ELEKS

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

We’re happy with the functionality of their deliverables. They’re a remote team, which has different challenges, but they’re definitely professional. Within two months, we had the full project ready and deployed. Compared to our normal hiring process, it would’ve taken three months.

We also had a sub-project in our company and ELEKS immediately provided three people for it.

How did ELEKS perform from a project management standpoint?

Their project management is outstanding and state of the art. They use Jira, Confluence, and Trello.

What did you find most impressive about them?

It takes a very short time to get access to their resources. We had new data scientists on board within one to two weeks.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They could add to the context of the project management. It would help the overall delivery to identify the value drivers within the tasks instead of concentrating on the wrong ones.

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

Working with ELEKS allowed us to open up a parallel project, rather than being single-threaded in releasing. We were able to have separate teams for legal entity information and pricing, bringing multiple pieces of functionality to market at one time, instead of doing it piece by piece. Loosely speaking, we doubled our capacity in the same amount of time using ELEKS, for a small additional investment.

How did ELEKS perform from a project management standpoint?

Project management is something that we've enforced with ELEKS over the last couple of years. We pick 1-2 liaisons for the teams, namely the more senior-level people. We have asked them to become involved in making estimates and laying out tasks for our projects. ELEKS has been very reliable in that respect. If they miss any dates, they don't miss them by much.

We have bounced around between project management tools. We have an internal bug tracking system, but sometimes the process can be as simple as dumping project tasks into an Excel spreadsheet and putting dates to it. We're starting to transition towards Jira, in a more formal manner.

What did you find most impressive about ELEKS?

Given all the offshore developers that we've dealt with, we found that ELEKS tends to turn around work quicker, but not at the expense of quality. They have more expertise and provide higher-quality engineers. We've experienced several cases with other firms by which they brought along engineers with limited capabilities, which equated to less-than-ideal results. With ELEKS, there was never an instance of hiring a developer and having to replace them. ELEKS has done a good job of picking the right people for our projects, based on the criteria which we've laid out. As we go into a more rapid development mode, we have found that ELEKS is able to turn the work around in a more effective manner than some of the other firms that we've dealt with. Every piece of software will have bugs, but ELEKS did a decent job.

Are there any areas ELEKS could improve?

We've tried to figure out whether we have unrealistic expectations, but we always emphasized the fact that we want a partnership with ELEKS, rather than a contractor-client relationship. If they have ideas or have a better way of doing something, they should bring them to the table and challenge us. We haven't seen this happen as much as we'd like. The most important thing for us is to push ELEKS and have them be more of a creative partner. We want to get them out of the offshore contractor mentality. We're not entirely sure if that cultural mindset is present there, but we're flirting with the prospect.

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

Generally, we evaluate milestones on a project-by-project basis. Lately, we've undergone fixed price and fixed goal projects with ELEKS, which are easier to evaluate. Even during our old project model, they've performed very well. There were instances in which we changed our minds and altered the scope. ELEKS is very good at tracking any such deviation. We are a very demanding client, but they've hit every goal set for them in terms of metrics.

Legal firms have set ways in which they have to do certain tasks, and working with companies from around the world, we have a diverse audience, but generally feedback has been very good. With each product released, we've gotten better at the process, learned new things from previous releases, and embellished certain features. The work ELEKS has done has not only drawn positive feedback, but has also opened up debates and discussions that we wouldn't have had otherwise. People have looked at a particular new feature and asked if it could be extended to do something more. The apps are feature-rich and have many possibilities.

How did ELEKS perform from a project management standpoint?

If we ever have to hit a quick deadline due to an upcoming tradeshow or similar situation, ELEKS will accommodate us. They assign additional people to our project and even work extra hours on weekends and during evenings.

There have been a couple of areas in which we approached them for particular skillsets which we were missing. As an example, a couple of years ago we were looking to make a mobile version of one of our products. It was a serious decision on our part between using an outside developer and recruiting internally. Within a couple of days, we'd received recommendations from ELEKS for capable people in their company. We had a call and met with one of their developers. This wasn't something we thought ELEKS would be able to help us with, but ultimately they pulled the resources out of their bag.

Overall, we haven't challenged them as much as other companies. We tend not to deviate much from the Microsoft stack. From what I've seen though, ELEKS is able to accommodate diverse requirements.

Recently, we've started looking at in-depth performance testing of our products. We gave them a scenario for what we were trying to achieve. Within a week, ELEKS had returned with a very detailed document of what our approach should be. It was something new for which we had limited expectations, but they came back with a solution that was precisely tuned to our needs. They know us as a customer, and have been able to deliver constantly.

We used to use Team Foundation Server, but have moved to Confluence and Jira for project tracking. This has come as a recommendation from ELEKS. They've been using those tools themselves for some time. They showed us how they work with them, and the process seemed an improvement from what we had.

What distinguishes ELEKS from other providers?

We get approached by a lot of offshore providers wanting to do work for us. I've had discussions with many of them. What sets ELEKS apart from similar firms is the partnership and rapport that they deliberately cultivate with their client. It's easy to have offshore resources with no real relationship and just an email address to which you send work.

The relationship we've built with ELEKS has been driven by them. They have a UK-based account manager who comes in to our office whenever there's an issue or there is a new project. They're very proactive in doing this. The staff in Ukraine are all English speakers, they engage us, and always prefer calling rather than making email chains. They're open to suggestions as well.

The fact that they have this openness and flexibility has made this engagement work. When I first started working with them, I was skeptical about offshore arrangements. In the end, we've made it work, and it's largely due to the ELEKS team's positivity throughout the engagement.