Ingenuity Global Consulting, Inc.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m an audit manager for New City Commercial Corporation, located in Davao City, Philippines.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Ingenuity Global Consulting, Inc?

We worked with them to develop a software that would assist us in the automation of our audit services: specifically, the detection of red-flag transactions.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Ingenuity Global Consulting, Inc. developed our software in ASP and PHP. They worked to develop the capability for processing financial records, allowing us to automatically detect red-flag transactions and raise them for review without having to go through and select them manually.

What is the team composition?

I’m not sure how many people worked for this project. I mainly worked with one senior developer and two business analysts. There were instances in the project where I talked to 2–3 developers. They had internal assignments for the people who helped us address certain modules and bugs.

How did you come to work with Ingenuity Global Consulting, Inc?

We had three vendors submit proposals including the cost of the project. Ingenuity Global Consulting, Inc placed second in terms of cost, but their proposal closely matched what we’d submitted during the selection process. We liked their attention to detail.

How much have you invested with them?

The total cost was around $80,000

What is the status of this engagement?

They submitted the final proposal for the project by September 2018. The project was split into two phases. With the first phase, they collected all the requirements and presented mockups and process flows to us. Phase two was development, and it ran between March–September 2019.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We based our success metrics on the number of test cases that they passed and their timeliness. We met the deadline we set, so that’s 100% in terms of timeliness. In terms of the test scenarios we set, we reached 100% after going live. It took them until after the live period to fix some errors, but they did fix everything by the time we deployed. We’ve encountered only a few bugs, so the test cases we set up during development helped improve the overall quality of our software.

How did Ingenuity Global Consulting, Inc. perform from a project management standpoint?

I’m not sure what project management system they used. I asked them one time because I was really amazed at how well they can handle projects for multiple clients. They have really good project managers in their organization, who not only handle projects technically but can also work with clients. They understood how we operate within our business and used this knowledge to handle the project more effectively.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their strategic officer was always thinking about what the feature was and provided inputs on how we handled requirements. He could foresee the challenges we had to address. It’s a really good asset for their company to have someone like him.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They have a really good project manager and senior developer, who monitored our issues closely, but I sometimes talked to their junior developers, the ones handling specific modules, and they had difficulty communicating certain issues that we understood differently. We ended up delaying solving those issues because we had a difference of perspective.

Some of their junior developers don’t have the same working knowledge as their senior developers. I can understand that, but I think they should be trained more on how to handle the client in the communication process. Every other aspect of working with Ingenuity Global Consulting, Inc. was perfect.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

We are a custom software development agency based in the United States. I lead the recruitment, training, and management of outsourced development resources.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Ingenuity Global Consulting, Inc.?

We needed a dedicated team of resources to support our business goals. Ingenuity could meet all our requirements for reliability, training, and excellent customer service. Our relationship has existed for over six years, and they have been a key partner in our success.

What were your goals for this project?

Our primary goal was to build a long-term relationship with an outsourced team who could supply qualified, experienced team members. Ingenuity has exceeded our expectations, enabling us to grow and adapt to new requirements and market driving needs.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

We reviewed several mid-sized outsourcing teams, audited their management practices, and analyzed their cost structures. Ingenuity was the best in all three categories. We have not regretted our decision.

Describe the project in detail.

They provide design, web and mobile development, and QA staff augmentation, which enables us to offer long-term services to a variety of customers and markets.

What was the team composition?

They supply over 25 resources to support all aspects of product development, from UI/UX design to software development and testing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We've had great success with Ingenuity over the years. They've consistently adapted to our requirements, and have always provided talented resources at a great price.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Ingenuity has customized their processes to meet our specific needs and advised us about potential issues and bottlenecks to improve the productivity of our relationship. Overall, the workflow has been excellent.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

We appreciate their ability to adapt to our changing needs and customer requirements. Also of great value to us was their ability to advise us on the different ways we can improve our services.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I was a technical manager for a motivation and loyalty management provider for B2B customers.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Ingenuity Global?

The company was running every motivation and loyalty program on a large platform. Business was good, so we needed to expand fast. The local market makes it hard to acquire developers, so we started looking abroad.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Ingenuity has been our strategic partner for offshore development. We have mainly worked with Django Python.

What is the team composition?

The team size fluctuated between 3–7 developers based on the workload.

How did you come to work with Ingenuity Global?

I hired 3–4 virtual assistants on Fiverr in different regions of the world and asked them to list good development studios in their respective locations. I made a shortlist, contacted the companies, and decided on Ingenuity.

How much have you invested with them?

The cost of their work was approximately $200,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Ingenuity Global around 2015. Ingenuity continues to provide 3–4 developers on a permanent basis.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The most pertinent metric is the amount of money we were able to save by using Ingenuity Global’s services. Hiring resources in our location would have been 75% more expensive. Another main advantage was the ability to scale up or down depending on the workload.

How did Ingenuity Global perform from a project management standpoint?

We installed Jira and Confluence based on their recommendation. We also used Slack, GitHub, and other Scrum-related tools. This approach was new to me, but Ingenuity Global guided me through it. We had daily standups during the 3–4-hour time window between our teams. We kept tickets in Jira, and we used GitHub as a code repository and Confluence for documentation.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I appreciated their flexibility and service orientation. Our local development team was able to learn a lot from Ingenuity Global in terms of processes and coding.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I wasn’t experienced with working in an agile fashion, which led to a couple of challenges in the beginning in terms of expectations and communication. It proved difficult to make them understand our business model, but I went to the Philippines twice for workshops. Everything went smoothly after that.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CTO of Inspiration Company. We’re in the business of loyalty and motivation management.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Ingenuity Global Consulting, Inc.?

We wanted to expand our development operation by hiring an outsourced team.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They started off doing larger tasks, but we’ve moved to a closer collaboration where we give smaller and more frequent tasks to them. We are mainly a Python Django shop. For the frontend, we use HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

What is the team composition?

We have three developers, one tester, and a project manager assigned. We’ve had a stable team since I joined.

How did you come to work with Ingenuity Global Consulting, Inc.?

My predecessor did an online search and found Ingenuity through a recommendation. The cooperation goes back to before I joined the company, but we’ve been happy ever since.

How much have you invested with them?

We have invested $500,000 so far.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in 2015 and the work is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We’ve replaced domestic consulting firms with Ingenuity, which has been a cost-saving measure. We have a very flexible arrangement with them which allows us to manage our workload better and plan our staffing budgets accordingly.

Their developers are skilled and very easy to work with. We’ve been getting more development work done and overall good results from it. The platform and the multitude of projects they’ve been involved in have all been of good quality.

How did Ingenuity Global Consulting, Inc. perform from a project management standpoint?

We use Kanban and they use a system similar to ours. We do most of the project management internally by gathering requirements, setting expectations, conducting daily standup meetings, and prioritizing issues. They do their own test runs for deliverables, after which we run an end-user test before we deploy.

What did you find most impressive about them?

It takes a lot of effort to set up a long-term business relationship despite working in different time zones. However, they’re very good at working similar to how we would expect developers in Sweden to work. They’re also an independent team that comes up with ideas on their own. You can give them an incomplete task and they will fill in the blanks.

They’re a friendly, motivated, and hardworking team that speaks very good English. We have a standing joke about one of the developers who never seems to sleep and always replies quickly. We’re a reasonably small company and sometimes we need help on short notice. Their customer service is outstanding; they’ve always been very good at supporting us.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No. They’ve done a very good at adapting to all of our changes.