N-iX

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm an Executive of a tech startup offering location tracking hardware as well as various software applications for Industrial / IoT purposes.

For what projects/services did your company hire N-iX?

We needed to augment multiple teams in a short amount of time with developers specialized across a wide range of expertise: IoT firmware development, Cloud platform engineering, frontend / backend / full-stack software engineering.

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

We were looking for an outsourcing provider with existing expertise and the ability to recruit top talent quickly.

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

For the first project, N-iX provided one of their existing developers to build the first prototype. This was quickly extended to two developers. Based on the positive first experience, we asked N-iX to recruit various other open roles in our teams, and we augmented our existing teams with up to 10 developers through N-iX in total.

Describe the recruitment process in detail.

We aligned on a target profile and N-iX quickly provided a pipeline of candidates. They pre-interview before presenting a candidate. We agreed that we would do a second interview with the same standard as our internal hiring process. Not all N-iX clients do this, but since we augmented existing teams, it was important to us that we have the same standard. N-iX was flexible to accomodate our wishes.

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

N-iX helped us scale the teams at a faster pace than we would have been able to by recruiting only in our HQ. They helped us launch an alpha product quicker, transfer an application to the Cloud, and implement our general roadmap faster.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Communication and decisions are very fast and to the point.

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

I was impressed by the speed of hiring. But what I found most impressive is how they managed to keep delivery up even during the most difficult times of the war. Of course it is not business as usual, but they make a big effort compensating for lost time and keeping their delivery pace.

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

During the time when we hired many people at once, there were situations where it was hard to keep an overview of the various pipelines. A recruiting tool showing the pipeline status would have helped. But this is really a minor point.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m an executive at a financial services company.

What challenge were you trying to address with N-iX?

We hired them to assist with staff augmentation because we wanted to grow our team fast to deliver the projects we had.

What was the scope of their involvement?

N-iX has been helping us develop from scratch and maintain our banking and mortgage software products by augmenting our engineering and quality infrastructure teams. They started the process by joining and helping us while we were figuring out and clarifying our requirements for the product.

Regarding features, they’re helping us with the front- and backend of our integrated POS for mortgage applications. Users can submit all their property information to the system, which we collect and incorporate with many vendors in the mortgage business.

In terms of technologies, they use Node.js, Angular, and MongoDB, among others.

What is the team composition?

We’ve been working with around 80–90 members of their team, and almost everyone is an engineer.

How did you come to work with N-iX?

We were looking for Eastern Europe providers, and someone referred them to us. We chose them because we liked them the most since they seemed trustworthy and confident and everyone on their team was high quality.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in October 2020, and the engagement is ongoing.

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

We’ve been able to launch a new line of business for our industry, and N-iX’s work has been instrumental in that being with us throughout the process. Moreover, every time we interview someone from their team, the process is fast because they send good resources right away — they have a great internal filter for selecting their people, which is time-saving.

How did N-iX perform from a project management standpoint?

They respond to our needs within our expected timeframes. In terms of communication, everything’s virtual, and we use Google Meet and Slack. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

The quality of their personnel is higher than average. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

I don’t think there’s anything they can improve on

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Be upfront about the requirements you have regarding the skills of the people you want to work with, and they’ll be able to provide you with the resources.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the director of IT for a credit card company.  

What challenge were you trying to address with N-iX?

We mainly used N-iX for their custom software development services. 

What was the scope of their involvement?

N-iX is working on a customer-facing web portal for loan origination and servicing using React Native. Some of their engineers are also working on a mobile app for both Android and iOS. The app allows cardholders to check their account balance, make payments, and more.

What is the team composition?

The team consists of five software developers and a business analyst.

How did you come to work with N-iX?

We found N-iX through a web search.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent between $50,000–$100,000. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in November 2021, and the engagement is ongoing.

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

The app and web portal are still under development, so we still don’t have any feedback on them. However, I’ve received positive feedback for the N-iX team themselves from our members who’ve worked with them. Overall, I’m 100% satisfied with their work, which has exceeded my expectations. 

How did N-iX perform from a project management standpoint?

Their project management has been excellent. To communicate, we primarily use Teams and Zoom.

What did you find most impressive about them?

N-iX has great engineers. Apart from that, their account manager has been attentive to our needs and responsive to us.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, there aren’t any. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

N-iX does a great job of understanding what we’re looking for and identifying the right type of resources for us. Given that, you should be thorough in describing to them your project and the type of resources that you want for your team. 

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the senior manager of data governance for Rackspace Technology, an IT company providing cloud solutions to customers throughout different industries. I focus on our internal data warehouse rather than the customer-facing side of the company.

What challenge were you trying to address with N-iX?

We work with staff augmentation panthers and try to maintain a good ratio of onshore and offshore and full-time versus contractor staff. We needed resourcing in an augmented staff model, specifically for resources on a contractual basis.

What was the scope of their involvement?

N-iX is our permanent staff augmentation solution, and they have a team dedicated to our account, including three QA specialists we label as test engineers. Sometimes, other teammates come on board on a project-by-project basis.

They had a discovery phase to learn about our data warehouse, which is very large and complex and has a lot of subject areas and layers. 

Their team supported us while we were in the process of migrating our SQL Server-based data warehouse into Google Cloud Platform (GCP). We needed outside resources because our internal data engineers were working on the migration. They supported the various requests from our business side. 

One of the specific things they worked on was data ingestion and bringing over new data sources within our company. At one point, they had about a hundred different internal sources that they ingested and that we hosted inside the GCP.

Our internal finance team is also migrating their SQL Server data warehouse to the cloud with the help of N-iX resources. In this case, the finance team has been leveraging N-iX’s resources directly for the migration. Currently, this project is winding down, and we’ll be decommissioning our SQL Servers. 

Other leaders within our company have also used N-iX for business intelligence (BI) items and our reporting layer. More recently, they’ve worked on other things related to our data warehouse and migration, including GCP automation and optimization tools inside the platform. All their work has been remote.

We’ll continue working with them in the QA and data engineering environments to tackle a ton of backlog on the business side that we’ve been pushing to the side more recently.

What is the team composition?

We started with a team of 4–5 people, and we’ve had up to 15–16 people from N-iX working with us at one point. Currently, I have three test engineers and six data engineers on my team, and two people are working on the finance migration project. 

How did you come to work with N-iX?

There was a group of us who worked together at a previous company. Back then, my current boss did a world tour to talk to offshore contractor resources, going to places throughout Europe and Asia. 

We decided to use N-iX, and we had a very positive experience working with them. When we joined our current company and were looking for outside help, N-iX was one of the companies we reached out to. We set up discussions with them due to our familiarity with them, which kicked off our current relationship.

How much have you invested with them?

So far, we’ve spent more than $1 million.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in Q1 of 2020, and our engagement is ongoing.

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

N-iX has been a tremendous help and has lifted some of the heavy load we've had in the last year. Looking at what we've been able to accomplish, there's zero chance that we'd have been able to do it without the N-iX team. 

Since the beginning, they've helped with a tremendous amount of the QA work, and they've jumped into the data engineering work — we don't have the resources internally to do all that. 

Thanks to their support, our engineers can focus on the migration. Having N-iX's resources working on some migration tasks and data ingestions has pushed us to where we're getting close to completion. As it is, we're delayed in our migration timeline; if it weren't for the N-iX team, we'd be in much worse shape. 

How did N-iX perform from a project management standpoint?

We run everything we do through Jira, where we can see story point, all the work involved, and completion dates versus due dates. The N-iX team gets assigned tasks in this system, and we track their capacity.

For communication, we have daily standups to make sure that things are moving forward. We also have a standing call for issues or blockers where teammates can join and discuss. Any time more detail is needed, we schedule additional calls or send emails. 

A manager from their team sits in on all our daily standups. She's helped me stay on track, making sure that we have what we need to set up new people.

At a higher level, I meet with an account manager and a director of accounts from N-iX every week to ensure we're all in line and there are no issues. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

I'm impressed with the quality of N-iX's deliverables and results. Things get done fast, and they don't let their team members fail. Their work is consistently good, we get the product we want out of it, and they deliver it on time.

They're consistently able to deliver what they promise. We've worked with other providers, and N-iX is by far the top performer in terms of this type of resourcing.

Previous partners have provided resources they said had certain expertise, and then we quickly realize that they're not the right resource. Meanwhile, we can trust N-iX to find the right people for the project. We tell them exactly what we're looking for, and they find resources without us having to interview them — it's worked out great.

Moreover, they work together to make sure that nobody fails. If they have a teammate who doesn't have certain expertise we ask for, N-iX makes sure that person is given the training they need to succeed; they don't just leave them out there to dry. 

For example, if there's a specific issue with the code where someone doesn't understand something, the whole team will jump in to help fix it. 

No matter what we need, they find a way to do it; they find the right people and inner workings within their team to ensure they all succeed. Overall, we've always had a good working experience with N-iX — we have utter confidence in them. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

The only issue we've had is that, at times, we've had a few people that have rolled off our project unexpectedly, whether it's by their own choice or N-iX's. This is both a bad and a good thing. For one, it does happen that we haven't consistently had the same person for some projects, and we've had to replace them with a new resource.

On the plus side, they've always found a replacement. N-iX has always cross-trained the new person ahead of time to have them ready to go whenever the former resource is rolling off our project. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

The more insight and information you can provide the account manager when you're looking to do something, the easier it is for them to find the right resource to ensure your project is successful. I've been guilty of not being very descriptive, which doesn't help them pinpoint the right person for that role.

Provide N-iX with as much detail as possible about what you're trying to accomplish and the skills needed, and they can find the right person, and I believe they will find the right person.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a chief product owner in the corporate logistics department for a large engineering and technology firm. My work revolves around innovative solutions for supply chain processes.

What challenge were you trying to address with N-iX?

We wanted to migrate our supply chain cloud platform to a native cloud solution with a domain-driven design. Our existing solution wasn’t scalable or flexible, as it was a monolith solution, so we wanted to find an expert partner to build a state-of-the-art, sustainable and scalable IT infrastructure.

What was the scope of their involvement?

They supported us throughout the whole lifecycle of the product migration, handling the technical project management as well as operational support tasks. The platform is web-based and focuses on Java microservices.

In addition to the migration, they set up new business use cases and worked on our connected mobile app.

We’ve also used them for certain design activities, including research on how our clients actually work with our product. This will allow us to derive a proper layout for our solutions. They’re creating mockups for new applications and our current platform.

What is the team composition?

We started with around 15 people but now work with around 30, including the complete scale of software engineers, technical project managers, scrum masters. software engineers, and architects. There are also data science specialists dealing with AI, software testers, DevOps engineers, and UI designers.

How did you come to work with N-iX?

We ran a tender process through our company’s procurement department. The goal was to find a partner close to Europe.

What is the status of this engagement?

We’ve been working together since January 2019.

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

They balance strong software expertise with a state-of-the-art approach to managing software projects. This was a complex migration project, and they took us by the hand and guided us through it.

We work in an agile collaboration model, so there are regular touch points to remedy issues. Generally, however, the quality is quite good, including in the realm of security. They do consistent checks in closed environments.

There will always be problems to solve in every development project, and while the whole delivery isn’t error free, I’d rate it a four out of five.  

How did N-iX? perform from a project management standpoint?

In terms of achieving project milestones and timelines, they are quite good. N-iX’s team supports us in creating project timelines.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their software engineers apply state of the art technologies in architecture environments, addressing whatever framework is the most proper in each situation. They don’t do standard, off-the-shelf products. Rather, they keep their eyes on the market for the newest trends.  

Are there any areas they could improve?

I would like to see them work more in the mode of challenging their clients ideas. This will ensure that the work is done properly and in the best way from the beginning. They could do more to guide the work in the right direction.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Align expectations about how you would want them to challenge any of your requirements if they didn’t believe they would be benefitting the project. This can be done by instituting a discovery phase and having a group of engineers — led by 1–2 experts — analyze your environment and devise a strategy. This way, you won’t spend time moving in the wrong direction.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the Product Manager of a Norwegian news site for business and economics (e24.no) and employed in the media tech company Schibsted Products & Technology.

For what projects/services did your company hire N-iX, and what were your goals?

N-iX was first hired in Schibsted to help out regional news destinations in Norway (inc Stavanger Aftenblad). Then, they were transferred to work with E24. Our goal here was to become the leading news destination for business and economics, which N-iX have contributed greatly to.

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

I wasn't the one who selected this vendor, but assuming it was based on a combination of cost and track record.

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

N-iX has been involved in everything from designs to web development (both backend and frontend), quality assurance and launch. Technologies used: PHP (mainly Symfony ), JS (vanilla, react, koa and more), AWS (k8s, lambda, etc), Jenkins.

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

For the last period, we've worked with 7 consultants: project manager, web designer, tech lead, junior web dev, quality assurance and two senior web devs.

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

By helping automate a solution for job adverts, costs related to this was decreased and revenues increased. Other than this, they always provided quality deliverables, and they were really thorough with their work

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

The project manager was very structured, and documented processes very well. She was always on time for meetings and project timelines were well estimated. We used Slack, email and Google Meet for coordination, and Github, Jira and Google spreadsheets for dev tasks.

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

Such nice people! Really a pleasure to work with. Very service minded and solution oriented. Thorough in their work and quality deliverables.

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

They could perhaps dare to challenge us more in order to improve collab even further!

Overall, we are very happy with the code delivery and code quality produced. It was done in a timely manner and with few production bugs. However, after taking ownership of the codebases, we saw that a few of the projects had some pain points to them:

One of the larger projects N-iX worked on had quite a complicated structure and in retrospect we saw that similar components (like buttons, dropdowns, etc) weren't reused. It appears that the developers working on the project weren't completely in sync. Such complex projects should perhaps to a greater extent involve pair programming to avoid duplicating code and components.

We also found that the README’s of some PHP projects were lacking some information needed to set up the project for the first time. However, in these projects, the overall structure was very good, and code was reused where it made sense.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the software development manager at Qualsafe, an e-learning supply provider and book publishing company in the healthcare industry.

What challenge were you trying to address with N-iX?

We needed their expertise in software development.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We’ve realized that it’s high time to expand our team of software developers to optimize the quality of our products. N-iX works hand-in-hand with our onshore developers because we want to come up with quality solutions and make them integrate themselves into our everyday development processes.

As we rely on N-iX for our IT staff augmentation needs, their team handles the recruitment process whenever we need additional developers and testers to join our team. They hire resources based on our standards and qualifications, and they’re then introduced to us for the onboarding process.

What is the team composition?

We currently work with an assigned project manager, two software developers, and one tester from their team.

How did you come to work with N-iX?

N-iX was recommended to us. They then reached out to us with the business plan and software expertise we needed, and we instantly liked their collaborative and adaptive approach, so we chose their team.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent over $400,000 so far.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our ongoing collaboration with N-iX started in January 2020.

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

Adding N-iX’s resources to our team has been a smart decision — they’re a very knowledgeable group that produces quality deliverables and works harmoniously with our internal team. They have exemplary testing and coding skills, which guarantee robust solutions for us to benefit from. 

On top of that, they value our feedback and promptly address any known issues to ensure that our processes and products are not compromised. Overall, we’re pleased to be working with a team that rewards us with fantastic results, a speedy delivery rate, and reliable expertise.

How did N-iX perform from a project management standpoint?

We conduct regular meetings as part of our agile prints. During those meetings, we address our preplanning and planning methods and review our progress. 

We’ve encountered minor communication issues in the past because of our language barriers, but N-iX’s project manager has addressed those right away after our feedback sessions. We’ve then noticed that they’ve made an effort to improve those shortcomings, which speaks volumes about their professionalism.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I’m most impressed with their team’s quality recruitment process — they’ve introduced us to well-rounded developers with reliable field experience and a solution-oriented mindset. We truly get what we pay for with their services.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Their communication skills can use further refinement — it’s a minor issue, and we’re grateful that they take the time to consider our feedback.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Be as collaborative as their team. Hiring an offshore partner doesn’t equate to letting them navigate through your processes on their own — if you show N-iX that you’re as committed and productive as their team, that collaborative energy will bring in great results.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the CEO of an online learning company, located in the United States, providing an interactive learning environment for K-12 students.

For what projects/services did your company hire N-iX, and what were your goals?

We needed to scale our business to provide more sophisticated features to a larger group of customers. The challenge was that we had to start with a legacy platform that was initially focused on a different set of features.

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

I met the company's CEO at a conference in San Francisco and decided to interview other managers at N-iX. and also check references. The impression I got was that they are very professional and transparent/upfront.

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

We started an ongoing process of functionality improvements (including social networking features and detailed reports for parents) so using C# in a .NetCore environment as the backend and Vue.js as our responsive front-end technology. Specifications were developed by the product manager in the US and discussed with the development team at N-iX.

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

One senior developer, one mid-level developer, and two junior developers.

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

We were able to develop a learning platform that offers more and more relevant functionality compared to our competitors and were able to gain market share.

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

N-iX is proactive in their communication. Their software developers are integrated in.our communication processes like our company's employees. This includes the use of Slack, email, etc.

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

N-iX is very transparent in their billing and communication in general. Their contractors identify with our company and our company's goals just like our own employees.

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

In previous years we were presented candidates for the job openings that were not quite at the level of competence that we need for our project. However, within the last year this has improved and their pre-selection has improved.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the managing director of a media technology company that provides services to the transportation sector.

What challenge were you trying to address with N-iX?

We were trying to upscale our technical resources quickly and potentially ensure that we were doing it economically to meet the market expectations for reasonable pricing.

What was the scope of their involvement?

N-iX provides software program management QA development resources for us. Although it is an outsourced relationship with them, we see them regularly, and they feel like part of our organization. We already had some of the interfaces for the project when we started working with them, and we provided that as documentation to jumpstart the project —we have a collaborative process with them, so we’re both learning along the way.

In terms of functionalities, we requested integrating a real-time transport operator schedule into a cloud-based engine, which would then output through a messages engine that would be pushed down to service on vehicles and direct to devices. They also did some of the architectural design for the platform.

What is the team composition?

We have around eight people working on our project at the moment, including a Scrum master program manager, a QA, and frontend and backend developers.

How did you come to work with N-iX?

They were referred to us by a friend. We met them, assigned a small project, and they delivered well, so we decided to expand the partnership with their team. 

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent around $1 million with them so far.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in July 2017, and the engagement is ongoing.

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

We’ve launched market-leading services on transport operations around the world, and that demonstrates the work that N-iX has been doing for us. We’re now in the European, Australian, Asan, and North American markets. They understand the challenges that we have and help to resolve them — they have the knowledge and experience to do the analysis and come up with solutions for our business.

How did N-iX perform from a project management standpoint?

They’re timely with their deliverables and do that at a price that enables us to create a business model around. Their understanding of the project and their flexibility to modify our product to launch it successfully are also good. It’s been a good experience for us to work with them on a project basis. Regarding communication, we use Microsoft Teams, biweekly technical meetings, and an internal chat system to keep the team updated.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The quality of their staff is outstanding. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

They're understaffed at the moment, but I know that’s because the market in the UK is slow at the moment. Apart from that, I think there’s nothing that they can improve on. 

Any advice for potential customers?

Be clear with what you want before engaging with them. As long as you can define the project you expect, they’ll understand the resources you need.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am a project manager at a retail company.

What challenges were you trying to address with N-iX?

We’re currently working on a very big digital transformation project inside the company and as part of this project, we need to develop different digital products. We then hired N-iX for an initial project where we achieved good results and are about to start a second one.

What was the scope of their involvement?

They basically help us find the development teams for these projects, they find the resources that adapt to our needs and the technologies we will use in our software development projects.

We developed a platform with them to create promotion campaigns for our products and distribute them to our stores. This platform allows users to select the products they’re going to promote, select prices, countries where the promotion will be, and it automates the process of campaign creation and price management.

They also developed another platform that allows us to track the processes of sending products into our stores. This platform connects with other systems inside our company, and it allows us to determine which articles to send into our stores and to plan our distribution processes.

They use our development framework, we have a company framework based on Java and they adapt to it.

What was the team composition?

We worked with 5–10 people. A scrum master, a technical lead, front- and backend developers, and developers in charge of quality

How did you come to work with N-iX?

We work with external companies that provide advice for us, and when we were looking for service providers, they recommended N-iX so we contacted them. We did the first project, and after having very good results, we continued to expand our collaboration.

How much have you invested in them?

In this last project, we’ve invested about €800,000 EUR (approximately $950,100 USD), and about €500,000 EUR (approximately $590,000 USD) on the initial project.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started collaborating with them about a year and a half ago and it’s an ongoing collaboration.

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

We have our own internal process to evaluate the success of our projects that includes metrics regarding the quality of the software, the team's performance, and the user’s evaluation, among others. At the moment, we have about 50 projects that we evaluate with the same metrics, and the first project we had with them is ranked first out of the 50 projects. 

We consider that as our best project not only in terms of quality, but also in terms of methodology and user evaluation. The other project we had with them is ranked 15th so that gives you an idea about the quality of their work.

How did N-iX perform from a project management standpoint?

They’re great. They have a delivery manager that reviews the quality of the deliveries, the quality of the final product, and the deadlines. That has been one of the things that we’ve liked most about working with them — they are also very good at taking care of the development team.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We’re impressed with the value for money they provide.

Are there any areas they could improve?

We would like to have a lot more projects with them, but the size of their team and scalability aren’t very big.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I would recommend them for the value for money they offer and for the technical and human quality of their teams.