Formos

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the CEO and founder of Total Asset Manager, a software SAAS solution for the oil and gas industry in the USA. We provide a unique integrated platform for housing technical information and integrating it to financial information.

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

To improve our platform in its natural progression and to develop a new platform for reading automated field data and presenting it.

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

Through knowledge of their project manager, who I knew, and respected. Then learned about their team through him. The fit was obvious to us

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

We had a kick off meeting to present our technology, and lay out the specific goals for improvement we had. This was multi-faceted. a project for each specific objective was laid out with estimates, and that guidance followed to conclusion. Formos now maintains our version releases of the software.

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

Project Manager was our main connection, who knew our space. He directed a team of 4-6 developers to meet objectives

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

Better product, and new product offerings.

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

We had weekly meetings for progress. always knew what to expect. other communications happened throughout as needed for the project's to move forward.

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

timeliness, communication. They fulfilled all of our expectations, which was exceptional.

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

no

Please describe your company and your position there.

ZoomInfo is a Sales Data Intelligence company. I was the CTO there from 2014 to 2018.

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

From 2014 through 2016, I oversaw a total rebuild of the technology platform for the company. We enlisted Formos in January of 2015 to augment the development team in this software development work. As the new platform was completed, we maintained Formos as an integral part of our development and support team.

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

Our company was growing rapidly and at the same time we were rebuilding the core platform on which the company depended. We felt that outsourcing some of the work temporarily would be a good way to keep things moving as we recruited full-time developers to build up our permanent in-house engineering team.

Formos was our first choice since I was aware of their reputation for quality. The intent was to use their services for a few months to bridge our need for developer manpower. As it turned out we maintained use of their services well after the initial project. In fact, the company has used Formos continuously ever since.

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

During the first year or two, the primary work was on the rebuild of the our primary SaaS application suite. Architecture and design work was done in-house and Formos was assigned various components to develop. They also contributed to the design details. They were integrated with our software version control and devops systems. We later had them also perform formal QA as well. The technology stack included Java, MySQL, various JavaScript frameworks, Twilio, and several services and technologies on AWS.

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

Over the period, I worked directly with Formos' system architects, client service managers, and overseas developers.

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

Formos contributed materially to the completion and success of our development team.Formos contributed materially to the completion and success of our development team. The rebuild of the SaaS application suite allowed the company to overcome the limitations of the previous technology platform and to subsequently incredible growth, that enabled the acquisition of several competitors and eventually one of the largest technology IPO's of 2020. Formos was maintained as a vital extension of the company's engineering team during my entire tenure at the company.

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

Formos was professional in all their interactions. Their solution architects and project managers met with us at our offices regularly. Their developer team communicated directly with myself and my developers using our online collaboration tools such as Slack. I do not recall any issues ever arising with respect to the quality or timeliness of their deliverables.

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

Formos excels in their management and execution. Their model of having local solution architects and client service managers working directly with the clients, with skilled overseas development teams works quite well and they have streamlined the process. In addition, as our relationship progressed, they were flexible in modifying the collaboration procedures for maximum efficiency.

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

I really cannot think of any. At various times, we found it useful to tweak processes and tools for both our in-house teams as well as with our interactions with Formos. They were always cooperative and constructive in these efforts. Consequently, there were very few issues or hiccups that we were not able to quickly solve together.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I was the consultant of realwear, and we manufacture Android-based head-worn AR devices that people can use in the engineering and construction industries.

What challenge were you trying to address with Formos?

We needed someone to further build upon our initial software base and migrate it into a modern cloud infrastructure.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Formos is providing our company with ongoing custom software development to technically re-architect our device. They have one pocket of developers working on Enterprise Java and React for the base web interface.

There’s another set of Android Java developers for the actual device, and another for the DevOps aspect — all teams are basically configuring and maintaining AWS and our software automation tools.

What is the team composition?

I interacted with Charles (CEO), Andrew (Director), William (Solutions Architect), and an in-country manager for the Vietnamese team.

How did you come to work with Formos?

I came across Charles and his company when I became part of a local investment board for nonprofits.

How much have you invested with them?

So far, I believe they’ve spent about $500,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

The partnership started in February 2018, but they’re still working together.

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

Formos was able to improve our development timeframes and $10 million worth of revenue from a customer-facing perspective.

How did Formos perform from a project management standpoint?

The project management was good from the onset because we got to establish a roadmap early in the partnership. The team was also responsive in identifying solutions and adjusting priorities as they shifted.

Additionally, they were proactive from a communications perspective, and we would typically talk through the phone and weekly meetings — I was very satisfied with the way they managed the program during my involvement.

What did you find most impressive about them?

What sets them apart from their competitors is their tenure and experience, as their team has been doing this type of service for a long time now. Because of that, they consistently delivered my needs thanks to their professionalism and high-quality process.

Are there any areas they could improve?

The only issue I experienced when I was working with them was their lack of customer DevOps experience, so there was quite a learning curve during the partnership.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I would advise against micromanaging their team and make sure you clearly communicate your expectations for their deliverables. Formos is really good at iterating your needs so let them figure it out themselves.