GEOGO Techsolutions

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the founder of a staff and recruiting company. It’s an industrial-grade marketplace that connects engineers, consultants, and operation folks with the enterprises dynamically on a platform.

What challenge were you trying to address with GEOGO Techsolutions?

I was looking for some flexible resources that could build a platform for me and had experience in Ruby on Rails and a SQL database. I also needed someone who could interface with the platform and bring AI to this engine so skill-matching could happen.

What was the scope of their involvement? 

GEOGO Techsolutions has developed our platform. We provided them the design and the content of our website. They’ve taken photographs for the website and given structure based on how we want the distribution. 

GEOGO Techsolutions has also worked on the platform’s features, including the skill-matching and option modules. The AI engine has to lead to the project’s skills, be able to be updated by the engineers or consultants, and scan the CVs to find the right words to match the profiles.

Many times, people don’t update all the skills they have in their CV because it’s more elaborate. However, we want an engine that can scan through the CVs, pick up the keywords, and send a notification to the client with the project goal.

GEOGO Techsolutions has researched, in some cases, to come up with suggestions for the project and what would be more interesting to customers.

What is the team composition?

I’ve worked with three people from GEOGO Techsolutions: a project manager and two developers.

How did you come to work with GEOGO Techsolutions?

I got recommended to GEOGO Techsolutions by one of my former colleagues who used to work for my previous company.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve invested around $5,000–$10,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in June 2018. We’ve finished the first phase of the project, and we’re working on the second phase.

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

GEOGO Techsolutions has completed the modules, but they haven’t yet given us a demo to show the deliverables are working. This will help us make a course correction rather than waiting until the end of the project. In this type of work, it’s very likely to have a lot of scope creep, which we don’t want.

How did GEOGO Techsolutions perform from a project management standpoint?

We communicate through emails and phone calls for regular revisions. GEOGO Techsolutions has been doing dynamic project management, too. They’ve also been managing the overall timesheets and staffing.

In terms of completion areas, metrics, and timelines, GEOGO Techsolutions has been good. They’ve been sending screenshots of the modules and letting us know how much time they’ve spent. They’ve delivered the documents on time, as well. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

GEOGO Techsolutions has been a trusted partner who can come up with suggestions for the project. Sometimes, during the development process, it’s possible for advantages and solutions to be communicated and GEOGO Techsolutions has been able to do that. Their team’s knowledge has been satisfactory.

Are there any areas they could improve?

One of the areas where we can work more closely with GEOGO Techsolutions is training with resources and documentation. When we give them a project, the only thing we want to do is take the results and go in order. In the future, we can train our team with detailed documentation so we'd like their team to work on that area.

We could have a clearer understanding of what is expected at the end of the project if we had been clearer and more precise with GEOGO Techsolutions.

Any advice for potential customers?

I think it’s very important to provide a clear scope of what you need. As long as you do that, GEOGO Techsolutions will do a fantastic job. I suggest putting it into a process map and tell them what you're looking for so everyone has the same idea.

The second piece of advice would be to make sure that, in the knowledge management sessions, you know what software GEOGO Techsolutions is using and how they’re building it. This will help you be independent. When you bring others in to support, the documentation becomes extremely essential. 

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m one of the directors and the CTO of a mobility solutions company. We’ve been working for the past 10 years in various cities across India.

We provide tech-based solutions for shared mobility assets, like public scooter and bike sharing. We also provide the hardware, software, and even the operations management system for those services. Overall, we enable various governments or public players so they can offer those services to the public at large in various parts of the world.

What challenge were you trying to address with GEOGO Techsolutions?

We’ve been working with GEOGO Techsolutions (GEOGO) for almost five years. Most of our website implementation is handled by them.

We had more of a hardware and electronics embedded system background, and we needed some guidance in the server-side of development because we didn’t have particular expertise in that area. That’s why we relied heavily on their guidance and advice.

What was the scope of their involvement?

The tech solutions we provide are across various domains. We have a mobile application for end-users to access the hardware and the server backend to manage everything.

All of the server development, including its architecture, was done in concurrence and discussion with GEOGO. We came up with the layout and design documents together.

The leader at GEOGO has a very interesting background in system architecture, so he suggested what platforms and hosting servers we should use. Once the architecture was finalized, their team did the server-side development. Now, server hosting and its maintenance are being carried out by GEOGO.

Most of the backend is being outsourced to GEOGO. It consists mostly of the server that provides the dashboard and management tools for the operator and organizers to monitor the service.

We have both iOS and Android versions of the app. It basically interacts with our onboard devices through Bluetooth or Wi-Fi and then gives the user access to them. The Android version was done in-house, and GEOGO assisted us in developing the iOS version.

What is the team composition?

At the peak of development, there were around four people apart from Suvajit (CEO & Founder). Two of them were senior developers, and two were junior developers that had recently joined.

How did you come to work with GEOGO Techsolutions?

We’ve been in contact with Suvajit since his earlier days. He worked for a company that did a lot of consultancy services, including planning and public transport planning — dictating which public transport needs to go to which area of the city and how frequently. We were selling our ticketing machines and supplying our GPS tracking solutions to his previous company, and that’s how we came to know him.

Once Suvajit set up his own venture, he got in contact with us and asked if we needed his services. We very much needed them, so we immediately got together and discussed what needed to be done. After those initial few discussions, we felt that he would be a good fit for our team, and we took it forward from there.

How much have you invested in them?

It has been around $8,000–$10,000 over the last year. Before that, it was around 1 million Indian Rupees (around $50,000–$75,000 USD) per year.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in May 2016. The development is done for now, so if there are any new requirements, we take that up on a contract basis. However, the server maintenance contract is ongoing.

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

Since it’s more of a B2C kind of business, wherein whatever we are developing can be accessed by the public at large, it’s very critical for us to have as few bugs as possible even before we launch. Although the app hasn’t been completely foolproof or bug-free, GEOGO has been able to successfully address those issues and be cooperative enough with us to solve them without any additional cost.

We don’t have a very large iOS user base; only around 5% of our customers use iOS. A lot of features that we have on Android can’t be directly ported to iOS because of the security restrictions that Apple has in place. Whatever is on the app is what we intended there to be, so our requirements have been fairly straightforward. They’ve suggested feasible and doable solutions to take it forward based on that, and they’ve comfortably been able to do it.

How did GEOGO Techsolutions perform from a project management standpoint?

We usually don’t interact with the whole team on a daily basis. We have one point of contact, and he manages their side of the team. We have a Jira board where tasks are set up, and everything happens through that. We’ve been using ClickUp recently.

Suvajit is based out of Bangalore, which is a completely different state than the one we’re in. He visits our office once a week to discuss future requirements and other topics. Once the requirements are decided and implementation starts, most of our meetings are online.

We used to have a meeting with their team lead daily or once every few days, and if there were any discrepancies from either side, we would resolve them. Overall, they’ve kept up with deadlines, but we haven’t interacted with their junior staff that much.

What did you find most impressive about them?

One thing that makes them stand out compared to other vendors we have worked with is their willingness to accept their mistake and correct it. If we ask them to do something, and they do it but it isn’t exactly what we intended, it would be very easy for them to say that it was our mistake because it wasn’t defined properly, but they don’t do that. They provide us with quite a satisfactory service, cooperate with us, and don’t point fingers, so we’ve been very satisfied with them.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Deadlines are an area that could be managed a little more effectively. There have been times where they haven’t been strictly adhered to them, so things would extend a week or more than what we had initially discussed. At times, it was a bit of a challenge because they weren’t able to figure out the technical aspects of it, or once everything was done and deployed on the server, it would crash.

We aren’t sure if we can blame them solely for the delays. Sometimes they delivered what they were supposed to, but it wasn’t implemented properly, so once we deployed it there were issues or bugs that came up. It has more to do with proper testing and development, rather than just saying it wasn’t delivered on time.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

The best approach when talking to any vendor is to have the requirements properly defined. Before the implementation takes place, share the entire requirements and big picture with them. That way, they’ll be able to understand the requirements properly and start with the implementation, rather than vice versa.

With GEOGO, Suvajit is more of a big picture guy, and we relied on him heavily for our system architecture. If you clearly communicate the bigger picture to whatever extent possible, they're able to do the implementation planning in a much better way and get out the deliverables as soon as possible.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We’re a semiconductor manufacturing company. I’m a solutions architect for our ERP-based solutions. Using SAP ERP and Oracle, we provide satellite applications for users across all of our locations.

What challenge were you trying to address with GEOGO Technologies?

One of the key projects my department is working on is a geographical mapping solution that has machine learning and AI elements. We reached out to GEOGO Technologies for the technical aspect of it.

What was the scope of their involvement?

GEOGO Technologies provides development services for our mapping solution. They develop using technologies like React. We have three teams working on the solution, and GEOGO Technologies is working on all of the technologies related to the frontend portion, including the UI. My team is working on the database portion, and we provide all of the APIs to GEOGO Technologies.

What is the team composition?

We have one main contact on their side. He attends our scrum meetings and delegates tasks to his team of 15–20 people.

How did you come to work with GEOGO Technologies?

We were looking for experts on the market, and GEOGO Technologies had expertise in mapping solutions, as well as machine learning and AI. I wanted to find a team in India so that we could work closely together. We made a proof of concept with them, and we chose them based on that.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent $70,000–$80,000 on their services.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with GEOGO Technologies in May or June 2018, and the collaboration is ongoing. We’re expanding the solution to more locations.

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

We’ve gotten reviews from internal users, with criteria like ‘good,’ ‘bad,’ and ‘ugly,’ and GEOGO Technologies’s work has been well-received.

How did GEOGO Technologies perform from a project management standpoint?

Project management is divided between our three teams. GEOGO Technologies is up to the mark on deadlines, and they provide project management as per our needs.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We’ve worked with a few provider companies, and GEOGO Technologies is number one, in my opinion. They adapt well to changes in our requirements.