Morrow

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the SVP Product Development of a HealthTech Company

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

We publish applications for pharmacy price and benefits transparency and prescription drug savings.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Morrow to accomplish?

• Address bugs tied to an Expo update
• Refactor and update dependencies
• Ready the application for the next Expo update

SOLUTION

How did you find Morrow?

Online Search

Why did you select Morrow over others?

Result of comparison of several vendors

How many teammates from Morrow were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

The first part of the project included troubleshooting and fixing an issue that developed when we upgraded to Expo 48. The issue was intermittent (but very common) failure to install OTAs on Apple devices. The key deliverable was updates that would fix this issue and allow the consistent installation of OTAs. The second part of the project, was to upgrade to Expo 49, and to update or refactor dependencies based on compatibility with the update and best practices. The deliverable was update to the app that ran smoothly using Expo 49.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

• First part of the project: Expo 48 based application build that correctly installed OTA on Apple Devices. 
• Part 2: Updated and functional app in Expo 49.

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

Their primary developer on our project was backed up and overseen by a senior developer, who also served as project manager. Oliver, the owner, also remained involved on a regular basis. 

The Morrow team provided us a Slack channel and was very interactive with our developers. Additionally, the Morrow team members brought a level of Expo-specific expertise, experience, and tools the to the table that we could not have matched with our regular staff. All project deliverables were on time and within budget.

What was your primary form of communication with Morrow?

Email or Messaging App

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

The team was spread internationally but worked and backed each other up very successfully. The level of experience and expertise of the team members was also impressive and at a level that would be nearly impossible to find or hire for locally. We were also impressed with the pace of the work, the reporting of hour/days, and overall project efficiency.

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

The engagement really couldn't have been more successful.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Head of Tech of (a/an) Software

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

We democratize access, knowledge and discovery to all of the latest sneaker drops and information - amongst other things

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Morrow to accomplish?

• Continue to ship features on our mobile app
• Stabilize our tech stack
• Provide ongoing technical expertise

SOLUTION

How did you find Morrow?

• Online Search
• Other

Why did you select Morrow over others?

• High ratings
• Pricing first our budget
• Good value for cost

What was the size of Morrow’s team?

2-5 Employees

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

We needed React Native expertise to assist on the backend and with maintenance and stability. Specifically with building a custom push notification system and upgrading some of our fragmented microservice architecture. Morrow helped us rapidly scale and set us up for future success.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

• Fewer bugs
• Increase in feature output
• Reduction in operating costs

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

Overall, Morrow is pretty timely. Sometimes we struggled to meet perhaps progressive deadlines and frequently underestimated how long things would take as well as some of the potential downsides of our solutions.

What was your primary form of communication with Morrow?

Virtual Meeting

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

They helped secure us a full stack developer when one of their employees left in an extremely timely manner. He was able to get up to speed super quickly.

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

Emphasis on testing and frequent communication / updates in Slack would be appreciated!

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Our company is a consumer internet company in the intersection of social media and web3. I am the Co-Founder and CTO.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

We hired the Morrow to work on a project where we had a big migration of our stack in order to build in a more scalable, sustainable way.

SOLUTION

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

We searched online for agencies related to expo.dev in some way, shape, or form.

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

The scope of work was to assist in a technical migration of our stack, refactor core components of our app, help set up best practices with our CI/CD, and implement a redesign of the product in the process. We migrated our backend to be hosted on Supabase, and migrated our app to be managed by Expo.

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

The CTO and a project manager worked most closely with us, alongside 2-4 developers, depending on the phase of the project.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

After launching the new version of our product, our users were very happy with the new experience.

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

We had daily stand-ups with their project manager and developers, a shared Slack channel, and tracked project management via ClickUp.

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

The CTO had very useful contacts in the industry, and served to be a very useful resource throughout the project.

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

Using their project management flow through ClickUp eventually proved to be a source of friction for us. Integrating with how we track issues and manage projects would have made workflows a bit smoother.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the CTO and designer

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

We wanted to make major updates to our existing React Native application. Our end goal was to deliver a real-time experience to users via our mobile app. That involved adding a new subscription tier and launching in a tight timeframe of 2 months.

SOLUTION

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

After interviewing with Morrow, it was clear they deeply valued best practices and would upgrade our existing codebase while also developing features using cutting edge technologies.

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

We had some initial meetings to set up our project for development, which involved laying out the tasks to do in an app called Clickup. Those tasks included adding a real time feed, push notifications, and a new subscription tier to our React Native mobile application.

The team was able to create a real-time feed using Supabase. Because of their decision to go with that product, we wrote less code and were able to get off the ground faster. For our push notifications we they serverless functions to Netlify which interacted with the Expo hosted notification service.

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

We worked with a project manager, a tech lead, and a developer.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Within a month of launch we saw a reduction in bugs, a decrease in app launch times, and a significantly faster release cadence because we could reliably push over-the-air updates. Additionally, a third of our user-base upgraded to the higher subscription tier of our product.

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

The team was highly communicative in Slack and were flexible with their approach to updates. We relied primarily on Slack for async communication, established a weekly meeting with all teammates, and they included me on their brief daily standup.

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

I like how Morrow is up to date on many of the latest and greatest technologies and is an advocate for reducing technical debt and following best practices for both React Native development and Expo.

We also found that they were willing to jump in during a snafu we had on launch of our product to quickly help us recover and address the problem, despite being on different time zones and working very late.

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

We saw some hiccups around the holidays and after where output dropped off without any communication. That's been addressed.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I’m Chief Technology Officer at Kura. We’re a transport technology company that combines leading-edge tech with reliable coach and bus operators across the UK. As CTO, my role is to lead our technical strategy and ensure our product suite is delivering key benefits to the schools and businesses that we serve.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

We had working prototypes for our driver and observer apps but they needed to be fully re-worked to improve usability and make them technically robust. As such, we used several services including UX consultation, UX design, code refactoring, new feature development and bug fixing.

SOLUTION

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

We had previously worked with the founders (Tom & Charles) so knew they had the depth of expertise required to make the project work. Tom took me through a detailed discovery phase where we outlined scope, budget and timelines. The plan was assured and the promised results were compelling so we went for it.

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

The key deliverables were to re-design two existing apps and design a third app from scratch. Additionally, to fully build all three apps to match the new designs and re-architect the apps to improve reliability and performance. There was some extra featured to be added in such as new booking logic and payments integration. All three apps were built in React Native and Expo using TypeScript and Mobx.

The project was broken down into a number of phases with design and technical refactoring at the beginning and UI implementation and new features at the end. We worked in collaborative partnership with App Sapiens producing best practice recommendations and guiding us through any important decision making.

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

We worked with Tom as our account manager and Charles as technical consultant. Then with a senior developer, a project manager, a UX designer and a couple of other developers.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The apps were launched two weeks ago and initial feedback is excellent - users are really loving the improvements. The apps are faster, much easier to use and more enjoyable to engage with. We’re also seeing a reduction in support tickets as users are less confused. On the business side, we’re now confident that the apps will support our revenue goals and our investors are reassured by the progress App Sapiens have made.

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

App Sapiens work in a very organised and automated manner. They use fully integrated ClickUp, GitHub and Slack so it was easy to know what status work was in. We didn’t have any face to face meetings, but we regularly jumped on video and screen-sharing calls. The great thing was that App Sapiens had three work-streams running at once during the middle section of the project.

That meant that UX design, design implementation and technical refactoring were occurring simultaneously without us needing to worry at all about coordinating resources. That left our product team to focus fully on the strategic side of our offering.

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

It was hard to not be impressed by the team's deep technical expertise. I’ve worked with dozens of engineers over my career but no one knows this space as deeply as they do.

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

It would have been nice to have a face-to-face meeting but was tricky to arrange due to Covid restrictions.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

At Reluv, we host Charities in an online marketplace, allowing them to sell great quality charity shop clothing, all across the UK. We offer behind the scenes support to the charities to guide them into a digital age and project their reach beyond the physical store space. I am The Founder and Director of RELUV HQ.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

When we approached APP Sapiens we were looking for their help with the development of our Web App. Our team at RELUV had already designed the applicaiton and how we wanted it to look and feel for the customers and charities. The PWA is slick, modern and has two interfaces so that the charities and customers have different portals within the app. This ensures that each side of the software is tailored in the right direction for that user.

SOLUTION

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

We searched online for local developers. After shortlisting the candidates and interviewing several of them, we decided to go with our gut instinct choosing APP Sapiens, down to their nature, development skills and cost estimate.

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

In order to be successful online, clothing must be on-trend, inclusive, accessible and most importantly fun. As a base, the PWA uses Swell.is Our payment system is linked with Stripe Payments. Our main deliverables included. A fully built login and reception, home page, filterable shop, direct messaging function, pinning(saving for later) upload photographs. Etc.

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

4-8 members Developers. Project Manager. Tech Support.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Since the Application has been completed. 5 Charities are successfully onboarded and ready to upload products. With launch on the horizon, we are just excited to get everything going properly.

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

I found that App Sapiens are incredibly flexible to work with, considering that all businesses have different hours and requirements- they really adapt their team in order to fit around their clients. Using software such as slack and clickup for our timeline and communications, allowed the entirety of each team to access the project even at an entrepreneur's awkward hours.

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

Their commitment to the whole project has blown me away. It is excellent to feel that App Sapiens are as passionate about the morals and practices behind our business, as we are.

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

None.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the head of broadcast engineering at Studio 1, a TV production company based in London who are currently producing and broadcasting a new daily entertainment news show to audiences across America.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

The studio began work on LIT, their entertainment news broadcast right around the start of the pandemic. This raised some interesting challenges with producing a television program as many of the staff were forced to work remotely from home. In particular the teleprompt operator was required to be remote and we needed a solution that allowed the writers, who live in London and New York, to be able submit scripts through the control room in London which were then displayed on teleprompt screens at our news presenters homes in Philadelphia, Michigan and LA.

SOLUTION

How did you select App Sapiens and what were the deciding factors?

I already knew Charles and Tom so they were my first call after we'd searched for existing solutions on the market and decided that it was going to be more valuable to the production to invest in a custom, tailored system to suit out needs. After reaching out professionally and talking through the requirements and some potential solution ideas, App Sapiens agreed to take the project on.

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

We already had somewhat of a system in place but we had outgrown it's capabilities too quickly. It was important to us that the user interface remained roughly the same even though the inner workings and backend were to be completely different. This meant minimal downtime on staff training and our operators would be able to seamlessly switch to the new system. We delivered to App Sapiens a copy of the data structure to be used and from this they began work to build a custom backend that would be able to take data in in real-time and present it to the users.

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

We worked with a project manager, senior developer and React Native developer on the solution.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Outcome wise, the project has been a resounding success. The system App Sapiens developed for us mimics the old user experience from the operators point of view while ticking the essential box of allowing our production team to remotely submit scripts and have them instantaneously available for use in the broadcast.

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

Project management was fantastic, ourselves and the App Sapiens team communicated primarily through Slack, which our company already uses day to day for communications so it was easy to keep track on the project.

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

We were impressed with the team's friendliness and helpfulness throughout the phase of the project.

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

Not at all really. We're very happy with all outcomes.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am Head of Marketing at Celestion. A Loudspeaker company with about 40 employees in the UK and many more in our factory in China. We are UK based but have production in both the UK and China. We manufacture loudspeaker drivers that are sold through distribution channels and B2B to OEM customers.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire App Sapiens?

To design a WPA that would provide a limited portal into our internal advanced acoustic horn design software. The App was intended as a tool to initiate dialogue between ourselves and potential OEM customers.

What were your goals for this project?

We wished to use the horn App to fish for and reel in potential customers. Once they’ve seen our expertise in action, hopefully, they would want to know more and come and engage with us more fully about horn design and drive unit (product) choice.

SOLUTION

How did you select App Sapiens?

We searched for and contacted approx 12 companies. Through Clutch and in markets such as India where we understood Apps could be produced relatively inexpensively. It was clear from our first conversations that App Sapiens were keen to work with us, without being pushy and that their responses indicated that they had properly listened to, digested, and understood our requirements.

Describe the project in detail.

The project involved providing a way to communicate parameters provided by our customers, from the App into our internal software. The resultant horn designs and calculated performance then had to be returned to the App and displayed. Both input and output required communication management of the data and intuitive GUI designs.

What was the team composition?

Tom was our first contact. This then expanded into a team of 3 at App Sapiens talking with me as the project manager, alongside one of our engineering teams.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

So far we have only released Beta copies but have already achieved the desired objective with a couple of our customers. Typical Beta responses have been "Overall, it looks to be very useful" "Gotta say, it’s a lovely piece of work" "The app is very cool. I like the 3d rotate & zoom"

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Super efficient, smooth, quick, and painless. From Slack through Zoom to telephone calls.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

They genuinely listened to what we said and came back with appropriate sensible solutions.

Are there any areas for improvement?

No. If anything it was usually us holding them up.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I’m the engineering manager at NOCD. We are a funded startup that helps thousands of people break free from their OCD. Our clinicians support patients directly through our apps. My job is to make sure the technical output of our services is excellent.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire App Sapiens?

We needed an internal app for our clinicians to use. The app would initially allow clinicians to chat with patients with the intention of providing more clinician support features at a later date. I had evaluated our technology options and wanted to use React Native.

Our internal team was very busy with the main app and lacked React Native expertise, so we decided to outsource to App Sapiens.

What were your goals for this project?

Our clinicians were frustrated by the existing web based solution, which wasn’t mobile friendly. The goal was to create something smoother for them. Chat is one of the main ways that clinicians support their patients so we really needed to create a frictionless user experience.

We also wanted a solid platform and codebase from which to build on. As such, we wanted React Native best practices and clean code from the beginning. In the future, we want to have a web version of the app available using Expo for Web.

SOLUTION

How did you select App Sapiens?

As I knew this project would involve Expo, I checked the Expo website to see which companies were listed as Trusted Consultants. App Sapiens was on the list, so I reached out and we setup a call.

Initially I had a 30 minute call with their CEO, Tom Riglar. Tom spent most of the call understanding our business and requirements for the app. He went away and wrote a proposal to address those needs and invited me to collaborate so I was able to tweak things over the following week.

Ultimately we chose App Sapiens because they were responsive to our needs and didn’t try and oversell. They let us work directly with the developers in a streamlined way.

Describe the project in detail.

Once we decided to work with App Sapiens, we had an initial 90 minute call. During this time, I showed Charles (App Sapiens’ CTO) exactly how our API systems work and how he should integrate with them. I gave them a document outlining technical requirements and then left them to it. I’m very busy with other parts of the business, so the fact that I didn’t need to handhold was really helpful.

Six days later we had our first weekly call. Charles has already coded the base of the app and was able to demonstrate basic working functionality. We then had a call every week where Charles would show progress and we’d address any blockers or unknowns.

The app was completed in 4 weeks as agreed with some extra features we didn’t originally account for. Tom and Charles have deep knowledge of the React Native ecosystem, so were able to guide us past the common pitfalls.

What was the team composition?

Initially we spoke with Tom, the CEO. During development we mostly dealt with Charles, the CTO, who carried out the majority of the development.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The app is now in the hands of the clinicians and the feedback has been great! The user experience is clean and sleek. It’s really allowed our clinicians to focus on doing what they do best: supporting our patients. The app was delivered within timescale, with extra features and under budget!

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

In our first call, I told Tom that I wanted a hands off approach and they honoured this during development. I was presented with blockers immediately and shown progress in weekly calls.

This minimised the time I needed to spend on the project exactly as hoped. The created a dedicated Slack group for us to use and was always really responsive. I never had to manage them.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

They didn’t try and over complicate or oversell. There was always clarity about what was happening, so I could trust them to get on with it.

Are there any areas for improvement?

They didn’t have experience with Apple Business Manager so we had to work through that together. But even in that case they were able to propose alternative solutions so we found a way forward.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the senior developer for Ownable.uk. We provide a bridge between printed media and e-commerce, allowing users to easily locate and purchase products that they see featured in newspapers and magazines.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire App Sapiens?

We hired App Sapiens to support our React Native app through a key product development phase. This includes improving the developer experience, providing platform stability, bug reduction and developing new features.

What were your goals for this project?

The app is our primary customer-facing interface so it has to be rock solid. The initial requirement was to support the app during a fast growth phase, and from there we wanted to stabilise the platform and future proof the code base. As the project rolls on we are increasingly looking to expand the feature set and improve the data science across the whole product suite.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

We had worked with Tom in the past, so knew he had a proven track record with React Native apps. He introduced us to Charles who had some ideas about how to achieve longer term stability in the app. We had a face to face meeting with them where we discussed various ideas for improving the app. They were upfront about the challenges and solutions and willing to be flexible to fit with our timelines and budget. After that meeting, it immediately made sense to select them as a long term partner to support the app.

Describe the project in detail.

The core functionality is shopping for items discovered in printed media, for example a beautiful lamp or a luxury rug. Once the user is inspired by an item, they can buy it directly from the app. We've created a premium design for the app which requires quality implementation in order to create a top end look and feel for the user. There are also several integration challenges, including HTML rendered descriptions, Firebase analytics, interactive animations and videos. A lot of the recent work App Sapiens has been focused on has been behind the scenes. For example they've been reducing build times, which minimises our costs and enables us to respond quickly to new feature requests, and they've also been modernising and future-proofing the app to make it easier to expand the feature set and onboard new developers.

What was the team composition?

Tom is our main point of contact and deals with most of the tasks. Charles is on hand for specialist Expo and UX advice. Between the two of them they've been able to deal with any query that we've raised.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The most significant success has been the migration to Expo. App Sapiens are officially partnered with Expo and so were able to handle the migration quickly and seamlessly. The end result is that the upgrade time to new React Native versions has gone from a few engineering days to around 30 minutes, and the time it takes to get new code from the developer on to a users device has gone from a few days (in the case of Apple) to a few minutes. The big boon for us is that we can trust App Sapiens to deal with anything app related in a timely and cost effective manner. By fully managing the challenges of app development, App Sapiens has allowed us to focus on our business and product goals.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Communication is very smooth - Tom has a weekly call with us where we discuss the challenges of the week and ensure that everyone is on the same page. After the call he sends us a weekly report detailing actions and the time-sheet. They have also added us into a dedicated Slack channel where we can communicate 24/7. We receive a monthly invoice with a full itemised breakdown so we know where our budget is being invested.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

As a relatively young company with requirements that can change quickly, it's important to us that we manage technical debt as the product evolves. Therefore, their commitment to producing clean and well-architected code assets for long term maintainability is impressive.

Are there any areas for improvement?

No concerns at this point. We're looking forward to working with them over the long term.