Digiteum

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the chief technology officer of a company that produces software for the healthcare industry, geared toward assisting different organizations to transmit information about patients from one to another. I was tasked last year to do some software development outsourcing, which is how we started our relationship with Digiteum.

What challenge were you trying to address with Digiteum?

We have a lot of expertise in server-side development, but we have a relatively thin staff for GUI [graphic user interface] development. We decided it made more sense to outsource that component, rather than trying to build a large, in-house team. That was the main driver that got us going with Digiteum.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We have an application that we wrote about seven or eight years ago. It was based on a GUI technology, Adobe Flex, which has unfortunately become quite out of date -- It reached the height of its popularity just as we selected it, only to basically fall off. We asked Digiteum to basically rewrite our applications in a more modern solution stack, such as HTML5, CSS, Angular.js, which is a JavaScripting platform to make it easier to do development on browsers. We also used Bootstrap, which was kind of related to making it look visually appealing.

I can classify the things they’ve done in two ways. One is that they do have designers in-house who have been quite helpful in deciding on the layout and flow of the website. We give them suggestions on how we think it should look, and then they come back with their own suggestions. They help us visualize what the design will look like by using certain tools prior to actually starting the code. We know roughly what it will look like.

Probably the bigger piece of it is the actual implementation of those designs. They basically do the whole thing. We provide them the backend programming interfaces, and they do all the GUI development and testing of those components. So, that’s what they’ve been doing for about six months now, since the end of last year.

How did you come to work with Digiteum?

We get inundated on a daily basis, with folks looking to provide services like this. We didn’t go through a massive selection process when deciding on Digiteum. We took a handful of different providers that happened to send us emails at that time, and we started speaking with the owner at Digiteum, Michael Grebennikov. We had a very favorable impression in terms of how he would provide resources and the pricing he could offer for those services.

We had a very bad outsourcing experience seven or eight years ago. We had outsourced our GUI development back then to a company in China. An important task for us was to find a group of people that we can communicate with real-time in English; that hadn’t been possible with the team in China. One reason we decided to go with an Eastern European group is that we wanted folks that we could relate to better and speak with easily. The pricing definitely factored in, and we saw some of their work on other projects. We saw that they produced visually appealing designs, so we thought they had the expertise.

How much have you invested with Digiteum?

We’ve invested between $50,000 and $100,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in November on 2016. The six-month contract recently expired, and we’ve renewed with Digiteum for an additional three months.

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

It’s too soon to see metrics around their work. The six months of work they’ve done has only carried us through to about 50% completion of this rewrite. Until we have that other 50% finished, we really can’t take this to market. They’ve been delivering in a timely manner, but it’s a complex application with a lot of programming interfaces that we have to develop concurrently to their work.

I’ve asked my team quite often for feedback on how things are going with Digiteum. Generally speaking, I think they’ve been quite positive about it, and my team is not the easiest to deal with. We’ve worked together very well. We have a status call once a week, and they put their entire design team on even though it’s quite late in Belarus. They’ve always been very good about ensuring everyone attends all these calls. They have people who can communicate effectively during the calls. I don’t think we have any complaints about their progress or the quality of their work.  

How did Digiteum perform from a project management standpoint?

I think they perform fairly well. The project management isn’t really their strongest point, or maybe they decided there weren’t enough complex interactions to warrant it. They’ve given us a team of two developers, a half-time designer, and a quarter-time technical lead. It’s a relatively small and modest team on my end as well. I usually have four or five folks actively involved with the Digiteum team. I don’t see much project management activities going on with them, and it might be nice to have more visibility into hours and delivery dates. We’ve seen some of that, but at the same time, I haven’t given them feedback to ask for more in that area. With the size of the team we have, I don’t need to know all the details as long as we keep seeing steady progress from week to week.

What did you find most impressive about Digiteum?

The designs they come up with are visually appealing. I think they do a good job in guiding us in the design. They’re proactive in that way, and we’ve been happy with the solutions they present for layout and usability. That goes back to the main reason we decided to outsource this project. We just don’t have that expertise in-house, so the GUI’s we develop are functional but not very pretty. Digiteum does a good job in their design.

Are there any areas Digiteum could improve?

We have an internal issue-tracking system that allows them to tell us the issues they’re working on and the hours spent. For us to start doing more QA and work with them more closely as we get to the final parts of the project, they could do more in that area. I’d like them to use the tools we’ve given them to update us on progress and work done. We often find that nothing gets added to that system for two or three weeks, and then there’s a big batch of changes. It’s hard for us to figure out what they changed. So, the project management is probably an area where they could do more.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the director and founder of BAM Mobile Limited, a digital agency that builds products for mobile. BAM is about 2 ½ years old.

What challenge were you trying to address with Digiteum?

We were looking for a scalable development resource, particularly an offshore firm. 

What was the scope of their involvement?

I recruited Digiteum at the company I worked for previously. I’ve worked with them for maybe 4 or 5 years and they’ve been my sole development resource over the period. When I was at my previous agency, we hired them for tablet app development. They did some work for us for Corbis. We did 2 tablet apps and probably 3 or 4 website builds. That was iOS, PHP, WordPress, a backend powered website, and some customized Tumblr blogs, all for the same client.

Then we used them to help us develop a software as a service business, specifically an administrative backend CMS to build customized tablet apps. It was a system that would compile apps by drawing content from multiple social feeds for our clients. We sold that as a service to our clients. More recently, we designed and built a website for an Asian-funded bank in Africa. It included integrating foreign exchange systems, a federal exchange platform, and money exchange systems. That was a high-security project since we dealt with banking data and individual data as well. Plus, the site needed to be very responsive.

After that, we built an app for Instagram. Instagram sponsored the music awards here in England called the Brit Awards. We installed tablets in the back of the limousines that took all of the musicians and celebrities to the show. Using our app, they could take a photo while they were in the back of the car and it got posted on Instagram. We also built a mobile app for another startup client of ours. It was a photographic app called I Remember. They built an augmented reality app on iOS for a soccer team called Aston Villa.

Basically, everything I’ve done in the last 4 or 5 years has probably been built by Digiteum—probably 5 or 6 websites and 6 or 7 apps. Digiteum provides resources as we need them, then we do the sales, design, and strategy. They put project and development resources and bring it to market. We worked with a number of people over that period of time, developing relationships with some of the staff. Eugene and Tatiana are on project management, while QA has been a couple of different people. We’ve probably had 4 different iOS developers but we usually went to the same lead development team. There were probably 2 Android developers. For the backend, it’s probably 3 of 4. It tends to be very scalable, which was one of the reasons we chose Digiteum in the first place. We fire a problem at them and they come back shortly after with a solution.

How did you come to work with Digiteum?

They actually approached me through LinkedIn because they were impressed by the mobile development work we had done at the time. We looked at lots of different options from the UK, Brazil, and Poland. Then we met Mike and Julia from Digiteum. We narrowed it down to the guys in Brazil and Digiteum in Belarus. We went to visit, went through the project and came out of that convinced that they were the best people to do it. The time zone was an important factor, and the length of time on the plane to go and see them or for them to see us was really important. The price was probably third; relative to a UK-based developer, they’re very high value. Now they come to visit us more than we visit them. We found that Digiteum’s breadth of experience and focus on mobile development was a good fit for what we needed. They’re largely for app development but also have the ability to work on .NET, PHP, etc.

How much have you invested with Digiteum?

We’ve paid $500,000 to $1 million for their services.

What is the status of this engagement?

I started with them in January 2012.

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

We used them to develop a prototype to help us pitch to Corbis and present to their chairman, Bill Gates. I presented with one of their prototypes and that was a million-pound project. That was a good first impression. Second, I think one of the projects that we ran for Corbis hit about 75% of the market that they were targeting. That’s better than anyone could have expected. Otherwise, individual projects have their own goals. I’m very pleased with their work or I wouldn’t continue to use them. If my happiness is a metric, that’s useful.

How did Digiteum perform from a project management standpoint?

To begin with, we had standard concerns about time zone and about not being located in the same office. We also had a potential language barrier. I think they demonstrated that none of those were an issue. They come over here often enough. We have developed a relationship with project managers that understand our requirements without having to spell them out. We have a process of daily standards and documentation so we know what progress is being made, receiving daily builds or weekly builds of apps. It makes you feel comfortable. If I need to report back to a client on progress, I need to be comfortable that progress is being made. We have found a way of collaborating that really works.

What did you find most impressive about Digiteum?

Their iOS development is the thing that we’ve used the most as well as the level of detail in their estimates. Quite often, we give them a fairly rough proof and we say, “Can you give me a cost on this tomorrow?” Very quickly, we’ll receive a topline number. If we interrogate them, they’ve already thought out the details of what is required in order to fulfill that piece of functionality. So, they are very thorough and provide quick detailed estimates. They’re usually extremely accurate and have thought through the detail a lot more than we’ve prepared in the brief.

Are there any areas Digiteum could improve?

Nothing comes to mind. I think the exchange rate post-Brexit has hit us a little bit, but I’d rather have the comfort of someone I know can deliver than to shop around.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Oxford University Press is the world’s largest and oldest university press. We’re based in Oxford, England with offices around the world. I am the technology director for the Academic Dictionaries Division in the Global Academic Group.

What challenge were you trying to address with Digiteum?

We have a very large licensing program where we license dictionary and language data to companies like Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and others. It’s been a very successful program, but it was a very time-consuming and expensive process. We needed to take various sources of dictionary and language data and convert them into the format that we used. Before I joined 2 years ago, we’d been using freelancers and doing it on a case by case basis. 

What was the scope of their involvement?

The first project was the dictionary conversion framework and pipeline. I had worked with Digiteum previously and knew they were very skilled. I sat down with them and explained the business problem that I wanted to solve, which was getting a wide variety of dictionary and language data in a variety of formats. From there, we needed to create a conversion pipeline so we could convert data in a repeatable, cost-effective, and accurate way. They pulled together some plans and processes which we worked on and approved, and we took it from there. They provided architectural guidance and developers to build the technology. They provided the test and QA for both the system and the results of the system. They also provided linguistics assistance in some of the technical computation linguistic tasks that we do.

Because that program was successful, we expanded the relationship. We also used them for testing and QA services for our core lexical platform and websites. Meanwhile, our marketing team uses them for website design and development. We’ve also used them for technical development in some of our technical projects, primarily around API development and platform development.

They use a lot of the Microsoft tools and systems, doing a lot of work in .NET. They’re familiar with a variety of backend systems and languages such as PHP, JavaScript and scripting language for a variety of web servers. For the front-end, they can do HTML, JavaScript and CSS. They use C# for the conversion pipeline and they also use Python. They’re a pretty wide-ranging shop. I’ve worked with them previously where they helped with mobile application development (both iOS and Android) and I’ve yet to have them not be able to take on a technical situation. If they don’t have resources in-house, they typically can bring people in from other places inside Minsk to help us with issues.

How did you come to work with Digiteum?

I’d been at a previous digital agency in London called Beattie McGuinness Bungay (BMB). In my previous role, I inherited them. The founders of the Startup (BMB TAB) had selected Digiteum for some early prototyping and projects. I’m not sure how Mike and Roy selected them, whether it was skill or luck (or a bit of both) but I worked with Digieum at BMB for almost 2 years and was really impressed with them.

When I moved to Oxford, Digiteum was the first team that I thought of because I’d been working for them the past 2 years. The relationship was fresh and I knew that they would be ideal for the role. I’ve selected other offshore partners and agencies in the past, but I didn’t really have to do that this time because I’d worked with Digiteum before and they were a natural choice. I originally started working with them in March 2013 and through 2014. I’ve known them for almost 4 years now.

How much have you invested with Digiteum?

Over six figures.

What is the status of this engagement?

I joined Oxford University Press in January 2015. I believe I started engaging to get the contract in place in March. We kicked off work around June or July of 2015 and we’ve basically worked with them non-stop since then. We’ve been using them for a year and a half and we’ll continue to do so.

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

We work in a very Agile and lean way, which involves sprints. There’s never a question of their commitment; they deliver on time and on budget. Because of the success we had in the conversion pipeline, the marketing team at Oxford University Press in the Global Academic Group brought them on to work on websites and others. A couple of my other partners have brought them on as well. I’ve never had an issue with them. They deliver what they say they’re going to do. We’ve been happy.

How did Digiteum perform from a project management standpoint?

They did really well. Most of their engineers speak really good English, but some don’t. They always ensure that the main project manager and technical leads speak good English. We typically have daily stand-ups for the project and we have weekly project calls. We also get reports at the end of each sprint. We get regular financial reports, budgetary reports, on what’s been spent.  

What did you find most impressive about Digiteum?

I’ve used partners from Eastern Europe, Poland, Russia, and Belarus. I’ve also used folks from Vietnam, China, and India. The thing I like about the Digiteum team is they will push back and challenge assumptions. If I ask them to build something or take on a project, they’ll come back and suggest enhancements. That’s what I look for in a partner. I don’t want somebody that’s just going to do exactly what I say because I make mistakes. I enjoy the fact that they’ll ask if we’ve thought about doing something else or using this tool, or we could do it faster if we drop these features to get it to market so you could test it. They will tell me if they think I’m going in the wrong direction. I really appreciate that. If I ask them to build a car and accidentally say, “Build that with square wheels,” they’ll let me know. I’ve worked with other partners who would literally build me a car with square wheels and not push back.

I like the fact that if I ever do have an issue or question, I can pick up the phone and talk to my technical leads or my project manager. I can also talk to the owners and co-founders at any time, provide feedback, and get things fixed. I’ve never had an issue that’s not been resolved. We can have very candid and open discussions on matters. The team is very upfront—they tell it like it is and I like that. They do what they say they do. They go above and beyond. I imagine that there’ve been times that they’ve been behind on a deliverable. Instead of coming back and saying, “We need extra time,” they just get it done whether that means working extra hours or taking a hit on the margin they would make. They’re in it for the long-term.

Are there any areas Digiteum could improve?

Not really. They’re my go-to folks for technical projects and technical testing. It would be great if everyone in the shop spoke perfect English, but that’s not going to happen in an offshore company. Everyone’s written communication is good.

We are a mobile agency located in the U.K. We work with enterprises, creative agencies, and their customers to deliver mobile-centric solutions with a particular focus on augmented reality and location-based content. I am the CTO, responsible for project delivery and partner management.

Our client handles thousands of vehicle sales each year, and today's online world means that pictures and video need to be captured for every vehicle so that they can be presented on the Web. This leads to significant delays between stock arriving and listings appearing on the website.

We worked together with our client and Digiteum to find solutions that would improve this workflow through the use of mobile technology and reduce the time from on forecourt to on website.

The solution was to create a dedicated content capturing app together with a cloud-based content repository. This allows any member of the client's team to capture images and video of incoming vehicles in a consistent manner, and then securely upload them to the cloud. From here, they can be automatically ingested into an existing Web CMS [content management system] and appear instantly on the consumer-facing website.

The overall project lasted approximately four months during which time Digiteum were responsible for the design and development of the iOS app, together with the cloud-based content management system.

The solution met both our expectations and those of the end client fully, with average turnaround times reduced from days to hours.

The technology proposed by Digiteum and their execution of the overall vision have proved to be excellent, and working in partnership with members of their technical team was far simpler and more rewarding than we'd expected.

What was especially pleasing was that Digiteum were incredibly flexible in both attitude and development. They were happy to work against a constantly changing set of requirements while maintaining the original schedule and budget. We look forward to working with the team again very soon.