They did good work there, so I decided to hire them in my new position.

What is the status of this engagement?

We partnered in January 2016, and the work is ongoing.

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

Because of them, we've lowered our administrative costs and increased our administrative quality. Our sales have gone way up because we've been able to successfully manage leads.

How did DevCom perform from a project management standpoint?

They’re responsive and do their best to understand our business. They deliver on what they promise and keep project scopes small in order to execute them to the best of their ability.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They helped build something that is right for us instead of just trying to sell us a product that we didn’t need. The platform is agile and customizable, which is exactly what we wanted. They listen to our needs and work closely with our team to make the partnership easy and effective.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Communication can sometimes be difficult because they’re overseas, and they could run more training modules.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

If possible, foster a relationship between them and your internal IT team to help them solve problems more quickly.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I do HR, accounting, and project management for TradeWeb Inc. We're a full-service IT company that writes code, hosts, and creates sites for our clients.

What challenge were you trying to address with DevCom?

DevCom partners with us and helps us handle the requirements for our customers. We had so much work coming in, and we wanted a supporting agency to help with code, websites, and other needs.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Members of their staff write code for me, and projects include mobile responsive sites for our customers. They test those sites, and set up special features like catalogs, stores, and sales tax rubrics. Other functionality they create centers around shipping requirements.

Some of our projects are long-term, and DevCom still works on some of the same accounts from very early in our partnership. Whenever we come up with a new project that we want their help with, we bring them in for a meeting to go over the requirements. They create a setup that we can test for each new project.

Our partnership is about 50% outsourcing, but we also have a project manager at DevCom that collaborates with our staff and oversees the team that works for us. The collaboration is closer than standard outsource agreements.

The industry progresses quickly, and we've moved through a lot of changes with them. Whenever we incorporate new technology, they do in-depth research and make sure they have the knowledge we need for our projects. We provide some documentation with specifications from each project. They go from there to build wireframes and complete requirements.

What is the team composition?

The team we work with is predominantly made up of developers. A few members of their team are responsible for QA, but the majority of their responsibilities are in development.

How did you come to work with DevCom?

I've been with the company since 2011, and we started doing business with them before I came onboard. I believe the owner of our company was introduced to them some time in the 2000s. When we got a large project early in the relationship, we approached them about augmenting our staff to help meet requirements. They have a competent team that does good work, and we don't have any complaints. They know what they're doing, see the big picture, and know what their code will affect.

How much have you invested with them?

For several years, we've done an average of around $100,000 of work each month with them.

What is the status of this engagement?

I'm not sure when the collaboration started, but it was already strong when I joined the company—so it goes back around a decade. It's quite a long ongoing partnership.

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

They help us fulfill jobs within the time periods our customers need. Through several projects with a variety of companies, they've never disappointed us.

How did DevCom perform from a project management standpoint?

We work hand-in-hand with them. They're excellent project managers, and their staff is very knowledgeable. Their people skills are good, and they understand the concepts we tackle. We have weekly meetings via Skype to go over the projects they're working on. Most of our communication is through Skype and email, and we speak with them daily.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They are dedicated to perfection, and they get projects right the first time.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I don't have any recommendations for improvements. We've had so few issues, and whenever we bring a concern to them, they work with us and resolve it immediately.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Communication is key. Their staff is very open-minded, and they will address your immediate needs or your long-term projects. They are an excellent extension of our company, and would probably do the same for any of their partners.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I’m the CEO of a SaaS provider providing operations management.

For what projects/services did your company hire DevCom?

DevCom has provided development and other services in a long-term partnership.

What were your goals for this project?

We want to develop innovative solutions to serve the needs of our client base. Our expectation is that our solutions are intuitive, secure, and user-friendly, and that the development efforts utilize best practices to ensure ongoing support and maintenance of the applications.

How did you select this vendor?

We established a relationship with DevCom for a small project 10 years ago and we have continued to work with them ever since. They have a proven track record of great development and customer service.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

They do full-stack development for simple to complex applications. Their services also include database management and technical advice.

What was the team composition?

Our team is comprised of lead developers, programmers, systems engineers, and QA managers.

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

With the assistance of DevCom, we have grown our application base from a single application to a multi-module solution suite.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

We have a full-time project manager on our side, but for some projects, we utilize the project management team at DevCom.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

The quality of work at all levels has been excellent, from the baseline programmers to the management team.

Are there any areas for improvement?

No, we’re very satisfied.

Do you have any advice for future clients?

As long as they continue to invest in their people and their company, I feel they will continue with their success.

Please describe your organization.

We are a nonprofit organization aimed at helping internal auditors advance their concessions. We provide training, publication, and membership services.

What is your position?

I am the director of IT [information technology] and applications development.

What business challenge were you trying to address with DevCom?

We had some unique development needs, and there was the consideration of cost from a nonprofit perspective. We were looking for flexibility in terms of the engagement model, so we didn't want long-term contracts. Our budget is determined year by year, which means that one year can differ greatly from the next in this sense, regardless of needs. We had to be careful about long-term, expensive engagements. Because we work with a variety of technologies, we also wanted to find a company that had the same skill sets, instead of having to hire five to six different vendors. DevCom fit the bill for our goals.

Please describe the scope of their involvement in detail.

DevCom initially developed a web-based .NET integration application for our company. They used SQL server tools, SaaS [software-as-a-service] packages and FTP [file transfer protocol] external data sources. We use third-party software that is hosted off-premise. For example, we've recently completed integration with GoToWebinar and GoToMeeting, which enabled us to create events remotely. We sell seminars through another third-party system so, when someone signs up, we want to register them automatically through the GoToWebinar API [application programming interface]. DevCom created integration components for this.

We also integrate with the eTouch event management system. Once people register for events, we need to push the information into our accounting system. We created integrations with a learning management system called DoceboLMS, which users can use for self-study, signing up for courses, watching videos, and taking quizzes. We needed to pull all financial information from it as well.

We have an annual nomination process through which members vote for new committee and board members. Our old one was run through a ColdFusion system that had been inherited from someone else. We migrated to a hosted system for which DevCom provided support, allowing us to push and pull data out of it.

We also used DevCom for a large SharePoint development project as well as many integration projects, which involved moving data from point A to B using a variety of ETL [extract, transform, and load] tools, many of them from the Microsoft stack.

After this, came a custom dynamic CRM [customer relationship management] development project that was used for our customer portal. We've also recently completed an e-commerce implementation of our bookstore, from a legacy ColdFusion system that DevCom had been maintaining up to that point, providing basic support for it. They transitioned our platform to an open source, .NET-based version, with customizations and integration capabilities for our fulfillment partners. This involved using various web services and FTP integration.

We sell many event registrations for seminars and conferences. DevCom built 10 to 15 SharePoint sites for our company, many of them portals for special types of customers.

How did you come to work with DevCom?

I had worked with DevCom before, for a different company, so I had an idea of their capabilities. DevCom is my go-to developer, out of the variety of companies we've worked with in Washington, D.C., and India. We've tried different things for different projects through time. DevCom was not our exclusive partner but, because of their flexibility and variety of skills, they became our first choice.

We went through a formal internal process, selecting and grading different vendors in the beginning. I've worked with the company for six years so, after a while, I came to settle and find the best vendors for particular jobs. I have an established relationship with DevCom. They visited us on-site three to four times in the past few years.

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

We spend around $100,000 per year with DevCom. We have a fixed monthly support budget, but also work with DevCom on fixed-price projects and one-off time-and-materials situations.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with DevCom six years ago [since 2010], and we've used them on around 30 projects. DevCom's team has become integrated with ours and is a part of our support system. Any tickets that come from customers are typically routed to DevCom for resolution. From that perspective, there is a lot of staff fragmentation. I always have three to four people from DevCom engaged in support activities. Once DevCom implemented our bookstore system, they became the permanent support resources for it.

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

The first project that DevCom developed for us is still in operation today. We've experienced very few bugs, and it has an active user base from all around the world. It's a global system used by 110 institutes from many different countries.

Our bookstore implementation had a specific budget and time, which DevCom stuck to. It went live three weeks ago [July 2016] with no issues, and allowed us to increase our revenue. The current system is better and more stable than the old one.

As the director of IT, I oversee all software development in the company. DevCom's work reflects on my livelihood, so I wouldn't have continued to use them if I wasn't satisfied.

How did DevCom perform from a project management standpoint?

I have been working with a stable technical lead architect, a project manager, and a part-time QA [quality assurance] person from DevCom. We receive status reports on a weekly basis for each activity, and DevCom keeps us informed about any resources that may become unavailable. Working with the same architect has meant that I don't have to spend too much time explaining what needs to be done. DevCom has been good at maintaining the same resource for me. Developers change, and some are better at a job than others, but I don't care very much about this aspect. I work with two people from DevCom who take care of this for me.

What distinguishes DevCom from other providers?

DevCom has a very flexible approach. If I need resources for a four- or five-hour task, DevCom will give me an estimate. Their rates are very good for a nonprofit, so our business has been very pleased with the results and cost.

I do have a local staff, and I have worked with other, more expensive vendors, but DevCom has stood out. Their communication is very good as well. I will be notified about any delays, so I always know where we stand. DevCom has deep technical skills, so I can throw anything at them. If we start using a new API, I can be sure that DevCom will figure it out within a week and make a proof-of-concept app build. I've used DevCom for a lot of research and technical analysis whenever we bought new software in order to see if we'd be able to integrate with it, how stable it, and how well it performs. I can't think of any other vendor that would provide the same services with DevCom's cost and timeframe.

Is there anything DevCom could have improved or done differently?

Most of the time, we've worked with DevCom on a remote basis. They could do a better job at testing and collecting requirements upfront. We sometimes had to catch up down the road, but this is to be expected from a remote relationship.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We're a management consulting firm offering a range of services. We specialize in working with airlines, offering restructuring and operational improvement services. I'm an associate consultant.

What challenge were you trying to address with DevCom?

We're a small firm, so we need to leverage technology. We don't have the manpower to handle some of our more complex projects that we're given. For one of our projects, we acted as a project management office, which equated to nagging people until specific tasks were completed. This can be annoying for the people involved and it's also time and manpower-intensive for consultants. We decided to create a website that would automate as much of this as possible, sending reminders and keeping track of things.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We had worked with another supplier initially, but the process didn't go very well. DevCom stepped in and gave us a good amount of help.

DevCom has since helped us with all sorts of different projects, most of them related to PHP technology with SQL servers.

At peak capacity, we worked with 4 people from DevCom. The size of our team has been irregular, given that we didn't have a constant workload. We've had a trust relationship with them, working with the same people for extended periods and training new resources when someone left the company. The selection process was handled by DevCom, but we've had a say in it.

How much have you invested with DevCom?

The total cost of DevCom's services has been around $50,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We have an ongoing relationship with DevCom. I doubt that will change anytime soon. 

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

DevCom has enabled us to sell projects and have at least a two-fold return on investment.

How did DevCom perform from a project management standpoint?

In general, DevCom has been very good at taking rough-sketch specifications and working on them independently. We don't have a lot of time for coaching DevCom or babysitting their project managers, but they've delivered in terms of taking small bits of architecture and building something out of those.

We use GitHub for project management and bug tracking.

What did you find most impressive about DevCom?

DevCom has been extremely flexible and multi-skilled in terms of technology aptitude. We use everything from C#, Visual Basic for Applications, PHP on Linux, to SQL servers, and so on. We are also able to pause development for a couple of months and resume the work without issues. Working with DevCom has been great because of this.

Are there any areas DevCom could improve?

DevCom has sometimes struggled with big technical issues. They're great at taking business requirements and turning them into a finished product, but when we asked them to trail-blaze and figure out how to use new technologies or libraries, we've sometimes had issues. There wasn't anything major, but I prefer to do this myself.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Our company develops and designs software for libraries. I’m the head of technical services here.

What challenge were you trying to address with DevCom?

We wanted to create a digital system that would allow us to manage and distribute content to users while retaining effective security and user permissions. Also, the system should retain copyright information and should not be easy to share on various websites. These requirements could not be met by the more traditional, e-book-focused library systems, and DevCom helped us create a system that would satisfy them.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Our project was fairly small, with only 3-4 resources from DevCom assigned to it in the beginning. As we progressed, that number shrunk down to one developer and a project manager. DevCom was not familiar with the technology that we wanted to use, so they did some background research. We use a backend platform called Adobe Digital Server, which is a DRM [digital rights management] system. DevCom added layer functionalities on top of it, essentially creating a user interface by exclusively using ASP.NET MVC with an SQL server backend. The Adobe Digital Server is a SQL-based application itself, but it uses Apache Tomcat. As part of our application, DevCom also built a Windows service that could process tasks in the background. We also have our own bug tracking software that DevCom accessed for the main bug list.

How did you come to work with DevCom?

We typically outsource our development needs to a different company, but they were already maxed out with our other project. One of my colleagues looked at a few companies and we ended up choosing DevCom.

How much have you invested with DevCom?

We have invested around $20,000 in DevCom's services.

What is the status of this engagement?

We're not developing anything at the moment with DevCom, but we can contact them at any time for any new additions to the system they handled.

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

Since the product is new and does not have a huge user base, it's hard to convey too much end-user feedback. In terms of the DevCom team itself, they've been more than willing to research answers to anything they're not familiar with. DevCom did this before we even signed up with them. The product itself has been very good and there were minimal bugs in the system. The user interface is as we wanted it, so we're generally happy.

How did DevCom perform from a project management standpoint?

I acted as project lead during the initial phase and helped draw up specifications. Given our budget and needs, DevCom specified what was and was not included on their end. We worked on a fixed price for the initial project, but we also added additional features which DevCom quoted separately. As far as budget goes, everything was as expected and there were no major issues. DevCom was generally on time, with only a couple of occasions where the work slipped by a week.

What did you find most impressive about DevCom?

I appreciated DevCom’s approach when it came to working with a new technology. They were more than willing to learn what was necessary to deliver the solution we needed. On many occasions, DevCom presented ideas for moving forward. This was helpful because, on several occasions, we knew what we wanted but didn't know how to implement it.

Are there any areas DevCom could improve?

There's nothing that really stands out. It was a simple project, compared to our other developments. Everything went as expected and there were no big problems or delays.

Please introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the president of a retailer and distributor of airsoft related products, one of the largest in the world.

What challenge were you trying to address with DevCom?

I started working with DevCom around six or seven years ago or something like that. I was looking for an offshore opportunity, and they seemed to have the right talent and right prices. I’ve been working with them ever since.

What was the scope of their involvement?

They’ve done both maintenance and development work for us where it’s not just maintenance for improvements but also custom coding from scratch. The website as it stands right now was developed by DevCom. We were involved; we have internal resources as well, but probably 60% of the work was performed by DevCom. It was a site built from the ground up. It was Java, Tapestry, Apache Tomcat, HTML5, JavaScript, all of that.

How did you come to work with DevCom?

The owner and I used to study at the same college, so we ran into each other at one of the events.

How much have you invested with DevCom?

Under $200,000 per year.

What is the status of this engagement?

We’ve been working with them for about six or seven years, and we are working with them currently. In fact, we continue to spend more money with them every year.

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

No, we don’t do that. We don’t measure their success based on metrics or our website performance in any way, so I wouldn’t know. It would be hard for us to say that for anything. Our success online is tied to so many different things.

What did you find most impressive about DevCom?

I think that their developers are really good. I think that they care. At least the ones that we work with seem to care about quality, which is always good. I think that these are all pluses.

I’m happy with their billing practices and with how they approach things. If we agree on something being a fixed project, which is not often but happened a few times where it’s a fixed cost, they never came back to me. Even though a couple of times they underestimated, they never came back to say that that was the case and they need some adjustments to be made, which is not that common. In general, I think they’re more than fair in their billing and how they account for developers’ times and things like that.

Are there any areas DevCom could improve?

I think that they could do a better job estimating how much time a project would take.

This review was updated on May 17th, 2019, by the client. The original star ratings were: Overall - 4.5, Quality - 4, Schedule - 3.5, Cost - 5, NPS - 5. New content is below.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the president of Pyramyd Air, a designer, retailer, and distributor of sporting goods.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with DevCom?

We were looking for an offshore development team that could help us grow our business. We wanted to invest more into our software infrastructure, including both frontend and backend work.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

DevCom is directly or indirectly responsible for most, if not all, of our frontend development work. They’ve built several websites for us, and their team is currently using infrastructure that they created to migrate web content for a company that we own. They’ve also implemented an order management system that we now use.

In addition to web development, they provide QC, design, and architectural planning for a variety of projects. DevCom also identifies opportunities for us to enhance our IT offerings and refine our product development processes.

About two years ago, the team expanded into mobile app development for iOS and Android devices. So far, they’ve completed numerous projects using an array of programming languages, including Java, Perl, and PHP. They also provide system administration for our Linux OS and updates to our ERP.

What is the team composition?

There’s a project manager, a QC specialist, and several developers.

How did you come to work with DevCom?

I went to college with the owner of DevCom, and we ended up connecting on LinkedIn. He saw a post that I made about my search for an offshore development team and reached out to learn more. We began our partnership soon after that.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with DevCom in 2010, and our partnership is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

DevCom is directly responsible for our success as a company, and we attribute much of our growth to the numerous services that they’ve provided to us.

How did DevCom perform from a project management standpoint?

Their management team is top notch, but we’ve had some mixed experiences with different project managers. We typically communicate via Slack, email, or phone calls.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Most recently, I’ve been impressed by their flexibility and commitment to our success. We recently finished phase one of a mobile development project, and we found ourselves in a position where we had to decide if we wanted to continue with phase two. It made sense to pause development because we were waiting on another project that was going to be finished another couple of months. At the same time, we were worried about losing our development team to reassignments during this gap.

We discussed our concerns with DevCom, and they were willing to begin development on phase two so that we could keep the same developers. They offered us a favorable set of payment options and terms that let us avoid the costs associated with onboarding new developers. This was completely unexpected and showed the type of committed partner that DevCom is.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I can’t think of anything. Right now, I’m very happy with our partnership.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Communicate with their leadership frequently and have very open discussions with them.

Please describe your organization.

We operated a search engine that helps ad technology and e-commerce companies target their customers better. As of summer of 2016, the business isn't currently active, but it was founded seven years ago.

What is your position?

I am the founder of the company.

What business challenge were you trying to address with DevCom?

I needed to create a proof of concept for my idea. I had an idea for how to collect information and needed someone to write the code. Ultimately, I knew this meant I would need a partner, but price was a huge factor, so offshoring was the best option.

Please describe the scope of their involvement.

DevCom proposed a design for the software architecture and then wrote the code as a deliverable. After the initial success of testing, they continued to work for me during the course of seven years iteratively refining the prototype into a platform consisting of multiple web applications operating at scale.

The work itself fell into a few areas: developing different types of web crawlers, database development, improving performance of software to collect more information, more quickly working with different APIs [application programming interfaces] to integrate services from other software, creating an email feature, devops for the system, and many custom reports and interfaces for individual clients.

The size of the team from DevCom varied from three to eight people. I interacted with them directly and through a project lead. The nature of the interaction varied according to the task. The project lead was always available to me, helping as needed.

How did you come to work with DevCom?

A trusted friend referred them to me. DevCom was the top choice from the start.

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

The total development cost with DevCom has been around six figures.

What is the status of this engagement?

The most recent project completed with DevCom was in April 2016.

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

DevCom directly contributed to my success. Without them, I wouldn't have had a functional website that, in turn, would not have led to the customer loyalty that drove the sale of my website.

How did DevCom perform from a project management standpoint?

DevCom delivered the work within time and budget. We used Assembla for project management at DevCom's recommendation. They also introduced me to agile software development.

What distinguishes DevCom from other providers?

I appreciated the collaborative nature of the relationship. Even though DevCom was technically a contractor, and I was just another client for them, I felt a strong personal connection. They were enthusiastic about their work in a way that went beyond just being professional.

Is there anything DevCom could have improved or done differently?

It was inevitable that we'd encounter challenges with people on DevCom's team and because we had a very good relationship resolving those challenges was a lot less painful than it could have been.

Any potential customers of DevCom should be specific in their requirements as possible. DevCom will do what is asked of them so, the more precise a client is in their phrasing and in establishing what it is that they want and how it could work, the less opportunities for the miscommunication or misunderstandings that slow down projects.

Please describe your organization.

We are a media agency based in Germany. We mostly work for clients in our country, as well as ones in Switzerland and the UK. We were founded in 1999, so we’ve been in the market for a long time. We mostly develop medium and large corporate websites and platforms used for workflow management.

What is your position?

I am the owner and founder of the company.

What business challenge were you trying to address with DevCom?

We were developing a tool that helps us synchronize our work. It works like a project management platform.

Please describe the scope of their involvement.

We are the project owners and inventors of the platform, but DevCom acted as our scrum team, doing all of the heavy lifting in creating the different parts of the project, coming up with solutions and providing a good workflow. The project was developed using the Symfony 2 framework. DevCom has been straightforward to work with, always on time and always friendly. They provide a high quality of work.

DevCom has provided a technical project lead with whom we maintained communication. Technical resources were also included in our Skype calls from time to time. We’ve had a good understanding of DevCom’s team.

How did you come to work with DevCom?

We found DevCom through eLance.com. When we look for development partners, we usually consider offshoring solutions, so we have a good experience with onboarding new teams. We did provide DevCom a small test project in order to see if they would perform and deliver on time, with the quality level demanded by us. DevCom succeeded, so they became part of the scope of the developers used by our company.

The other candidates for this project were all offshore developers. We’ve had some bad experiences working with Indian companies, so we leaned towards Ukraine, which only has a one-hour time difference from Germany. We have frequent video conference calls because it’s important for us to be face-to-face with our partners.

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

The total development cost with DevCom was around $40,000. The initial investment was between $10,000 and $15,000 for a minimum viable product. We expanded DevCom’s involvement more and more from that point.

What is the status of this engagement?

We have been working with DevCom for over a year. The minimum viable product was delivered after three months of development. Since then, our relationship has gradually evolved. We have worked on the same tool with DevCom, but it has grown bigger and bigger over time. We are making some changes under the hood, but the frontend part of the platform has stayed the same.

We are currently discussing two more projects with DevCom, but they haven’t been started as yet.

Could you share any statistics, metrics or other feedback from this engagement?

DevCom does the heavy lifting for us, and I’ve appreciated the fact that they don’t bother us. DevCom has a good quality assurance process. They publish work from a development server directly into a production system. A huge part of our operations are run through this system. We’ve never had downtimes or any other issues. For the money that we’ve invested, working with DevCom has been a huge success.

How did DevCom perform from a project management standpoint?

DevCom worked as if they were a part of our company in developing our tool. I can pitch an idea to them in five minutes. DevCom will discuss it with their development team and present a minimum estimate within one business day, on which I can base my decision. All they will need from me then is an approval to start the project.

DevCom is using the tool that was conceived by us for project management. Billing is done through it, so DevCom is communicating with us through the same platform that they developed, although they could have worked with any other project management tool. DevCom tries to make the process easy for the customer.

What distinguishes DevCom from other providers?

DevCom is very proactive. Whenever we have an issue, we can reach out to different resources. There was never a case in which I felt like I needed to escalate an issue to a supervisor. We’ve liked working with DevCom.

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