Monterail

Please describe your company and your position there.

Easyship is an end-to-end logistics platform, built to enable hyper-local to cross-border eCommerce, while removing barriers to entry, like inefficient systems and prohibitive cost's for SME's. As a user-centric product, Easyship has helped to simplify the complex world of logistics for more than 40,000 clients worldwide, making it more accessible for eCommerce SMBs and startups to grow. My role - Product manager: Own part of the Easyship product by defining solutions in line with the product vision and strategy, coordinating with the design and engineering teams, in order to constantly create value for our users.

For what projects/services did your company hire Monterail, and what were your goals?

The key challenges of the project included: Building a mobile application from scratch flawlessly integrated with our web platform and multilingual features. Co-working with our internal backend team while in different time zones, calendars, and holiday schedules. Understand our product, business logic and user flows of the web application, to reflect it in the new app.

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

To select the vendor, we consider how they handle these factors as below: Thorough research to understand the logic and our user flows in the existing product and reflect it in a new one. Paying a lot of attention to animations and UI details: the quality and great UX of the app were very significant. (UX/UI were designed by Easyship). A clear and open communication to defeat the time difference, and detailed reporting to the stakeholder at the management level. Working on the API of the web application, and preparation of receiving data properly.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and technologies used.

After 6 months of work, the mobile app was delivered and ready for beta testing. The result is an app that stands out with great UX and UI quality and animation details. It contains a lot of data, a variety of filters for sorting and searching options for the lists of shipments and pickups. The app has mobile functionalities personalized for the industry’s needs, such as a barcode scanner for easy search of shipment information. Mainly, it uses REACT NATIVE & TYPESCRIPT. With our current backend team, that took care of the UX/UI design, we needed to outsource a team of developers that understands our existing web product and business logic that had been working for a few years, and that could build a mobile app from scratch that would stand out from our competitors, and be based on their API without touching the back-end.

How many resources from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

A project was assigned as the contact point and coordinator of the project, together with 2FE and 1 QA. There is a lead engineer will provide the technical advice from time to time.

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

Within 3 months soft launch (no marketing), we have reached 400 users by organic download. The app is less than 0.05% App crash during session. Also, there is no user complaint about the UXUI and bugs.

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timeliness.

The project management style is totally agile. It had the progress and testing everyday. You will see the result and find anything went wrong early and easily. We were using Slack and Jira to keep the close communication in 2 different timezone (like 6-7 hours).

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

My favorite thing about our collaboration is the app’s consistency. All pages have the same high quality and response. Our beta testing users love the app and they can’t even find bugs in the MVP

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

It would be helpful to provide some estimate of the development time during the product development. It would be easier for us to control the time & budget.

Please describe your company and your position there.

We are a small startup (<10 people) building the MVP of our first application. I am a cofounder and the CEO.

For what projects/services did your company hire Monterail, and what were your goals?

We needed front-end design and development in Vue for the MVP for our SPA. We were not in a position where we wanted to hire a full-time developer and designer, and contracting individuals on our own was more overhead than we wanted for this project.

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

We evaluated the front-end development firms that were listed as contributors to the Vue community and evaluated each of them based on perceived quality of the implementation and willingness to work with a smaller project and budget.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and technologies used.

They designed and developed much of the front-end of our SPA. For large features, we had design workshops, discussed interaction patterns with the team, and then reviewed mockups that would be worked on in the next sprint. The final product is the high-fidelity MVP of our product.

How many people from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

We worked with a project manager, a designer, a developer, and a tester primarily. Additionally, Monterail added an Account Manager later and we started with a sales engineer. Finally, another engineer at Monterail would act as a reviewer on the code developed by the front-end engineer we worked directly with.

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

We were impressed with the quality of the deliverables. The designs were excellent, captured our goals in unique ways, and kept accessibility at their forefront, including for mobile devices. The code quality is high, well-organized, and was easy to follow and understand.

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timeliness.

Monterail assigned a dedicated project manager to the project that kept up context in Jira. We primarily provided our design goals and descriptions in Confluence, and then the Monterail team would develop the list of tickets that would be worked on in the next sprint. As a group, we did estimation just before the sprint, and then daily standups on blockers. We were extremely pleased with the level of effort from Monterail's project manager and the care and attention to detail she put into communicating project status with us. We communicated some over Slack, but we were offset by almost 9 hours so most communication that wasn't in direct meetings was asynchronous.

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

We worked directly with the team - they were an extension of our own team and their commitment to the quality of the product and helping us focus on a good MVP rather than all the features we could throw at them was extremely valuable for figuring out our priorities.

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

While there was a price change due to a well-deserved promotion of one of the team members we worked with, towards the end of our time on the project there was a 20% across-the-board price increase that was communicated to us as a company-wide increase. We were informed that it would change the next month. We also had a shift towards more iterative development rather than concrete feature development and our team struggled with the rapid schedule changes and priority adjustments.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the head of research and insights for a virtual addiction recovery program, and we were created to focus on the stimulant addiction problem because of the lack of solutions in that space. We’re collaborating with some of the top researchers in addiction and using some of the latest techniques such as contingency management — the act of paying our members to stay abstinent and sober as well as other things they need to do to recover.

Part of contingency management is a central app where our members can interact. The app also enables our members to manage all of their appointments and activities so that they can do what they need to do in order to receive their payment and incentives. I’m in charge of managing the app, including the content that goes in there. Within the app, there’s a huge curriculum that has a bunch of tasks that we ask our members to do as part of their recovery, which is geared towards helping them build habits and increase their recovery knowledge.

What challenge were you trying to address with Monterail?

We engaged Monterail to help us build a custom app to deliver a better experience to our members. Prior to that, we were using an existing app that we bought and customized a little. However, we realized that we needed to create our own experience and systems.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Monterail’s main goal was to build an iOS and Android native app, and their work involved integrating some of the existing code that we had. The team started with the design phase, and we partnered with their designer to outline our app’s key features.

Essentially, we spent a month doing design iterations before we brought in their engineering team. They created an admin interface that we used to configure content and implemented tracking information. Our members could also access their appointments, receive their incentive, and more. They used tools such as Mixpanel to report on things that we cared about, too.

With their support, we were able to do testing a couple of weeks ago just before we launched our app. The team continues to provide us with maintenance and is helping us add and design new features on our app. Moreover, they fix any bugs or other technical issues that come up, and they help us increase the velocity of our team, considering that we’re still ramping up our internal engineering team.

What is the team composition?

I’ve worked with quite a number of people, including Joanna (Project Manager) and Robert (Senior QA Engineer). We also collaborate with their designer, lead engineer, and another project manager.

How did you come to work with Monterail?

Choosing to work with an offshore engineering team was a risk, and we anticipated that communication might be really difficult. On top of that, pricing could dramatically increase at any time even if our chosen vendor would fail to deliver what was expected from them.

As a result, since our CTO had worked with Monterail before at a different company, we knew that they were responsive and responsible. We did evaluate a couple of other vendors during the process, but Monterail’s price point was reasonable and we already had proof of how they worked.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent $250,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our ongoing partnership began in May 2021.

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

They’ve been able to help us launch our app on the date that we were shooting for. During our user testing, we’ve gotten very positive feedback on our app’s design. To be specific, people say that our app has a clean and intuitive design and offers a relatively smooth experience.

On the technical side, Monterail has been able to swiftly resolve bugs — usually within 1–2 days after the bugs are identified. More importantly, they try hard to catch technical issues ahead of time. Overall, we’re satisfied with their work.

How did Monterail perform from a project management standpoint?

We hit a regular cadence of about two meetings a week, but it took us a little time to warm up to each other. Now, we’re frequently chatting over Slack, and we’ve reduced the number of our live meetings to once a week. Project management-wise, my only issue is Jira because it’s a bit hard to follow all of the work there because there's so much of it. Sometimes, I get lost when trying to track something. 

Despite that, Joanna and the other project manager have been extremely helpful and responsive when it comes to leading me to where things are — they effectively manage all of our releases, sprints, and more. We’ve also started to lean into Confluence, which has been a huge win and a much better form of documentation than what we’ve used in the past. Above all, even though we’re working in different time zones, we know how to make things work.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their speed has been impressive — Monterail has completed our app within three and a half months. More importantly, they’ve been able to integrate many features and content during that time. Overall, I really appreciate how quickly they move because they allow us to save time.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Our communication style could’ve evolved sooner. We’ve improved in that area and I have full faith that we’ll continue to improve so it’s not really a concern right now — it just took us a long time to figure out each other’s preferences.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Document everything — the more you document at every step of the process, the more you ensure that things don’t get lost in the way.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the co-founder and co-CEO of a software technology company. We are the developers of the global, hyperlocal social networking app.

For what projects/services did your company hire Monterail, and what were your goals?

We engaged Monterail to partner with us to develop a minimum viable product of our app for global release. Our goals were to develop a stable and scalable version of the app to test and refine as part of a global beta release process. We are continuing to work with Monterail as we move towards a global release of the product in a couple of weeks.

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

We selected Monterail as part of structured and deliberate interview process with a series of competitive prospective partners. The Monterail team and proposal beat out the other competitive options on two vectors: plan specificity and tailoring (demonstration of care/commitment) and price (demonstration of flexibility and long-term view of relationship).

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and technologies used.

I'm not comfortable sharing this information.

How many resources from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

I'm not comfortable sharing this information.

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

Within 4 months of launching the earliest version of the app we have grown the user base to nearly 40,000 users and achieved market-leading retention rates in some of key geographic target markets.

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timeliness.

The Monterail project management style is predictable, measured and clear. Our project manager places a keen priority on clear and efficient information via Slack and email. They are generally quite responsive during business hours and willing to be flexible to accommodate our time zone differences.

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

We have been rather impressed with Monterail's ability to anticipate our team and project needs as we have scaled over the course of our engagement. Our project manager was swift and proactive in working with us to continually augment our team to achieve our sometimes shifting and goal sets and requests for acceleration in execution under uncertainty. It has been a pleasure to work with such a steady, supportive and flexible development partner.

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

We are a company in a rush, so we are always requesting faster execution from our partners at Monterail. They generally operate very efficiently and quickly, but we would, of course, be pleased with even speedier execution.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the CEO and Co-Founder of a startup in the hospitality space, we digitize their procurement and inventory management with easy to use software that is leveraging the data from existing systems on site.

For what projects/services did your company hire Monterail, and what were your goals?

We hired Monterail right from the start after founding the company to create an MVP and then build the product with us for market readiness,

How did you select Monterail and what were the deciding factors?

We reviewed a couple software partners that included design, backend and frontend development under one roof. While the costs were similar, the business analysis team at Monterail identified highly relevant topics and issues and seemed to be clear where we wanted to head with the product. In the end it was this understanding that led me to decide for them..

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and technologies used.

• Technologies used: Python with Django, Javascript with React.js, Redux, Typescript
• Project steps: Kick-off, framing of the scope
• MVP: Web App with interface to one supplier's price catalogue, to show products, create orders and conduct rudimentary inventory management
• Ongoing: Development together with our growing inhouse developer team for the entire product to be ready to market.

That includes various features in Backend (Interfaces to integration software, ElasticSearch) and Frontend (Many more screens, barcode scanning, ... )

How many people from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

• 1 Project Manager
• 2 Backend developers
• 4 Frontend Developers
• 1 Designer (on demand)
• 1 QA Analyst
• 1 Key Account Manager

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

Very efficient goal-oriented development to get something out that is usable. We did not always meet communicated deadlines, but customers at our market launch have been happy. High-quality standards were held up thoroughly by their very capable QA developers.

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timelines.

Daily standups for the entire team with the project manager, at a later stage this included our own internal developers without problems. For communication the main channel is slack, for all tasks its Jira.

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

The drive to get things done for us, in meetings that include Monterail and our developers it feels like this is just one homogenous team. Personally, as a startup in hospitality we faced hard times during the Corona crisis and Monterail was very accomodating.

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

The only things coming to mind is progress reporting that could be done regularly (e.g. make it a company-wide standard to let the client know each sprint exactly what happened) and the foresight to ensure meeting deadlines.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CTO of a three-person startup. We’re a dating service.

What challenge were you trying to address with Monterail?

We needed an MVP built out. We had a high-fidelity wireframe of our MVP that included all of the typical app features.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Monterail built out the frontend of our responsive web app’s MVP, which had mobile screens as well. 

We developed the backend ourselves, although Monterail helped a little bit with that. They used React on the frontend, and we used Rails on the backend.

What is the team composition?

We mostly worked with a project manager and an engineer, and then we worked with a third person in the last couple of weeks.

How did you come to work with Monterail?

I believe I actually found them through Clutch.

How much have you invested with them?

The total was roughly $30,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from November 2020–January 2021.

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

Monterail was very thorough. They wrote clean and usable code. The team provided a very holistic service — they helped think about the business in terms of different features, and we had a good back-and-forth.

How did Monterail perform from a project management standpoint?

We didn’t have strict deadlines, but they generally came in early on all of the deadlines that we did have. We finished the project a couple of weeks before we thought we would.

We used Jira for project management and Slack for communication. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

They were very professional, and their project management was well-done.

Are there any areas they could improve?

We’ve gotten more competitive quotes from other places.

Any advice for potential customers?

Have your wireframes and business requirements really fleshed out beforehand.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the managing director of a compliance management company. 

What challenge were you trying to address with Monterail?

We were using an outdated system. We needed to modernize our web app and create mobile apps.

What was the scope of their involvement?
Monterail built a mobile app for incident reporting. The platform allows people to report an accident at a company site or an environment incident from their mobile devices. Those reports go into our internal system.

Recently, they built a progressive web app for conducting audits and safety inspections. Their team used Angular for frontend development. They built a progressive app, meaning it can be used from mobile devices too.

Users can plan and schedule their audits through the platform. Using their mobile devices, users can conduct inspections. Users can take pictures, generate reports, and look at dashboards.

The overall modernization of our system is an ongoing project. They work on smaller, focused projects as needed.

What is the team composition?

We started the project with two backend developers and a frontend developer. Now, we work with two frontend developers, a project manager, a part-time QA teammate, and a part-time UX designer.

How did you come to work with Monterail?

I conducted Google searches for development agencies. We spoke with 15–20 different agencies on the phone. Before hiring Monterail, we visited their office. We eventually decided they were the best fit for us.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent roughly €750,000 (approximately $824,000 USD) on the project. We spend about €250,000 (approximately $275,000) per year on their services.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in December 2017, and it’s an ongoing partnership.

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

When we had new products, we had to train clients to use them because they were complex. Monterail developed products that are self-explanatory and don’t require training. Feedback from our users has been positive. They like the platforms' performances and ease of use. Users also like the look and feel of the apps.

How did Monterail perform from a project management standpoint?

We use JIRA, Slack, and Google Drive for documentation. Their communication and project management are transparent and straightforward. They always meet timelines. We’re satisfied with their project management style.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Monterail has all the necessary resources in-house. Their team can easily scale up or down as needed. They aren’t too big, so their CEO is available whenever you need to talk.

Are there any areas they could improve?

We had issues regarding the estimated timeline during the project. However, they quickly resolved them with a dedicated account manager who sets clear timelines for their team.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

It’s helpful to visit their office and see the quality they provide.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am principal consultant for Brodick Consulting, which was formed in 2016 with focus on the UK water and energy utilities markets. Primarily a specialist data consultant for those markets, we also look to provide toolsets, especially for the smaller companies for whom some enterprise-scale solutions may be too large.

For what projects/services did your company hire Monterail?

Monterail was hired to help turn a broad vision into a tangible prototype that could help communicate our concept to potential customers.

What were your goals for this project?

The project had three goals:(i) translate the vision into a demonstrable prototype, (ii) establish the framework for developing fuller capabilities beyond the initial focus and (iii) inform the likely costs and timescales to move a full product.

How did you select this vendor?

I engaged Monterail after a tender process, having shortlisted six companies that appeared to suit the needs of our project (from general research and through appraisal sites, such as Clutch).

Monterail demonstrated that they understood the challenge, gave a clear vision for how the project would be delivered, while also recognising that there were areas of uncertainty and opportunities to enhance what was proposed. This last aspect was key: we wanted a partner that would use their experience to build on the specification but not to be limited by any inherent biases or blindspots within.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

The project began with a two-day discovery workshop at the Monterail offices, which gave us a chance to all meet, build the relationships and develop a deep understanding of the project requirements. Monterail set up the team working side of things and developed mock ups of what the solution would look like.

Iteratively, we stepped through the evolution of the mockups, which focused on the core outputs of the tool (the key data viz capabilities) as well as the non-functional aspects needed to maintain the data. I had a regular catch up conversation with the Monterail project manager, as well as joining some of the team's daily sprints as needed to resolve any specific questions.

The final output from the project was an interactive prototype that has been used to socialise our vision with customers, generating a lot of interest itself and raising our credibility as a consulting service.

What was the team composition?

The core Monterail team was four people, with specific input from the wider team as required. We had a dedicated project manager, with specialists also looking at the technical requirements, the user experience design and the data visualisation outputs. Szymon - the co-CEO of Monterail - would also check in with me from time to time to ensure that I was satisfied with how things were progressing.

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

The demo has helped with establishing credibility and has directly resulted in two projects, albeit not directly related to the demo itself. The project has also helped us to better understand potential client appetite, readiness and priorities (the market is a young one, with non-household water becoming competitive in England fro April 2017). There is clear interest in adopting the fuller version and we still aim to revisit and build on from what was delivered.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

The project management was very straight forward and effective: there was a clear single point of contact for any questions and the costs/timescales were clearly communicated at each step of the process.

The project manager made it clear when the team needed something specific from me and even things like having a specific Slack channel for where my input was needed by the group meant that my time was optimised, which was useful for both sides. I had access to Jira and other documentation as needed throughout the process.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Even during the tender process, I felt that Monterail was prepared to suggest alternative ways of approaching something, whether in improving a specific visualisation or from other technical aspects of the solution. This continued through the project: the final output was different to the initial specification - and all the better for that.

The whole team was very engaging and very easy to work with. And each team member demonstrated a lot of expertise in their area and a very strong understanding of the project and its aims. Visiting the office and seeing the energy and enthusiasm across the whole company really helped confirm that we'd made the right hiring choice.

Are there any areas for improvement?

Not particularly - I found the experience very positive and would have built further on the work had the market conditions supported it (and may yet still). We pivoted from building the first module of a full product into a demo option but the Monterail team adapted to that with great professionalism.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO of Afriwise, a legal tech startup. We provide online legal tools, solutions, and information for companies active in Africa.

What challenge were you trying to address with Monterail?

We needed someone to develop an online cloud-based platform that would allow us to build our own data in a flexible way and to easily input and update legal information. We also wanted it to be a social community base for legal experts in Africa.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Before we started working together, we held workshops on Python, Django, STX Next, Ruby on Rails, Transition, and PHP. We wanted the platform to include all the project features we required and didn’t want any giving in on that. We did the written scope of about 60 pages and part of their assignment was to do the UI/UX and the wireframing.

Then they developed our platform. Since then, they’ve been doing maintenance and developing new tools and features. We’ve built in APIs and a lot of stuff that wasn’t part of the original scope. Since COVID-19 struck, they’ve been doing pure maintenance.

What is the team composition?

There was a project manager, a senior backend developer, junior backend developer, a senior frontend developer, and one QA. For the first six months, we had a business analyst.

How did you come to work with Monterail?

We did a lot of research, using Clutch as well, to find an external development partner. We had a fixed scope and presented it to a few developers for workshops and proposals. We also spoke to a lot of the clients of each firm.

Eventually we shortlisted three development firms and ended up choosing Monterail after a quite lengthy assessment. The criteria we looked at was time, cost, product, and process. We needed the platform to be commercially viable by June 2018.

The platform development process needed to be efficient and consume minimal of our management time. We didn’t have internal project managers or business analysts and wanted a team who could do the whole legal setup and development without a lot of interaction with us.

We needed someone who could think with us in terms of building a scalable platform. Monterail had a very good reputation with their existing clients. They had done some similar projects as ours. We found an excellent team fit and approach with them during the workshops. They gave us quite an accurate cost.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent €400,000 (approximately $433,000 USD).

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in June 2018 and is ongoing.

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

The MVP was ready in June as we had requested and within budget. In September 2018, we launched the official product out to the market. We’re extremely impressed by their development capabilities. They developed everything we wanted. They’ve reached all the KPIs. They’ve been great in terms of backup and maintenance. They think with us. They’re always within budget. We’re happy with them as a partner.

The UI/UX is great. We get a lot of feedback that the site is extremely user friendly. It’s not an easy thing to do because it’s legal tech. People that use our platform are lawyers and aren’t tech savvy at all. We were a bit worried about that. Monterail did extremely well with the UI/UX.

We were afraid that any change we would make afterwards would cost us an arm and a leg, but they were reasonable.

How did Monterail perform from a project management standpoint?

Project management and business analysis, they were spot on and did extremely well. We got weekly reporting. They use Slack and Jira.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’re down to earth. They’re very pragmatic. They think with us. We didn’t have to spend months on a whiteboard with the developers. They were able to quickly start developing and visualize things for us within two months.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They’re a bit weaker on design compared to some of the other development firms. We didn’t use a separate design team. At a certain time, we had to bring in a separate designer to help them a bit. Things could be a bit better with design, but we knew they were a development firm.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Work with the right people. We were lucky to have the most senior team on board.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am one of the co-founders of an online marketplace for hospitality and VIP packages for sporting, music, and culture events. We are primarily a B2C platform, but we also offer a B2B piece of software that we can provide to our partners so that they can upload their inventory of VIP tickets and packages onto the platform.

What challenge were you trying to address with Monterail?

We are a startup, so our goal was to create this online marketplace from scratch. We worked with their team to build all of the necessary functionalities and features from scratch into a cohesive software for us to offer to our customers.

What was the scope of their involvement?

The project started with us going out to their offices in Poland and holding a three-day workshop where we dug deeply into our goals and the challenges that we would have to overcome in order to get there. They came back with a proposal, and we hit the ground running from there.

We worked with their team in weekly sprints, prioritizing the biggest challenges first so that we could get a basic MVP up and running as quickly as possible so that we could start building a brand identity and awareness around that.

Then we continued the development on top of that, adding the sales aspects and the more fine-tuned functionalities. We worked in Ruby on Rails for the backend and something called Elixir that we added into the framework to help manage high volume traffic during sales, as well as React for the frontend.

What is the team composition?

The composition of their team has changed over the time that we’ve been working with them, but at the highest, it was around 8–9 individuals and at the lowest was more like 6. We have a project manager and developers specializing in back- and frontend as well as QA and design.

How did you come to work with Monterail?

They were recommended to us by one of our connections within the industry, and we approached them with our business proposition and objectives. As soon as we met them, we were blown away by the impression they gave in terms of their competence, talent, and professionalism, so we knew we wanted to move forward with them.

How much have you invested with them?

In total, we’ve spent around $300,000 on the project.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in July 2018 and are still ongoing with them now.

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

Initially, the bounce rate from our website and traffic was around 89% and we’ve managed to lower that to 29%, which is really significant. Our conversion has tripled in that same amount of time, and our traffic has grown to nearly 20,000 users per month.

Overall, we’ve made a massive amount of improvement with them and are making progress towards building trust and client relationships through the platform. We’ve started to sign up a lot of partners using the B2B software and people seem really interested, which is exciting for us to see.

How did Monterail perform from a project management standpoint?

They’ve done a great job of managing their work with us. Even through a change in project managers, both individuals did a great job and handled the transition very well. They keep me up to date as much as they can and lay out very organized plans ahead of time so that I always know what the next steps of the project will be.

Monterail’s team is very good at providing opinions and suggestions, as well as staying within schedules and budgets without us needing to ask for any of that from them. They really operate as part of our internal team. We communicate through Slack, for the most part, which really helps to keep the two teams connected.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The sheer talent that they possess is incredible. They are determined, passionate, and unbelievably committed to your success as a company. You couldn’t even compare them to the other options we considered for the project because they have been so astronomically ahead of everyone else in terms of the quality of their work and the value they are providing for our money.

Are there any areas they could improve?

If I had to think of something, there were a couple of really rare moments where we had small miscommunications, but that was honestly the closest we’ve come to a problem throughout the entire thing.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Be absolutely open and honest with them about what you want to achieve, and then be ready to listen to their advice as well, because the collaboration with them is what’s going to produce the best results.