LeaSoft

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m one of the co-founders and the COO of Ginger Payments. We developed a payment platform that helps banks and large financial institutions compete with payment services such as Stripe and Adyen.

What challenge were you trying to address with LeaSoft?

It’s pretty difficult to find good programmers in the Netherlands. We needed a team to build our plug-ins. Our payment platform connects to different shopping platforms such as Magento, PrestaShop, WooCommerce, Shopify, BigCommerce, etc. We needed a piece of software in between all of those different shopping software platforms and were looking for a team to build that connection.

What was the scope of their involvement?

LeaSoft assigned a team that’s working on custom software development. They know our platform and the ones we want to connect to, so they build the plug-ins, test them, and also provide support. Whenever a client of ours has an issue, such as not being able to install the plug-in or some unexpected behavior, LeaSoft will assist them.

Typically, we talk through our API specifications with them. Then, we go over all of the functionalities that the plug-in should have, such as credit card payments, PayPal payment, refund functionality, and more. The last phase is when they actually go in, build the plug-in, and test it to demonstrate all of the functionality. Our goal is to allow clients to pay as fast as possible without being interrupted by something else on the screen. Everything needs to work flawlessly, and we check that during the testing phase.

We use PHP because all of the shopping carts are built in PHP. One of the cool things that LeaSoft is building is a generator for those plug-ins, which is basically software that writes software. We needed this because we have multiple clients that want their plug-in branded with their name. We’ve created the plug-ins, and we use the generator to generate the branded plug-ins for our clients.

What is the team composition?

We have six people assigned from their team. There’s one project manager named Michael (General Director), a tester, and four developers — three senior developers and one junior developer.

How did you come to work with LeaSoft?

I knew Michael from another project I had in the past. He was working at the time for another company I had hired. We liked working together, so when he left that company and started something by himself a year later, he contacted me. I was looking for someone to help with development, so I decided to hire them for this project.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent around €200,000 (approximately $240,000 USD).

What is the status of this engagement?

We started collaborating on this project around May 2019, and our partnership is ongoing.

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

Before, we had 1–2 people in the Netherlands handling this work. Now, LeaSoft handles all of the work for us, and our in-house team is free to work on other important things. Their response time is within a day. Whenever we had an issue before, we would take about 2–3 days to resolve it since we’re understaffed, but now we have fast response times to incidents thanks to having LeaSoft on board.

LeaSoft is also very proactive in going beyond what I ask them to do. For example, we originally only asked them to build the plug-ins, and they suggested creating the generator and doing hackathons to develop new features to add to the plug-ins. They work really well as an independent team.

How did LeaSoft perform from a project management standpoint?

LeaSoft did much better than I did in this regard. They actually keep track of all reports and metrics, managing their employees and development plans themselves, and coming up with suggestions for improvements and hackathons. In addition, they have great teamwork and never bother me with any personnel issues. 

They use Jira for project management, and we use Slack to communicate daily. Once a week, we have a meeting to discuss plans and go over what we did. We also have a quarterly meeting to talk about things on a bigger scale and plan out the goals for the next quarter.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The most important thing to us is their proactive approach and management skills. They’re very upfront with us when something goes wrong and will compensate for it.

Are there any areas they could improve?

It’s pretty difficult to find and keep talented staff, so I’d suggest for them to take some time to find new talent. A few months back, we had a hard time searching for people when we needed a new resource on board. They could do this a bit faster, but overall, we’re happy now.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Defining your project properly will always help you achieve success with your project. Also, try to work as partners. Have open communication instead of dictating what should be done. This way, they’ll bring forth their suggestions, and we always hear them out and discuss their ideas to see if we can add them to our platform. Most of the time, their suggestions are really good, and we implement them.