Eastern Peak

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the CTO/CPO of WalkIN IQ

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Walk In IQ is a smart access control and property automation platform built by operators for operators. Originally developed in-house to automate a portfolio of more than 7,000 units, it now helps multifamily, student housing, build-to-rent, and senior living owners cut costs and increase profitability through self-guided tours, keyless access, turnover management, and energy management.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Eastern Peak to accomplish?

• Smart Access Control and Property Automation Platform

SOLUTION

How did you find Eastern Peak?

Referral

Why did you select Eastern Peak over others?

• Pricing fit our budget
• Referred to me

How many teammates from Eastern Peak were assigned to this project?

6-10 Employees

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

Over six years, the team has served as our extended development arm for the Walk In IQ platform, a smart access control and property automation system used across multifamily, student housing, build-to-rent, and senior living properties. Their work has covered the full product lifecycle, from initial builds to ongoing enhancement and maintenance. 

Key deliverables included: 

Mobile applications: Development of the resident and prospect mobile apps, including keyless unlock and the SelfTour IQ app for scheduling, touring, and applying. 

Web dashboards: The agent and property manager portals for lead tracking, prospect communication, access management, and reporting. 

Self-guided tour functionality: End-to-end workflows covering scheduling, identity verification, temporary access, and lead capture. 

Access control and turn management automation: Logic that automatically issues and revokes digital keys for residents, staff, and contractors across the unit lifecycle. 

Third-party integrations: Connections to property management systems, access control hardware and locks, and energy management devices, with data kept in sync across systems. 

Energy management features: Thermostat fleet management, vacant-unit monitoring, and alerting for extreme temperatures and overuse. 

Reporting and analytics: Dashboards for leads, tour activity, and access logs. Ongoing maintenance and support: Regular releases, performance improvements, and rapid response to production issues.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

The platform the team helped build has delivered measurable results for our portfolio and our customers. In our flagship deployment across 26 properties and more than 7,000 units, we’ve seen: 25% reduction in vacancy loss, driven by self-guided tours that expand showing hours and increase tours, leads, and applications 5-7% increase in NOI, from lower operating costs and faster unit turns 35% reduction in staffing costs, as automated access control and turn management replaced manual key and scheduling tasks Up to 20% reduction in HVAC energy costs, through vacant-unit energy management and usage alerts 

On the engineering side, the quality of the team’s code has reduced our QA costs by [X%], and production issues are typically resolved within [timeframe]. Over six years, that consistency has let us ship releases with confidence and keep our own team focused on product priorities. Before you submit Fill in the brackets with real figures, even rough ones. If you don’t have exact numbers, an honest estimate such as “roughly a third” is better than a precise-sounding invented one. 

Check attribution. If you’d rather not imply the subcontractor is responsible for the business metrics, you can open with “Our platform has delivered...” and keep the subcontractor-specific credit to the QA and response-time lines. Consider adding delivery metrics if you track them, such as uptime, release frequency, bug rates, or on-time delivery percentage. Clutch reviewers tend to value these because they tie directly to the vendor’s work.

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

Project management has been one of the team’s biggest strengths. Over six years, they’ve been consistently organized, transparent, and dependable. We always know what’s in progress, what’s coming next, and whether anything is at risk, so there are no surprises on scope or timelines. They deliver on time as a rule. 

When they commit to a date, we can plan our own releases and customer commitments around it. On the rare occasions a timeline has shifted, they’ve flagged it early, explained the cause, and proposed a clear path forward rather than letting us find out late. They’ve also been very responsive to our needs. Requests and priority changes are handled quickly and without friction, and the team adapts as our roadmap evolves. When something does go wrong in production, they respond fast, take ownership, and fix it without finger-pointing. 

That reliability is a big reason the relationship has lasted six years, and why I treat them as an extension of our own engineering team. To make it more specific, consider adding: Your working process, such as two-week sprints, weekly syncs, or a shared Jira or Slack channel An on-time figure, even a rough one (e.g., “roughly 90% of releases delivered on the committed date”) A response-time example, such as “a critical production issue acknowledged within minutes and resolved the same day” A time they adapted to a change, like a shifted priority or a tight deadline they helped you meet

What was your primary form of communication with Eastern Peak?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

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

What sets this team apart is that they deliver on all three fronts, consistently, for six years. Quality of work: Their code is clean, well-structured, and reliable from the first delivery. It arrives so close to production-ready that it has noticeably lowered our QA costs. We spend far less time chasing defects than we ever did with other vendors. Communication: They’re proactive, transparent, and easy to reach. 

We always know where things stand, and problems are raised early rather than discovered late. It feels like working with an internal team, not an outside vendor. Speed and accuracy of deliverables: They get it right the first time, so we rarely go through rounds of rework. And when something does go wrong, as it eventually does in any software project, they respond quickly, diagnose accurately, and fix the issue without finger-pointing. What I find most impressive is the trust that comes from this combination. After six years, I don’t second-guess their work, and that frees my team to focus on product priorities instead of managing a vendor. To make it more distinctive 

Add one concrete story, such as a critical production issue they fixed within hours or a tight deadline they helped you meet. Specific examples are what set a review apart on Clutch. Quantify the accuracy, if you can, with something like “fewer than X defects per release” or “QA time down roughly X%.” Name what’s unique compared with other vendors you’ve used, such as retaining the same core team for six years or proposing improvements without being asked, if either applies.

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

I am happy with the way they operate.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the founder of StudioToGallery, an art professional with 20 years experience in the fine arts industry. Our platform connects artists with galleries, collectors, and cultural opportunities, creating a supportive bridge between the studio and the wider art world. Through curated visibility, community, and professional guidance, we help emerging and established artists to be seen and to grow.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Eastern Peak?

We needed help creating a platform manageable by only one person.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Eastern Peak has helped bring our vision to life by developing the digital platform and technical structure needed to connect artists, galleries, collectors, and cultural opportunities. Their work supports us in creating a professional, accessible space where artists can gain visibility, share their practice, and grow within a wider creative community. Easter Peak has delivered the full technical development of our platform, building the core infrastructure and features needed to support artists, galleries, collectors, and users. Their work includes AWS hosting, GitHub-based development management, artist profile pages, automated payment systems, automated email workflows, Stripe integration, and the overall backend and frontend components required to run the platform professionally.

What is the team composition?

We work with 2–5 teammates from Eastern Peak.

How did you come to work with Eastern Peak?

We found them through an online search. We chose them over other options because our company values aligned.

How much have you invested with them?

The project cost is confidential.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in January 2025, and our engagement is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We’ve seen progress and success at the same time. In three months, we’ve had 750 member applications and 537 active members in our program. Our conversion rate is high; two-thirds of applicants convert into members and stay. Only two members have canceled the service out of 537 members. Moreover, 10% of the members use the platform daily, and 50% use our Discord channel. Additionally, members like the platform and are now asking for more services. We’re working on the new services at the moment.

How did Eastern Peak perform from a project management standpoint?

They have a fantastic team; I’m very happy with their services. They’re excellent.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their understanding of my ideas and their ability to bring them to action are impressive. They have very good execution, and it’s nice to talk to them.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, there aren’t any.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

RYDE, a company that specializes in transporting employees to organizations in Israel, has over 150 customers who use our platform and save thousands of shekels every day and month. My role is CTO

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Eastern Peak, and what were your goals?

The goal of the project was to build a mobile application for our customers. EASTERN PEEK took this project from start to finish, we gathered all the challenges that exist in the old system and they implemented them perfectly and met the goals we set for them

SOLUTION

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

RYDE is a subsidiary of TOYOTA Israel That's why a recommendation came from the CEO of Toyota based on acquaintances. The relevant factors that influenced us in choosing this external supplier were: time with customers, recruitment of workers in Israel, and the quality of work.

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

Scope of work

• Characterization and understanding of an existing product
• Achieving dangers and mapping all customers in terms of business
• Building a work plan and assembling the team
• Building INFRASTRUCTURE for the benefit of the Mobile Application
• Build a system of settings for the benefit of managing UI screens in the application
• Building applications for 2 stores

Technologies: BACK END FOR MOBILE NODEJS MOBILE UI-ANDROID & FLUTTER MANAGEMENT SYSTEM - REACT & NODE JS CLOUD - AWS DB -POSTGRESQL

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

6 people 3 Full Stack developers 2 MOBILE DEVELOPERS 1 QA

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Excellent results, we met the goals and the first version was already wanted in production by 7 of our customers B2B. Of course project continues because we have more customers who want the streets and changes

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

We operate in the AGILE method We have weekly planning and also have DAILY Tools: UTRECK for task management SLACK Correspondence by Channels ZOOM & HANG for DAILY

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

We are impressed with their professionalism and the quality of their work. They are able to fulfill their promises

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

We are a customer - all that needs to be improved is our ability to give precise requirements

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We're a software development company focused on video applications for mobile and web. We work primarily with B2B customers, and we’ve been around for four years now. I’m the CTO of the company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Eastern Peak?

We had a mobile application written in React Native, with a few outsourced developers. We weren’t happy with the developer nor the application. Because of that, we wanted to rewrite our mobile application to be entirely native, and we were looking for a team that could help us do that.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We’re doing UI work with them. In these engagements, we provide them the backend and APIs, and they handle design. Eastern Peak allocates frontend developers working on iOS and Android for mobile as well as React for the web.

We provide complete designs as Photoshop and InVision files, workflows, and product definitions. We use Jira to create tasks and work collaboratively. The model of operation is a mix of agile and Kanban.

Recently, we’ve had another application that we wanted to write, this time from scratch. We expanded our team at Eastern Peak to develop this application as well. We’ve also used them to write our web interface. We liked our engagement to that point, so we gave them more work.

What is the team composition?

We currently have five people on their team. We started with two, but then added a web developer and two more mobile developers.

How did you come to work with Eastern Peak?

We had a bad experience with a previous company, so we were very careful in picking out the new team we’d be working with. We tested the developers and spoke with people who’d worked with them. This time, we did our homework. Eventually, the quality of the developers was the determining factor. 

Eastern Peak has a nice operation, and that was a prerequisite. Our team wanted to work with an established company that could scale up if we needed more developers in the future.

How much have you invested with them?

It cost about $100,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Eastern Peak in July 2019, and it’s very much still ongoing. We have a roadmap planned for the next two years.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We have documentation and Jira reports, but I don’t have any metrics outside of that. Our team handles delivery timelines and QA, which is determined based on quality. In other words, if everything is on course, the quality is good. We’re getting everything on time, so we’re happy.

How did Eastern Peak perform from a project management standpoint?

We handle project management from our side. They have a good understanding of the tasks we give them, able to give us more developers when needed. Typically, it takes a few weeks to hire a new developer for our team. We’re considering giving them more freedom in terms of project management because their developers are good and they know what they’re doing.  

What did you find most impressive about them?

If we need them, we can pick up the phone, and someone will answer and handle the request quickly. We wanted one of the developers to become more of a team leader, and they helped us with the training needed to get her up to speed in that new role.

Eastern Peak provided a course and educational material for her to study. We talk with the Eastern Peak management every couple of weeks. They check to see if we’re happy and if there’s anything we need.

They keep close contact and haven’t refused anything we’ve asked. We even asked to isolate our developers in a different location in the office. They rearranged the open space to accommodate that. It’s been a good experience so far.

Are there any areas they could improve?

There’s nothing specific that I have to say. If we pick good developers, most of the issues that may arise will solve themselves pretty quickly.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

Clients should let the team from Eastern Peak do the first filtering for them. That saved us a ton of time. They have a really good filtering process for developers.

We like people to be involved and enjoy to choosing developers as part of the team. That was harder to find, but Eastern Peak found them for us.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the chief operating officer of a user-generated content site serving tens of millions of artists across the world. Whether it’s photography, visual arts, culture, or anything else, we provide the platform for those items to be displayed, commented on, or sold.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Eastern Peak?

We wanted to expand our business to incorporate a TV brand that wanted to partner with us. Eastern Peak helped us develop an app that functions as an extension of our website for that.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

The app is based in Android and includes a curated stream of content from our platform using our API as well as different tokens and security measures to fetch content that we decided to feature.

We approached the project in two phases, one of which is a screen saver and the second of which is the real app that you can download on your tv and do different things with the content such as browsing by category or saving your favorite items.

What is the team composition?

There were four members of their team working on the project with us.

How did you come to work with Eastern Peak?

I knew the founder from previous interactions and had tried to work with them in the past but ended up not going through with those projects, so I knew that I wanted to see if they would be interested in this one as well.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent around $70,000–$80,000 in total.

What is the status of this engagement?

The project lasted from around May 2019–January 2020.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

When you’re looking for outsourcing agencies to work with, you really need someone who is attentive and responsive, and who is going to understand the business and be objective in their assessments of the product. Eastern Peak really provided all of that for us.

The quality of their work was very good, and they made an effort to communicate very closely with the project managers on our end. It felt like they were a part of our organization, and that was a really key element to our success, in my opinion.

How did Eastern Peak perform from a project management standpoint?

They did an excellent job managing the project. We used Slack and email to communicate as well as another project management software to keep track of the milestones and deadlines for our work.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their team lead is absolutely exceptional, and the rest of the company does a great job of coordinating their efforts to quickly work through larger tasks by breaking them down into very manageable chunks.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I really don’t have anything that I can point to that they could do better.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

No matter what agency you are considering working with, make sure you interview their people before you start to make sure that their culture is a good fit for your organization. Once you get to know Eastern Peak as a team, there will be no doubt in your mind that they will be able to do good work for you, so all that’s left is to make sure they are the right choice for your organization.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the CTO of a digital learning company. We develop a cloud solution and content for online training. Our mother company deals with offline training when there is a real location and classroom setting.

We develop a cloud solution that provides both a learning management system (LMS), which enables companies to provide learning material to their employees and follow up on their progress, and also a solution for classroom administrators. This second product is an online platform to register for classes. It takes care of all the paperwork and organizes everything in one place.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Eastern Peak?

We were looking for a partner to help with development. Specifically, a company with experience in Ruby.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We are writing the platform using two technologies. When I started with the company, the platform I inherited had a backend written in Ruby on Rails.  We decided to use Node.js for the next project, and Eastern Peak also has experience with that.

Eastern Peak came onboard to work on an existing project. There were a lot of undocumented models, so they dove into the source code to understand how it all worked without disrupting service for existing clients that were running the platform.

We also wanted to move the platform to Amazon to take advantage of their cloud’s services (storage, distribution, caching), many of which weren’t available in the local hosting we had. They contributed to that from their experience.

They’ve also worked with a variety of third-party tools. For example, our customers use a CRM or a billing system, and Eastern Peak went into the API to understand how it works and how to migrate from our cloud to Amazon. In some places, we wrote a lot of the model or integrated deeply into another company who had their own cloud solution with APIs. The Eastern Peak team rewrote the whole connection from Ruby to Node.js.

What is the team composition?

We have a core team of four full-time developers consisting of two backend resources and two frontend resources. Both backend developers use Ruby and Node.js, and we use React.js on the frontend.

Additionally, we have a project manager who contributes 50% of his time to our project. He has been our main contact, but I also speak to the developers directly. Whenever I need a higher-level overview, I involve the project manager. I’ve also worked with a UX designer and a DevOps person, who works on our project 30% of his time.

How did you come to work with Eastern Peak?

When I joined the company, we had our own team of developers. We moved the development offshore because I was looking for more of a professional team with scalability so I could add developers for certain projects or for a short time without committing to hiring under Dutch law, which is very strict.

I made a shortlist of five companies; some were local and some were offshore. Eastern Peak was one of the top ones, mainly because of the Ruby technology they could support me on, which was the first requirement. The second requirement was experience with Node.js because I wanted to develop the classroom administration using that technology.

They also shone on the list of options because of their response and interest. Our relationship started off strong when their CEO came to visit us. In the end, I selected Eastern Peak based on the technology I wanted to use and the technology I inherited from the previous development team.

What is the status of this engagement?

We began working with them in March 2019, and the work is still ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We finished phase one of the classroom admin system, and they met the deadline. We are now going into two weeks of testing and feedback. All the models we defined for the classroom are done. For the core project that they took over, we are now adding new functionality. In the end, the goal is to migrate everything to Node.js and merge both the online and offline projects into one platform.

When I joined, we had one full-time developer and two students, and the project lasted for three years. In three or four months, we managed to do something that’s comparable to three years of development the other team did. Of course, we put more effort into it this time and had more experience, so they knew how to set up a lot of things. 

Once we actually release the classroom product, which they handled from start to finish, it will be a record for us in terms of development progress. Before we worked with Eastern Peak, we had very slow development processes. We’ve since scaled up the team and gained experience, and Eastern Peak already know how to do a lot of the things we’ve requested. They are very dedicated.

How did Eastern Peak perform from a project management standpoint?

I visit them once a month for a couple of days, which helps maintain a close relationship. Project management has been pretty strong on their end. We also have a product owner in Amsterdam. They guide the product while I guide the development. We have a video chat every morning for our stand-up meeting where we report everything. YouTrack handles reporting issues and tasks, and GitHub is for repositories.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I am quite happy with their service. I’ve had a couple of cases where clients needed support and we had our own roadmap, so we scaled up the team for two or three weeks. They provided me with an experienced developer that could solve the problem without a long-term commitment. I am very happy with that capability.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, not that I’ve seen. They communicate clearly, which was one of the key characteristics I was looking for.  

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I'm the CMO of a company that develops ultra-secure mobile phones with blockchain capability. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Eastern Peak?

We wanted to relaunch a new branding scheme and build a website to support it. 

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Eastern Peak helped our company launch a rebrand. They developed a responsive website for us with translations into multiple languages. Our web designer created wireframes and sketches for the design.  

The site includes an e-commerce platform they integrated with our CRM system. They also built different payment integrations for crypto-payment capabilities. 

What is the team composition? 

Eastern Peak assigned us a dedicated project manager. We usually work with about three people total from their team.

How did you come to work with Eastern Peak?

I used to work with Alexey (Founder and CEO, Eastern Peak). 

How much have you invested with them?

We've spent about $25,000–$35,000 so far.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in August 2008 and have an ongoing relationship. At this point, they're providing maintenance and support. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Eastern Peak delivered a platform with a high level of both functionality and reliability. Since launch, we've received many compliments about it. The overall feedback has been consistently positive. 

Eastern Peak has very good programmers on staff. They’re very cost effective, and I highly recommend working with them. All of their work is consistently high quality. 

How did Eastern Peak perform from a project management standpoint?

Eastern Peak has been very responsive and engaged in our project. Our primary forms of communication are phone and e-mail. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

Eastern Peak is a team of very smart people. They’re capable of anything you could need them to do. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

No.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I recommend defining every aspect of what you wish to accomplish in the project before it begins. Make sure to align expectations beforehand. Having detailed requirements will translate to an accurate cost upfront and prevent any unpleasant surprises. 

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the director of software engineering at a battery-free Bluetooth tech product firm.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Eastern Peak?

We needed additional resources to help with iOS and Android app development. We’d been working with a local company in Israel, but it wasn’t going well, so we decided to look for an offshore vendor.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We provided Eastern Peak with a set of initial sketches, and they put together a plan for building iOS and Android versions of the app with simple UI elements. We’re currently in the prototyping phase. Basically, the finished application will act as a gateway between our company’s physical beacon to our cloud solution, using Bluetooth Low Energy technology to connect the two.

What is the team composition?

We work with Nick (Project Manager, Eastern Peak) who leads a team of about seven engineers that handle UI, Android, iOS, and web development.

How did you come to work with Eastern Peak?

I found them through a Google search. After speaking with one of their product managers, I decided they’d be a good fit.

How much have you invested with them?

So far, we’ve spent $15,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in August 2018, and it’s an ongoing project.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Their development work is high-functioning and reliable.

How did Eastern Peak perform from a project management standpoint?

Eastern Peak is very communicative. Our teams speak multiple times a week, if not daily. They’re very proactive and manage the project well. We use Jira, Bitbucket, and Confluence to track our progress.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I appreciate their responsiveness. It’s clear that they want us to succeed.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I’d like them to do internal testing before submitting any of their work to us, which isn’t part of their current process.

Any advice for potential customers?

Clients should be sure they have an engineer they can communicate well with.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the CTO and co-founder of a Software-as-a-Service enterprise provider. We focus on localization solutions for websites and applications that need to be adapted to multiple local markets.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Eastern Peak?

We have our own engineering team, but needed access to different skillsets . Technology moves fast and even though we have our own stack, we need to support our customers around different platforms. Finding and hiring full-time developers for single use cases was not easy, but some of our customers required SDKs [software development kits] for connecting to PHP and .NET components.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They provided highly talented offshore resources for specific technologies. They make sure that those resources deliver and that they can be made available in a very short time.

Our customers use different technologies. In order to integrate to our Java platform, an SDK is required. The work involved building plug-ins or connectors for us.

They developed a PHP SDK used by customers to support specific frameworks. Another customer needed the same SDK to support WordPress so Eastern Peak hired engineers for this purpose.

What is the team composition?

I worked with five people from their team. Their project manager is our primary point of contact, but I have talked to everyone on their team.

How did you come to work with Eastern Peak?

They contacted us over LinkedIn, but we didn’t need additional resources at the time. They proposed a one-project trial and did a great job.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in August 2017. The SDK development project took two months to complete. The collaboration is ongoing, and we plan to expand their team.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Eastern Peak delivered 27 projects since we’ve started working together. Those connectors have been used by 461 of our customers. They’ve done an excellent job in delivering our scope.

They delivered our SDK one month early. Because we liked working with the developer, we kept him on even if there is not enough work to do.

How did Eastern Peak perform from a project management standpoint?

We appreciate the team dynamic and the flexibility they show. When requesting resources, some of our members want to work with the engineer directly, without a project manager. Eastern Peak allowed this, but they also provide managers when necessary—working with our marketing team, for example. They adjust their approach to meet our demand.

We use Slack for communication. I can contact them at any time, including late at night. They’ve worked hard to remain responsive and they answer us fast. They’ve worked during weekends just to deliver on time.

I was impressed by their effort, so I gave our account manager a bonus. His main role is to make sure that everyone is happy and available, and to provide more resources when we need them. Otherwise, we communicate with the engineers directly. We prefer to be in touch with the engineers directly, so we haven’t relied heavily on them for management.

What did you find most impressive about them?

None of the companies we worked with in the past actually delivered. They make promises and present great engineers in the beginning, but, after the contract is signed, those senior engineers are replaced by juniors. Eastern Peak guaranteed that this would never happened . The resources we were assigned are our own. They’re never lost or shared without our permission.

Are there any areas they could improve?

There is always room for improvement. They’re a small-to-medium company and we would appreciate it if they had a bigger pool of resources. At one point, we needed .NET or other technology skillsets by the next day, but they couldn’t accommodate that. However, their one-week delivery time time is still faster than finding developers in our own city.

A local presence in our country would make everything easier for us, from the financial side. International transactions are not easy to deal with, so I would love to work with a local branch.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

Focusing on direct communication with the engineers is a good approach. Using Slack is also faster than email.

It’s a good idea to put together a long-term plan, particularly when it comes to how many engineers will be needed in three or four months. Finding resources takes one or two weeks, unless they are immediately available.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the VP of R&D at an event management startup. We are a one-stop-shop AWS platform that allows organizers across the globe to build successful events. Our development is based in Israel and Ukraine.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Eastern Peak?

We needed help with development for our event management platform.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Professional conferences—whether in HR, technology, or any other industry—often attract hundreds or thousands of attendees. Organizers usually set up a website to display the agenda, speakers, and other information, and allow people to purchase tickets.

When arriving at an event, a mobile app shows the attendee the agenda and speakers while enabling them to chat with everyone in the event community. On the organizer side, the app provides an easy drag-and-drop layout. It also allows them to build event contents, analytics, and reports.

Eastern Peak was mostly focused on the frontend and backend of the web platform, rather than the mobile app. They have mostly worked with React.js and Backbone, which are the technologies we use. Our tech stack also includes React.js and React Native for the frontend, and Java and Kotlin for the backend, running on Tomcat 8 and Engine 8. We use multiple data sources, like Elasticsearch, RDS with MySQL, and Redshift.

We work with four squads in an Agile manner. One or two Eastern Peak employees work within each of our squads. They have a strong background in other technologies, and they have been able to recruit very strong, collaborative developers for us.

What is the team composition?

We initially brought on three or four people from their team, but recently grew the team to six people. They surprised us by quickly getting us very good candidates. We are hiring much more quickly with Eastern Peak than with any of our other development sources.

I have been working with a point of contact on the HR side, and have worked with Alexey Chalimov [CEO, Eastern Peak] regarding finances. They are permanent employees until we decide differently.

We didn’t just hire anyone that comes from them. We had our own recruiting process, which includes an assignment and interview. This helps us to evaluate the qualities we are looking for in a candidate.

How did you come to work with Eastern Peak?

The CEO of Eastern Peak has a personal relationship with someone from our company. Both of our companies are based in Israel in a small community.

How much have you invested in them?

We spent between $30,000—$40,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We began working with them in January of 2016, and the work is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The velocity of the team has been very effective for us, and the quality of their work has been fine. They are making great progress working as part of a heterogeneous team here in Israel. Everyone is very happy. The onboarding of our recent additions to the team went quite smoothly and quickly. I’ve worked with other companies in the past, and it hasn’t gone as well as it has with Eastern Peak.

How did Eastern Peak perform from a project management standpoint?

Communication with them is smooth. We usually communicate through Skype calls on an as-needed basis, which is usually daily but sometimes more frequent. Some of their developers are very fluent in English, and some have a few challenges, so we have to figure out what works.

We use Scrum and Agile methodology, which allows us to bring them into our daily meetings and involve them in our work. They feel like they are part of the team.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The team that works with us is very loyal. We have been working with some of them for a few years, which is a long time for a vendor.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Nothing that I can think of right now.