Everest Consulting

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I was the CTO for an IT consulting firm providing various services around intellectual property. My responsibilities included the patent analytics portion of the company, which involved a number of tools, reports, and consulting services around patent evaluation and quality.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Everest Consulting?

The 2 biggest challenges in this particular division were the expenses associated with the development and maintenance of the data and software in the system and the quality of the software from the maintenance developers.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Everest provided 3 services for us. They supplied developers to work on our software, improve software quality, and so on. They also provided data analysts to do patent research and data quality checks. They also assisted with algorithmic development as we developed new analytics and scores. We leveraged a few PhDs with experience in statistical analysis and machine learning to develop new products.

The software stack was Java using J2EE on Tomcat, against both a Microsoft SQL Server and PostgreSQL Server. We had a series of legacy Perl scripts that, which Everest Consulting maintained, plus all of the HTML and JavaScript for the frontend interfaces.

At the start of the selection process, I spoke with the president of Everest and described our project to him and his team of developers. I really believe he listened to our needs. From there, the president put together a series of resumes that would be appropriate for our project. I assessed the experience levels of our options and selected the developers.

How did you come to work with Everest Consulting?

We found Everest through a referral, but we had explored other options. Two primary pluses stood out when working with Everest. First, they had the whole package: data analysts, developers, and access to PhDs for deeper analytics and machine learning. They had a fairly broad set of experience to bring to bear on our problems and demands. Second, we knew we were getting a partner with a fair amount of software development experience that wasn’t necessarily as rigid with certain requirements. They were more fluid with requirements and worked with us to tease out what needed to be done. Since the project was a time-sensitive shift, we needed to move to a new development partner fairly quickly. Their flexibility, while still maintaining a high level of quality, was very desirable.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them from the Fall of 2012 until the Fall of 2015. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We saw a decrease in defects and an increase in data quality and accuracy. That was measured both by the number of bug reports filed as well as feedback from customers. We're receiving less feedback about incorrect data. Our actual dequeue checking time started dropping. Our teams in Chicago and San Francisco spent less time correcting data from reports after Everest took on the project.

How did Everest Consulting perform from a project management standpoint?

Generally, they did well. Sometimes, we changed things at the last minute, which caused them to miss a deadline. Our contract was set up initially in a series of milestones every 1–2 months. They did hit all of our milestones on time and within budget.

What did you find most impressive about Everest Consulting?

Everest understood our problem domain and was able to make suggestions about new reports or analytics or slight adjustments to the way we presented the information for clarity. We didn’t just hand over the work; our focus involved more problem-solving. In the second year of the contract, they actually understood the domain and our goals. They did generate some new analytics and ideas. They carried the impetus; it wasn't directed.

Are there any areas Everest Consulting could improve?

Their team tended to be fairly young, so I would have liked to have a few more senior developers. It was a balance of cost. In some areas of the project, a second senior developer could have smoothed out some of the bumps. 

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

3Discovered helps our clients convert traditionally manufactured parts into 3D printable ones. I'm the CTO. My job is to oversee the construction of the platform and to build the technology partnerships that go into the platform's construction.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Everest Consulting?

I have worked with Everest Consulting in a less direct capacity in my previous job at Ocean Tomo, a Chicago-based intellectual property firm. Everest Consulting had built and maintained an intellectual property database search and analytics tool that we had been using there. I knew that Everest Consulting was available to do more work, and I had a good experience with them at Ocean Tomo. I proactively connected with them in order to develop this new platform for us at 3Discovered.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We have a number of software tools and an integrated platform that Everest helped build for us. It integrates, through API calls, a variety of other cloud-based software tools that are used for processing 3D designs in order to move them from CAD or CAD-equivalent type files to one that's ready to be printed. (That may at first sound like it should be straightforward, but it's not at this stage in the industry.) The platform not only operates these tools but also stores files that have been uploaded there in a structured database. It works with a number of e-commerce tools in order to move the files back and forth and share permissions between users, so that designers can access them or other individuals at the company who wish to purchase those designs can have them printed. At the other end, there are of course the printer operators, who will actually be doing the printing and fulfilling. There's all the e-commerce functions you would associate with that, payment processing, shipping and handling, order tracking, and communications that can occur back and forth. That's our backend. On the frontend, there's the actual uploading and storage of the designs and the software tools to process them.

The designers are the users, but they will generally be within a larger entity. Some of our customers are manufacturers, in which case the designers are going to be engineers that work within their four walls and are uploading designs that they have already done on their desktop with their existing CAD software. Some of our customers are asset managers. These are people at train companies who don't actually build the trains, but operate and maintain them. 

Locally, we had three folks interacting with the Everest Consulting team, so none of our folks are in a traditional software architect leadership. Locally, we had a UI/UX designer, who would pass wireframes over to Everest Consulting in order to design the business rules and workflow. We did have one architecture contractor who had worked with them on explaining how we wanted it to interact with AWS and the overall architecture. On the Everest team, there was the leader, Adeeb, who is the business manager/business leader. He is not a technical lead, by any means, but he's been in the business long enough that he does have a decent functional understanding of the technical issues. Adeeb was doing the staffing, managing the payments, organized any meetings that needed to occur on their end, and kept people on task.

They had two technical leads, Addal and another person, and six additional people. Addal is the absolute most senior of the technical leads. He was the database expert, organized most of the rest of team, and would frequently be on the calls. Addal and the other guy would lead all the technical work and organize it. They were the most knowledgeable as to the overall system.

Then they had four more folks who were divided between a variety of roles, one of which was a pure database expert, Mustafa [Husakovic, Senior Software Engineer]. He was very technically good and deep in this one narrow area. He was the only one of them whose English was not strong, so he didn't talk as much as any of the rest did, but he was heavily managed by the others. I didn't have as much direct contact with him, but it seems like the work he was doing was very good. The rest of the team were fairly flexible folks. Everyone was moved around as need be between frontend and backend work and bug testing, but they did have one person purely dedicated to bug and error testing.

How did you come to work with Everest Consulting?

Before we began work, there were no specific teams we were considering. We had a general idea of hiring local programmers instead of using Everest. We had considered the idea of a generic, alternative external team that we didn't actually interview anymore. During the course of the study, there were a number of additional options that came up, most of them all in Eastern Europe. We ultimately stuck with Everest. There was one point where we added one additional team member from another Romanian firm who had more current knowledge about auto-deployment features of AWS. We added him to supplement the team in order to not only help with getting those features built but also to help spread knowledge and do additional training on some of these systems for the Everest team.

How much have you invested with Everest Consulting?

They varied in price a little bit during that time, but we spent around $200,000 with them.

What is the status of this engagement?

The relationship at Ocean Tomo went back many years. But at 3Discovered, we started working with them in September/October 2016. We still have a relationship with them currently. They're still doing work with us, although we are wrapping up this stage of the project. We'll probably move them to a different project here in the next few weeks because that is what the company needs. It's essentially been the same team. I don't think anyone has floated in or out during that time.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

I can speak to this in two different capacities. At Ocean Tomo, part of the reason why we continued to work them was because the platform they had built for the intellectual property engine is I think, to this day, probably the best one out there. Unfortunately, Ocean Tomo, for business reasons, is no longer selling it.

Our platform that we're building for 3Discovered is the most sophisticated platform of its type. There are several partial competitors that we have, but none of them do what we do. What they do is simple by comparison. Everest Consulting has done a very good job, especially in their database work. This is where I'm going to rely a little bit on some of my other technical folks, because I'm not especially deep here, but the way they build their databases is very efficient and robust. They're particularly good at that piece of it. With them, we’ve built the most sophisticated 3D printing cloud-based database service out there, and there are a dozen partial competitors out there. It's a little bit of a niche, but it's not as niche as it may sound at first. The fact that they pulled all of these tools together from different sources and gotten them to talk to each other in a way that's strong and reliable says something.

How did Everest Consulting perform from a project management standpoint?

They performed quite well overall. As far as the amount of effort I had to put forth, it was not terribly large. They did a pretty good job if we gave them a good, solid description of what we were looking for. They required a bit more handholding as far as defining what you're asking for, but once you had defined it, they were very independent.

Are there any areas Everest Consulting could improve?

I will say that you did have to be pretty specific with them. That would be one of my criticisms. We had to be very detailed in what we were asking for, and they would deliver exactly what you asked for, which is both good and bad. Once I told them what I was looking for, they pretty much took it over and figured it out from there without needing guidance. If there was something that I had said that didn't make the most sense, they wouldn't proactively come back to me and say, "Here's what you said that doesn't make sense. Here's what we recommend doing instead." I don't want to say that they would never do that, like they were robots, but they weren't as good about understanding the bigger picture and coming back with suggestions, as other individuals I've worked with.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Bike2020.com and Sup2020.com are subscription-based websites for stores and manufacturers in the paddleboard surfing and cycling industry. We list their inventories for sale in our own store. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Everest Consulting?

When the original site was setup, it was on a Ruby on Rails platform. It wasn’t conducive to what we wanted to do in terms of expansion, security, and everything else. We needed to bring it to the modern age, redoing it from the ground up on the Java platform.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

From start to finish, I dealt with two people from Everest Consulting, the owner and a manager. I was able to run through the initial scope, cost, and timeline of the project with the owner, and left the rest to their team.

Our site is strictly a listing service with no e-commerce functionalities. Clients pay a monthly or annual subscription to be listed. We’re the only game in town in terms of how the site is architected. There were some backend elements which we specifically asked Everest Consulting to implement, in terms of meta-tagging and customer tracking and interface

How did you come to work with Everest Consulting?

We had gone through some disappointing trials with other firms. I knew a graphic designer in Germany to whom I reached out when we needed a new programmer. They recommended Everest Consulting to us. I sent them an email asking to start a conversation. They sent me a confidentiality agreement, and I gave them the source code of the site as it existed back then, as well as a link to our task list on Trello. Everest Consulting got back to me, we had a 30- to 40-minute Skype call about it, and I had the confidence that they could do the work and not drag it out forever. I had no experience with their past work, but their principal was able to gain my trust over our call when we went over many of the “why” questions.

How much have you invested with Everest Consulting?

For the initial stage, the cost was below $25,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Everest Consulting in early September of 2016. The site went live by mid-December, after a 10-week period. We cloned it for a second site.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We did have an issue with the traffic after going from the Ruby platform to the Java one. Everest Consulting warned me about Google indexing the site as a new page, but a part of it was on our end. On the old site, every listing had a lag in terms of search results, with products that had been sold still showing up. We were getting a lot of organic traffic to the site based on dead links, which needed to be cleaned up. Everest Consulting figured out a way to do this with a minimal loss of traffic. We didn’t lose too many links since everything is now redirected to current inventory for the particular dealer. We had 75%–80% organic traffic before, and it was a huge concern for me that we would be losing that. We did in the beginning, but it’s coming back to close to what it was.

I haven’t received a lot of feedback from customers on our user experience as of yet, but, from the admin standpoint, it’s 100% better. Things are much more easily clickable, which was part of the reason for building the site: we needed the paying user experience to be better, as well as the end-user one. Everest Consulting got it all the way around.

How did Everest Consulting perform from a project management standpoint?

There were a few delays from our end after we requested a few changes. Everest Consulting’s team was very responsive. When they told me that something would be done at a certain time, it was. If we had a crash or other issues post-launch, we could Skype their team at all hours of the night. I’m very happy with the service.

They didn’t program first and ask questions second. If something wasn’t translating well from Ruby to Java, and there was a better way to do it, Everest Consulting told me first and asked for an okay. It was an A+ on their part, compared to other programmers we’ve used, who just thought that their way should be the default, even if it wasn’t conducive to how our business operated.

With programming, deadlines are always moving targets. We gave Everest Consulting a Trello board with 100 items that needed to be corrected for the new site. They got those done, but we still needed to make changes. Timeline-wise, we’ve had a two-week delay, for which I was personally 95% of the cause.

What did you find most impressive about Everest Consulting?

If they told me something was going to be done, it was done. I haven’t found another programmer who could come within 30% of Everest Consulting’s due-date schedule. We also worked on a flat fee, so I don’t know how much extra effort was required to reach those timeframes, but it was impressive. Their response time was also great. I received instant replies to my emails unless it was in the middle of the night.

Are there any areas Everest Consulting could improve?

I had some concerns in the beginning about working with people from a foreign country. Things could have gotten lost in translation, but I had zero issues in this regard. I was also concerned about the price being lower than average, but Everest Consulting was upfront about their reasons for the lower cost. They coached my concerns quickly.