Koombea

Introduce your business and what you do there?

I am an IT project manager at a carbon exports company.

What challenge were you trying to address with Koombea?

Our company works in open sky carbon mines so we have a big field operation, and we wanted to find a way to send field information to supervisors via an app.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Koombea developed an iOS app for iPad devices. The app had modules that showed the mine’s map, and the location of the teams along with the mine in real-time. They also added a feature that allows us to see who the operator is and information about the team, among other things.

What is the team composition?

We worked with a project manager, a graphic designer, a backend developer, two frontend developers, and a QA specialist.

How did you come to work with Koombea?

We evaluated and visited different service providers. Koombea stood out to us because of their flawless office, great website, and portfolio. In the end, we felt that they were the best choice for us.

How much have you invested in them?

We spent $200,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them towards the end of 2018, and the project lasted about three months.

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

We had very positive results from this project. It was our first mobile app, and it helped our supervisors to speed up processes and made their work easier. On a technology level, we were also very satisfied. The app is very stable.  We’ve required minimum support and it’s just of great quality.

How did Koombea perform from a project management standpoint?

Koombea’s project management was one of the things I liked the most about working with them. They worked with scrum agile methodology, so we had weekly meetings and they completed every sprint on time.

Whenever we encountered any setbacks, they were available and willing to solve every challenge. They really know what they are doing.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their service attitude and commitment to the project were impressive. They should keep doing things the way they do.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the CEO at Nauty360, an online platform for boat booking services.

What challenges were you trying to address with Koombea?

We were looking for a technology partner that had the experience working in a project and creating a platform as big as the one we needed. We had tried with different companies before but never felt completely satisfied until we found them. So they developed our web, responsive sites and mobile apps.

What was the scope of their involvement?

They used Ruby and Rails and Java for web development and React Native for the mobile apps.

What is the team composition?

We worked with six people.

How did you come to work with Koombea?

As we had bad experiences with past providers, we were looking for a new company that could guarantee quality. Koombea’s name came up in our search for the best agencies. When we met them, we knew that we wanted to work with them.

How much have you invested in them?

We spent around $150,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started in 2019 and are continuing our collaboration.

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

They have a great understanding of startups, are very flexible, and were there for us through the entire process. We are very happy with the results of the development. They have a flawless methodology and make everything completely clear for those without a technical background. We saw results almost immediately after the site went live.

How did Koombea perform from a project management standpoint?

They have very clear processes, and their project management was great. We met once a week at first, transitioning to biweekly meetings later in the development. They were effective communicators in their willingness to listen to our needs.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Over time they've become a strategic ally, rather than just a services provider.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They could be more precise at indicating their initial requirements. There were a couple of times when the project didn’t go forward as efficiently because some of the requirements they needed were not ready.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m an omnichannel manager at a retail furniture store. We also provide credit services for furniture.

What challenge were you trying to address with Koombea?

We were looking for a company to develop an e-commerce site for the store, as well as train our employees on new technologies and agile development.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Koombea used Shopify, Ruby, and AWS to build the e-commerce site. They’ve also trained our team on agility.

What is the team composition?

We work with 4–8 teammates, including a designer and a UX developer.

How did you come to work with Koombea?

We had worked with other local companies before and hadn’t had a great experience. When we contacted Koombea, they specifically mentioned that they wouldn’t just implement the e-commerce, but that they would also tailor it to our company’s needs, which was key for us.

How much have you invested in them?

We’ve spent about $10,000 for the development and around $118,000 in total.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in April 2018. Although the project was completed, every once in a while we contact them for advice on specific technologies that we don’t manage very well. 

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

In general, the service they provided was great. The software could be improved, which is usually the case with software development, but they are a great team to work with.

Our sales and traffic have increased because of the e-commerce site, so the project paid for itself very quickly. Thanks to what we learned while working with Koombea, our company’s general project has changed a lot. Our whole team knows about agility and analytics. 

We now know that if we want a certain development we need to find talent for it and not just buy a solution. So, in general, the best contribution Koombea gave us as a company was to change our technology culture.

How did Koombea perform from a project management standpoint?

They are always very flexible. We make constant changes and they are able to adapt very quickly to our needs, which is a great advantage. In our experience, technology companies tend to be very rigid, but we don't have that issue with Koombea. 

Additionally, they do everything well and in a timely manner. Since they work with many international companies, they have a culture of delivering within the schedule, which is rare.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Something they do extremely well is the agile methodology, meetings, follow-up, and stand-ups. In terms of consulting, they are also extraordinary. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

They could improve their pricing because it’s quite high.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the co-founder and CEO of Nab New. We’re an aggregator of e-commerce stores.

What challenge were you trying to address with Koombea?

We engaged them to develop our first real MVP to get to market. We had the backend covered and were looking for a team to build out the frontend.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Koombea helped us build a mobile- and web-friendly progressive web app (PWA). We didn’t want a native, mobile-only app, but instead an app-like experience that could be found through SEO. Their involvement encompassed the design, frontend development, and QA. 

We also did some user research at the beginning. It was important to me to talk to potential customers before getting into the design phase. They even plugged in my co-founder as the backend developer, which was noteworthy because that was not the way they prefer to work. Their willingness to accommodate us was special, and we made it work. 

What is the team composition?

Our core team consisted of the project manager Jessica (IT Project Manager, Koombea), the frontend developer Miguel (Full Stack Developer, Koombea), and three other people. We had more than 10 people working on it in the end.

How did you come to work with Koombea?

We were looking for developers that could build the frontend of a PWA. Koombea had the experience we needed.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent $92,000–$94,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

The project started in mid-August 2019 and wrapped in January 2020.

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

After the main project wrapped, it wasn’t a hard-stop to our collaboration. Within 2–3 days, if I found any bugs, Koombea would take care of them without charging us. They wanted to make sure that what went to market was what they promised it would be.

The frontend is so important to our platform. It has to convey that this is a trustworthy site that users want to spend time with. A lot of feedback I’ve been getting is, “Oh, wow.” They say the site is beautiful and has a more professional look and feel than what they’d expect out of a company our size. That’s been awesome. We’re in really good shape with what Koombea built. 

How did Koombea perform from a project management standpoint?

Jessica was our main point of contact and a key reason why this ambitious project worked so well. Whenever the project became more complicated, they could scale instantly. Jessica would reach out to her boss, get new resources on the team, and onboard them to our project within half a day.

The communication was really good. We used Zoom for meetings and a Slack channel for constant communication. They were responsive even after hours. Their Zoom setup was highly professional, and it won our trust. One time I gave feedback about a bad mic on their end, and within a short time, they replaced the single mic with headsets for everyone. It all went really smoothly after that.

What did you find most impressive about them?

What stood out to me was their commitment to the project. Koombea got into this project as if it was their own company’s product, which meant a lot to us as a company on our first product.

In the end, they went above and beyond, working 10–14 days in a row — including weekends — to meet our deadline. They even included a spreadsheet of billable hours that they didn’t charge us for, which we didn’t need to see because we saw the effort they put in. Their investment in us as a small company — especially in scaling their team so fast — was exceptional. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

My co-founder is very disciplined and felt that the sprints could have been run a little tighter. That stressed him out, so we’d probably try to stay on top of them more if we do future projects with their team.

Please describe your company and your position there.

Paymentez is a payment service provider in Latin America. I have worked as a Product Manager, IT Director, Head of Product and Head of Innovation

For what projects/services did your company hire Koombea?

Koombea was hired to help us with the design and UX of Paymentez 2.0.

What were your goals for this project?

To launch in a short period of time a full web payment platform supporting 2 languages (Spanish and Portuguese) with 3 different types of users (customers, resellers, internal users)

How did you select this vendor?

We analyzed several companies not only local (Colombia) but also foreigners and Koombea's portfolio was really outstanding. We requested a couple of previous customers to get contact and validate the quality of their services.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

They help us with the architecture of the platform. They fully created the front end and the UX patterns. They keep creating new users flows and improving the previous ones.

What was the team composition?

A "Project Manager" who was our direct contact, an UX/Designer specialist, 4 front-end developers, 2 backend developers. All of them specialized on Ruby and Python with deep knowledge on Google Cloud Platform and Amazon Web Services.

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

Our platform was launched on time and after 6 months we improve our conversion rate more than 10%, we launched in 5 different countries (Mexico, Colombia, Brazil, Argentina and Chile). We moved from 85 resellers to more than 4.700 in Brazil in only 10 months increasing our sales more than 40%.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

Project management was very effective. They were always worried about deadlines and valuable deliverables. Our communication was mainly by Skype, Google Hangouts, Pivotal Tracker and GitHub

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Not only their quality level on UX. Their responsibility and commitment to the customer's success set them apart.

Are there any areas for improvement?

Always you can improve, so they can be better than they already are. That's all. They are great!

Please describe your company and your position there.

Our company is a large educational company based in the U.S. With a wide range of products from Kindergarten through workforce, we stream to provide students of all ages with the best resources to succeed in their chosen educational path. I am the Director of the Learning Group.

For what projects/services did your company hire Koombea?

With the introduction of Common Core standards in the US, teachers, students, and parents alike were struggling to find resources to help students remediate or excel in each standard. Furthermore, it was unclear how these standards related to the standardized tests students are forced to take.

We set out to create a platform that connected teachers and learners with resources that met their individual learning needs and gave teachers the ability to meet Common Core Standard requirements. While we had machine learning experts internally to do so, we did not have the proper frontend or backend developers to create a user facing product out of the core machine learning technology.

What were your goals for this project?

The goals of the project scaled as did the success of the product. First, we set out to just build the core functionality of exposing high quality content to our users. Then, our users demanded more of us and we set out to have a minimally viable platform that allowed users to log in, utilize learning resources, and report back on scores on any device. This was built in EmberJS and Ruby on Rails. Next, user adoption required a mobile app on Apple, Andriod, and Chrome stores.

After growing our own user base and adoption across US platforms, other companies requested our functionalities to become available through REST APIs, and for us to integrate our platform with their APIs. We also launched SSO with various platforms, including more sophisticated integrations with Google. Our platform (both web and mobile), along with our API, became the sole products of our company and have our full commitment.

How did you select this vendor?

Three companies were considered when we started our search for development partners. We were most concerned with finding a partner that not only listened and executed a broader vision and strategy, but brought to the table their experience and architectural vision. We did not claim to have the answers to all the problems facing the development of a new, sophisticated platform, and needed someone who could help shape the underlying technology and scope. Koombea had a track record of partnering with companies from the very beginning of a product's lifecycle to deliver a scaleable and robust product. THAT is what we needed.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

Based on mockups and a detailed SOW for the first MVP, we developed a personalized learning platform for Kindergarten through 12th grade students, teachers, and parents. The platform allows teachers to create classes and invite their students, then create assignments for them. The assignments can be chosen from a selection of online resources that are curated using machine learning or they can create their own.

After students complete their assignments, teachers receive detailed grade reports that shows the student's scores, and provides suggestions for assignments to help remediate poorer scores. In order to accomplish the above functionality, the developers need to integrate the machine learning engine, the resource delivery API, SSO, and rostering capabilities. The platform needs to adhere to IMS Global standards, which are interoperability standards set across the educational industry. Koombea was responsible fo ALL of the backend work and integrations, and for part of the UI.

What was the team composition?

Two developers from Koombea were part of our larger team from the very start of our company. As we scaled, we onboarded two more for a total of 2 UI, one full stack, and one backend developer. All 4 rolled up to the product manager and the team worked alongside a small team of full time machine learning developers.

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

After the launch of the new and improved user facing platform that Koombea was responsible for developing, we saw an increase of 2x in 6 months, to reach over a million users in the first year. The most impressive thing was that we were able to launch this product within 3 months! That was unheard of at our parent company.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

The Koombea team and my team felt like family. We were in constant communication of Slack, via calls, and on Pivotal Tracker. There did not go a day, even half a day, when one of the contractors did not respond to a question or issue. They were incredibly responsive and never missed a meeting without a heads up.

We tried to be very diligent with our tickets and time/feature expectations. Very rarely were deadlines not met, and usually only due to extenuating circumstances. The team was very good about coming to me with questions on tickets to get clarification so they could attack the problem correctly.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

I can't say enough how important and effective the team was because of their great communication and responsiveness. We avoided a lot of miscommunications and inefficiencies because they were very good about asking questions and seeking clarification instead of piecemealing something together to be able to say they closed out the ticket.

They also had a deep understanding of the technology and were able to identify any issues quickly; others would spend days to investigate something they were able to pinpoint in an hour. Lastly, as their manager, I appreciated their willingness. They never told me they couldn't do something I had requested. Instead, they would suggest other paths or trade offs if something was unreasonable.

Are there any areas for improvement?

I couldn't be happier with the team from Koombea that we have now. They are the largest assets on my team. However, when we were quickly scaling up the number of developers, we were not quite as lucky with one of them. I should not have expected the best and brightest to show up on a moment's notice, so better time planning for better resources is important.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Payix provides collections tools, payment processing resources and business intelligence solutions to the nation’s lenders and auto dealers. Offering white-label services and real-time loan management system integration, Payix helps lenders improve their ability to communicate and collect payments from borrowers.

What challenge were you trying to address with Koombea?

Payix partnered with Koombea to create a higher level of IT architectural scalability and stability to increase revenue velocity.

What was the scope of their involvement?

The Payix platform is built on an AWS LAMP stack with the frontend created in React.

What is the team composition?

The team included between 5–10 people.

How did you come to work with Koombea?

I connected with the Koombea CEO through a mutual relationship, and after meeting our eventual project team, I was impressed with everyone’s transparency and obvious level of competency.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve invested north of $250,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our engagement with Koombea started in February 2018 and has since grown significantly.

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

Overall, the Payix engagement with Koombea has been a success.  Their commitment to work quality and client satisfaction has been very consistent.  They’re professional, methodical, and make sure we feel important.  No matter what, they make sure we have a conduit for communication and that’s extremely important when working with an outsourced services partner.

How did Koombea perform from a project management standpoint?

Their ability to self-organize and meet deadlines is fantastic. Sometimes there is a language barrier due to English being their second language; however, in the end, understanding is always achieved without a noticeable amount of additional time.  Most communication is done using Slack and Jira which creates obvious efficiencies.

What did you find most impressive about them?

One of their key company strengths is their culture. Many Koombea team members have worked at the company for several years. There is a clear level of trust between all employees, which we saw firsthand when visiting their headquarters this year. In my experience, outsourcing service-related companies typically have a high turnover, which makes creating a thriving employee culture a big challenge. The clear bi-directional commitment between management and staff has contributed to a strong company culture, with Koombea’s clients being the true beneficiaries.

Are there any areas they could improve?

There’s no doubt Koombea is on the upper end of pricing for an outsourced servicing company.  Considering this though, you do get what you pay for, and with Koombea we may be paying a premium, but we’re also receiving a high-quality product.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I'm the product manager at a testing company. 

What challenge were you trying to address with Koombea?

Koombea developed a tool that lets us manage competencies and make related connections. We decided to outsource this project to Koombea because they offered an impressed level of experience and breadth of expertise. 

What was the scope of their involvement?

Koombea provided web-based development in PHP. They developed a prototype in Ruby and developed our open-source project in collaboration with some other companies and our team. 

What is the team composition? 

We worked with a team of four led by two main participants. Koombea enabled us to pull in additional developers, Javascript specialists, and UX designers as needed. 

How did you come to work with Koombea?

I first started using them when our company was a startup, prior to being acquired. We established a long-term relationship and continued to use Koombea with the larger company and just added more developers from their team. 

How much have you invested with them?

We've probably spent over a million dollars over the last three years. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in June 2017 and met the milestones we set in March 2019. They're continuing to work with other departments in our company. 

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

The developers from Koombea excelled at communication. They kept us on time with our sprints. Any delays we experienced were related solely to the complexities of the open source web application, rather than their team. They always conveyed why anything wouldn't be on time if needed. The product they helped create has generated revenue for our company. 

How did Koombea perform from a project management standpoint?

Due to the open source nature of our project, we used GitHub as a tool to communicate product details and give feedback. The team was always very diligent about responding to our input. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

The manager was extremely diligent about keeping us aware of roadblocks. We didn't experience any language barriers, even though they're based in Colombia and English is their second language. Koombea was flexible and very easy to work with. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, I can't think of anything. I've worked with several contracting companies and Koombea is the best one by far.

This review was updated on October 10th, 2019, by the client. New content is below.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the product manager at a testing company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Koombea?

Koombea has worked on several things within our company, but I’ve worked directly with them on an open source web-based application that helps us manage students’ competencies.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement? 

We started with this project about three years ago and has had different forms and that kind of thing. But one thing has been really interesting is that other companies have taken different branches or forks of the application that we've developed and done different things with it. 

Since starting this project about three years ago, we’ve watched our product evolve into different forms. What’s interesting is that other companies have taken different parts of the application and customized it to suit their needs.

There was a product that launched in March 2019 that functioned as a national clearinghouse of academic competency frameworks. It was a solution to host federal standards for all 50 states and more.

Even though we didn’t directly contribute to that product, that product wouldn’t be possible without our and Koobea’s work. It’s a slightly modified version of our software. 

The core tech stack was PHP, JavaScript, MySQL, and Docker. We first started the project in Ruby on Rails but decided to change to PHP because there was already an established open source community. Even though PHP wasn’t Koombea’s first choice, they did a good job of reacting to our needs.

What is the team composition? 

I worked with two full-time developers.

How did you come to work with Koombea?

Before my current position, I was working for a startup that already had a relationship with Koombea. Between then and now, I’ve worked with Koombea for at least five years.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent between $1 million—$5 million so far.

What is the status of this engagement?

The main development was actually from June 2016–March 2019. We’re currently on a break as we work to secure more funding, but I’m trying to get Koombea back on more projects.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The national clearinghouse product is gaining prominence as an interoperable case specification tool that allows organizations to publish via the case API. Several states are now publishing natively through that solution. 

Our organization is also using the base solution as a way to represent competency frameworks in a digital form. Koombea’s work was integral to that.

In terms of their performance, our sprint velocities were usually very good, and the rate of completion was above 85% most of the time. Their development and development forecasts were always accurate, too.

How did Koombea perform from a project management standpoint?

They’ve performed well, especially back in March 2019 when we had to do a major redesign of one of our front pages. 

They were able to get us from mock-up to development to production push within a week. Despite the short turnaround, they understood that it was really important for us to get it done and completed the task, even though they knew we were losing funding for them soon. 

Logistically, we did daily stand-ups and spoke mostly through Slack. They're very communicative—always let me know if there were roadblocks and asked questions at the appropriate times.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They're a little bit more expensive than other offshore consulting companies, but they’re worth it in quality.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, not that I could say.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?
 
Come in with a clear scope, but be open to their expertise and suggestions.

Introduce your business and what you do there. 

I'm one of the co-founders of an education software company. I lead product development. 

What challenge were you trying to address with Koombea? 

We wanted to create a tool to help us train teachers in 21st-century practices in a way that shifts from traditional to new models of learning and technology.

What was the scope of their involvement? 

Koombea is developing a web-based platform that is mobile-adaptive but not native. Ruby on Rails is the primary language. We consider the platform to be part learning management system, part professional learning community, and part Cloud Coach marketplace. We launched in August 2018 to our current clients. They continue to work with us on building out features from our backlog. 

What is the team composition? 

Our core team is about six people, including frontend developers and designers. The exact composition varies given whatever sprint we're in. 

How did you come to work with Koombea?

We have a lot of clients in Latin America. We were introduced to Jonathan (CEO, Koombea) by one of our digital media resources in Colombia. We met with Jonathan directly as well as their senior managers and executives to brainstorm. We especially liked that they pushed us to be clear about our value proposition. They challenged us to think if we really needed to build a platform versus providing services.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent about $200,000 to date. 

What is the status of this engagement? 

The project started in December 2017, and the engagement is ongoing. 

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

Koombea created an incredibly appealing and modern platform. We've gotten really positive responses from our initial users, allowing us to bolster and scale our services. They’re preparing to launch autonomously as the next step forward for the solution. That's going to be a key piece for our ability to scale our work. On the whole, we're so excited about this development. 

How did Koombea perform from a project management standpoint? 

We have a really strong relationship with the Koombea team. They're accessible, responsive, and accountable. That makes them good creative partners. Our current velocity is pretty consistent, and they typically meet our sprint goals. Even when there were some difficulties, they got back on track quickly. They were able to get us to where we needed to be by our launch date, so overall it's been a positive experience. 

I've shared with them specific feedback along the way regarding timing and delivery issues early in the process. We made a bad decision that delayed the project because they didn't provide an accurate estimate at the starting point. We had to recalibrate what version 1.0 was going to look like. Thankfully, their response was strong. They put a senior project manager on the project, and his involvement has been paramount to keeping everything progressing as planned. 

What did you find most impressive about them? 

Their people are so hard-working. The team has a strong work ethic and good personalities. Project management has been outstanding. They're faithful to agile methodology and consistent in running sprints. They've been able to create good communication processes via a shared Slack channel between our teams. They get direct feedback on products from our coaches who work with actual users. 

Are there any areas they could improve? 

Providing accurate estimates is always a challenge but worth continuing to try to improve. It’s obviously not an exact science. They're still trying to figure out how to estimate agile epics. In other words, how do they backward-design a timeline if we know that we have to get from X to Y by a certain date. They're getting better at it, but it's definitely an area that can continue to improve. 

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the innovations manager for a home improvement company with 25 stores in Panama.

What challenge were you trying to address with Koombea?

We recently launched our e-commerce site. We already had an online store, but it was very basic so we started to talk with Koombea to analyze our options. They suggested that we migrate to Shopify Plus so we decided to start this project with them.

What was the scope of their involvement?

They used Ruby on Rails for the development. They created an intermediate platform on the cloud between Shopify and our back office to integrate everything.

What is the team composition?

There were around 6–8 people involved, each with different expertise.

How did you come to work with Koombea?

I worked in technology development previously and had worked on the other digital projects. I learned what I needed in a technology partner through my experience so when I started analyzing providers, I was clear on what I wanted. I needed someone who could understand the way we worked and the sense of urgency. What I heard from Koombea made me choose them over other providers.

How much have you invested in them?

This project cost around $50,000–$60,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

The project started at the end of November last year and the project has launched. They are still our partners on this and other projects.

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

The results were excellent. All our expectations were met. We have the most stable e-commerce platform. We had a huge increase of 700% in sales. We made the right decision.

How did Koombea perform from a project management standpoint?

We used Slack and Trello. The communications were very fluid and efficient.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The quality of their work is great. They are very meticulous. Anytime we had a question, we had a call with the team to clear it up.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They are very oriented to the North American market which makes them sometimes manage the Latin American region the same way as they do North America. Sometimes, this created a bit of cultural shock and some complications. It’s not critical, but it’s a barrier that they could refine with the Latin American market.