Melon

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the founder of a wearable tech company.

What challenge were you trying to address with Melon?

We needed help augmenting our wearable tech watch product.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Melon performs several backend tasks involving development and testing on our advanced platform. They help out with a lot of different tech resources that we lack in-house. The team creates new solutions and updates to optimize the customer experience. For example, they’re helping us create a feature to make sure people social distance from each other in response to COVID-19.

What is the team composition?

We work with 3-4 people from their team.

How did you come to work with Melon?

We found them through our CTO’s network.

How much have you invested with them?

We spend $25,000 per month.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in February 2019, and our work is ongoing.

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

Overall, the work they’ve done has gotten very positive feedback. The team is professional in terms of response times. It’s important for us to be ad-hoc and add new things, and they’ve been very good at adapting to our change in direction.

How did Melon perform from a project management standpoint?

Their CEO is fast and responsive. The service level is always fantastic. Overall, their flexibility has made our life easier.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Other vendors sometimes say one thing and the delivery is poor, which is not the case with Melon. They’re far better than anyone we’ve worked with.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, nothing I can think of right now.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

My advice is to be transparent about your strengths and weaknesses as a client. The fact that we’ve been very transparent has helped them to work in a very agile way.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the Co-founder, CEO and product manager at Slick. Slick is a web-based booking platform and workflow management tool for hair & beauty salons and other appointment based businesses.

We have around 3k users of our platform from 700 businesses in the UK. We are partnered with L'Oreal for distribution and also have some integrations with them to enhance the experience for L'Oreal salons on our platform.

For what projects/services did your company hire Melon?

We have had an ongoing relationship with Melon right from the start of our business around 2.5 years ago.

Melon have provided us with front end developers (CSS and React Native) and back end developers (Python, Django) to help us build out our platform and evolve all of the features.

We have flexed between 0 - 6 Melon developers over the past 2 years and they have worked alongside our in house development team of 2-4 people.

What were your goals for this project?

Our platform has to be usable across a range of devices and browsers and it also needs to be incredibly user friendly since the majority of our target customer base is switching from a paper diary to digital.

Since our customers are using Slick to run their entire business daily, the platform must be super reliable, stable, and fast when performing quite complex tasks.

In addition most parts of the product require information/actions from other parts of the product, so there needs to be a good understanding of how everything fits together and seamless performance across the platform.

How did you select this vendor?

Our CTO had worked with Melon before and was confident in the quality of the developers, their availability and flexibility, and also the cost. He had a good working relationship with the CEO of the business, Krum, and was confident that this is the best agency he has ever worked with (having worked with several before), so we were confident this was the right choice.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

The team at Melon have worked across a variety of features such as online booking, stock management, financial reporting, payments processing integration, client data management.

Some of our features have been built almost entirely by the Melon team from scratch and others have been co-built with our in-house team.

The Melon team have also worked on some of the custom L'Oreal integrations such as a salon locator hosted by L'Oreal which links to online booking for salons using Slick.

What was the team composition?

On average we have been working with 1 backend developer from Melon and 2-3 front end developers. This has fluctuated over time according to our financial position and our product needs.

The great thing is we have always been able to work with the same developers at our request, so there is continuity for us. The Melon team have always been fully integrated with our in-house developers and we work together as a team.

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

Thanks to work on usability improvements across the whole platform from the Melon team, we have reduced bugs reported from our customers by almost 70% in the past year.

A module that was built almost entirely by Melon developers was our marketing module which has resulted in an average of 20% increase in revenue per customer for us.

The Melon team have gone over and above what is asked or expected of them in order to help us meet delivery deadlines, and i am always confident I can rely on them not to let me down.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

The Melon team are all offshore and also for the past year our entire team has been remote. This has never been a problem and the team have excellent communication and exceptionally good english language skills so we never have misunderstandings.

We communicate primarily through Slack, hosting a standup call daily at 9:30am and a sprint plan every fortnight. We each then have 1-1 contact and catch up calls to discuss problems or share progress. We use Jira to manage tasks and workflow and then we use Github.

The melon team easily picked up our processes and adapted well to any changes. Their communication is always excellent and they are very reliable on deadlines or letting me know if there are any issues meeting them and why. Usually though, they do whatever they can to meet deadlines, so I am never disappointed.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Excellent communication from the top down - I have met with the CEO and CTO in London which is a classy thing for them to do to ensure we are looked after as a client.

Resource management always responds almost instantly and they are incredibly accommodating for our needs, always trying their best to get me the developers I want to work with. The quality of the developers we have worked with is outstanding.

But also their work ethic and communication skills are excellent - it's clear they receive very good training, guidance and support from Melon and it's clear they respect Melon as an organisation and enjoy working for them.

Honestly I couldn't be more complimentary about Melon. They have supported us the whole way, but most especially when times have been tough for us. They are very understanding and collaborative to help us achieve our goals. I absolutely love the developers we work with and they feel 100% part of our team.

Are there any areas for improvement?

Genuinely struggling to think of anything that needs improving - things work perfectly exactly as they are! The only tiny thing I can think of is maybe giving a little more advance guidance on national/public holidays for developers in their respective countries and what the expectation is around working/not working.

And also what the guidance is for holidays (annual allowance, notice of requests) ie is this something Melon specifies or I should specify. It's not caused any issues at all to date; I'm just not sure what the developers' expectations are and who has responsibility for this ultimately.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a senior manager at RARE, a conservation and development nonprofit.

What challenge were you trying to address with Melon?

We hired Melon to add additional features to an Android app written in Java that has a backend admin system. They worked on the front- and backend.

What was the scope of their involvement?

The app is a fisheries' catch recording app. We work with small scale fisheries in developing countries and try to get fisheries data in our project community to record their data. What we're trying to do is to replace traditional methods of recording fisheries data and move that into a digital platform. We've developed an Android app to collect catch data in small-scale fishing communities.

Melon was brought on when the previous developer had other responsibilities and we needed to continue development. We get feedback from users, filter what’s feasible, and then pass that on to the developers to add requested functionalities.

They fixed a lot of bugs and built a feature to track profit, aimed at fish buyers. The tool is a financial one, that assists the buyers with managing incoming income, expenditures, and profit in order to motivate them to use the app and continue to provide the fisheries data that we need for managing fish stock and enhancing ecosystems.

What is the team composition?

We usually had one person working on the backend and one person working on the frontend. There’s a project manager as well, and 4–5 people join our weekly meetings.

How did you come to work with Melon?

They were recommended by the previous developer. He put us in contact with us and we seemed to fit.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve invested about $50,000 so far.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in December 2017, and are still working together.

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

Adoption rates of the app might be our best qualitative metric. We’ve seen continual increase and usage of the app until March 2020, when it dropped for obvious reasons. Once the app is adopted, users tend to stay on the app. This is largely due to the new features that Melon has been assisting us to develop.

How did Melon perform from a project management standpoint?

They’re great and very thorough. They provide constant updates and prepare progress reports for our weekly meetings. I can’t complain. They’re efficient, get the job done, and stick to timeframes and cost points.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I’m impressed with the way they go about their work and the knowledge they have about what they do. They haven’t let me down ever.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No. I’m happy with the way they work.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Be as thorough as possible on the project brief. I’ve been guilty of giving too vague of a description. Make sure you have enough detail for them.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO of a social networking platform.

What challenge were you trying to address with Melon?

We were looking to outsource the development of our app.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Melon came on board to help us build the iOS app from the ground up. There is no Android version. They were effectively responsible for the backend, frontend, design, and everything else we needed.

We provide a video calling technology, and they helped us build the video capabilities, the payment solution within the app, the scheduling system, and all the other typical functions of a typical marketplace app.

Our chief engineer led the project and managed their team from Melon, but they had a team lead on their end as well.

What is the team composition?

We had three people from Melon working on this fulltime: one iOS and two backend developers.

How did you come to work with Melon?

It was a referral from someone in Bulgaria.

How much have you invested with them?

The cost has been $250,000–$280,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Melon in November 2019, and we will continue working with them.

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

The success metric for us is delivering on time, and they’ve done so for every sprint so far. They handle minor changes and bug fixes as part of the everyday process.

How did Melon perform from a project management standpoint?

We have a daily call to make sure everything’s working well and to plan for the day. Their performance is fantastic. We use traditional management tools, including Jira.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They deliver everything on time and let us know if they don't understand something. They’re honest and genuine people who're passionate about what they do. It's clear that they care about the client’s success and satisfaction.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Not at all.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

It’s important to be organized.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CTO of a mobile solutions company in the UK.

What challenge were you trying to address with Melon?

We needed software engineers for web development.

What was the scope of their involvement?

They’ve mostly done development work for us, working on Node.js in the backend and HTML JavaScript on the frontend. It’s a complex system that diagnoses faults and issues in mobile phones. They’ve also done design work and the testing structures are handled exclusively by Melon.

What is the team composition?

We’re working with 4 people currently, but some of the teammates have changed at different points in the project. There is a senior engineer and senior test engineer who have been overseeing the project remotely.

How did you come to work with Melon?

We were looking for companies throughout Europe, as it’s difficult to hire locally. A contractor working for us referred us to Melon, so we went with them. 

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent between $250,000–$500,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We began working together in March 2019 and our engagement is ongoing.

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

We demonstrated the project to the customer and we’ve been pleased with how it works. Their work has been mostly on time and within budget, too. 

How did Melon perform from a project management standpoint?

Project management has largely been handled on our side since we hired someone experienced in managing remote teams. To communicate, we use Jira and Slack.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Unlike other service providers I’ve experienced, Melon has a good combination of professionalism with the processes and flexibility within an agile environment. We had some initial concerns about having a remote team, but it’s worked so much better than expected.

They’re flexible and willing to help. For example, we had a delivery recently that they happily did extra runs on to ensure proper testing and made any fixes or changes needed.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, there’s nothing. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

With any outsourcing or remote work, you should be clear about your needs and skills. Organize the project so it can be done well remotely. 

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the IT manager at Ovation Incentives, a global provider of incentives programs for multinational companies. Our main product is a universal voucher system, which users can redeem in our system for any retail voucher. We operate in 100 countries with multiple currencies.

What challenge were you trying to address with Melon?

We needed an IT team to help us with the development of our website application and provide technical support.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Their primary task was development. They also created APIs to enable our clients to connect their systems to our system. They used Microsoft .NET and MySQL. Additionally, they also developed an internal reporting tool using SQL Server Reporting Services. Our products need constant development so they did changes and maintenance.

What is the team composition?

We worked with a couple of project managers and dedicated developers. They also had a QA engineer, which was helpful.

How did you come to work with Melon?

I used to work in Bulgaria as a developer and project manager and knew that they were good, which is why I chose them to be our dedicated partner.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from December 2009 until July 2014. We now have an IT team in-house and don’t outsource anymore.

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

Without this app, we wouldn’t exist.

How did Melon perform from a project management standpoint?

I was the project manager on our side. On a monthly basis, I sent them the specifications and details about what needed to be changed or improved. We used Mantis. We worked well together. They’re exceptionally friendly and they completed the projects professionally.

For our main project, there were no scheduling problems and they completed the work within our deadlines. On another project, the main developer left the company in the middle of the project so they needed extra time, but it wasn’t a big delay, and it worked out for us. Even though it took them additional time, they stayed within the fixed-price budget.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We wanted to work with a big company because we wanted to have sufficient resources and talent. The risk of working with a small company is they may not be able to replace experienced developers if a team member leaves. The team that worked for us wasn’t that big, but if someone leaves, they make good transitions and provide another resource.

Are there any areas they could improve?

In the first month, we quickly determined our style for project management with one of the projects.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Use them. I’d be very happy to work with them again.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I’m a digital specialist for the America for Bulgaria Foundation. We promote economic development and democratic values in Bulgaria.

For what projects/services did your company hire Melon?

We engaged Melon to build a website for a new education program called Education Leadership Academy (ELA).

What were your goals for this project?

The website needed to share information about our program, schools, and useful resources for interested users.

How did you select this vendor?

Melon worked with us before to develop our main site. We were pleased with their results and their maintenance services, so we engaged their services again for this project.

Can you go into detail about the services they provided and the scope of the project?

Melon developed, configured, and launched the site. The team responded quickly to questions and feedback throughout the process.

What was the team composition?

We worked primarily with a project manager. They communicate our needs to their team of frontend developers, backend developers, QA testers, and DevOps people.

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

The site met all requirements, but we have yet to measure its impact on our program.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

The project ran smoothly from start to finish. Melon consistently met deadlines and communicated their few delays in advance.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

The team responded to any inquiry in less than an hour and adopted our preferred channels of communication with ease.

Are there any areas where they can improve?

Some tasks could use better time estimates, but overall, we’re highly satisfied with their work.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the director of Buchanan Technologies. We’re a strategic managed services provider and IT consulting firm.

What challenge were you trying to address with Melon?

We hired Melon to provide development support.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We brought Melon in for their expertise with various technologies. We’ve worked together on numerous projects for our customers. They helped us with the scoping and delivery process. We primarily utilized their broad spectrum of SharePoint skills and expertise. 

Melon developed one of our projects on an Azure platform. They’ve provided the pure development skills we’ve needed, like .NET expertise. We’ve also had them work with us on DevOps oriented tasks like Office 365 migrations.

What is the team composition? 

Melon provided the bulk of delivery resources for our projects, who work with our internal project managers. Their team includes SharePoint architects, business analysts, and resources with development and UI/UX capabilities. We also work with the individuals who handle DevOps.

I work primarily with one of the principals. From a project delivery perspective, he keeps an eye on everything that goes on in the background.  We typically worked with team leads and engaged directly with various teammates in the SharePoint or the .NET space. 

How did you come to work with Melon?

Melon came recommended as a provider. We both have offices is in Bulgaria and had held previous business meetings with their team. 

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent $250,000–$500,000. Their costs are very reasonable.

What is the status of this engagement?

We’ve been working together since May 2016.

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

We’ve had excellent feedback from our customers, who find that Melon is very thorough and thoughtful. Our clients appreciate the team’s approach and the services they provide. Some members from Melon’s side of the team have received great comments.

How did Melon perform from a project management standpoint?

Melon is excellent. We have no issues with project management. We use Microsoft Project and Jira for tracking requirements along with a variety of different tools. The technology we use depends on the specific customers we’ve engaged with and what platforms they’re able to support.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I don’t view them as a vendor or a supplier. Melon’s approach feels more like a partnership. We work together towards deploying a customer’s solution. The team has shown they can be flexible with our clients when needed, which has been critically important to us.

Are there any areas they could improve?

The only thing that our customers notice is the time zone difference, given that Melon is Bulgarian-based. For the bulk of our engagements, they’ve been flexible about matching our time zones. This minor issue sometimes comes up as a question, and we try to respect it on both sides. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Be open and honest about your intentions and what you’re trying to accomplish. You can trust that Melon is going to treat your customers like their own clients. 

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I'm the CEO and founder of theinfluencer.com, a marketing platform, and marketplace that connects brands with social media influencers to help them collaborate on campaigns.

What challenge were you trying to address with Melon?

We needed to work with a team that was familiar with automating the process of a marketplace so we could connect two types of users to fully automated transactions.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Acting as our outsourced I.T. and product department, Melon helped us translate our commercial needs into technical tasks for their developers. They managed everything from the initial wireframes and architecture to the complete full-stack development with an emphasis on the backend. They used angular for the frontend, and the backend is Python-based. In addition to our primary web platform, they produced two mobile apps for Android and iOS.

Our site integrates with influencers' social media accounts through APIS that are available on all the different platforms. Brands and agencies can use our system to run fully automated campaigns, measure ROI, reach out to content creators who have profiles on our platform, and send them assignments.

What is the team composition? 

A project manager, one backend and one frontend developer, and a QA engineer work on our project full time. Sometimes we pull in extra help from another either backend or frontend resource depending on the need. 

How did you come to work with Melon?

We considered providers from Bulgaria, Poland, Ukraine, and India. After reviewing a few agencies found through an online search, we selected Melon. They seemed to have an experienced team, and they offered the best balance between quality of code versus cost.

How much have you invested with them?

We've spent a total of $250,000 on Melon's development services. We started on a time and materials billing structure and then moved to a dedicated team with hours each month. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We started development in January 2016 and finished within a year and a half. Melon delivered the MVP in July 2017, but we had additional requirements. The platform is now fully live.  We’re still making enhancements to fill in missing steps in the process and improve the loading time. We were in beta until January 2018 when we officially launched. 

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

We’ve established a long-term relationship, and Melon is guaranteed to deliver on our projects. We're not aggressively onboarding yet. The few customers we're working with have shown us a few things we should change. 

As of today, we have 2,100 content creators on our site who have connected their social media and signed up. We’ve identified a much more extensive database of 30,000 influencers, but they haven't joined yet. We’re still focused on achieving significant traction.

How did Melon perform from a project management standpoint?

We spent the first 2-3 months getting acquainted. They missed a few deadlines because we'd underestimated the scope. Once we understood each other better, we found an effective system of communicating and gained momentum. Everything became much smoother month by month, and they started delivering. 

We use Trello to define tasks from the commercial side. Their project manager skillfully translated our business needs from plain English to technical tickets on Jira for the developers. Our communication was seamless. The entire team is very well-spoken and understands our needs. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

I most appreciate Melon's human element. We have a healthy business relationship. In the cases I've asked them to go the extra mile with me, they always have. Whether it's an extended credit period or billing negotiations about bugs, we always have transparent and frank conversations. Our open dialogue helped develop credibility on both sides. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

Allocating resources properly would help them improve. Not all the team members have stayed constant, which I would have preferred. Melon eased my concerns about staff turnover by bringing in credible people. They adjusted the billing to account for new teammates' 2-3 week learning curve during onboarding. 

Their web development team is excellent, but their mobile app team caused a two-month delay. We either underestimated the scope or the resource managing the project wasn’t senior enough. Once they noticed this problem, they jumped in, fixed it, and delivered in the end. They even footed the bill for the delay.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Transparency is key. Have well-defined tasks prepared to assign Melon.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am a project manager for a beverage brand that covers 28 markets in Eastern and Central Europe as well as Switzerland, Ireland, Nigeria, and the entire territory of Russia. As a member of the central IT department, my role assists with the company’s business solutions.

What challenge were you trying to address with Melon?

Our company uses a primary technology stack. We needed design support for one of our frontend BI solutions

What was the scope of their involvement? 

We were facing an upgrade of our solution to an ACP-based custom cloud architecture that would bring a new look and feel to reports. Melon created a design to match the context and logo of our brand accordingly. Their lead designer managed the creative work and came up with several proposals for app screens. After brainstorming five themes ranging from traditional to avant-garde, we shortlisted three options and selected the best one.  

One of their developers implemented the design following our strict instructions. He chose a CSS that will be compatible with future releases of the ACP application. Since it’s a proprietary application, he came onsite to work in our office to get a better understanding of the requirements. Remote work wouldn’t have been appropriate in this particular case. He demonstrated a keen understanding of our project and collaborated effectively with our in-house and integrator teams. Accurate communication between all three parties was critical to successful completion. 

What is the team composition? 

Melon assigned an account manager, a senior and associate developer, and a designer to our project. 

How did you come to work with Melon?

We have completed previous projects with Melon, so they’re on our vendor list.  Most were related to Windows-based solutions.  When I was looking for a company that could provide both creative design and development, I knew they would be one of the proposed vendors. I chose them based on their immediate availability. Quick completion was key. Cost-wise, their offer was acceptable for our budget.

How much have you invested in them?

We spent between $10,000–$20,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked on this project together last year from October through November.

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

Melon adjusted the look and feel of our frontend reporting solution. The upgrade we’re implementing is not yet live. We’ve already used the CSS they created, and it appears in every new report. The overall solution isn’t entirely complete yet.

Melon finished the job and conducted the entire process properly. Our customers are pleased with the reports we’ve started to use. The whole process went smoothly, and we achieved our overarching objective.

How did Melon perform from a project management standpoint?

We communicated with the remote part of the team over Skype. When Melon’s developer came to work onsite, I was pleasantly surprised by how well and quickly he adapted to our environment. I expected glitches in the beginning, but he has everything properly installed from day one. He engaged the ideal people to help him complete the job.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I appreciated Melon’s flexibility. They stepped in, were easy to work with, and did the job exactly right. This was an especially useful quality for this project. Their developer seamlessly joined our corporate environment. He worked effectively with a team he met for the first time on a computer we supplied.  Working rapidly, they completed our project within two weeks. Everything was done on time