Diceus

What was the scope of their involvement?

They helped us write the code and did some of our design and UI work. The app runs a series of analytics, calculations, procedures, and visualizations on financial information and sales transactions. It allows users to instantly view their current tax obligations and requirements, including trends, variance, and proportional taxes. It also runs a series of automated tests that search for potential errors and incorrect conclusions.

Our previous tool was built for big businesses on a SQL stack. I wanted the new app to be a modern, online SaaS solution. We all agreed that our best option was a MEAN stack.

What is the team composition?

They had a project manager who also acted as a business analyst and QA lead. His English was proficient, so he translated my requirements for the developers and acted as the intermediary. We had two dedicated developers, one for frontend work and another for the backend. One week out of every month, we worked with a designer on concept screens before each sprint.

How did you come to work with Diceus?

We sent an RFP to six different developers we found on Clutch. Diceus responded almost instantly, within a day. We interviewed their COO, marketing representative, and the lead they were proposing. They read the brief, came prepared to answer questions, and provided examples of similar work. No other team was as thorough, prepared, or impressive, so we decided to hire them.

How much have you invested with them?

There is one more invoice coming in, so we will ultimately spend between $92,000–$100,000 USD.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in November 2017. We are not quite finished with the MVP and are entering another revenue raising round at the moment. They are finishing a component, so we are a little behind.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We started out building two modules in the cloud solution, replicating what we already had in Windows, but focusing on two main functions which would enable us to start migrating US clients. It was all about rating insurance products and administering claims on them. It’s a flexible solution by which clients can tailor their own products with the rating engine behind them, and issue policies in order to receive and administer claims on the same insurance product.

We don’t have any integrations yet, but we will be integrating with financial systems within the new year. When offering invoicing on top of these insurance products, the next step would be for the system owner (the person who buys the system and hooks into it) to hook in with whatever they have in the backend as a financial system, for example, QuickBooks. The aim is for invoices to flow automatically into the system in which they typically get their financial stream of payments so that they can match payments automatically with invoices. Hopefully, the next step of integration will be for payments going back to our solution.

From the start, we specified that we needed ASP.NET development, and Diceus suggested that we use ASP.NET Core so it would be more transparent for me — the platform running the code didn’t need to be Windows. I appreciated this suggestion since I hadn’t known about .NET Core previously.

What is the team dynamic?

Diceus’ team has typically provided full stack development, but I am the type of person who wants to be in control of the bottom layer. This is my fourth time building a system for this trade. I’ve been in the business for 20 years and have specialized in insurance-related software. I know exactly what I want when it comes to functionality and data structures, so the split between me and Diceus is that I provide the data architecture features, and they program up against a black box. If I was not happy with them, I could swap them out with another development company at any time, since I am in full control of what goes on beneath the 2 top layers of the solution. It took a little while for them to get used to that way of working since I might be too specific when it comes to what I want and how it should look, but, after a while, it became better and better.

This is not a huge project; we only have 2 developers. They’ve consistently been the same resources from the start.

We use Skype and email for communication, and I went to their office when we started up to have brainstorming sessions on functionalities. Most of the time, we communicate electronically about specific parameters.

How did you come to work with Diceus?

Being in the trade we are in, we get all sorts of prompts from different providers, many of them from outsourcing companies in India or Eastern Europe. Diceus came across as one of the more serious ones. Diceus reached me at a point when I was starting to warm up to the idea of outsourcing development, so I remembered the contact. The fact that they had experience with solutions for the insurance world made a difference. They had references in Scandinavia and might have been looking for similar prospects.

In spring of 2017, I created a description of our product and my intentions in building a cloud solution. We had a Skype meeting and discussed my criteria, and they came across as a professional option. Diceus connected me with a developer to discuss the issues more specifically. He was proactive in terms of technology and methods, pinpointing issues in my demands. This was the main reason for selecting Diceus. Their CEO, Illia Pinchuk, controlled the initial discussions, quoting, and analysis in a very serious way, which gave me the impression that they were not only skillful developers, but when it came to communication, he would be able to allocate the right people.

How much have you invested with them?

The cost of two developers over the last seven months was $60,000–$70,000. We are invoiced monthly. Compared to our in-house resources, it is a good value for the money.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Diceus in May 2017. We will launch the cloud solution at the beginning of 2018.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Diceus is working as an outsourced provider for our company on the product development side as well as on project execution. We’ve worked with Diceus on two products, one of which is a cloud-based solution for the insurance industry, specifically brokerage. The other is a cloud-based HR package. Diceus has provided development power, both on the backend and the frontend, and quality assurance. The product management is done on our side.

In terms of language and platform selection, we’ve been focused on the Microsoft Stack: C#, ASP.NET, and Azure. There wasn’t a lot of expertise in terms of cloud implementations in 2011 since the field was not very developed. But, as our collaboration grew, Diceus has become more mature. We have been working together with them on this journey and have been fairly aligned in terms of capabilities from the beginning.

We execute project-related work for clients, and Diceus has provided coding, QA, and project management resources on this side as well.

How did you come to work with Diceus?

We found them through a recommendation. We were a relatively small company and were looking for someone who could provide cost-effective, good-quality solutions. We worked with Diceus on an initial trial basis, and the collaboration grew from there.

How much have you invested with Diceus?

The cost of Diceus’ work will be in the range of $500,000 for 2017. We’ve been working with them for a number of years, and the involvement started fairly slow since we didn’t have as much work at the time. On average, we’ve grown the relationship by 20%–25% per year. The workload does tend to fluctuate, but our biggest growth has been in the last three years.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Diceus in February of 2011.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We have cooperated with Diceus on several projects so far – the latest one being complete front-end/user interface development for one of our products. Our developers prepared requirements and functional specifications while Diceus provided a solution that we can utilize within our product quickly.

How did you come to work with Diceus?

We cooperate with multiple external software development companies and teams. However, Diceus is our largest provider so far. We selected Diceus for a larger and more complex project. Previously, we did a trial run with them using smaller projects where they were able to finish them ahead of schedule while meeting all our requirements.

How much have you invested with Diceus?

The latest mentioned project budget is about $53,000. We're unsure about the exact manpower on the Diceus side as they are providing us with complete turnkey project management, and they are assigning new resources for each new project we spinoff. Our budget for all Diceus projects in the past 12 months was more than $100,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in April of last year [2015]. The latest mentioned project started in late August or early September of this year and will be finished in December. We are currently on schedule, and Diceus is meeting all agreed milestones.