EntroSolutions

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the director of an online homewares retailer. 

What challenge were you trying to address with EntroSolutions?

We hired EntroSolutions to run our web development projects. 

What was the scope of their involvement?

EntroSolutions develops new projects, rectifies technical issues, and optimizes website speed for our company. They’ve completely rebuilt our website using a mix of OpenCart and JavaScript, specifically AngularJS. Since the site relaunch, EntroSolutions has continued to build upon the foundation they developed. The new site is an e-commerce retail store with a few unique functionalities that other sites may not have. 

What is the team composition?

We primarily work with Martin (CEO) and a developer — occasionally, two other developers join the project if we have a tight timeline.

How did you come to work with EntroSolutions?

We found EntroSolutions on PeoplePerHour. 

How much have you invested with them?

We generally spend $40,000–$50,000 with EntroSolutions per year, although that price has increased over the years. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We’ve been working with EntroSolutions on a project-to-project basis since January 2014, and we plan to continue our partnership.

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

EntroSolutions is very professional and provides high-quality work. I’ve always received comprehensive solutions that meet our needs. 

How did EntroSolutions perform from a project management standpoint?

We don’t set budgets with EntroSolutions because we retain them hourly. However, they’ll always put in extra hours to ensure projects are completed on time. EntroSolutions is easy to communicate with and is very responsive — we mainly communicate through Trello, although I can always contact Martin and the rest of his team through WhatsApp. 

We also scope out projects in Trello, writing out exactly what our expectations are for a project and how we want to approach it. They then provide feedback on whether or not our project is achievable through the methods we advocate. Often, we’ll then have a meeting on Google Meet to discuss any feedback and trade texts through WhatsApp. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

EntroSolutions is always willing to get a job done — there isn’t much they can’t do. Even if they can’t execute a project exactly as we like, their team can find a suitable workaround to ensure they deliver what we need. EntroSolutions always performs at the level we require, even if they don’t have as much experience in some aspects of the project we’re developing. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

I have no constructive feedback for the EntroSolutions team. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I’d advise customers to hire EntroSolutions — their team can handle any OpenCart or AngularJS work. Additionally, if customers are focusing on a specific project, it’s critical to be as detailed as possible when explaining it to EntroSolutions. I’ve found that a lack of information often leads to less than desirable results. 

Please describe your company and your position there.

REINNO is a financial technology company with an innovative approach to lending, powered by blockchain. To satisfy a variety of customer needs, the company created a range of lending products: instant loans collateralized by tokenized commercial real estate, a mortgage refinancing program, and loan brokerage. My Role is a co-founder and COO.

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

We hire Entro to customize and finish our campaign script and also add features like loans to it. Also, we hire them to create our Blockchain smart contracts which operate our system and tokens.

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

We know each other from other projects.

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

The scope is to offer tokenization of properties in our system and loans. We start with setup the Laravel system and start modifying it and adding features to meet our needs. And we lunch it. Then meanwhile the Blockchain smart contracts were in progress and soon after we lunch the main website the contracts and tokens were ready too.

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

Two Laravel developers and one Blockchain Developer

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

Everything was delivered on time and worked as it need to be.

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

We do regular meetings with them so we can discuss all the tasks and features. We communicate via skype and use Trello as a tasks management system. The work was organized in sprints

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

They are professional and are able to meet deadlines, which is very important.

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

So far, no.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am a designer and owner of a design and development agency in Germany.

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

We were in need of more development power to finish our client projects.

How did you select EntroSolutions and what were the deciding factors?

I was referred by a friend of mine that has previously worked with them.

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

We had our own system based on React and utilizing processwire as a database and CMS. Even though a lot was developed on our own, Entro Solutions quickly got up to speed and was able to develop additional suolutions.

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

We worked with two of their developers.

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

One of the projects is still in the making, another one was partially discontinued due to the COVID pandemic. Entro Solutions offered us great spontaneous support with their development team.

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

They adjusted to our project management style without enforcing their own.

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

Their ability to adapt to the needs and desires of their client.

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

Their ability to adjust to their clients process can lead to them not questioning the main decisions of the project. Depending on the client it can be helpful to question their decisions and help them with another proposed solution.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the Founder and CEO of MelioraWeb. We are a web design agency based in Sofia working to provide an exceptional eCommerce experience for our Shopify clients and partners by building their stores, apps, and SaaS solutions.

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

We hired EntroSoluition as our partner in building Sell&Care and most specific in its back-end skeleton and functionality to satisfy our specific requirements. After launching the project we are working with their Marketing expert for boosting Sell&Care’s performance via Google AdWords. Our goal was to have a great-working Shopify app solution and we are more than happy that it’s listed in the Shopify App Store.

How did you select EntroSolutions and what were the deciding factors?

Deciding to work with EntroSolutions wasn’t very hard because I have previous experience by working with their CEO and I knew that they are trustworthy partners. Our common goals of expanding the eCommerce space with high-quality app solutions were one of the deciding factors, too.

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

Sell&Care is built from scratch with React.js, Polaris for the frontend, and Laravel for the backend. We followed the Scrum methodology as we start with the research phase of the project, exploring competitors and having the exact idea of Sell&Care goals.

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

We worked and continue working with 3 of EntroSolutions’s team members - their Full Stack Developer, their Marketing Experts, and their CEO.

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

We managed to create Sell&Care for less than 10 working weeks and to pass the approval phase of Shopify. After its launch, we created an Admin panel for the app where every merchant can monitor the performance of his donation campaign, as we created detailed Statistics for merchants to analyze the pros and cons of their donation Campaign.

The process of fixing arising bugs was smooth and the team managed to fix every problem on time with no extra software problems.

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

The project management was excellent, we worked with the Agile (Scrum) methodology and the project was running on separate Sprints. We use Slack, Google meets, and Jira for communication tools.

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

Based on my experience and my work with a lot of clients and partners, I can say that EntroSolutions are one of the best partners we’ve worked with because of their professional attitude, skills, and ability to work under pressure.

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

Everything in the technical part of the project was communicated and developed with excellent quality. We had a few organizational misunderstandings.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We’re a specialized ed-tech company. We provide tools for intercultural training, namely content, and features that help companies be more effective when working internationally. I’m the CEO.

What challenge were you trying to address with EntroSolutions?

We went to them for software development, specifically the concepts and content we use inside the company. We’re a tech company, but we don’t want to spend all our resources on internal software development projects. The problem we were solving was really one of talent.

What was the scope of their involvement?

EntroSolutions initially helped us migrate from some legacy systems. In 2015–2016, we built the application at the heart of our service. It was built very quickly initially, with a mindset that was more about prototyping and proof of concept. We’ve been doing a lot of refactoring with EntroSolutions, creating more robust and strategic solutions.

We replaced an old .NET framework just before starting the collaboration with EntroSolutions. The backend also uses Laravel, which EntroSolutions updated. They implemented better standards around the custom solutions we had, which were undocumented and poorly maintained.

They also worked on our AngularJS frontend and our AWS infrastructure. They’ve done lots of migrations, the most recent one being from a self-hosted WordPress solution to one on a hosted platform. We’ve also implemented automated testing, which we hadn’t had before.

What is the team composition?

I’ve worked mainly with Martin (CEO), and, occasionally, with some of his colleagues. We’re in touch on a daily basis.

How did you come to work with EntroSolutions?

I found Martin on Upwork when he was still a freelancer. He started his own company soon after that.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent €75,000–€100,000 (approximately $90,742–$120,989 USD) since the beginning.

What is the status of this engagement?

I started working with Martin in late-2016, and it was in late-2017 or early-2018 that he formed EntroSolutions. We’re still working together. 

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

The system is performing well. We have automated testing in place, so, if a newly-implemented feature breaks, the system detects it immediately, and it’s self-correcting. It may not be a business metric, but it’s an important one for us.

We’ll be releasing a new feature tomorrow, for collecting feedback. We haven’t done that systematically, so I can’t give numbers on EntroSolutions’ work yet. There are many stakeholders involved with the platform, so it’s hard to separate Entro’s contribution. We don’t track numbers like ticket turnaround times, because they vary a lot.

How did EntroSolutions perform from a project management standpoint?

We have honest conversations, and they’re ready and willing to step in when things go wrong, which is an important part of project management.

We don’t have a project manager on our end. I’m working directly with Martin, and we rely on Jira and Confluence for organizing the work and communicating the status. We use other tools as well, including Google Docs.  Most of the communication is ticket-based, and it works.

What did you find most impressive about them?

What I like about working with EntroSolutions is that nothing’s out of scope. They’re willing to take on any challenge. There are no predetermined answers, and EntroSolutions’ open-mindedness and confidence in the abilities of the team make them special.

One of the great things about working at this scale, with a small business, is the flexibility. EntroSolutions has done a lot of work for us, and they’re well-educated and able to solve problems that neither of us had dealt with before. They have the right level of professional confidence and courage to solve problems, and that’s key for me.

Are there any areas they could improve?

We could do a lot better in terms of project management and communication. I never want to point the finger, and it may be something on our side, but it’s something we have to figure out and do better.