Geomotiv

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the Creative Director, Partner at Bright Bright Great.

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

Bright Bright Great had been looking for a reliable technology partner for almost a year. Geomotiv was recommended to BBG through a mutual friend and we immediately started work.

We hired Geo for WordPress development, technology implementation and more. The main goal was to build a steady working relationship between our two teams adding bandwidth to the BBG team, while working with a communicative intelligent partner.

How did you select Geomotiv and what were the deciding factors?

BBG had an introductory call with the Geo team and we left that meeting feeling positive and wanting to run trial projects. We almost immediately had their team jumping in with the BBG team as additional support.

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

1. WordPress development
2. Technology integration
3. API integration
4. PHP
5. Technology audit and estimation
6. Backend development

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

• Account Manager
• Project Manager
• 3 Developers

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

Jumping into previously started work is always difficult, however, the Geomotiv team not only helped us maintain deadlines but deliver ahead of time.

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

They are very communicative. We have a daily stand to review all project work.

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

BBG clicks with Geomotiv. We understand each others needs and work to collectively get things done. Also, they are great people. We look forward to speaking to them every day.

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

Nope.

Please describe your company and your position there.

PebblePost is a marketing technology services company. I'm the Chief Technology Officer responsible for building our platform and maintaining our production cloud systems.

For what projects/services did your company hire Geomotiv ?

We needed to hire and scale an engineering team very fast in order to rebuild our platform completely from scratch. The original platform was initially built as a proof of concept, but the business took off at such a high scale trajectory that the platform was falling over since it would not perform or scale to the business needs. We could not hire a team with the needed big data and tiered web skills fast enough in NYC and I had experience with using an offshore team extension through Geomotiv from my previous company the Rubicon Project days. I reached out to Geomotiv and asked them to help me to again grow a highly skilled team aggressively fast. They we extremely helpful in collaborating to find, recruit, close, and maintain a highly skilled team quickly.

What were your goals for this project?

We successfully rebuilt the platform from scratch in 6 months and we're now working together to further scale the business, platform, and extend our product lines into other areas. The platform now essentially scales linearly with big data technologies. The platform has high performance in both speed and in accomplishing client goals.

How did you select this vendor?

I had successfully worked with Gemotiv at my previous company the Rubicon Project so they were my go-to first choice for building a fast high skilled team here. We discussed our needs which were different than before. Before it was mostly high performance high scale computing engineers that we were primarily interested in. This time the focus was more around big data technologies. Gemotiv felt confident that they could find engineers with the big data skills and so we worked together to accomplish that.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

The project was to rebuild a big data graph systems from scratch, big data reporting, and build a new workflow campaign and creative management system. The big data was primarily Spark and GraphX. The web technologies were a Java/Spring backend and a react front end.

What was the team composition?

The teams were balanced around 70% onshore and 30% offshore.

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

The project was hugely successful in that it was built in 6 months and accomplished all of our core goals of infinite scale, high performance, reliable and maintainable through automated testing. The new workflow management web application allowed our client services team to handle 20x more clients per person than before.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

We are an agile team (scrum) so project management is handled within the self organizing team. The Geomotiv team was essentially an extension of our team.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Geomotiv is able to find highly skilled engineers much faster than we are are able to in NY at an equivalent or even higher quality.

Are there any areas for improvement?

If there were areas to improve we would have already done so. I did mention some changes that would help us to create better success early on and the Geomotiv team responded and improved them quickly.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I was the CTO of N Technologies. They offer an advertising audience-management platform tailored for B2B interactions.

For what projects/services did your company hire Geomotiv?

We needed help developing a real-time bidding system based on RTBKit (open-source software package). Afterward, they helped us out on several smaller projects.

What were your goals for this project?

We wanted to introduce functionalities the business required: a bidder with highly specialized logic and 3rd party-systems integrations.

How did you select this vendor?

I worked with them as an outsourcing partner at a previous company. We sent them an inquiry, along with other candidates. They offered a developer who was perfectly suited for our needs, so we hired them.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

We brought them on solely to handle highly complex coding tasks. We provided them with some requirements, but they also developed some of them themselves. They also migrated an ad server from Ruby to Node and did several integrations (Salesforce, Facebook API, Google API).

What was the team composition?

We worked with two senior developers.

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

I call the project a success because other developers were able to extend their code without major issues. They fulfilled all our requirements.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

It was quite one-sided. We provided user stories, and they provided deliverables. They were always available on a chat channel, and we had daily phone calls.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Their professionalism was great. They tried to up-sell me some, but not to an unacceptable degree.

Are there any areas for improvement?

I can’t suggest anything serious to improve. I think they’re headed in the right direction, and their work ethic is great. You should expect above-average service.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We are an advertising technology company focusing on the development of technologies for the automation and targeting of linear television. I am the chief executive officers and one of the co-founders.

What challenge were you trying to address with Geomotiv?

We needed to develop a platform in an evolving, developing field. There were many dependencies still in the process, and we needed an Agile development partner to help us with that.

What was the scope of their involvement?

The platform used in development was Java-based, and it required integration with several APIs. The role of our platform is the automation of a media buying process and to connect various sources of media inventory and third-party data.

How did you come to work with Geomotiv?

We conducted a search process where we looked at many firms, narrowed them down, and interviewed the top firm, which was Geomotiv. We had a thorough screening process which allowed us to understand their capabilities, projects that they have worked on in the past, and their references. We initially gave them a smaller project at inception as a test, which went well, and then we expanded the scope of the work from there. They were the first agency to work on our project.

How much have you invested with Geomotiv?

That is confidential.

What is the status of this engagement?

Since June 2014 and ongoing.

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

Since we are still in the early stages, the feedback I have is qualitative. We have worked with a number of brands and agencies that already gave very strong reviews and feedback on our platform.

How did Geomotiv perform from a project management standpoint?

They do a good job of adhering to an efficient process for managing dates and deadlines and accomplishing the tasks that need to be done.

What did you find most impressive about Geomotiv?

Beyond their development work, they are a great thought partner. In the past, I have had experiences with development firms where you had to be very specific on your requirements and what you are looking for. With our business in an emerging space, they have been a very effective thought partner in thinking about solutions to our problems.

Are there any areas Geomotiv could improve?

The one thing I would like done is to manage deadlines that we work with efficiently since dates change, especially with a tough assignment like ours.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We are an internet advertising company specializing in the automation of advertising. Traditionally we serve the publishing industry and help them to monetize ad spots on their websites, mobile applications, or other digital platforms. We've now moved to a more cohesive platform and are building out automation technologies to help advertisers automate their purchasing.

I am the senior vice president of the technology buyer side.

What challenge were you trying to address with Geomotiv?

We couldn't hire smart people fast enough on shore. It takes a while to find the right people with the right skill sets, experience, and culture. In order to move faster with our platform development, we decided to formulate a relationship with an external company.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Geomotiv finds the candidates and pre-screens them according to our specifications. We then formally interview the candidates and hire them through Geomotiv. They then co-manage the engineers and provide them with office space, computers, and tools. We then treat the engineers as an extension of our team. Work was primarily around data technologies like Hadoop, Spark, MapReduce, and other big data frameworks. They also help us with high-performance and high-scale development for our real-time platform for buying ads.

How did you come to work with Geomotiv?

I've had really good success in the past working with consulting agencies in Eastern Europe. They generally have a lot of good, high-quality candidates coming from good schools. The company that I used to work with shifted their focus, so I was looking for a new partner. I met with the two principals of Geomotiv and we talked about the type of work they've done in the past. I checked their references for what they've done with other companies. I talked about what we were looking for in the way of skill sets and gave them job descriptions. We agreed that it would be most efficient to find a pool of eight to ten candidates that would work with us to have a sufficient team size. They were very accommodative to helping us move faster almost immediately and then scale up quickly.

How much have you invested with Geomotiv?

The investment started at $5,000 a month and is up to $36,000 a month now.

What is the status of this engagement?

We have been working with Geomotiv from November 2013 to present day.

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

My team leads are very happy working with them. The quality of candidates that we get from the interview process is good. Geomotiv was flexible about accommodating our hiring and management processes. They do first level candidate screening and do a pretty good job. The success rate post their screening is probably 80%. They're finding good engineers with the right skills and culture for our needs quickly.

What did you find most impressive about Geomotiv?

I've really only worked with two companies from that area of the world, and I was really happy with both of them. They're very responsive to our needs. Early on, the quality of some of the code wasn't as good because they weren't writing sufficient tests. We gave them some feedback and they took it to heart and set up an internal process so the people who were better at development/testing were then mentoring the new hires on the team how to do the automated testing in the way that we required. Their flexibility and following our guidance is something they do well with.

I'd also say they do a good job of putting up with our dysfunctionality. We're somewhat of a bureaucratic organization, and they're pretty patient with our financial, accounting, and legal teams who make them jump through hoops.