Intelliarts

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am VP of Product Management. We are a digital insurance agency that embeds home insurance into the mortgage process.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Intelliarts?

We needed a way to systematically prioritize our leads so that our agents could efficiently work the best leads.

SOLUTION

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

We reviewed a number of Ukraine based data science companies and selected Intelliarts.

Describe the project in detail and walk through the stages of the project.

First we met with Intelliarts and reviewed the work done by a prior employee. We identified our goals for the data science models and then began work. Throughout 2022 we tested different versions of the lead scoring models in our agency to both determine if the models were working as expected and the best way to apply those models to our business.

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

We worked with two resources, both of whom were data scientists.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Intelliarts built a model that prioritized our leads by likelihood to convert. We have run two tests with this model and will run another in March of 2023. We have proved that the model works and are now finding ways to apply it to our business.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

The workflow was effective. Intelliarts was always available and met with us regularly to discuss progress.

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

The most impressive thing about Intelliarts was their willingness to learn about our business so that they could build the most effective models.

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

We should have found ways to test the models faster, but this was more of a problem with us than with Intelliarts.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the president and founder of Ryffine, a B2B consulting company. We work in the structured content space, which is a specialized industry. We’re a small company with about 12 employees, not including our contractors. Our list of clients includes some pretty big companies; some of our customers are businesses like Salesforce, GE Healthcare, and Hewlett-Packard Enterprise. We have about 50–60 clients and generate about $1.5 million annually. Overall, we’ve been in business for nine years.

We operate like a law firm where I’d be the founding lawyer. My partners do part of the work, and I do a bit of everything. As the CEO, I run the company and make all the decisions.

Part of our business is the technical software side. We don’t build our own software, so we don’t have a product to sell. Instead, my consultants and I develop custom solutions for our clients.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Intelliarts?

We needed help to do some of our technical work to take on more projects and deliver better work. In summary, we needed the ability to go faster and with higher quality at a lower cost.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Intelliarts is one of our Ukrainian suppliers; they do specialized technical software work. They provide services in two ways: firstly, they do publishing work and develop automation for publishing XML content to other formats; secondly, they convert from other formats into XML. Overall, they focus on XML technologies, including the whole family of languages, such as XSLT, XPath, XQuery, and XSL Formatting Objects.

Additionally, they’re skilled in DITA. The team knows how to code with the DITA Open Toolkit, which uses all those languages to transform XML into outputs like HTML and PDF.

What is the team composition?

Over the years, we’ve worked with a few different people. We usually keep three members from Intelliarts on our team. Currently, we have three full-time resources; they’re all developers. The team leader has been with us for 5–6 years; she took some time off from maternity leave, but she’s back with us.

How did you come to work with Intelliarts?

Their marketing model was word of mouth, so one of my consultants referred them. She used Intelliarts when she was working at Dell and told us Intelliarts’ team was fast and cost-effective, so we got together with them.

How much have you invested with them?

Up to this point, we’ve spent about $300,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

They’ve been our partner since December 2016.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We don’t have metrics around productivity. However, we measure if we’re hitting deadlines and take some profitability metrics based on the engagement and how much development costs. Intelliarts consistently meets our time and budget expectations, so everybody wins. All parties make money, and the customer gets what they need.

Overall, we’re comfortable with Intelliarts. We know that whatever they work on will be high value, which matters most. If it weren’t the case, we wouldn’t work with them. In summary, the team is productive, and they help us be successful and profitable.

How did Intelliarts perform from a project management standpoint?

They always hit deadlines; they’re rarely late due to their own miscalculations. Sometimes there’s scope creep, so things go out of budget, but as far as budget goes, they hit our operating budget projections 80%–90% of the time.

Moreover, communication is excellent, and they work according to company culture. Their internal management keeps them on track, ensuring the customers get everything they need. If we have extra work ramping up, we can go to them and ask them to add someone to our team. All in all, they’re consistent, which is hard to get from other vendors.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We’ve worked with similar suppliers in Ukraine and the US, and they’re different from other shops. Some custom software development companies act as job shops or glorified recruiters; you pay them to have a resource. Although there’s nothing wrong with that model, we prefer the way Intelliarts does it. They train their people and have their internal metrics, reviews, and career paths, so they have a better team culture.

Secondly, they’ve stuck with us through everything. Although the Russian Invasion has been a massive disruption, they’ve supported their country by continuing to work, which is pretty admirable. We admire their work ethic.

Finally, Intelliarts are experts in the niche of technical communications. Many people use DITA, so we have a significant need for experts in this area.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Our only problem is that they don’t have enough resources. They try to train them, but getting them up to speed takes a while. We need more team members like them because that’s hard to come by.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the CEO of a small industry-specific SaaS business. We help trade pros (plumbers, electricians) start, run, and grow their home service businesses.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Intelliarts?

We needed to find a team with a deep bench of varied expertise (front-end, back-end, mobile, big data, AI/ML, GIS, etc.) that could help us prototype complex systems, then refactor and fortify them into production solutions.

SOLUTION

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

I've worked with Intelliarts for about a decade now across various different businesses. They have an incredibly rigorous screening process, a robust training phase to ensure every developer is as competent professionally as they are technically, and a phenomenal corporate culture that encourages them to teach and support one another.

In my experience, that translates into their developers being able to listen, understand, and execute much more effectively and independently than other agencies we've worked with.

Describe the project in detail and walk through the stages of the project.

They helped us build big data pipelines on Hadoop, then migrate it to Spark on Databricks, and eventually to Snowflake as the technology ecosystem has evolved. They've built consumer-facing web apps with React and large websites with static-site generators like Gatsby.

They've helped me modernize our backend migrating from REST to GraphQL, and helped us migrate from AWS AppSync to our own federated Apollo Server graph. They've been able to crack any problem I've thrown at them and can't recommend them highly enough.

Describe the recruitment process in detail.

We've worked with over a dozen developers over the years. When we pose a need they'll screen internally, provide us several individuals to interview, and give us the opportunity to do a small test task with them. Then that person will transition over to our project team if they have the capacity.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

They've built systems that process 20+ billion events per day. They've helped me build the tools and technologies powering trades.org end-to-end.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

In our case, we've fully embedded them as members of our team: they're in our Slack, have email addresses on our domain, and take part in all of our regular business activities.

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

Their company culture is phenomenal, and it shows through in the quality of the developers. Technical skills aside, they're smart, professional, adaptive, kind, communicative, proactive, hard-working, and excited. It's honestly night and day comparing them to independent contractors we've worked with.

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

N/A

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am a Director of Engineering at a SaaS company that helps small and medium size business grow better with our suite of Sales, Marketing, and Services tools. We offer a platform that can be customized and extended by our customers to best serve their business needs.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Intelliarts?

We needed to find qualified and passionate software developers to help us grow our product and provide support for our global customer base across multiple time zones.

SOLUTION

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

We found this agency through word of mouth. They came highly recommended from colleagues that had previously worked with IntelliArts.

Describe the project in detail and walk through the stages of the project.

We employ about 30 developers from IntelliArts. They are part of our product development team and do product development at all levels — backend, frontend, APIs, etc. They communicate regularly with Product Managers, Support, end users, and internal stakeholders. They are an integral part of our Engineering organization.

Describe the recruitment process in detail.

We communicate directly with IntelliArts recruiting providing them with detailed description of the qualifications we are looking for. Initially, we interviewed the vetted candidates ourselves but at this point, we have full trust in IntelliArts and let them interview and hire candidates for us without our direct involvement.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

IntelliArts developers have been an integral part of our Engineering organization for over four years. They have been responsible for numerous releases of new product features, always on time and with high quality.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Extremely effective. IntelliArts developers work directly with our Product Managers, internal stakeholders, and peers on our in-house development teams. They are fully integrated into our development cycle, from ideation to delivery. They take part in roadmapping, planning sessions, daily standups, and retros. They take pride in their work and are fully trusted to develop the best solutions for our customers.

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

They have a culture that is very similar to the one we have in-house. They treat everyone with respect and instill the sense of ownership into their developers, which is the quality we value the most in our internal and external developers.

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

None!

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

At Aliro, we're founded on a belief in 'access for all'. We're on a mission to help talent acquisition and sourcing teams tap into hidden networks and cultivate robust talent communities, making it easier to connect people to jobs and hire great people - faster.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

The goals were to develop key technology and design concepts for the platform and develop a razor focused scope for the MVP.

SOLUTION

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

Hired to assist a SaaS startup in developing their platform. They were tasked with assisting in the discovery phase, developing key technology and the MVP, and designing the UI/UX for the platform.

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

I am continually impressed with Viktor's dedication and commitment to the team. He goes above and beyond what I would expect from a QA Engineer. From taking the initiative to write unit tests to making product enhancement suggestions it is readily apparent how much “ownership” he takes in the product. He is always very accessible and despite the time difference between him and the rest of the team he always makes sure that he is available and if not he communicates changes to his schedule ahead of time such that there is no service interruption.

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

Victor has been with us since the beginning, but we have contracted with 4 or 5 others as needed.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

This group has allowed our team to focus on our strengths of vision while bringing to life our concepts. It has been nice to have a “one-stop-shop” experience where all elements of the development have been handled.

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

Clear communication and quick email response for support. Despite the time difference, there is not much wait time for responses from the team which allows us to move forward with ease.

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

Come to the table with a strong vision so that the team has a clear idea of what they plan to execute for your project.

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

Come to the table with a strong vision so that the team has a clear idea of what they plan to execute for your project.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO of DDMR, a data marketplace for clickstream data.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Intelliarts?

We needed high-quality engineering support to build our product.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We hired Intelliarts to help us design, develop, and implement large-scale data transformation and data augmentation systems for us. We work on very large data sets, and Intelliarts has been critical in helping us be able to process those data sets and transform them into valuable insights for our business using AI.

Aside from that, Intelliarts has also been helping us with hiring and Cloud infrastructure management.

What is the team composition?

I’ve worked with engineering managers, AI engineers, DevOps, and full-stack developers from Intelliarts.

How did you come to work with Intelliarts?

We found Intelliarts through a referral.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent around $1,400,000 so far.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in June 2015, and the engagement is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Intelliarts’ work is amazing. Thanks to their help, we’ve been able to process hundreds of terabytes of data per day. We’ve definitely seen an increase in our revenue since we started working with them.

How did Intelliarts perform from a project management standpoint?

Intelliarts is a self-sufficient partner — their project management skills are top-notch. They’ve been excellent at sprint planning, communication, and expectation setting. In terms of how we work with them, their team members are like real team members to us. They're integrated into our regular sprint planning and communication, and we come to visit each other regularly.

We typically communicate through Slack, and we use Asana, Notion, and Confluence for project management.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Intelliarts genuinely cares about us and our product. There really is a sense of shared mission, success, and sacrifice within our teams.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, I have no complaints. We've been extremely happy with them.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Don't be swayed by the larger technology firms out there. It's more important to have somebody that cares about the work that they're doing rather than somebody who is just trying to add another client to their roster.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm a co-owner of a company that develops software/hardware solutions for IoT-IIoT

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

Our goal was to create a web platform to process telemetry data from our devices

SOLUTION

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

We started a PoC and, after the evaluation period, continued with a bigger team

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

We had a kick-off meeting where we decided which tools we would use for issues tracking, source code management, and cloud deployment. The tech-stack is Java/Spring/Angular/AWS

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

A team with:

• a team lead
• three full-stack developers
• a UI/UX designer
• a DevOp
• a QA

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

After a first milestone and a first deployment, we received a lot of feedback from our end customers, that increased the list of potential solutions we can provide with our hardware and the platform

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

We have daily stand-up meetings and short iterations (2 weeks) with retro and planning. We have a demo with new features and significant fixes every four weeks.

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

It's effortless to work with a team. They are open-minded and have great experience in our technology stack.

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

none at the moment