nexocode

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the CEO of a professional rental accommodations provider. We are a global business supplying large credit card companies and working with large travel companies.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenges were you trying to address with nexocode?

We supply accommodation and bring it through API feed integrations with other systems. We also have a complex website which allows travel managers and clients to report, place and cancel bookings, manage payments, perform currency exchanges, and more. We built this business with the help of nexocode and don’t plan to stop working with them.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Nexocode is almost an in-house IT company for us. They don’t treat us like a client, but rather like a partner. We treat them the same way.

They built our website and manage our Azure cloud infrastructure and static servers. They have handled design through to delivery for any part of our product. We use Java and .NET. We act as the product owner. nexocode brings their own ideas about how something should work, and we discuss it; the operational side is a mixture of their input and ours.

What is the team composition?

We have a project manager, a business analyst, 2 main developers, and other resources on nexocode’s side.

How did you come to work with nexocode?

We never wanted to have in-house tech resources. We started working with another company initially, but we weren’t pleased with them at all. Radosław Kamiński [nexocode founder] left that company 18 months ago and continued to work for us on his own. As we grew, we sanctioned him to take on more tasks. nexocode was built through our relationship.

We were thinking of starting our own development company in Prague and looked at other companies as well. We worked with a large multinational, but Radosław offered us the services we needed and didn’t treat the work like a job, but rather like his own project. This is something which isn’t always found. When things go wrong (which they do sometimes), Radosław will be as stressed as I am about it.

How much have you invested with them?

So far, we invested $1 million–$1.5 million.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with nexocode when the company was initially founded in February or March 2015. Radosław was involved in the project for approximately a year before this as an employee of our previous partner. The collaboration is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We won the Best Travel App of 2015 award from Sabre, the largest global distribution service in the world. This week, we won Best Trade Supplier from Travel Weekly’s sister publication, Travolution. We’re supplying the largest, blue-chip companies in this industry with the system that nexocode built.

How did nexocode perform from a project management standpoint?

Yesterday, Microsoft migrated our account without our knowledge. Even though we had global redundancy, they made a mess. Without even having to ask them, nexocode’s team fixed the issue. They immediately put an engineer on the case. Responsiveness has never been an issue; we’ve never had to ask where Radosław was. If we find a problem, he or his team will already be working on it. We can’t do any better.

We use JIRA for project tracking. nexocode’s team uses Slack.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We have worked with IT companies in the past but have never had the type of relationship we have with nexocode. They’re amazing. We’re all human, and we treat each other accordingly. Radosław treats us correctly, and this is the most important thing. He is fair and hardworking and has built a similar team around him, one which shares his ethics.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They could improve by increasing the size of their team since we keep stretching them. They are working on this.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

Clients should visit nexocode and not just talk on the phone. This will give them a real feel for the company.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I work for Google in the developer relations team. I’m a lead for the Google Developers Experts program to support the process in which we onboard new experts.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with NexoCode?

We needed some tooling. We went beyond the capabilities of our forms and various spreadsheets. It was hard to manage and we realized we needed a custom solution for that. 

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They helped us redefine and improve the process itself. They proposed an architecture that was the frontend in Angular and the backend using Firebase. They also proposed some backend which was not only Firebase, just to tackle some of the functionalities we wanted, especially sending emails. They established the whole infrastructure, the staging environment, system environment, and production environment. 

They started implementing the screens, the backend, the login, the dashboards for onboarding, the application form, user management, and some administrative views in which we assign our interviewers and our regional leads. I work with the team of around 30 people who are spread around the world and who lead developer relations. They do the execution of my program on the ground and they also use the tool.

What is the team dynamic? 

We worked with programmers and project managers and a very talented UX [user experience] designer.

We started with just 1 backend developer and 2 frontend developers. Over time, we extended that to 3 frontend developers, 1 backend, and almost 60%–70% of the UX person’s time. She’s now also acting as the project manager from their side. 

How did you come to work with NexoCode?

We didn’t have a lot of time to find a supplier or to make huge assessments from the technical point of view. We posted about our needs on social media, and NexoCode was the most flexible and the fastest to respond.

Radoslaw [Founder, NexoCode] was very flexible. I knew them from other projects so I was sure they were what we wanted. We signed a contract that was fixed in time and money, but not on the scope. We had a fully Agile approach to that. 

We could have waited for another year to figure out the final architecture and the best company to implement it, but we made some quick decisions and they helped us with finding architecture and defined the details of the product. 

How much have you invested with them?

We have spent over $300,000 so far.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in December 2016 and the work is ongoing. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The main business value for me is in the onboarding process, which is the main content they are developing. I had one person responsible for that on my team. That person was able to process 5–10 people to the next stage per week. After the solution was introduced, the same person was able to process 120–130 applications in the first 3 weeks. It’s 8–10 times faster and more efficient versus our previous process. 

Our users are happy. Users are candidates who have tried the program, but also other people from Google who are working with the tool such as regional leads or interviewers. The tool is used by 80–100 people per week, at least. 

How did NexoCode perform from a project management standpoint?

Their communication is very good. I consider myself part of the team in a truly Agile environment. We have weekly meetings. Whenever I need more information, they are responsive. We use email or we organize Hangouts over the video conference. They used JIRA to manage the sprint, the bugs, and the feature requests. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’re very flexible. They’re very good if they work with a customer who is also truly Agile. A lot of companies say they’re Agile, but they’re not in the sense that they always want a fixed term, fixed money, and fixed scope. I attracted them with having the scope pretty open, but I’m happy with the results. 

That’s the way to work with them. To keep the budget in some boundaries, you define the amount of money. They tell you how many people will be working on it. It’s somewhat well defined, but it also depends on how many people you want in your project. We were burning our money a little bit faster, but that was a conscious decision from my side. I would recommend them for these types of jobs. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

We had some different opinions on architecture, but it doesn’t prove them wrong. I’m a programmer myself and have developed many projects before. They are more traditional regarding architectures where you have a frontend, a backend, the database, and so on. Maybe they could be a bit more open to the newest technologies. However, it’s not like they’re using ancient stuff. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Be open to the Agile approach in terms of scope especially.