MAQE

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m an outsourcing partner for an international auditing, accounting, tax, legal, and advisory firm.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with MAQE?

As an accounting firm, we provide accounting and tax compliance services to international companies doing business in Thailand. We wanted a tool that would enable us to extract, validate, and use data from the invoices that our clients receive to streamline our processes. We already built and tested a prototype for this tool even before we engaged MAQE.

The goal was to add more structure to the way we worked and allow our staff to focus on the quality of their work rather than the production of their work.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We hired MAQE to develop a web-based data-capturing tool for internal use based on the prototype we developed. The solution allows us to extract data from invoices, populate fields on a form, validate that data, and help us review the accuracy and appropriateness of that information for accounting and tax treatment use. The solution also posts the data into our accounting software, enabling us to prepare AT returns more efficiently. It also has workflow and roles that streamline the entire process.

What is the team composition?

I worked directly with a senior developer and a project manager from MAQE.

How did you come to work with MAQE?

We found MAQE through online research. We chose them for this project because they trusted the prototype that we already had and built the tool based on it.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent around $100,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from March 2021–August 2022.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

I was impressed with the quality and execution of MAQE’s work. They were flexible, quick to resolve issues and bugs, attentive to our needs, and accommodating of scope changes throughout the project. Overall, we’re incredibly satisfied with the results of the project.

How did MAQE perform from a project management standpoint?

MAQE performed well in terms of project management. They were responsive and able to meet deadlines. The project did take 3–4 weeks longer to complete than we had anticipated, but we were able to work through that problem together.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We were most impressed MAQE’s strong commitment to delivering high-quality work. We also appreciated their flexibility and ability to adapt to our working style and processes.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, I was satisfied with their work.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Make sure to be organized so they can better understand and help you with your needs.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CTO of Everysport Group; we run different sports-related tech solutions and websites. We have sports-related news websites and are building gathering systems for sports results.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with MAQE?

We hired MAQE as our technology department; when another company acquired us, they became one of the technology teams within our company.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We’ve been working together for more than ten years, but most of the technology we use includes PHP, JavaScript, Node.js, MySQL, HTML, and Laravel. We use a Scrum workflow to ensure that we’re all on the same page. We’ve built around six websites with MAQE, and they handle maintenance and perform front- and backend development for us. The websites are hosted on AWS.

MAQE takes care of automated scaling for our server environments. They’ve also been working with our payment solutions and importing a lot of sports-related data. 

What is the team composition?

They rotate their team in and out, so a lot of people understand our systems and can jump in very quickly to take care of things. We currently work with two developers and an on-demand data scientist. 

How did you come to work with MAQE?

I was not with the company when we started working with MAQE. 

How much have you invested with them?

We spend roughly $100,000 a year with MAQE. Overall we’ve spent around $1 million. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together around January 2012, and the engagement is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

They’ve been with us for a very long time, and they’re responsible for building all of our websites; we’ve been very happy with everything they’ve done. 

How did MAQE perform from a project management standpoint?

They're usually on time with their delivery of products, and when things aren’t delivered on time, it’s normally not their fault. They have good communication, and they make it a priority to make sure we’re communicating efficiently. They provide us with support whenever we need it. We’re in different time zones, but they get back to us generally by the end of the day. We use Jira for project management. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

Everything is running smoothly, and we get good value for our money. They’re always trying to solve problems, and we continue to use them because they always deliver for us. They’re flexible, and MAQE understands how to prioritize projects. They’re invested in our company and are proactive about making sure they’re on top of everything, and that everything is working properly. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

They’ve gotten better and understand our company more the longer we work with them. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Have a well-defined process and involve the developers as much as possible. They have a diverse set of knowledge, so they can see things from different angles.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the head of IT for a luxury furniture retailer.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with MAQE?

We needed our ERP integrated with our processes. We also hired them to update it to make it more efficient.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They started by consulting and advising us on the priorities we should focus on. Their team helped us fix the issues in our ERP, including switching from manual to automated processes and integrating with all our systems. The system records information and links it to be used in accounting and other areas now.

They’ve also supported us with product discovery, helping decide on a clear product browser to make our stock and information available to customers. Overall, they’ve worked to improve the existing system. 

What is the team composition?

At least 20 people work with us, including consultants. 

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent between $500,000– $1,000,000. Last year, we spent around 12,000,000 baht (approximately $370,000 USD). 

What is the status of this engagement?

We began working together around January 2015 and our engagement is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

MAQE is the best provider we’ve worked with. I’ve been very impressed with them—their designs are good and they follow best practices. 

How did MAQE perform from a project management standpoint?

They’re clear on what they will deliver. Nothing unexpected has happened in how they manage the project. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their design process and team are outstanding. They’re very careful about what they present to the customer and their proposed designs are often approved without any change requests. They really have the best team working for them. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

I think their accounting consulting could be better, but it’s not bad.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

They are a mid-size company so customers should expect that there may be a higher price than with small companies, but they’re well worth it. Their process is great.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Capcito is a Swedish FinTech company. I’m a co-founder and the CTO of the company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with MAQE?

They’ve been with us more or less since the beginning. We had no development resources at all in Sweden when we started, so we were searching for a good and more or less cheap way of creating a proof of concept with modern technology and people with solid experience in cloud computing.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We’ve had a development team hired from MAQE since the company’s start. In the beginning, they helped us architect and build a prototype as well as transfer it into a real system. They handled both front- and backend development and design. Over the last three years, we’ve mainly hired backend developers from MAQE. Since 2019, we’ve also hired data science personnel from them.

What is the team composition?

We’ve worked with 10–15 people from MAQE since the start. The normal size of the team is four people. There were more people from their company helping us in the beginning. After we got up and running, the team went down to 3–4 people on a regular basis.

How did you come to work with MAQE?

Andreas (CEO and Design Director) is from Sweden, and that’s how we came in contact with them. It would’ve been very hard to find them otherwise because we weren’t looking for outsourcing companies, especially not in Thailand. It was through personal contact with Andreas.

How much have you invested with them?

I believe we’re spending around 8 million Thai baht per year, which translates to 1.5–2 million Swedish crowns, or around $200,000 USD.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with MAQE around January 2015, and it’s ongoing. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We’re happy with their work. If we weren’t, we’d have stopped using them a long time ago. We think of the developers from MAQE as we think of our own developers. The resources we have from them are like having our own employees.

How did MAQE perform from a project management standpoint?

We use Atlassian products quite a lot, including Jira for planning and following progress, Sentry for bug tracking, and Confluence for documenting products and projects. It’s a long-term relationship, and we have daily contact with the developers. I talk to them every day over Slack, and we have standups and so on. We track everything we do on the development side.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They have very deep and broad knowledge in backend development with Laravel PHP, which is what we use. They also have very good knowledge in AWS, which has helped us very much.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They could move to Sweden. Of course, it’s always a bit hard to work over such a time difference. With outsourced personnel, we need to spend a bit more time on specifying items and making everything clear. However, I think it works really well, given the daily contacts we have.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

Try to build a long-term relationship. With a complex system, it’ll take some time for developers to get up to speed, but, when they do, they’ll work efficiently and very hard. This is the same when using internal employees. Because they are consultants, however, we also get flexibility in scaling our capacity.