Leniolabs

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm a Senior Director of our UI Engineering organization. Our company is mid-sized and recently acquired by a larger global organization. We specifically are building products and platforms to support the mortgage industry within the US.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Leniolabs?

We are in the process of building out the next generation of our platform/flag ship product and engaged Leniolabs to augment our Web Development team.

SOLUTION

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

While we were already working with a company in India, we weren't that happy with the majority of the engineers work and so started to look elsewhere. This new search led us to explore Mexico and South America so we could have more overlap with our timezone.

An employee at the time had worked with Leniolabs at a previous engagement and mentioned them, so we gave them a call. We ended up shortlisting them with another company and after further conversations, cost reviews and a trial period of a few engineers, we decided to take them on for the long term.

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

In the beginning we started with 5 Sr. Web Development UI Engineers helping to build our new Form Generation engine. As we continued to work with both the engineers and their account management team we were impressed. We have since scaled them up to about ~80 engineers on various projects related to our next generation applications. At this point several projects are live, in some form or another (mature, MVP, etc..), while others are in the middle stages of development.

Describe the recruitment process in detail.

As I mentioned earlier, our initial conversations were with the account managers and founders. As we weighed in on price and considered the cost of South America vs. India we engaged in a trial run. The trial run demonstrated that we were getting high quality engineers that were worth 2 of what we could accomplish in India, making the cost negligible.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

As part of our re-write to the next generate, we worked to create a brand-new platform framework on React. The team was comprised of a UI Architect and UX personnel from us, with 100% development done from Lenio. This framework is so highly successful that it is used across ~10 UI apps by more than 100 UI engineers and it was delivered by this core team that consists of only 5 UI engineers.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

They are great communicators and always available. Given the timezone overlap, working with them is just like working with any other remote engineer on the team.

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

We've been very happy with Lenio as they are an awesome partner. One thing I love is their attention to quality and their team. If there are ever any issues, it is usually their account managers that are bringing it to us with suggested resolutions far before we are aware.

In addition, given the turnover in today's market, having this close relationship guarantees that we are always keeping ahead of potential problems related to personnel management - i.e. potential under-performers, potential departures, etc...

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

At this point, I haven't had any issues that I would like to see them improve on.