IT-Town

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

My name is Maxim Olshevsky, and I own Astra Management Services, Astra Construction Management, and Astra Group. We handle anything from sourcing IT projects to organizing commercial construction projects.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with IT-Town?

We’ve handled a few projects in the last year, many of which were diversified in nature: one was for a social media platform, another was a concierge application and the last one was a  construction platform for aggregates. IT-Town has helped us a lot with these projects.

Our clients wanted successful apps that they could promote, and hopefully, grow. We provided them just that, and the rest was up to their business models.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

IT-Town has taken on the main scope of work for our projects. Everything started out with creating design work. Once this was done, IT-Town put together a specs sheet outlining features and processes. Then we went into development, testing and then release. It’s been smooth sailings.

The concierge app is quite intense; it can accept and send out payments, provide geolocations of all potential concierges in an area, and bid for tasks. The payment schedule can be controlled on the backend through Stripe.

What is the team dynamic?

I deal with Alexander, the owner of IT-Town, but I don’t know how many people he has on his team. We had Skype calls in the morning, a few times a week.

How did you come to work with IT-Town?

I’ve worked with a few other subcontractors, but didn’t have a good experience. IT-Town was actually hired to fix these previous developers’ work. I found them on Google, and reached out. I told the team what the issue was, and they claimed they could rectify it. We slowly developed our relationship and trust, and, a year later, we still work together. I interviewed 5-6 companies in total, but IT-Town had the most reasonable pricing, and a good vibe.

How much have you invested with them?

The total cost of their services had been over $150,000 so far.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with IT-Town 14 months ago, around July 2016. We still have ongoing projects.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

IT-Town has performed well, and we’re continuing to use them on a few of our own projects, for the construction company.

I don't participate in the app after the development phase, since they’re for my clients. One of the applications, AthleteBook, has about 5,000 users. The concierge app is still being fine-tuned, and hasn’t officially launched. There hasn’t been a lot of success in getting users for it, but I believe the client is getting marketing professionals to carry this out for them. Hopefully, they will do well, since all the apps have potential to be successful, they just need the right business model.

How did IT-Town perform from a project management standpoint?

The process has been thorough; Alexander had proper timelines and Gantt charts outlined. He followed through with everything, and made sure there was no miscommunication by outlining every feature in detail. He’s quite experienced in dealing with projects.

It was easy to work with them, despite the time difference. I'm located in Canada while they are in Ukraine. 9 AM my time is 6 PM in IT-Town’s location, so they talked to me in the morning.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The collaboration was straightforward. Other companies promised to do everything for me, but, when push came to shove, they couldn’t deliver on simple tasks, and claimed certain features were unrealistic at that time.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No. I am overall satisfied and wouldn’t change the process in any way.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

You get what you pay for. If someone will hire a company in India for $6,000 to develop an app, they can expect a $6,000 product. If they want to hire someone out of America and pay $100,000, they’ll possibly get a good app, but they can also hire hardworking Ukrainian people for half the price, and be perfectly satisfied. It’s a case where finding the perfect median is the key. For me, this is the point where value meets price and delivery. IT-Town is right in the vertex of it.