Fideles Technology & Services

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m an architect for Dr Mage, an e-commerce solution company. We specialize in ERP, Magento, Magento 2, Shopify, BigCommerce, etc.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Thought Centrix?

I needed development help on a day-to-day basis for multiple projects. I tried a couple of companies. I was looking for a company that had a good development and project management team.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Primarily, I use them to provide solutions to my clients in the U.S. They do resource augmentation. Their development work includes integration of new modules or FedEx ShipStation and implementation of the components necessary for any e-commerce business to run. We completed 8–10 successful deliveries.

The first project was a sales tax app, which was a combination of a web, iOS, and Android app. This app saves and reads receipts through an OCR system. It pulls out the taxes on the receipt and calculates how much is owed to the IRS at the end of the year. My customers are getting money back from the IRS through this app.

Another project was for SheaMoisture, a company that sells body and hair products. They needed an integration of FedEx International Cross Borders to ship products outside the U.S. Thought Centrix used Magento 2 and developed a module for them to enable the selection of a country from the website. It supports payments from approximately 255 countries and 13 different payment gateways.

We also worked on a project for C&A Marketing, a marketing company for Polaroid, SkyMall, and Ritz Cameras. They approached us regarding their problems dealing with the stock inventory, the templates on eBay, and the connection with the internal warehouse system. We designed an architecture for them, but we didn’t have anybody to implement that complex architecture. Thought Centrix came up with good coding in PHP to build up the stocks and read the dynamic eBay templates. We suggested dynamic solutions in terms of architecture to upload on eBay, Amazon, and SellerCloud. We had architecture and a developer from Thought Centrix. They did a great job integrating this complex architecture.

We also have a project for Furnitureland South, which had integration with Salesforce and Magento. They have complex servers. Thought Centrix provides maintenance and support. They’re still changing styles and making dynamic components on the website.

These projects are complete, but they’re working on new projects.

What is the team composition?

We’re working with a mobile team, a web team, and a hosting and design team. Every project consisted of a project manager, a team lead, two developers, and one tester. When we were working with mobile apps, there was an additional team of 4–5 people. When we were working with web development and e-commerce, there was a team of 5–6 people. It’s a company of 15–20 people, and they tailor the team based on the technologies we need.

They have an office in the U.S. where the sales and marketing people are. Whenever we need them, we’re able to approach those people. It’s good we have somebody’s collar we can grab when something goes haywire.

How did you come to work with Thought Centrix?

After a six-month search, we found them through an internet search. We wanted a cost-effective solution. We gave them a small project, and once we saw they were doing great, we started pushing them into big projects.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent $80,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in September 2017 and the work is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We give the big jobs to Thought Centrix. We rely on them. I had the quality engineer check their work, and the quality of the work is good. We found that their quality and efficiency is 90-95%.

They respond to us within 24–48 hours. There were multiple times when they worked long hours for us. They address any crashes or issues immediately.

How did Thought Centrix perform from a project management standpoint?

We do the project management on our side. We deal with the client. They have group project managers who facilitate if a developer is missing. We generally work with Jira. They’re on our system, and they give us project updates. They’re good at arranging the developers or the tasks. They pull a designer whenever we want. I’m happy with the project management that they organize. They never made us feel there’s a time difference.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’re trustworthy people. We were dealing with the iOS problem where we had a server built on Ruby on Rails. We reached out to Thought Centrix, and they arranged a developer overnight and executed well. If there’s a technology that they’ve never worked on, they never say no; they learn it.

Are there any areas they could improve?

It’s not a dream company from the perspective that we’ve been having trouble with design issues. We have a requirement from our customers, and we try to get the designs from them. They come up with lame designs that we need to work on. They need to work on building up the designs for the customer based upon the requirement.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Stay on top of the project management. Monitor the managerial team to get the work done. If you lose 10 days, and you go back to the company, you may have a hard time getting back to the project. Stay focused and set up a project management system.