Diatom Enterprises

Please describe your company and your position there.

Escher Group's unique software platform powers the world’s first and last-mile deliveries, helping Posts connect nearly 1 billion consumers with global eCommerce networks. My role as COO is to ensure Escher is delivering high-quality software to our clients that delivers the quickest value.

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

Escher partnered with Diatom to for assistance with software development, quality assurance, and technical solution architecture for several of our key client projects. Our goals were to augment our current staff with added expertise to help manage the inflow of work for both client projects and product development.

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

Technology expertise, ability to provide resources quickly, cost.

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

Multiple projects for configuration and customization of Escher's solutions. C#.Net full stack; across multiple platforms such as Windows and Android.

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

We have had over 20 consultants working with us form Diatom raging from Software Developer, Quality Assurance Engineer, Solution Architect, Support Engineer and Project Manager.

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

Diatom has provided quality software development services. resources have quickly adapted to the Escher solution and technology to deliver value on projects.

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

Excellent Project Management skills put Diatom a step above some of the other global partners we reviewed.

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

The personalized attention and prioritization of our needs are impressive. We have developed great relationships with the Diatom leadership team.

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

Escher is committed to ongoing improvements to our quality practices. As part of that initiative, we have asked Diatom to help us keep quality a focus for all work.

Please describe your company and your position there.

We are an artificial intelligence tech company that provides advertising services to brands.

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

Our managed services require complex user interfaces and we were looking to bring on a company that could help build the tools and enhance existing features. We required a medium sized team who could pivot quickly and manage sprints in a seamless manner.

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

We were recommended to Diatom from an employee who had worked with them in the past. After interviewing the leaders we knew that they would be the right fit.

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

After providing requirements for the initial project Diatom was able to put together milestones and timelines. All of the designs were high resolution mockups in Figma. Once the initial design was completed the Diatom engineers built out the interface on schedule.

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

We worked with a project manager, one designer and four front-end engineers.

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

No, except that all of the stakeholders were extremely pleased with the outcome.

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

We had bi-weekly stand-ups and design sessions that included questions on business logic or general direction of the project. Diatom was able to integrate into our Slack and we used JIRA kanban boards to track work. All work was submitted into GitHub and everyone on the team provided feedback on code reviews.

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

Diatom has always been professional and all of the work done is of the highest quality. All team members spoke english and it was very easy to communicate with everyone. Diatom will always ask for more work and I feel comfortable that they are pushing themselves everyday.

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

It is sometimes difficult to work with a company that is in another timezone but with proper communication this can be easily overcome.

Please describe your company and your position there.

We link people between the UK and mainland Europe. We help customers to get inpired and discover cities in France, Belgium, the nederlands and in the UK. We transport from city centre to city centre with the only under water train in the world.

For what projects/services did your company hire Diatom Enterprises?

Diatom helped in the development of our booking path. They were quick and effective to raise the conversion rate of the booking funnel by implementing new functionality very quickly. After this success we also used Diatom for bespoke development such as developing the app that runs our depot and significantly improve the efficiency of the train maintenance actvities.

What were your goals for this project?

The goals where first and foremost to increase conversion rates to increase revenue. We also wanted to increase functionality around presenting inspiring content earlier in the bookign funnel to push more people down the booking funnel. Diatom with their pragmatic and test and learn approach helped us a lot.

How did you select this vendor?

Diatom have been a partner who I worked with before moving to my current company. They have delviered high quality software consistently for a long period of time. They are real professionals with very high level developers, architects etc... They are constantly trying their best to accomodate and they are flexible in accomodating our changing requirements.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

They can do staff augmentation to increase the capability of existing agile teams. They can also take away a project and deliver it by themselves with minimal supervision. This gives a high level of flexibility in the model we apply and we can adapt their service to what is best suited for any particular project.

What was the team composition?

In total we had about 10 Diatom developers either on a specific project or to augment existing agile teams. Mostly senior developers but also cooridnation/management roles.

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

The conversion rate has increased very significantly generating several millions in revenue. The major improvements where on the payment / checkout pages. The gaim in efficiency for the depot app where very significant and allowed us to save operational costs.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

Project management was very efficitive. It was not over the top as you usually get from other vendors who have to manage expectations and communcaition carefully. The management layer is here to bring transparency.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Adaptability, higly skilled staff, professionalism. Everyone in the Diatom staff is very technical and this allows open and honest conversations without having to jump through the sales and marketing messaging hoops.

Are there any areas for improvement?

I had to think to find one. May be price. Diatom is not the cheapest offshare company but the you pay for what you get. And with Diatom you get very high quality.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the senior lead software engineer at ScaleFactor Inc., managing four of our teams. We do accounting software for our clients, including automated bookkeeping, expense transactions, and classification.

What challenge were you trying to address with Diatom Enterprises?

We needed to supplement our current dev team quickly and with quality developers.

What was the scope of their involvement?

They were working alongside our in-house developers, almost like part of the team. Each of the developers we were given work primarily in our Ruby on Rails, Ember.js, and JavaScript framework.

As part of the Diatom Enterprises process, I was able to select all of the engineers. They sent us resumes beforehand, and then we got to interview each of the applicants. Ultimately, we were able to choose who we wanted to move forward with. 

What is the team composition?

We worked with three of their engineers during our collaboration. 

How did you come to work with Diatom Enterprises?

Our VP of engineering worked with them in the past and had a great experience, keeping up with their connection over the years. He recommended that we look at them, so we reached out and were happy with the quality of resumes we were seeing. While doing independent interviews, we were also impressed and able to select them as our provider. 

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent about $250,000–$500,000 to date. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We started collaborating in October 2018, and the work is ongoing.

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

We use sprint point attainment to determine whether their team is able to get a certain chunk of work done within a given time period. They’ve performed very well, even against our own in-house team. We’ve been tacking test coverage as well, and they’re very strong in that area too. 

How did Diatom Enterprises perform from a project management standpoint?

Because they’ve integrated fully into our team, I interact with the lead of whichever team they’re working on. However, all feedback on their developers has been very positive. Most of the contractors are located in Europe, but they’re online for all of our standups and meetings.

Given the timezone difference between us, they’ve been very accommodating, even jumping on late in their day to work through problems. We communicate primarily through Slack, Jira, and Zoom video, and they’re always available to jump on a call with us. They really do feel like part of our team. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

They took the time to understand the use case instead of just churning through tickets. Past partners had the tendency to require you to be very explicit with the work we hand off to them, but they have no problem taking a step back to look at problems more broadly. They’ve been able to offer suggestions that have improved our collaboration.  

Are there any areas they could improve?

Nothing specific jumps to mind. We’ve been very happy with our experience working with them. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Make sure you’re connected with them every day, even if it’s just a 15–20-minute standup. That way, they’re set up for success when they come into work each day.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am a digital workflow engineer with the office of Dr. Marc Lemchen, and we are an orthodontics office.

What challenge were you trying to address with Diatom Enterprises?

We had just purchased a Pepper humanoid robot and wanted a specific experience geared towards orthodontics, so we hired them to build that application for us.

What was the scope of their involvement?

They helped us create and check a robotic check-in process that allows patients to ask questions and access educational materials as well. It’s a human-looking robot with a face and a tablet on its chest, so you can walk up to it and check in by entering your birth date.

The most complex aspect of the application was the ability for the robot to answer questions that the patients have, for which we had to input a lot of practice-specific information and the Diatom Enterprises team had to build out the robot’s word and voice recognition. They also included the ability to display videos to help the robot explain various issues to the client.

What is the team composition?

There were about 5–6 people from their team working on the project.

How did you come to work with Diatom Enterprises?

We contacted them after seeing a couple of their videos on their website while we were doing research for developers with robotic application experience. Diatom Enterprises had actually worked for another company on the exact same model of robot, so we decided to engage with them.

How much have you invested with them?

I didn’t handle the financial aspect of the project, but I believe it was in the $25,000–$30,000 range.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from February–October 2017.

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

I would say that the impact of this change has been tremendous because we are one of the first doctor’s offices to have a robot that can not only check patients in but have a conversation with them or show them videos at a moment’s notice. Throughout the project, they delivered functional and reliable code and were always on time and within budget.

The program has not only improved our customer satisfaction, but it has allowed us to expand our SEO, because every time someone came into the practice, they would take a video or picture of it and hashtag us, increasing our presence on a wide range of social media feeds.

How did Diatom Enterprises perform from a project management standpoint?

One of the things we like most about them is that they are very proactive. They would call us if there were any snags or questions related to our progress. They also had a weekly meeting established to provide us with updates and a virtual timeline that we could access online to see were at any given moment.

There were a couple of things that didn’t go as planned right away, but they were able to easily change them and get them functioning the way we wanted to. Communication with them was one of the best aspects of the project because they were always willing to address any issues we raised with them right away.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their ability to communicate, hit all of our milestones on time, and deliver within budget is a combination that is extremely difficult to find in a development partner.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Unless they wanted to move their office to our time zone, I don’t think there’s anything they could do to make their process even better.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Keep in mind that even though they aren’t the least expensive agency out there, you will get what you pay for in the form of really excellent work at the end of the day.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the director of a small market research startup.

What challenge were you trying to address with Diatom Enterprises?

We were facing a lack of engagement with market research respondents. There weren’t a lot of tools available in the marketplace that could help us make the experience of participating in market research more fun and engaging.

What was the scope of their involvement?

They basically took our dream and made it a reality, building it from the ground up. They helped a little bit with ideas, but most of the concepts were ours and we relied on their ability and knowledge for the coding of the actual product.

We created a cloud-based cross-platform software client on web, iOS and Android called Cliizii, It allows users to interact with various multimedia, presenters, and one another in real-time, and basically functions like a live whiteboard where people can view and edit content and message other users.

Their team took over where our previous developers had failed, but they basically started from the bottom in terms of establishing the right foundation. They did a lot of experimentation to determine the right coding languages and went with a combination of AngularJS and Node. Then they took our existing wireframes and were able to work that into the design.

What is the team composition?

Our main point of contact was Gleb (Project Manager, Diatom Enterprises).

How did you come to work with Diatom Enterprises?

We had already started the development of the project with other companies that had failed to deliver, so I was shopping around for other teams and they were the only ones who were willing to pick up where our last developer left off.

How much have you invested with them?

Our total investment at this point is around $200,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We first engaged with them in February 2014, and our relationship is still ongoing.

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

I have a bit of a hard time quantifying their impact on our business because we are entering a completely new marketplace. How successfully they completed our objectives has little to do with how successful our venture is able to become.

From a quality perspective, I have never seen any reason to doubt the standards of their work. Their team is extremely highly educated and hard-working, and their attention to detail is among the best I’ve ever seen.

It’s very reassuring to deal with someone that highly skilled because you really don’t have to worry about the functionality of the product they’re going to provide. With previous companies, I might spend a day debugging and testing every time they gave us an update, and with Diatom Enterprises I’ve never experienced anything delivered that didn’t work properly.

How did Diatom Enterprises perform from a project management standpoint?

We did struggle a little bit with project management, but I put a lot of the blame for those difficulties on myself rather than on their team. We definitely ran over schedule and budget, but it was simply a matter of experimentation being something that you can’t predict. It’s very rare that you come up with a new idea and it snaps together on the first go.

In terms of their ability to follow instructions, things actually worked out very well. Because of the time difference, we had our whole day to lay out a pile of things for them to work on, and then at the beginning of their day, they could work through it turn around a pile of results or questions for me to work on the next morning. It was a very effective back and forth.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They have also been extremely open and communicative the whole way through our engagement. Even their CEO would take the time to listen to me, which I really appreciated. One of the main reasons we’ve stuck with them is that they go out of the way to demonstrate respect and commitment to your company in the way that they go about the work.

Are there any areas they could improve?

One way I think most software companies could benefit is by focusing more on the learning curve that working with a software company presents to regular business owners like me. If I had known what I know now before going in, I would definitely have had a second project manager just to work with me on managing tasks and priorities from our side of the engagement.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I think it’s just important to be very, very clear on exactly what you want and think about the project. They are very good at building scope documents, so the more you give them on that end of the project the more smoothly the rest of the project is going to go.

Please describe your company and your position there.

We are using the advantages of today's digital world, to create the best solutions for the maritime industry. I'm the chief technology officer of the company.

For what projects/services did your company hire Diatom Enterprises?

Building solutions for the maritime industry requires us to develop applications that can run independently from the world wide web. Diatom Enterprises is helping us with there development capacity and knowledge to design, build and fine tune our solution.

What were your goals for this project?

The solution needs to be able to run without a constant internet connection. It needs to be able to keep the onshore management informed about the decisions and workflows onboard.

And in case of emergencies the solution also needs to be able to run on the connected devices without a constant connection to the server.

How did you select this vendor?

As a start-up we are were looking for a company that can deliver high quality code to a reasonable price. The good communication skills of the developers and the hands on attitude from Diatom Enterprises made them a reliable partner.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

The project is managed agile. We take care of defining the business needs and together with Diatom Enterprises we define the requirements to fulfill these needs. After we define the sprint goals and priorities Diatom Enterprises takes care of implementing the features.

What was the team composition?

We have a core team of 2 -3 developers plus a project manager. Depending on the deadlines and requirements Diatom Enterprises is very flexible in scaling up the team with the right persons.

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

At the time of writing our solution is not published yet. We have however overwhelmingly positive feedback from partners and interested clients that we provided with a demo instance.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

The project management is communicating problems quickly and directly. This enables us to quickly react on emerging problems and together find a good solution to solve and prevent the type of problem in the future.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

It is a pleasure to work together with Diatom Enterprises since their employees are well-trained and hands-on. And the communication does not get stuck in bureaucracy.

Are there any areas for improvement?

At the time of writing we are very happy with the value Diatom Enterprises provides to us and see no area of improvement.

Please describe your company and your position there.

We develop and sell logistic solutions for industries and trade companies in order for customer profitability to increase. We offer, via our broad sector expertise, a wide range of transportation solutions. Our staff is qualified and committed, and will always give our customer’s needs priority. We develop our own IT solutions which support and improve the business.

For what projects/services did your company hire Diatom Enterprises ?

Develop our ERP system

What were your goals for this project?

Get an advanced, efficient business system that creates great benefits for our customers.

How did you select this vendor?

Found it by a Google search in early 2011. Had several Skype meetings and it clicked. Have worked with them since then.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

They have developed backend, frontend both Windows application and web application.

What was the team composition?

Over the years we have had different sizes of team. From one person up to almost 10 people working on the same project.

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

We have grown our business from a turnover of 200 MSEK to 350 MSEK.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

Daily scrum meetings during the project and several meetings before we start a project.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Their ability to understand our business and facilitate its growth is very impressive.

Are there any areas for improvement?

No.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I’m a system developer and project manager at Finland’s largest reseller of Canon printing solutions. We also have a large IT support network throughout our 13 offices in the country. We provide IT support as well as many other IT services to our business customers.

For what projects/services did your company hire Diatom Enterprises?

A customer of ours wanted to build a meeting system for their housing company customers so that stock owners could attend digital meetings on a website to vote on different annual decisions. We outsourced the development of this platform to Diatom Enterprises.

What were your goals for this project?

The goals were was to build a well-functioning administrative backend in Angular that enables the customer to administer things like multi-tenancy, housing companies, shareholders, and meetings. We also wanted to build an Angular-based frontend and create the functionality for shareholders to log in and vote remotely during annual general meetings.

How did you select this vendor?

We initially met them at a business technology fair and have worked with them on several projects over a few years. Since we don’t have our own development resources, we needed to outsource this project to a cost-effective and reliable partner. Diatom Enterprises has always done a good job and provides skilled developers to help us reach our goals.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

Diatom Enterprises coded and implemented both the backend administrative web app as well as the customer frontend portion needed for the solution. They also did QA on the implemented user stories. The actual architectural design and user stories were given to them from our side. They took care of the rest, and together, we reached a mutual understanding of the project goals. We worked in two-week sprints and were able to achieve great things during our collaboration.

What was the team composition?

The team consisted of four people, including a product owner from our side. Diatom Enterprises provided a developer, a junior project manager, and a senior project manager.

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

Our end customer is among the first in Finland to start using digital general meetings for housing companies, allowing shareholders to cast their votes online without needing to attend yearly meetings in person. This will give them a huge advantage in the market.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

Project management was very well set up. Their junior and senior project managers have great experience and were always up-to-date with the deadlines. Communication from their side was excellent regarding delays or missing information we needed to collect. We were in touch through Skype, email, and Jira.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

We always spoke to the right people to get a mutual understanding of everything that needed to be done. They felt like part of the company thanks to their open communication lines and straightforward approach. Diatom Enterprises also excel at finding the right people for the job that needs to be done and has immense knowledge of different techniques, programming languages, frameworks, etc.

Are there any areas for improvement?

At this point, I have no suggestions for improvement other than the general small things that every company needs to keep up with.

This review was updated by the client on February 12, 2020. The original star ratings were: Overall - 5, Quality - 4.5, Schedule - 4.5, Cost: 4, Willingness to Refer - 4.5. New content is below.

Please describe your company and your position there.

Canorama Oy provides ICT-services and .digitalisation solutions for the B2B sector.

For what projects/services did your company hire Diatom Enterprises?

Custom software development projects and integration projects for end customers as well as for Canorama internal use.

What were your goals for this project?

Create custom software and system integrations that support digitalisation of business processes.

How did you select this vendor?

Based on previous reviews and customer recommendations.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

Diatom Enterprises took care of development, UI/UX, testing, QA.

What was the team composition?

Canorama had role as product owner and project management. Development team was outsourced to Diatom Enterprises.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

Project management included daily scrum meetings, sprint reviews and video meetings when needed. Was very easy and effective.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Customer orientated, agile and all in all gave a very professional impression.

Are there any areas for improvement?

Better "readiness" for taking on short-term projects.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the CTO of a marketing agency. We help our customers with online marketing and online presence.

What challenge were you trying to address with Diatom Enterprises?

We engaged Diatom Enterprises to help us develop a new platform.  

What was the scope of their involvement?

Our in-house resources are quite limited in terms of software development, so we have relied heavily on Diatom Enterprises. In our time working together, we’ve tasked them with architecture strategy, development, testing, and deployment of our application.  

We did most of the design internally, but Diatom Enterprises developed a self-service platform, where we will add third-party suppliers and make use of a complex system that is readily available for the SMB segment. It is a cross border platform using Xamarin and Microsoft SQL. We plan on introducing Android and iOS versions of the application.

With this app, we wanted to provide a platform where businesses can retrieve user feedback when it comes to what effect their marketing activities have on the company.

What is the team composition?

We’ve worked with a project manager, a lead architect, a lead developer, two frontend and backend developers, and a part-time testing engineer.

How did you come to work with Diatom Enterprises?

Diatom Enterprises was already on board before I joined the company.

How much have you invested in them?

We have spent around €200,000 (Approximately $224,730 USD).

What is the status of this engagement?

We began working with them in April 2018, and the work is still ongoing.

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

Over the last few months, we’ve made great strides in adding functionality and testing the application. Our owners have been quite satisfied with the latest version of the app.

How did Diatom Enterprises perform from a project management standpoint?

Overall, they have done well in managing the project. We’ve had some small issues, but they have been very transparent and helpful in solving those for us. We track much of the project through Jira, which has worked well.

Prior to January, our team caused some communication issues because we didn’t have the experience of being a good customer. Our teams went back and forth for some time, but we have since remedied much of those problems.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The project manager has been forthcoming when it comes to helping us solve our internal problems. They have understood our situation, and I have been very grateful for that.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They could improve when it comes to communication, especially at the beginning of the project, to ensure they have understood how things look at the other end. They might have overestimated our ability to be a good customer, and it could have been handled with a little more communication with our senior management level.