Facile Consulting Private Limited

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Our company, Premium Quality Consulting LLC, is a business consulting agency. Our primary product is CYA Cover Your Assets, asset and field service management for the global coffee industry. I am CEO of the company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Facile Consulting Private Limited?

Our lengthy careers in coffee and our consulting work with leading companies confirmed for us that coffee businesses almost universally did not manage their capital assets (equipment in the field) to their financial benefit. The use of rarely updated spreadsheets and information written on paper meant that there was no way to assess for companies to assess their processes and improve them. We knew that technology would be the simplest solution and, based on conversations with the industry, we outlined the business needs for the software we would create to track equipment assets, schedule service, create reports, and build data for companies that would help them analyze and manage their assets, locations, ROI and actions.

What were your goals for this project?

CYA would be a cloud-based, mobile and computer application that was informed by our in depth understanding of the coffee industry, which meant that no lengthy and arduous set up would be required; UX would be simple and intuitive to use, no action would be more than two clicks in; data history of all fields would be easy to sort. Reports would use each company's data to categorize their activities, provide trends in key metrics and help them identify opportunities for improvement.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

Facile was referred to us by a trusted friend in the software business. We met with their management by video conference several times and began working with them on a straw man version to present at an industry show. Now, three years later, we are working on version 4.0 of CYA.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

Our most successful way to work with the Facile team was when we began to manage by business needs, outcome objectives and deadlines vs. following development step-by-step. We ask them to provide the best solutions based on the needs. We communicate primarily by a development tool, have frequent checkin calls where they demonstrate their progress and discuss outcomes based on certain choices. Our Facile team is always prepared for productive meetings and prompt and professional in all follow up.

What was the team composition?

As Facile has been our development partner through all versions of our software, our team size has changed from 3 or 4 to up to 10 members. Our team leader is competent and resourceful and our meetings are always attended by a member of senior management who can provide advice based on his experience when needed.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The product that we have built with Facile is our business! We are working to grow our SaaS revenue model and gradually address additional requests for functionality. We have an impressive product that works and a development and support team that never lets us down.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

Our progress is best when we manage by business needs, outcome objectives and deadlines. We communicate through Trello and frequently upload quick videos explaining needed changes. We schedule meetings every week or so, both Facile and our team make themselves available for additional calls to clarify points whenever needed. Facile has smart developers who make valuable recommendations for how we can achieve our goals.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Our focus is our CYA software and we feel that CYA is also the focus of our partners at Facile. We have gotten to know them quite well over these few years and appreciate their integrity, competence, collaboration and friendship. We hope to meet them in person some day.

Are there any areas for improvement?

We have successfully worked through a few learnings along the way, mostly to do with communication delays due to focusing too much on video conference meetings. Now that we use a development tool, both teams can communicate during their own prime work time and the result is greater efficienct.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Suventure Services is an IT services company. We work backend development, mobility, and the Internet of things. We have been in business for five years.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Facile?

We needed an outside vendor and strategic partner.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They’ve helped us in Microsoft Tech Stack primarily on the backend and frontend, and also in some mobility.

One of the projects they helped us with was an end-to-end solution for a restaurant-based application for one of our U.S. customers. The backend was on the Microsoft Tech Stack. The frontend was primarily on iOS and Android. They were responsible for the development. Our end client had a designer based out of Europe. Some minor pieces of the design were done by Facile. The app allows customers to book a table, look at the menu, and order their meal in advance. They can also make the payment on the app.

The second project was a dashboard for a cable channel company in India. We developed a solution with the help of Facile. It was an enterprise work primarily done on Microsoft Tech Stack. In India, there was a mandate a couple of years ago that digital set-top boxes were mandatory. Every year, cable operators were giving the cable to the TV sets, which was stopped. They wanted everything to go through the set-top box. The personal intent is revenue for the government through sales and taxation. The CEO of the cable company wanted to know how many set-top boxes have been sold, installed, and are active. This status needed to be collected through spreadsheets in a manual way, which was all automated. While this was automated, data was being stored for analysis, and it was presented in a dashboard to the top management. The top management could monitor the progress of the coverage and the target. This data is presented to high-level leaders.

How did you come to work with Facile?

We worked with the team in the past in previous organizations. We know their capabilities. Anything that we come across on Microsoft Tech Stack, they are our go-to partners.

How much have you invested with them?

We invested $30,000–$40,000.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The restaurant app has been deployed in mall food courts and places like that. From a scale of 1 to 10, I would say the feedback is 9+. My clients are satisfied and there are no complaints. Facile is very strong from the technical perspective.

How did Facile perform from a project management standpoint?

Most of the projects are co-managed. We had good support from their senior management. Mostly, we aligned with the customer process and app processes there. We worked in Agile methodologies. They’re above average with project management. They were very proactive. They were good with follow-up and things were in place. The work promised to us was delivered on time.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I’m impressed by the senior folks there that come from a core technical background. Their technical skills are in Microsoft Tech Stack primarily. That’s what makes us go back to them.

Are there any areas they could improve?

In certain cases, there are multiple resources required a particular project. They could have mobilized more people in a shorter time. They stand for quality though. Even if there is a little delay, they don’t compromise on the quality.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I'm the product manager for a Human Resources company. We develop cloud-based human capital management solutions, like a recruitment site and an innovation field for HR management.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenges were you trying to address with Facile Consulting?

Our application provides a platform for recruiters to store and peruse jobseekers’ information. When you’re in the recruiting industry, you get a lot of resumes from people looking for a job. If you have a job opportunity right now, you can look for those candidates and reach out to them. And when you receive an email from a jobseeker with their resume, you can download it from Outlook and upload it into our product. That’s the basic functionality of our product.

As part of our research, we have to build the user ecosystem. Our users utilize different software for handling resumes, but they consistently use Microsoft Outlook for getting or sending resumes. We integrate between Outlook and our product so that they can add the resumes from any emails they get. We needed help with that integration with the Outlook framework.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They built the bridge between our application and the Outlook inbox in order to transfer data from Outlook to our product. They developed everything in the document framework. There were involved in all the stages of development from requirements gathering to testing. We did the user acceptance rates and rolled out the environment. The application they built is on .NET.

We had a few projects with them. We have a couple of products and they built a lot of plugins for us.

What is the team composition?

We had 3 resources assigned to us because we engaged them for a couple of projects. Each project was handled by one person who was supervised by someone else.

How did you come to work with Facile Consulting?

We had references for them. We had tried another company earlier.

How much have you invested with them?

We probably spent about 700,000 to 800,000 Indian Rupees ($10,900—$12,500).

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked with them from 2016 through the first quarter of 2017. Whenever we need client support we talk to them but the engagement has ended.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The reason we had an engagement with them for 9-10 months is because of the work that they delivered. I’m a technical guy so I can tell if it’s good or not. The web development itself was strong because we’re not running into any issues right now. The way that they built, the way that they programmed for future changes, it’s pretty good. We have a lot of clients who are using the tool today on a regular basis.

How did Facile Consulting perform from a project management standpoint?

They're good in terms of responding and in terms of completing the work. Sometimes things went beyond deadlines but, most of the time, it was completed ahead of the schedule.

We communicated over email and phone. We didn’t have any project management tools for them because of the fact that they’re not our internal resources. They’re always available by phone, email, chat, or WhatsApp, even not being onsite. They're available on the weekend as well.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The way that they built, it's their core strength. Because the application was initially developed by somebody else, it was in bad shape and we had a lot of issues with it. Once we contracted them, the way that they scoped the project and documented the solution was really good. What they built is working well after close to 10 months. It's scalable. On a day-to-day, we don’t need support from them.

Are there any areas they could improve?

For the quality of work that they delivered, I think that the amount that we paid is reasonable. But I would have been happier to have paid a little less. That's the only thing that I’ve seen. In terms of the quality of the product they delivered, it is good.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the CEO and principal architect of NCompas Business Solutions. We are an IT consulting firm in Cleveland, Ohio and have been in business for over 3 years.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Facile Consulting?

We needed software app development for our mobile apps. I was looking for a development partner that had the skills I needed, specifically in the Microsoft platform.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement? 

They are essentially my extended team. Whenever I have Microsoft projects, I use them due to their excellent performance and the way they deliver their projects. They have helped me with the software development of my mobile apps, websites, and web applications.

I receive the project requirements and then have a team of developers within Facile Consulting who I go through those requirements with. They do the design work, the UX [user experience] design work, app design, and then the app development testing and delivery. They provide support after the project has been delivered as well.

A particularly complex project used Qt, which is a newer technology. They learned about it to allow us to still deliver the project. It is a medical image processing app which had highly intensive processing happening on the GPU [graphics processing unit]. They also did mobile app development, which included multiple social media logins and a lot of testing on iOS and Android platforms. They made that process very smooth by using Xamarin on the Microsoft platform. It was a cross-platform architecture with was one code base, but we were still able to deliver on both iOS and Android platform.  

What is the team composition?

Depending on the project, I worked with anywhere from 1–3 resources. I mostly worked with 1 senior level person who has more than 10 years experience and has delivered multiple projects. I also worked with 1 part-time UX person, who has a lot of knowledge when it comes to data flow, data elements, and an esthetic sense of website and mobile app development, and 1 developer who would have more than 5–6 years of experience.

How did you come to work with Facile Consulting?

A friend of mine had worked with them before and had a very high regard for them. He recommended them to me and I have been with them since.

How much have you invested in them?

We spend between $10,000–$30,000 per project.

What is the status of this engagement?

We began working with them since 2014, and the work is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Initially, the tools that were in place helped to smooth the seamless interaction between my client, myself, and the team. We always knew what the developers were doing and had first-hand information about the progress of the project. If something was thrown at them at the last minute, their response time was good and they were able to deliver the same kind of quality, even on newer technologies.

How did Facile Consulting perform from a project management standpoint?

Everything went smoothly. Most of the time, project management is something we do from our end. From their side, they had the right tools. We use Slack and Basecamp which helps in the smooth rollout and the support of projects for my clients. We also use Microsoft Team Foundation systems on the cloud, which most of the project management, Scrum, Gantt charts, and all of those things came from.

Whatever was decided for each phase, they were always able to get done in time, even if it meant that they are to work extra hours, which they would do without billing the client extra time. Most of the time, we were able to deliver the project.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They are really strong on Microsoft platform, especially for app development. If there is a customer who has legacy apps, or some older versions of Microsoft apps which need support and maintenance, as well as the new app development work, I think they would be really good development partners to have.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They could venture into some of the bigger projects. That would really help them with respect to their delivery and what they can really do. Within their own team, it would be good if they could venture into other platforms apart from Microsoft.

They could improve also by having more automated testing, continuous integration, and delivery. If they could integrate that into their app development from the word go, it would really help them out a lot.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

We develop mobile applications for the environmental, health, and safety industries with a focus on construction companies. 

What is your position?

I am the principal of the company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with Facile Consulting?

We were looking for a company to supplement our development team on projects when we needed assistance or more resources. The main goal was to update and modernize some older apps that we had developed. That's why we partnered with Facile Consulting.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement in detail.

They were mainly responsible for developing, designing, updating, and maintaining apps for our clients in the construction industry. They have also helped us design and develop prototypes for some of our clients' apps. They supplement our team whenever we need extra resources or if certain development aspects are out of our league.

How did you come to work with Facile Consulting?

They were referred to us by a friend of the company.

Could you provide a sense of the size of this initiative in financial terms?

Up to now, it has cost us less than $10,000. But, by the end of the year, it will be more than that.

What is the status of this engagement?

It's ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

One thing that we wanted was to have prototypes for certain apps. The main benefit that we have received from working with Facile is that now we have the ability to show our clients a prototype rather than explain things in technical terms that they do not understand.

How did Facile Consulting perform from a project management standpoint?

From my standpoint, the project has been very smooth. When I tell them something, they understand and execute. They may not understand the subject matter at first but, as long as I can explain to them in their terminology the workflows, I've been able to get that out from them. They are able to present a product in a timely fashion, and they understand what I tell them and provide me those so that I can go back to my clients and explain to them how it's going to work.

What distinguishes Facile Consulting from other providers?

Facile's response time has been outstanding. They're on top of everything. They've been extremely reliable. We have a standing meeting every day for 10 to 15 minutes, and we extend it if we need to go beyond that. 

Is there anything Facile Consulting could have improved or done differently?

I can't think of anything.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

ALTEN Calsoft Labs provides transformational enterprise IT [information technology] and product engineering services, helping customers to become smarter, more productive, nimble, and better at predicting the future.

What is your position?

I am the senior manager of sales.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with Facile Consulting?

We are a large IT services organization and our internal team was preoccupied with other deliveries. We were looking for a partner who could help us out in getting the right talent for some of the projects we wanted to ramp up. We sent Facile Consulting the requirements of what we are looking for. They have qualified resources and shared profiles with us, and the conversion ratio was very good.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement in detail.

We needed to quickly ramp up a .NET development project team on, and we needed the end resources to be on for a period of 45 days. They were solely in charge of coding.

How did you come to work with Facile Consulting?

We had worked together in another organization.

What is the status of this engagement?

Although this project is completed, we look forward to working with them again.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

It was a very flexible team that we could get somebody from their side to help us out and get the right results that we were looking for. They ramp up quickly as well. They were the very qualified team that we were looking for. They have understood the Intercorp activities very well from a client perspective and ensured those things went very well.

How did Facile Consulting perform from a project management standpoint?

Facile Consulting understood the scope of the work well. They delivered on time and exceed expectations.

What distinguishes Facile Consulting from other providers?

As an organization, they're very flexible. Service organizations are aplenty today, and you need to have some edge or other because that is what the customers look for today. I feel they have that edge.

Is there anything Facile Consulting could have improved or done differently?

No.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your role within the organization.

Enperitos is a software services company that delivers customized solutions, innovation leading to transformation and technology expertise to its end customers. As part of the service offerings, we enable our customers to leverage on the expertise that Enperitos consultants provide transforming the customer organization towards innovation. Enperitos transforms the customer organizations to become experts in technology and deliver efficiently in their core business offerings

What is your position?

I'm the CEO of the company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with Facile Consulting.?

We knew that 60 percent of all small business enterprises are technology-enabled, but lack access to quick and simple applications that enable measurement and tracking of all their activities on a single platform. The challenge was to create a solution where small businesses get the option to track all their projects and tasks currently being executed by their staff in real time and provide the ability to compare progress, productivity, and innovation.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement in detail.

We engaged Facile to architect the solution, deliver a prototype, build the solution, and deploy the product on the cloud. Facile used Microsoft technologies and the Windows Framework for this project. All design options provided were well throughout keeping the end customer in mind. The technology elements used were futuristic and screen rendering sharp. The infrastructure recommendation from Facile was adequate, and there was no additional cost for the consultation. Weekly reviews and deliverables helped to see progress and deliveries were all on schedule and within scope.

How did you come to work with Facile Consulting?

Having seen previous work of Facile Consulting team on building a dashboard for a different customer, their ability to turnaround and provide a solution was commendable.

Could you provide a sense of the size of this initiative in financial terms?

The project cost between $10,000 and $49,999.

What is the status of this engagement?

The entire engagement spanned more than four months, and the team is currently engaged to onboard new customers and maintain and enhance the product.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

The dashboard and its usability were highly appreciated by the customers. The rendering of information on the mobile phone was quick and crisp. The workflow for screen data mapping and switching of elements was seamless.

How did Facile Consulting perform from a project management standpoint?

We had calls twice a week. Then, we had a call with the customer once a week, so status was always clear, up to date, and progress was [watched] closely.

What distinguishes Facile Consulting from other providers?

From a technical standpoint, Facile Consulting was very forthcoming, in terms of giving recommendations and positions and not just sticking to the job. Also, playing beside us as to what could be done in a different way or a better way. From that way, they were a little different in terms of trying to make sure that we were aware of what's happening in terms of technology.

Is there anything Facile Consulting could have improved or done differently?

Overall, things went very well. Just trying to think how to put it in a way where it doesn't sound negative. I know they're a small organization, so they have a little bit of a niche. Overall, they can manage things very well. The budget was not an issue.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the Co-Founder and COO of iBank.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Facile Consulting Private Limited?

To develop our mobile application.

What were your goals for this project?

To develop and deploy our minimum viable product to the marketplace.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

We had been using other vendors and received a referral. After looking at Facile and others, we decided to select Facile.

Describe the project in detail.

We provided the scope of our project, received a fair quote, and decided to proceed. We were assigned a very experienced development team. We have multiple calls on a weekly basis to discuss objectives and milestones.

What was the team composition?

We had a project manager, a senior developer, and other resources.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Facile has been able to accomplish every goal we have put forward for them.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

The workflow is super effective between our two teams. We use various communication channels, which gives us great transparency and efficiency.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

We are very impressed with the company leadership. They truly try to become part of our team, rather than treat us as just another client. The results have been great all around.

Are there any areas for improvement?

Everything can always be done faster, but we are very satisfied with the work and Facile has generally stuck to our project time ines,