Innovecs

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am part of the management team for an ad-tech company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Innovecs?

They have provided us with facilitating our recruitment in Ukraine.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We have a list of requirements and according to those specifications, they conduct a search. They facilitate the initial interview to make sure the candidate is a good fit before we do an interview. 

There have been over 100 positions filled over the period of time we have been working together. They have filled any type of position that is related to ad-tech, gaming, and programming. 

What is the team composition?

I have been working with two dedicated people on their end. They’re the contact people for us if there are any issues. There are also additional team members that help behind the scenes.

How did you come to work with Innovecs?

I am not exactly sure of the history, but my company worked with another company that worked with them. After a recommendation from the other company, we started working with Innovecs.

What is the status of this engagement?

We’ve been working together for about six years.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We now have an operational office over in Ukraine with people we have hired through Innovecs. As with any recruitment process, it requires fine-tuning. 

There are some adaptations we’ve made on both ends to get the best results. It has been a constant process of working together to get the best results.

How did Innovecs perform from a project management standpoint?

We already had up and running operations over the years and I guess I can say it has been working well as we have figured out the right way to work.

We communicate by calls, email, and messaging platforms. Prior to COVID-19, we also had some face-to-face meetings.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I think their willingness to collaborate and find the right way to work together has been the most impressive.

Are there any areas they could improve?

It is always a process of improvement. I cannot say there is anything right now because anything that needed to be taken care of was taken care of. Due to us having a good partnership, we have found the right solutions to solve any issues. There are processes that have changed on our end, and they adjusted themselves according to the needs we have on our end, so it has been great.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Listen and find the right way to work together. You may think you know, but it is a good idea to listen to the people who specialize in this kind of work.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Upright Technologies is enabling people around the world to simply & easily sit, stand, or walk with correct upright posture with the leading posture training technology. React Native developers

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Innovecs?

Development

What were your goals for this project?

Develop our company products with the team in Israel

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

Working with Innovecs since 2013 in other companies

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

As for now, we are using Innovecs for our React Native project. We have 2 developers and we are planning to grow (TBD)

What was the team composition?

We had 3 developers, one lest and now 2 left. one was promoted to RN tech Lead.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

In Israel, it was hard to find React Native developers. In Innovecs, we found great React Native developers. Due to that increase, we increased our workforces and as a result, we have realized our new app

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

Their work is very effective, using zoom to communicate, Jira, Slack etc.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Know the company for a long time and know-how to work together.

Are there any areas for improvement?

Need to push hard in order to ger good CV The recruiters do not have a good tech recruiting background and dept understanding in how to sell the company and the positions

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Position: Head of Art Company: mobile Apps developer

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Innovecs?

To do a Full-cycle development for the project: Conceptualising-Art-Dev-QA etc

What were your goals for this project?

Its an Ongoing Mobile app game. App development, More Users, More features for the projects is always the goal

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

CEO had previous experience with Innovecs

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

Its a Chance based Casual game for the Mobile phones. The user needs to build and develop his town and progress to more towns in order to achieve bigger and better features and goals. The user does that by rolling dice and gaining more in-game-currency.

What was the team composition?

The team goals were to maintain a full-time dev team that will jumpstart and maintain the project forward

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

This project is our business. So the success of this project is the success of the whole company. We are not obliged to only one project but the success of our project demonstrated that this is a good project to invest all our horses in

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

It was arranged by the HQ in Israel. Then, Employees were promoted to Managers or managers were hired to maintain the workflow and the quality of employee's work

What did you find most impressive about this company?

The facilities, the quickness of response. As the head of art here, i can say that the art and creative employees are very high level as well and we are very happy with them.

Are there any areas for improvement?

Yes, I think that a more involvement of the HR team will be more welcome. Im not sure about employees status or the general mood in the office. I do talk to them myself so i know the general status of their feelings but its not coming from the HR team - which it obviously should. Also, i think that there should be more clarity as to who the HR are. I know the HR manager but i am not sure who are the actual HR taking care of the my team because there were many Going and coming of new HR employees in Innovecs that im a bit confused at this point

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the director of product engineering at a telecommunications company. We offer text messaging services for business individuals and organizations. We also provide inbound texting services for concierge customer support. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Innovecs?

We hired Innovecs for staff augmentation services.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Innovecs operates alongside us, as though they’re part of our own core team. They provide support with software engineering, as well as in more operational roles like dev-ops, product ownership, and manual and automation QAs. They also provide us with UX designers.

What is the team composition?

Innovecs has provided us with about 40 members of their team, with whom we interact on a daily basis. 

How did you come to work with Innovecs?

Our company partnered with them before I joined the team. 

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent between $1,000,000-$5,000,000 over the course of the partnership.

What is the status of this engagement?

We began working with them in 2006, and the engagement is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We track Innovec’s work in terms of velocity. The squads are each expected to meet their KPIs on an individual basis. 

We wouldn’t be able to output or accomplish as much as we do if it weren’t for our partnership with Innovecs.

How did Innovecs perform from a project management standpoint?

Due to the nature of their support, we don’t work with a project manager from Innovecs. Instead, they act as part of our internal team. 

They do provide a site manager who helps manage some of the day-to-day tasks around the office.

Our experience working with them has been better than previous outsourcing relationships. We’ve been able to align our processes and communication, and it’s been really successful.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Innovecs’ flexibility is very valuable to us. The team has been open to our model of staff augmentation and willing to organize and work in a way that’s effective for us.

Additionally, the quality of many of their team members is amazing.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I wish we had brought in the site manager earlier on in the engagement, as they’ve been a helpful addition to the team. That was a decision we should’ve made together. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Consider Innovecs as an extension of your team. Given the quality of their candidates, the engagement will work out really well.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

We develop a fully featured and tested at scale white-label enterprise Telemedicine Platform for handling an unlimited number of remote medical consultations, in any specialty, any time, any place, on any device. Supporting integrations with existing medical and administrative systems, as well as remote monitoring devices and Apps. I am the VP R&D.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Innovecs?

We hired Innovecs for offshore resourcing and that we can scale our R&D group fast.

What were your goals for this project?

To build and R&D team that can scale.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

I short listed 5 companies and did online interviews. After this I flew to meet 2 shortlisted companies to meet them face to face.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

They delivered a reliable hiring capabilities with state of the are facilities for us to start small and enabled us to grow from 6 developers to over 40.

What was the team composition?

The team involved were the CEO, VP of Delivery, Head of recruitment, Recruitment Team lead and recruiters, IT department and customer services team.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We were able to start quickly with a team of 6 developer and grow up to 40+ developers. This is a great achievement that to do local would be costly and slow.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

The communications and dedication of the Innovecs team is amazing. They are very responsive and accommodating to ours needs which helped build our long term relationship.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

They care about their clients' success and will do what is needed to make that happen.

Are there any areas for improvement?

no

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We’re a warehousing and logistics company, providing refrigerated storage for our customers. I’m a director of development.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Innovecs?

We needed qualified technical personnel to help write one of our mission critical systems.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They’re our technology partner. They write a lot of code for us and provide technical expertise in terms of technology upgrades. They also provide business analysis and QA [quality assurance].

They’re writing the whole warehouse management system using Java and Angular. It manages or governs the warehouses that we own.

What is the team composition?

We have a project manager, several team leads, 20 developers, and five QA resources.

How did you come to work with Innovecs?

We found them at a conference in Poland and chose them because they had expertise in Java. We liked the company size, which is around 300–400 people; they’re not too small and not too large. Their prices were good and there’s only a seven-hour time difference. Their COO worked in the U.S. in a similar IT sector and he understood all the challenges of developing a system and outsourcing in general. He was able to address those challenges very well.

What is the status of this engagement?

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

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The code is very good and their technical level is excellent. We have very positive feedback on the company in general.

How did Innovecs perform from a project management standpoint?

I have nothing negative to say about the project management; it’s been good. We use Jira to track bugs. We see how much work was delivered and the quality of it. We use Skype and video conferencing and Confluence for document sharing. There are no communication issues. We have weekly calls that are usually productive.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The quality of the technical resources was impressive. They’re advanced, have good personalities, and are good people.

Are there any areas they could improve?

The market in Ukraine is very active for this type of field. It takes a while to recruit and bring new resources. They could improve on recruitment in general.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Customers would immediately see the difference and improvement compared to outsourcing to India or China.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the vice president of R&D at Hexagon Technologies. We’re a B2B2C company that provides SaaS-type platform services for several customers.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Innovecs?

We needed outsourced services for web development.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We have a group of developers from Innovecs who are taking care of the UI for our back-office project. One of the biggest pillars of what we do is the back-office software which we give to our partners so they can support their internal and business processes. Innovecs uses React for development.

What is the team composition?

We interacted with a lot of their talent acquisition department when we were initially building the team. We discovered when we came to Kiev that the people on the list who we had pre-approved were not meeting our expectations for some reason. The talent acquisition team did a great job of arranging replacements for us in no time, which was very impressive. They set us up with 10 interviews within a couple of days, allowing us to hire three of four developers.

We have an account manager who we’re in constant contact with and is responsible for the managerial overview of the team. He’s our primary point of contact in cases we need something unrelated to day-to-day working procedures.

How did you come to work with Innovecs?

I’m not sure how we found them, but they were there when we needed them. We went to Kiev, Ukraine to meet them and it went very well.

How much have you invested in them?

We’ve spent around $360,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We began working with them in February of 2017 and the relationship is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

They’ve been successful in providing us with people who can do the work for us while still feeling like a part of the company rather than just an outsourced team.

How did Innovecs perform from a project management standpoint?

We work with an internal management tool which they’re a part of. We feel like they are part of the company even though they do the work remotely.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They were the right company in the right place at the right time for us. We were looking for a certain type of solution, and they’ve been able to deliver good developers who we’ve felt comfortable hiring. They also look good in terms of HR policies and their offices in Kiev have an assortment of impressive features.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They’re great. Nothing really comes to mind as to areas they could improve.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Be honest and straightforward with them. Bring issues up if they arise. We brought it up when we found that we didn’t have the right people initially and they were very fast to change it. This was a very positive experience from my perspective.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We are a technology-based performance marketing company. We promote ourselves as a marketing business that generates customers for our clients. Our company is fundamentally built on owned and custom-built technology which powers our network. In effect, we've built a bespoke lead management application which allows us to host a number of websites and control what they do. Through one interface, we can also handle reporting and analytics, as well as capture, validate and deliver data. We're a big data business focusing on the collection and delivery of new customers to our clients. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Innovecs?

We needed a vendor for our front-end and back-end process development. They needed to handle our architecture as well as the look and user experience elements. I considered building an internal team as well as outsourcing to various other companies.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We have migrated our process development to Innovecs. They developed our solution and took care of the website design and functionalities. I am also using development resources in the UK and Innovecs' team liaises with them at a front-line level. I have a local media team working directly with Innovecs' designers in order to build out offers and help drive traffic to our website.

How did you come to work with Innovecs?

Innovecs was recommended by a good friend and colleague who works with them. I spoke to Innovecs' CEO, met him in Kiev, and we made a deal. The collaboration has been good. Innovecs provides a decent service. Choosing a tech partner can be a minefield. There are many people who talk a lot but don't necessarily deliver or provide sub-standard work in terms of coding methods and core quality. I have zero technical knowledge and mostly work on the creative side of things. I rely on working with good, honest people in order to deliver projects in an expected manner. My approach for choosing a development partner is similar to looking for someone to build my home. I have been in this industry for a long time and worked with good and bad technology providers. So getting a reference from someone that I trust will tend to be a differentiator.

How much have you invested with Innovecs?

We've spent around $150,000 on Innovecs' services so far.

How much have you invested with Innovecs?

We've spent around $150,000 on Innovecs' services so far. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Our business has benefited from the effort put in by Innovecs. The application is meant to be completed today, so I can't give much feedback on the benefits side. In terms of design, my team worked closely with Innovecs. They have made a huge difference in terms of the speed at which we can create new entry points into our network. Our reaction time in the market has increased a lot. We're probably one of the quickest groups and we’re able to turn around work fast. That’s simply because we have a decent resource plugged in from Innovecs, particularly on the front-end side. The work has been made to an incredibly high standard. So far, it's been a worthwhile investment. In a few months, I'll hopefully be able to say the same thing about the architectural and engineering sides as well.  

How did Innovecs perform from a project management standpoint?

We are working with a full-time 8-person team from Innovecs, including 2 designers and one front-end developer. We have a project lead who acts as our main point of contact. At a higher level, Jira and Trello were our main project management platforms. We use Jira as a general task manager. We've created an environment within which we can log what needs to be done. We keep track of scrum boards and sprints, thus seeing exactly who's done what and when. Jira also shows when the work needs to be completed. Trello is another tool which we use for design work. Innovecs probably uses other tools internally for bug fixes and similar tasks. Every client is different, so they need to make sure that everyone is on the same page through regular communication. Innovecs has been very good at this. We have daily telephone calls, sometimes more than one per day.

What did you find most impressive about Innovecs?

Our app development is a huge project and there have been many issues along the way. Had I given this project to another business, I would have undoubtedly been led down a wrong path. That’s judging by other developers I've used in the past. The ultimate deployment wouldn't have delivered what it had set out to deliver. I also expect that there would have been issues with personnel. Innovecs' quality of work is very good. As an example, we've recruited a junior front-end developer who'd only been doing the work for a few months. We brought her along and she's been absolutely fantastic. We have gone through a few resources. Because of the honesty exhibited by Innovecs, we were always able to replace people and get someone with the proper skillset. Innovecs has implemented changes quickly without affecting our team or the project.

One of the things that I've really liked about Innovecs is that I am able to deal with C-level people there. They have been accessible and incredibly honest about the situation, whether it's good or bad. As a remote customer, I don't have anyone on the floor managing the team. Innovecs has to do this internally, which goes back to the issue of trust. I have to trust that Innovecs is doing what was promised and that my best interests as a client are at the forefront of their decision-making. Innovecs has the freedom to handle much of the hiring and firing, as well as many of the technical decisions. I'm involved in these matters, but I'm not the expert. So I have to rely on Innovecs to be honest and upfront about what they're doing. Whether the news is good or bad, such as delays or tasks that are delivered ahead of schedule, the overriding thing for me is honesty. Expectations should never be set so high as to shatter relationships to an irreconcilable point. The culture there speaks for itself. From the CEO, down to the project management level, Innovecs is completely honest.

Are there any areas Innovecs could improve?

It's taken some time to get to where we are, given that we're dealing with people who don't speak English as a first language. Many of them don't have the experience that required to handle design and architectural work. There's been a lot of learning and there have been low moments within this process, but the experience overall has been positive.

What tips or recommendations could you share that might increase the likelihood of success with Innovecs?

In the industry, it's important to know who you're working with. Some research into the people being employed is necessary. Clients should make sure that there is someone project-managing the team. That person should fully aware of and accountable for the deliverables. From experience, automatically assigning a project manager to take on a project to a client's standards is never the case. 

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We are an advertising technology company specializing in analytics for the search data used to display video ads. Our company is 5-years old and has a 150-person team in five different countries. Our engineering team is in Kiev, and the product teams are based in the United Kingdom. I am the founder and chief executive officer of the company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Innovecs?

We have raised $15 million through fundraising and needed to build our solution from scratch. We didn't have the technical skills necessary so we decided to partner with a company. 

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Innovecs has built our entire technology in the form of both web and mobile applications. They revolve around search intelligence and are used to understand user search behaviors online. As such, we have to crunch a lot of search data, which was our main engineering challenge. The goal is to find users who have searched for the products that our advertisers are looking to market. An airline offering flights to New York will look through our database for users who have made relevant searches. Once one of those users arrives on any Internet website, we will deliver relevant content to them, based on their ID.

Our tool is aimed at advertisers looking to serve banners and mobile video advertising to users, based on their online search histories.

We have worked with around 30 resources from Innovecs, including front-end and back-end developers, and QA [quality assurance] specialists.

How did you come to work with Innovecs?

Our old CTO [chief technology officer] was in charge of choosing engineering firms in Ukraine.

How much have you invested with Innovecs?

The cost of Innovecs's services has been around $1 million.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Innovecs at the beginning of 2012.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Innovecs has acted as our engineering team, and we are a technology company, so that amounts to everything that we do.

How did Innovecs perform from a project management standpoint?

Innovecs is organized and has made an effort to provide a solid project manager for us. We have run the collaboration from our own product team, so Innovecs's role was in terms of logistics: keeping the staff happy and making sure that everyone received their salary on time. We use JIRA and GitHub with our engineers.

What did you find most impressive about Innovecs?

We haven't used any other providers outside of Innovecs. There's nothing surprising about them, but Innovecs has provided the service that we wanted. We've had issues at times related to trying to find the right staff, but everything else has been running as normal.

Are there any areas Innovecs could improve?

We were hiring too slowly and couldn't get as many developers as we wanted for the price. We fed this back to Innovecs, and they hired additional in-house recruiters. The pace picked up from there, and hiring has gone well since then.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We are a software developer based in Israel, working with the e-lottery business. Our contracts are mainly governmental, working with the Michigan State Lottery, for example. We plan to launch a platform in Virginia at the beginning of September, which will give us an involvement with 50% of the US lottery business, as there are 4 states at the moment who engage in this. We also have clients in Europe, like the lotteries in the Czech Republic and Portugal. We develop platforms, provide integrations, and end-to-end solutions for the e-lottery business, working with organizations from around the world who want to extend their offerings into the online area. I am the chief operating officer of the company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Innovecs?

As a part of our R&D [research & development] team, we work with remote teams in Ukraine, both in Kharkiv and Kiev. Our Kiev team is operated by Innovecs. 

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Innovecs has provided frontend development using the standard technologies in this space. We also use a Flash developer from Innovecs, and have recently built a quality assurance team using their resources.

One example of a feature developed by Innovecs was integration with third-party payment solutions. Innovecs has also developed other add-ons and games for our platform.

We use Innovecs as an extended team, replicating our local operations within their location. We use the same processes and development cycle. Innovecs hasn't handled dedicated projects for us. Altogether, we have around 10 people on Innovecs' team, and are looking to expand it.

How did you come to work with Innovecs?

We were working with an outsourcing company in Kharkiv, but didn't have success in hiring resources for frontend development. We tried our luck in Kiev, and were successful. I first met Innovecs' owner 5 years ago, when he used to work for another outsourcing company.

How much have you invested with Innovecs?

The total cost of Innovecs' services has been around $300,000. We worked on a cost-plus model. Everything is transparent, and we know what the compensation is for each employee that we hire. Whenever we work with one-time resources, we can assign bonuses to them directly through Innovecs.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Innovecs in July 2015. We have an ongoing relationship.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We compare outsourcing companies through internal benchmarks. One of the advantages offered by Innovecs has been hiring time. The market is very competitive, both in Israel and in Ukraine. Finding qualified developers takes around 3 months in our location. Putting together a frontend team like the one from Innovecs would take around 6 months. We managed to do this within one month, and we are happy with the people that we've recruited. The level of cooperation, both in administrative and technical terms, was very good. Our interactions with Innovecs are very smooth and efficient. Whenever we had an issue, we found that it could be resolved quickly. I'm overall happy with Innovecs.

How did Innovecs perform from a project management standpoint?

In terms of schedule and budget, Innovecs delivered perfectly. We control the process on a weekly and monthly basis, so there are no surprises in terms of the information going back and forth.

We don't use specialized project management tools. Each of our project managers has visited our location, and new employees have had training periods in our R&D center. We have an internal dedicated team leader for each team, usually Russian or Ukrainian speakers, in order for us to overcome the language barrier.

Are there any areas Innovecs could improve?

We've learned a lot from our previous engagement, so after 5 years of working with outsourced companies, we've come to know what to expect in terms of performance, relationships, and financials. We share information and suggest ideas to each other, improving on the go.

What tips or recommendations could you share that might increase the likelihood of success with Innovecs?

Any client should have an exact definition of what they expect to achieve, including job descriptions. They should be willing to invest time for hiring and managing the relationship. We believe in having a high involvement with our outsourced company, with face-to-face interviews for our shortlist candidates. We tend to travel a lot, visit the sites, while also having our resources visit us. Other clients tend to work remotely, on a more project-based model, but we see Innovecs as an extension of our own company.

UPDATED REVIEW

This review was updated by the client on January 23rd, 2020. The original star ratings were: Overall - 4.5, Quality - 4.5, Schedule - 4.5, Cost - 4.5, NPS - 5. New content is below.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the managing director of a firm that provides a platform that allows governments and other lottery providers to migrate their data from kiosk to online.

For what projects/services did your company hire Innovecs?

managing of people

What were your goals for this project?

ensure business continuity, staff satisfaction and client satisfaction with the delivery

How did you select this vendor?

We first zeroed in on Ukraine and then chose Innovecs based of reputation recommendations and personal meetings

Describe the project in detail.

delivering a custom made end product/integration based on client needs

What was the team composition?

product managers, architects, developers, database analysts, QA, designers and artists

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

meting timelines providing a high quality product

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

amazing. Simply seamless

What did you find most impressive about this company?

They are very innovative in the way they provide unique environment for their employees. They are process-oriented and strive to constantly improve.

They have very skilled and professional staff in all specific areas. They are attentive and flexible

Are there any areas for improvement?

none