EDENLAB

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the executive director of Bank Lviv, a small regional bank in western Ukraine with 100% European shareholders. I focus on the business development of our credit processes and micro digital lending.

What challenge were you trying to address with EDENLAB?

We needed someone to develop a CRM system to service all types of credit applications.

What was the scope of their involvement?

EDENLAB helped us build and design a CRM system for business integration, and worked on designing our own loan application process for microbusinesses and large corporate clients. We’ve successfully passed the first iteration and launched it publicly.

We’re currently working together for the second iteration to implement more depth in each process, and trying to implement a special risk model for loan applications.

What is the team composition?

Our team consists of a project manager, a business analyst, a developer, and backend support.

How did you come to work with EDENLAB?

We chose to work with EDENLAB because we felt comfortable communicating with them.

How much have you invested with them?

So far, we’ve spent about $256,000 USD.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our ongoing partnership started in October 2019.

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

Since implementing this new system, we’ve lessened the average time of our microlending process from 2 or more days down to only 2–3 hours.

We’ve also increased the number of loan applications we’ve received during the last five months, and we’re garnering more than 3000 applications.

How did EDENLAB perform from a project management standpoint?

They perform quite professionally despite the pressures of the labor market.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We’re impressed with their experience and professionalism. The team is highly flexible and it’s very easy for them to apply any changes we want to make, even if we already finalized the initial scope — EDENLAB feels like a significant part of our company, rather than an external vendor.

Are there any areas they could improve?

The only drawback that I want them to improve is to have a more stable team that will focus on our organization.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Raiffeisen Bank International is a bank in Austria with many subsidiaries in Europe. The Austrian operation of our company does business with legal entities only, so all private-individual operations are in Central and Eastern Europe. I’m a board member in the organization and I’m in charge of those operations.

What challenge were you trying to address with EDENLAB?

We wanted to create a new digital-only value proposition in the market, and we started with an unsecured loan product for Poland. We also needed to lay the foundations for the banking platform such that it could easily and quickly accommodate various use cases as they come. For this, we sought the expertise of EDENLAB.

What was the scope of their involvement?

EDENLAB developed the frontend of our app natively for iOS. They also acted as the product owner, covering most of the IT development and product design. They took over some of the materials from our existing team, but they basically developed the app from scratch.

The app has a digital onboarding functionality followed by the customer journey for the loan. Customers could provide data on the spot, but they don’t have to provide documents since EDENLAB integrated open-banking APIs from independent third parties like Mambu. 

From the supplied data alone, the system could do a background check and make an automated credit decision. If a loan is granted, a new customer account — similar to a credit account — will be opened. The entire process takes place within 30 minutes.

We intend to have EDENLAB develop Android and web versions of the app later on.

What is the team composition?

Along with the project manager and 20–25 people that EDENLAB provides, we are also in contact with Marina (Managing Partner).

How did you come to work with EDENLAB?

They were recommended to me.

What is the status of this engagement?

The project officially started in June 2021, and EDENLAB took a couple of months to onboard themselves. The actual work began in September 2020 and is still ongoing.

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

It’s still too early to talk about business metrics, but EDENLAB’s involvement helped our app go live with a new bank within the span of 12 months. Considering that we had to secure a banking license and that their team had to adjust themselves to various compliance and regulatory requirements, it is a significant achievement.

We also consider it a big success that EDENLAB was able to design a customer loaning journey that only takes 30 minutes to complete. 

How did EDENLAB perform from a project management standpoint?

EDENLAB is solid in terms of sticking to the deadlines. I’m not deeply involved in the management of this project, but I haven’t seen any significant issues on my level. 

We hold our virtual standup meetings via Microsoft Teams. EDENLAB is also fully integrated into the IT security environment and compliance systems of our bank. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

The most impressive thing about EDENLAB IS the extremely strong quality of their delivery.

Are there any areas they could improve?

EDENLAB has a strong team that’s been together for many years, but I don’t know how scalable they are or if they’ll be able to provide more resources should we want it.

Going through the process of taking over the solution they built for us, I think they can improve by learning how to perform handovers. Our experience was that too many things were in the hands of just a few people, and there wasn’t sufficient documentation for a smooth transfer.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

If you need to create a new product or a new feature, go with EDENLAB, but if it is just an incremental development of a more stable system, you might want to consider another agency. EDENLAB is at their best when they have to create an MVP to solve a very complex task. They build things in the smartest ways possible, and they’re the sprint type of people. They test new frontiers, they have a creative attitude to problem-solving, and they really deliver.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the former CIO of LakeDiamond. We developed machines to create diamonds in labs based on research from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne.

What challenge were you trying to address with EDENLAB?

They asked me to build a platform to do the ICO which is the initial coin offering. I was working with another company in Greece, but we weren’t satisfied with their work. We had to hire people who had a deep knowledge of financial technology and centralized technology like Ethereum.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We started with a little project with them initially which was a payment module for cryptocurrency for eCommerce. We created our own money. We were selling hours of production on the machine. We created a time unit and each time unit which could be one minute, but people could buy hours. It requires a certain amount of time, and to grow a rough diamond it is roughly 20 days.

They built a web platform using GoLang. We had the design already and requirements. They helped us to redesign it, and I have to say that they were super helpful and super reactive. 

What is the team composition?

We worked with a team of four people and it was great. Sometimes they will hire extra resources like a solutions architect, or a security engineer for specific tasks.

The CTO was super knowledgeable and super-efficient. The project manager was very involved as well.

How did you come to work with EDENLAB?

I had another developer who was great, and he recommended I look at EDENLAB. Their portfolio helped me chose them for this project.

How much have you invested in them?

We spent roughly $200,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked with them from January–June 2019.

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

We had to deliver it in June, and they did it in record time. Once we hired them, I felt relieved and I was able to sleep at night. It was a real game-changer and I can only recommend them because they were really professional. They engaged themselves and took the work seriously.

They delivered what we expected, but unfortunately, the project was not launched because of changes on our side. We had sold some hours of production, but we were not able to produce. We designed the platform, launched it, reviewed it, and had an external security company and everything was perfect.

EDENLAB would always give feedback and would explain how things would work or not work, and they would tell us the solution they recommended. They always brought different things to the table and would always check with us to see what we expected when it came to issues that we couldn’t plan for when we designed the platform. I'll involve them in my next project because I'm really happy with them.

How did EDENLAB perform from a project management standpoint?

I am based in Switzerland, but we had virtual meetings every day. It was straightforward. They use tools like Confluence, and I think it was good to work with them. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’re problem solvers. I have worked with different companies, but for me, this is the best one I’ve worked with. The most important quality is their reactivity, knowledge, and strong communication. They have the ability to deliver and sometimes find a simple solution to a problem. 

When we started the project, within one month we were able to try out the e-commerce payment option. If developers haven’t worked with a payment processor it could take months, but they developed the processor within a month. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

They are better on the backend than on the frontend. They know Azure technology very well.

It’s probably because we didn’t have much time to work on the project, the UX was okay, but when it came to the UI, it would have been great to have a lean UI and something more trendy and well designed instead of tonal and a bit cold. 

However, it isn’t fair from my side to say because they were really good at everything we asked them for. We asked them to do an interface, but we should have given them more time to do that. The project was not crystal clear and was a bit blurry on some things. We had to tackle some issues, so compared to the challenges they had, I must say they performed really well.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

It’s important to tell the project manager what you expect and what want. If you need prediction ready tools for fintech or healthcare, they're the right company for that.

Please describe your company and your position there.

We are data company specializing in automotive data. We collect information about the vehicles and sell vehicle history reports for people who are buying used cars.

For what projects/services did your company hire EDENLAB?

We wanted to store metadata of our vehicle history reports in blockchain for transparency. EdenLab helped us to build a fast and reliable solution to achieve this goal.

What were your goals for this project?

A scalable, reliable, cheap to operate and fully integrated into our system.

How did you select this vendor?

Got recommendation from a friend.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

They have build a serverless solution on AWS Lambdas with Go Lang. Solution used IPFS to store metadata, MongoDB to index it. They have also built a website to browse the metadata.

What was the team composition?

CTO + Back End developer + Front End developer

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

This allowed to achieve our goals with minimal effort (1 call once a week) with very low financing.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

Management was great. It felt really like an in-house job.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

The skill and knowledge of their engineers and their willingness to help set them apart. I feel like just consultation alone were worth the money.

Are there any areas for improvement?

Cant think of any. We will be hiring them again.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the VP of product development at a financial company.

What challenge were you trying to address with EDENLAB?

My company wanted to create a more secure money transfer solution through a database. We needed an experienced IT company to implement and develop our platform.

What was the scope of their involvement?

EDENLAB is developing a payment platform that provides card-to-card money transfer services. They are also designing the UI/UX. To make the platform more secure, EDENLAB built a website with a database that links the end consumer’s card to other identifying information; this way, the receiving identifier is not the card, but the consumer’s phone number or email address. EDENLAB developed the backend so that it can integrate with banks, which perform the money transfer.

What is the team composition?

We work with a business analyst, project manager, and two IT developers.

How did you come to work with EDENLAB?

EDENLAB had their own payment platform, on which consumers can pay their bills and perform money transfers. Since they had an existing solution, we approached them with our idea for making transfers more secure.

What is the status of this engagement?

The engagement began in 2016, and it is ongoing.

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

The platform is functional and reliable. EDENLAB’s team is supportive and always available, and they deliver on time.

How did EDENLAB perform from a project management standpoint?

We communicate via phone, email, and Messenger, and we have weekly meetings. EDENLAB sometimes participates in our strategic discussions. They help us see areas for improvement in our ideas and the overall project.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their level of feedback, support, and scalability is impressive.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, there’s nothing I’d have them improve.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

It’s crucial to prepare clear and functional business requirements.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the co-founder of a renewable energy company.

What challenge were you trying to address with EDENLAB?

We needed a partner to manage our software development. Specifically, we needed someone to build a platform dashboard to enable our users to log into our system and buy or sell the energy from their renewable energy assets through a peer-to-peer (P2P) energy exchange.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Together, we came up with a roadmap for our project and plan for onboarding new dev resources. EDENLAB built the entire exchange system, including the different compartments to generate the accounts, cold storage, and hot wallets. They also enabled the integration of mining facilities. Our clients’ assets are linked to the P2P energy exchange through APIs, which allow clients to log in and become a member of our cooperative. From there, they can then upload the energy from their battery discharge and directly sell it to other users. As of now, EDENLAB has built our minimum viable product (MVP), and we have plans to do more work together in the near future.

What is the team composition?

We worked with four developers and two project managers, but there were more team members in the background.

How did you come to work with EDENLAB?

Our CEO met one of their representatives at a conference.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent about $160,000 so far but plan to spend more.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together form November 2018–April 2019.

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

They developed a functioning MVP that met our standards.

How did EDENLAB perform from a project management standpoint?

They met all of their deadlines except when external APIs had issues, which wasn’t their fault. We mainly communicated via Slack and managed the project through Azure.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’re extremely efficient and created a clear roadmap that outlined our project milestones. The team was friendly and worked hard to resolve our concerns, consistently looking for ways to improve. I was pleased with their work ethic and ability to meet our expectations. They were able to find competent developers who delivered exactly what we needed.

Are there any areas they could improve?

We had some problems with the language barrier, but it wasn’t too serious.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I’m the CEO of Vertex, a mobile payment and investment company.

For what projects/services did your company hire EDENLAB?

We needed someone to research and consult on blockchain technologies that might be applicable to our solution, as well as contribute to our proof of concept by developing our MVP’s architecture.

What were your goals for this project?

We wanted to create an environment where companies could reach out and engage with their customers via media messages and special incentives.

How did you select this vendor?

They found us through an ICO listing and reached out to propose their capabilities. We chose EdenLab from among other possible vendors because of their vast experience in enterprise-level, blockchain app design and implementation. Their team was also skilled in several blockchain technologies that we were considering for our solution.

Can you go into detail about the services they provided and the scope of the project?

They helped us develop a decentralized, application-to-person (A2P) messaging system that shares content ads between providers and viewers. The ad viewer (client) side of the solution consists of both iOS and Android mobile apps, while content providers interact with a web browser-based application. There’s also backend microservices that enable viewer-to-provider communication, push notifications, and Ethereum services.

What was the team composition?

We worked with a three-person team that included a product owner, a blockchain team lead, and a business analyst.

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

They’ve been instrumental in helping us create our business.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

We had one or two calls every week to ensure that our processes remained effective. They replied quickly, and we had flawless communication, which was helped by us working in the same time zone.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

EdenLab is a professional team with the capabilities we were looking for. They’re capable of developing extremely complicated, distributed solutions and are able to suggest the best technologies and approaches. They can also design a product given nothing more than a business idea, which differentiates them from a large number of software providers.

Are there any areas where they can improve?

There’s nothing specific, as I would recommend them to anyone.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am a team lead for development of eHealth in Ukraine. We are working for the Ministry of Health. We are currently responsible for the development of an eHealth product for the country.

What challenge were you trying to address with Edenlab?

We are developing the information system for the financial reform of the Ministry of Health. The Ministry of Health is planning on changing the way practitioners are financed from the state budget. Our main problem is we need to make sure that the population is accurate and we don’t over calculate individuals. This is why we need to have an instrument that can help address the possible risks. Our short-term goal is to have a verified report for the National Health Service so we are sure that there no duplications of patients and the state pays only once for each individual. 

What was the scope of their involvement?

The current business process is to cover such things as registration of medical facilities. We need to establish a registry of medical staff. That would allow us to see which medical facilities are operating in Ukraine, which ones have joined the government program and the medical staff who work at these medical facilities.

In Ukraine, we don’t have a unique number that covers people from birth to death, like a Social Security number does in the United States. We do have identification numbers, but there is no unique identifier. Certain instruments developed in Edenlab are establishing this registry of patients. It will also establish a registry of declarations signed between the doctor and a patient. After those steps, we’ll develop functionality for the reimbursement program of the Ministry of Health.

What’s unique about this project is that we are not building it in one solution. We are developing a system where we have a central component.  This central component interfaces with independent medical information systems and incorporates the work with the central database via API. Edenlab did a lot to develop this central component, which via the API connects the infrastructure and the medical information systems and incorporates data to the center.

What is the team dynamic?

We had a team of 16 people, including a project manager, working on their side. With government projects, especially in Ukraine, you have an incredible level of uncertainty with very strict deadlines and short windows of opportunities. The dynamic is constantly changing.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve invested around $500,000 with Edenlab.

What is the status of this engagement?

Overall, it’s been quite a wide-scale project. We met with them in March, and in April, we have presented a demo version, and then they kicked off the project in June.

We’ve started piloting in the registration of medical facilities, and it’s already happening in Ukraine and more than 200 medical facilities have been registered in the system. We’re still working with Edenlab, and in two weeks, we’ll be ready to start the pilot of the project at the national level.

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

We just kicked it off, so we can't measure the quality yet, but we haven't had that many bugs from them so far. We’ve been impressed with their work overall.

How did Edenlab perform from a project management standpoint?

In addition to e-mail and phone calls, we use Slack constantly. We did have some small delays, but those delays were from our side.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their involvement and passion. I have previous experience working with various developers, and Edenlab is a good example of a boutique company. We are not just a regular project that comes and goes. They believe in this project and they are personally involved with it. It’s an important project for us, and when you're doing these kinds of reforms at the national level, it’s important to have people who believe in these things. Edenlab is also quite organized and well-structured in their work.

At times but we might need some extra effort in convincing them that we want to go one way or another, but that’s a good thing for us because they do question and challenge us. We don't just go to them and have them do what we demand, which is what usually happens with big outsourcing companies. Sometimes it’s a challenge for us to work with this kind of an approach, but with Edenlab it does lead to good results.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They might need to work a bit on the testing side, maybe some testing on their DevOps side, but I can't think of anything big worth mentioning.