ESTEROX LLC

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Agatagir LLC is a family business. My wife is the director, and I’m the vice director. We’ve been in business for more than 80 years, importing stationery and printing house paper from different countries, mainly Dubai and South Korea.

What challenge were you trying to address with ESTEROX LLC?

We needed to develop an e-commerce site for our company. We hadn’t had one before, and we saw it as a necessity, especially in a small country like ours. The coronavirus pandemic added a sense of urgency to it as there were a lot of companies getting printing paper from us, including tourism operators, which are now shut down.

What was the scope of their involvement?

ESTEROX developed our e-commerce website.

What is the team composition?

I don’t know how many people were involved. We have someone on our side responsible for making product listings, who worked with ESTEROX for one and a half months. Armen (Founder and CEO) and Poghos (Senior Business Developer) were our main points of contact. We kept in touch with them after the website was developed, to make some corrections.

How did you come to work with ESTEROX LLC?

We found them through the company that’s providing inventory management services to us.

How much have you invested with them?

We paid them $3,800, which is actually a lot of money in Armenia for a small company like ours. We paid them over a period of six months.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with ESTEROX in December 2019, and the website was launched in late-March 2020. We have an ongoing contract with them for maintenance, and we’ll be making a separate contract for new development.

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

We’re still waiting to see the full effects of the website on our business, but we’ve received 50 new customers so far who found us through the site. We’ll have more results after the pandemic has passed and there’s a better market for our products.

For now, the website is a necessary thing to have, since we can’t welcome customers to a physical shop. I’m sure we’ll need to advertise on platforms like Facebook and through email, but we no longer need to invest in an expensive shop in the town center.

How did ESTEROX LLC perform from a project management standpoint?

We’re in contact with them via email, Viber, or phone. ESTEROX is always ready to troubleshoot any issue we may have. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

We went to other web developers, and the reaction was always that we were just a small shop and didn’t need a website, and they didn’t want to work with us. ESTEROX was ready to do something for our website, and we feel good about the results.

Typically, only large companies in Armenia have websites, given that maintaining one costs a lot of money. A company like ours typically won’t have a site, but we discussed our reason for wanting one with ESTEROX, and they were able to do something. Compared to what our partners have, we have a website in the minimum range, but people can find us, and we can sell goods through the internet. Our customers are happy to contact us through this tool.

Introduce your business and what you do there. 

I'm the chairman of the board of directors for CountryNet Software Pty Ltd. We write software for the education sector and we have over 10 million users in 16–17 countries. We have three prominent software titles. One is for scheduling parent-teacher interviews or conferences. We have another product that aids the subject selection processes for Year 9 and Year 10 students, predominantly in Australia. Our third software product is a school administration management tool.

What challenge were you trying to address with ESTEROX LLC?

We hired ESTEROX LLC to help us rewrite a product that we’d designed.

What was the scope of their involvement? 

We wrote the initial subject selection software ourselves about five years ago. We wrote it in .NET and then realized that it's antiquated and needed to be rewritten. ESTEROX LLC rewrote the whole project based on our design specifications. We drafted the functional specs and they updated it to PHP. They also developed a MySQL database and designed a public-facing API. 

They wrote two iterations of the software, as well as what we call an enterprise version that looks at clusters of schools. ESTEROX LLC continues to provide ongoing maintenance.  

What is the team composition?

We work with Armen (Founding CEO, ESTEROX LLC), Arshak (CTO and Sr. Web Developer, ESTEROX LLC), and one frontend developer.

How did you come to work with ESTEROX LLC? 

I was in Armenia and I met Armen through my brother. He really impressed me. We spent some time talking, and he was prepared to prove his skill set for us. 

How much have you invested with them?

If we put all their work together, we spent $165,000 AUD (approximately $115,000 USD).

What is the status of this engagement?

The project took place from October 2016–December 2017.

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

ESTEROX LLC delivered over and above what was required. They made the whole thing happen. They delivered on time, which was brilliant. Their work was incredible. There were very few bugs, if any. They did a lot of redesigning in the background so that we can get faster calculations. The database now handles about 20,000 queries per second. It's quite impressive.

Their ability to understand our work allowed them to make suggestions that we’d overlooked from a design perspective. That was a major advantage in working with ESTEROX LLC. Having never worked with a third-party developer before, I appreciated that they didn't perceive it as a job but as a partnership. They’re proud of their work with us. As a result, we're about to engage them on a big level to head up our next project. 

How did ESTEROX LLC perform from a project management standpoint? 

Communication was always great. They made sure we could talk to the right person as needed. The CTO dealt with technical issues, and the CEO handled administrative tasks. We used either Skype, email, or face-to-face meetings. I traveled to Armenia several times to meet with them in person, which was good. 

What did you find most impressive about them? 

They had a lot of integrity, and were always factual. ESTEROX LLC told us outright if something couldn't be done. They never misrepresented their skill set, which was quite impressive. It's hard to find a partner that will take ownership of their limitations. 

Are there any areas they could improve? 

They're a startup and we watched them learn and grow over the years. As a novice company, ESTEROX LLC was naive but they learned quickly. Much of what they lacked in business maturity was due to them being a young business. I saw it as a growth issue. To their credit, they grew really well. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers? 

Be upfront with them. As long as they're aware of your exact needs, they'll be very articulate in how they will deal with you. Don’t leave room for ambiguity.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am a Principal Consultant at Noravand. We provide Value-Based information technology solutions and services to clients in diverse industries.

For what projects/services did your company hire ESTEROX LLC?

Need a team to develop a responsive WEB App that projects workforce requirement for construction companies.

What were your goals for this project?

End-to-End solution

How did you select this vendor?

Went to Armenia and interviewed software developers.

Describe the project in detail.

Confidential

What was the team composition?

Project Manager, Developer, QA, UE

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

Yes

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Excellent

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Their communication and workmanship impressed us.

Are there any areas for improvement?

Nothing with our project

Please describe your company and your position there.

Age of innocence is a children's footwear brand. I am one of the founders of the company.

For what projects/services did your company hire ESTEROX LLC?

Esterox LLC was assisting in upgrading and maintenance of our e-com web site and CRM.

What were your goals for this project?

To optimize the performance, conversion rates as well as creating a comprehensive CRM with analytics.

How did you select this vendor?

First we approached Esterox with a single task, and after a successful execution, we have decided to engage the company for a day to day support and execution of our backlog task

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

Based on our specs Esterox team re structured backend of our web, as well as assisted with creating bespoke analytics and task management in the CRM, integrated various marketing and other API's , managed and optimized web performance for mobile devices, etc.

What was the team composition?

We have been working with backend developer, front -end developer, and designer.

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

Overall all tasks were done in time and met our requirements.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

Overall it was effective.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Personal approach, efforts to optimize costs as well as valuable advice

Are there any areas for improvement?

Not really much. more or less it is an effective team.