Octobot

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the IT manager at a medical association in Uruguay.

What challenges were you trying to address with Octobot?

We needed IT support.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We were looking to renew our IT area so we counted on their help. We worked on all online services for our clients with them as digital partners.

What is the team composition?

It has changed over time, but usually, we work with two or three people.

How did you come to work with Octobot?

We did some research on the local market. They were referred to us so we contacted and interviewed them. We had a first test project with them and from then on they became our partners. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them around 2015 or 2016.

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

More than a service provider, Octobot has become a partner to us. They have gone beyond meeting our expectations and have provided an added value to our services and to our brand. We are very happy with their work.

How did Octobot perform from a project management standpoint?

We are in permanent communication. We usually use Slack, and when needed, we have Skype video calls. We are based in different cities but that has never presented any issue, the communication has been excellent. Every week we establish sprints for the week together and they always meet everything in a timely manner.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We have our own developments and work with other service providers’ developments. Octobot has had an excellent interaction with these third service providers, so their performance and interaction with not only us but our other partners has been excellent. 

Another thing I would like to highlight is that they have women working in their team as developers, which is something hard to find in the IT industry.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I couldn’t say anything, they're constantly improving.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We have two sides to our business. One involves attribution and advertising campaign to offline attribution. Our team helps agencies and brands determine whether or not their campaign efforts are driving customers into stores, creating conversions. We also have a mobile app that allows customers to take control of their personal data to sell it directly to brands and agencies, sharing the progress. I’m the VP of product.

What challenge were you trying to address with Octobot?

We wanted to enhance our development team with additional engineers and leadership for the engineering team. Ideally, our partner would be in our time zone as well.

What was the scope of their involvement?

They provided us with engineers to help support and lead both our attribution campaign system and our data-centric mobile app. Their team made use of React and Django Python. 

What is the team composition?

We worked with three people from their team.

How did you come to work with Octobot?

Their tech stack and focuses are identical to ours. We put one of their engineers on a small two-sprint project as a test of the shop’s capabilities. He did an amazing job with communication. That’s what convinced us that we needed to hire them. We knew we could be comfortable with a team of three of their engineers working with us. 

How much have you invested with them?

We spend about $20,000 each month with them. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in May 2019, and the engagement is ongoing.

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

They’ve greatly improved the speed, predictability, and quality of our development efforts. 

How did Octobot perform from a project management standpoint?

Their engineers act as an extension of our team, working on our sprints and using our communication tools. The communication factor has been a non-issue on our projects together.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Our team finds them to be honest and transparent partners. When leveraging more junior engineers to help on our projects, their team always provides them the support that they need to be successful in our work. As a customer, I don’t need to worry about that, which is greatly appreciated.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, I can’t think of anything.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the co-founder of Cloud IT Guru, a technology solutions company.

What challenge were you trying to address with Octobot?

My company wanted to develop a product. We needed to hire a development company that could understand our product idea and take it to production.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We already had the product’s user interface, design, and mockups, and we provided all of this to Octobot. They developed our product using Python, PostgreSQL, AWS, and Docker containers.

What is the team composition?

We work with two Octobot team members.

How did you come to work with Octobot?

We evaluated a lot of companies on Clutch, and Octobot’s reviews were very good. In our interview with Octobot, they expressed interest in our product. We wanted to implement a complicated product architecture, and Octobot understood these needs better than any of the other vendors that we considered.

How much have you invested with them?

My company has spent $60,000–$90,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in September 2018, and the project is ongoing.

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

The product came out much better than we expected it would. We’re very happy with the way the project has gone.  

How did Octobot perform from a project management standpoint?

We followed an agile development methodology. Octobot managed project deliverables with Pivotal Tracker and Slack, and we had no communication challenges. We had weekly calls to discuss progress, and the same Octobot team members were always on the call. The team was open to answering questions and sharing information.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I don’t believe we would have gotten this experience from another firm. Octobot took the time to understand our user interface. We admire their proactive and detail-oriented team.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, I haven’t found anything for them to improve. They have a very good understanding of the system, and they make customer service a top priority.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I work for a pharmaceutical company that operates drugstores located all over Uruguay. We are the number one chain in the country.

What challenge were you trying to address with Octobot?

We needed to implement a new system for replenishment planning and demand planning. Before this engagement, we many different systems. We had to make them interact to accomplish our goals. We hired Octobot to develop an SD so we could own the data and centralize all the information. 

What was the scope of their involvement?

Octobot developed an SD system for demand and replenishment planning. It aggregates data from all our separate systems into a central location. During our first engagement, Octobot developed a platform for input management. 

What is the team composition?

The size of the team from Octobot changed according to our needs. I interacted with five people including the CEO, CTO, a project manager, and two developers.

How did you come to work with Octobot?

We sent our project and specifications to a few vendors. Two previous companies had been unable to finish our project according to our requirements and within our deadlines. Octobot had been successful during our first project together.

What is the status of this engagement?

We first worked with Octobot on another project last year in 2017.  This new project started at the beginning of 2018.  They're still working with us and providing ongoing platform maintenance.

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

We surveyed all of our internal teams that were involved in this project and asked them how to rank the suppliers we used. Every one of them ranked Octobot as first place. Factors we took into consideration to rate vendors included response speed, analytical skills, and comprehension of the project and our goals.

One thing I especially appreciate about Octobot is how easily they offer accurate solutions to the problems we pose. Their work was simply excellent.

How did Octobot view perform from a project management standpoint?

Octobot was highly committed to finishing their work on our schedule and met every deadline.  They used Slack to communicate with our team and quickly replied to all our requests. We also used Redmine as a project management tool.  

The team responded to us immediately and were available even after hours. There were no issues on their side.  Our communication was always fluid, and our collaboration worked perfectly.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Octobot’s greatest strength is their capacity to understand what the client needs. They have an impressive analytical capacity and understood the workflow right away. The team’s quick thinking enabled them to provide fast and precise solutions.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Honestly, there wasn’t anything negative about our engagement with Octobot. They could always extend their working hours, but they were flexible with us about working outside the set schedule. 

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We are a full-service advertising agency with five global offices and around 500 employees. I work in our connected experiences team, which creates and manages everything that touches the internet. My role within that team is development director. I oversee the execution of all the visual properties and user experiences we design.

What challenge were you trying to address with Octobot?

We worked with Octobot to build our own website. They refreshed our former one, which was about four years old.

What was the scope of their involvement?

At our request, Octobot used WordPress as our CMS and platform. We had some familiarity because our previous site was built on it. We explored a few options, but settled on WordPress. Their team hired a WordPress specialist to accommodate this.

We worked with them on about a dozen other projects. The technologies ranged from HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, to iOS app development. We’ve also done some API work with a workflow management tool called Workfront.

Another large project used a JavaScript library. It was developed for a site that used a 360-degree camera to give a virtual tour of an indoor space.

What is the team composition?

From the hours report Octobot gave us, we worked with five or six developers. The developers were all based in Uruguay, but our main point of contact, the co-founder, worked from Minneapolis for most of the year. He was in Uruguay for the first month of the project. Outside of that, he came onsite for meetings and reviews. We had the team from Uruguay on videoconference.

How did you come to work with Octobot?

We had worked with them a lot before this project, so they were a proven partner. Compared to our other options, the price point was also excellent. Otherwise, we would have had to acquire internal development resources or pay twice as much to use a similar local development shop.

Because of our history with Octobot, we knew that they were a good partner who would accommodate our timeline and functionality changes. They also had great attention to detail. We could resend designs and wireframes, and they would implement the functionality and design immediately in very high fidelity. With other remote teams, that can be a long, frustrating cycle of reviews and revisions. We were very happy with the work Octobot did for us in the past. That largely influenced our decision to use them for this project.

How much have you invested with them?

For this project, the cost of their work has been $50,000–$80,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

It’s an internal site, so employees have many opinions on it. We started talking about it internally in October or November 2017. Octobot effectively began developing the site in March 2018.

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

We got excellent internal feedback. Everyone in the agency loved the way it looked and functioned, which I largely attributed to Octobot’s attention to detail. They implemented our visual designs at a high fidelity. When we ran into issues, Octobot proactively suggested alternative solutions and enhancements, which we implemented quickly.

We supplied wireframes, designs, animations, and other pieces of functionality for visual implementation. Once we started development, some of those elements proved impractical or simply clunky. Octobot usually brought those situations to us with a potential solution and an estimate of how long its implementation would take. Working with them was exceptionally valuable.

In many cases, their alternative solutions were excellent fixes. Our team could have devised them on their own, but the fact that Octobot could make those suggestions was indispensable. They already had roadmaps for building them, which expedited their path. 

How did Octobot perform from a project management standpoint?

They were very good partners, and flexible with the changes we dictated. We used to communicate with them on Slack. When our company shifted away from it, Octobot didn’t skip a beat. We continued to use email and other tools. 

We gave their co-founder access to Workfront, our internal workflow management tool. He seamlessly communicated through that tool, using it in coordination with Octobot's internal project management tools. It was great to have their co-founder as a local resource. We got the best of both worlds, with face-to-face conversations to hash things out, plus all the benefits of a remote team.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their key strengths were their flexibility and ability to execute whatever we threw at them, often on very tight timelines. They never failed to deliver what we asked for within a reasonable amount of time, even if it was beyond our initial goal. They were either early, on time, or gave us a heads-up that they couldn't meet a deadline. They were always upfront about the feasibility of those timelines and deliveries. They often hit deadlines early, which was always a bonus.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I work at an electronic government agency that belongs to the Uruguayan presidency. We manage the country's digital agenda—everything related to e-government—and help citizens to have access to more services.

What challenge were you trying to address with Octobot?

We needed to develop our electronic ID platform.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Octobot used Python and OpenShift to develop a multi-factor identification platform. It was completed on time and launched in January 2018 for production, and the number of users has exponentially grown. We now continue working with them for developing new features and mobile apps for Android and iOS.

What is the team composition?

They assigned four developers, an architect, and a security advisor.

How did you come to work with Octobot?

All state hires are based on public tenders. The government evaluates potential vendors by basing 70% on the technical capabilities and 30% on their prices. Octobot did very well on the technical side and offered a better price than the company that matched their skills.

How much have you invested in them?

We’ve spent around $200,000 so far.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working on them in September 2017. We’re on a contract or six more months, which will be renewed for an additional year.

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

The number of registrations to the platform grew by 300% thanks to their work. Octobot was also great at meeting deadlines. Their quality and efficiency matched the other companies we’ve worked with before that have a lot more time on the market.

How did Octobot it perform from a project management standpoint?

We use Slack and email for communicating and have meetings every Tuesday. The speed at which the project has progressed is amazing. We haven’t had any delays, which we know is complicated, but they’ve managed to pull it off.

Octobot has also been flexible and understanding whenever our priorities change regarding scaling their resources. When we decided to launch the product in January, we reduced their working hours and increased them again two months ago, which they haven’t had any trouble with.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Things that took other providers a month to complete takes Octobot a week. Their capacity to adapt and take on new technologies really called our attention. They’re also very proactive and agile.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I can't think of anything at the moment. We are very happy with them.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We own steakhouses and markets in the Miami and Weston areas. I’m the CFO [Chief Financial Officer].

What challenge were you trying to address with Octobot?

We needed software developed for our barcode system.

What was the scope of their involvement?

They solved the issue that we had with barcode software. We can now centralize our meat purchase as well as baked goods and pastries. We have everything in a single barcode system. They took what we had and made it cloud-based, using Amazon Web Services, to make it more stable. They provided me with the real-time reporting that I needed.

What is the team composition? 

There were 3 people working on the project. I had a primary contact and weekly calls with the team. They worked in sprints, so every week we had deliverables.

How did you come to work with Octobot?

We have an IT company that handles the infrastructure of the restaurants and markets. We had some challenges with the system that had been developed for us two years ago and when talking to the IT company, they mentioned Octobot. 

I had a conversation with Guillermo [CEO and Co-founder, Octobot] and the team in Uruguay and I felt very comfortable with them. The sprints helped build that comfort level because you aren’t just giving them the requirements and not seeing anything for two or three weeks.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent $50,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started with this project in late August. We finished the core of it in November, but it’s ongoing because we’re including recipes and adding other features.  

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

After we went live, if there were any issues they reacted very quickly. The feedback has been very positive. Our operators are not very tech savvy and they found the new software to be more user-friendly and better for productivity. Before, scanning would take 30–45 seconds per barcode when doing the shipping. Now it’s immediate, and it’s the same for the inventory. We now save one FTE [full-time equivalent] per year.

The system is also more stable and reliable. I feel more comfortable looking at the data and not having to work out if the information is correct. Before the system, we had some downtime where users were experiencing freezing and frustration with the software. Now that’s gone.

How did Octobot perform from a project management standpoint?

They were hitting the deadlines throughout. They have a project management tool they use for the sprints, which I thought was very good. We had a weekly call and had open communication at all times. If there are any issues, we would Skype or FaceTime to get things going. We would send them videos, they could look, and work around any issues. We have a time difference, and if they have to work later hours they did. I was very pleased with that.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Usually, there’s a big disconnect between the programmer side and the business side. Octobot took time to understand the pain points that I had and how my business works. We are in the food industry so products expire and there are different measurements we use. One of the team came from Uruguay to spend some time with us to understand our business. They understood the business side and were able to provide different ways to do things.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I think they could continue to tighten up the weekly deliverables in order to keep their promises.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Make sure they use the sprints. This was the first time that I dealt with a developer that did. I found that it worked very well for us.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Seesr is an online dating platform that gives users the ability to make a reservation for a certain activity. I founded the company with two others.

What challenge were you trying to address with Octobot?

We wanted to provide activities for people, and we needed a company to develop our platform and have it be as user friendly as possible, in addition to being something new, fancy, and unique.

What was the scope of their involvement?

It’s three web platforms combined: one for the user, one for the people presenting the activities, and one for the administrator. They used Django. It was a challenging job but we succeeded.

What is the team dynamic?

There were two designers, two developers, and the two owners.

How did you come to work with Octobot?

We sent an request for proposal to 70 companies. The first was Octobot, and my partner went and met them in person. We waited two months for the perfect partner, and the first people we contacted turned out to be the best ones.

How much have you invested with them?

€25,000 [$29,500 USD].

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in May of this year. The work was completed in November 2017, but we recently did a new request for a few modifications to improve the user experience, which wasn't part of the initial project.

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

We’re pleased with the design. It’s quite fancy, and they made it user friendly for us as administrators. I’m happy with the results and we’re happy as a company. The general conclusion of users and activity providers is that it’s a nice website. We didn’t test that many troubles, and if we had any, they quickly resolved it.

How did Octobot perform from a project management standpoint?

They used Slack and sometimes WhatsApp or email. We were ready two weeks before the deadline. We had weekly follow-up meetings and sent questions back and forth daily. The time difference was sometimes a small issue, but mostly, the response time was quite fast.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They're a small company, but they always try to hit your expectations and meet you in the middle. Everything was negotiable. My favorite thing is how they design things, which is their strength. They always collaborated with us and really improved our ideas.

Are there any areas they could improve?

We’re pleased with the collaboration. Sometimes, we wanted them to work cheaper or respond sooner, but we can’t expect more than they did.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the founder and CEO of Puppy Mama, Inc. We are a social media startup and lifestyle brand.

What challenge were you trying to address with Octobot?

We reached out to them for help on building our platform. We needed to get to MVP and perform market analysis in order to ensure a good product fit. I had initially worked on a mockup of the UI and UX myself, and was looking for a dev team which could bring it to the next level.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Octobot provided design and development for our platform. Since I was building a women’s brand, it was important to find a female developer, which is hard to do, especially in the US. There are multiple women on Octobot’s team, and all of them are talented. I have been very impressed with their work.

To start, we had two full-time developers, both of whom moved fast and with quality work. But, because I wanted to launch a more sophisticated MVP than what was originally in our contract, we upped the team to three full-time developers, as well as two UX/UI designers.

Immediately prior to our launch, Octobot brought in their senior developer, who worked very hard with the team in order to fix any last-minute bugs. I was impressed with how much emphasis, dedication and care was put into the project. Octobot was proud of the product, and they wanted it to look great. True ownership over the work is hard to find.

How did you come to work with Octobot?

I found them through a friend in a senior position at another tech company in San Francisco. I was considering whether to find a CTO or a dev shop offshore. He gave me quite a few names, and I also received contacts from other friends. I interviewed a few shops, and felt that Octobot not only had a good price, but their principal is also a talented and smart person who listened to us and cared. I told him what my vision was, and he quickly understood it, relaying back what value his team could bring.

Octobot was the best out of all the shops I visited, and I was also impressed with the technical infrastructure in Uruguay. Video and phone calls were the same as when communicating with someone in San Francisco. When I interviewed other companies, the bigger distance and/or lack of infrastructure were a source of frustration. In order to have a true partner, they needed to be accessible and reliable. As a nearshore company, relative to California, Octobot is only four or five hours away from us.

How much have you invested with Octobot?

I’m confident that Octobot would negotiate in good faith with other clients, but our project may be different than others, given that we’ve leveraged them as a full-time member in our team. I was the only employee of the company at the time, so I needed Octobot’s help more than other people may have.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Octobot in October 2016. We spent two to three weeks ensuring that the UX design was exactly what we wanted before moving on to the development phase. We launched in mid-March 2017. We continue the contract with Octobot, but we’ll build more features only after we’ve tested the platform.

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

People have been very impressed with our platform, and have requested introductions to Octobot’s team. They took the software to the net level, creating a sleek design and plugging in different types of modules. I’ve received many compliments.

How did Octobot perform from a project management standpoint?

I couldn’t be happier with Octobot’s team. They’re a pleasure to work with, and we even cracked jokes during our meetings. It wasn’t a dry collaboration; Octobot was in it as much as I was, and it was important to see that passion from the people I was working with.

I was trained on the development process, and got onto the same project tracker as the team. When I identified a bug, I put it in, and we developed a very good rhythm. We’ve been using the django-project-management application, through which I can give overviews of the app by myself.

My husband and I visited Octobot in Uruguay, and we’ve been impressed with their office space. They also surprised us by having the CEO and three other team members come to our office in order to help us with the demo phase.

What did you find most impressive about Octobot?

My husband and I have been very impressed with the work provided by Octobot, and we treat them more as partners, which is hard to find when outsourcing developers. They have been our team since the beginning, and I strongly appreciate their counsel regarding how to make the app better and lessons learned. Instead of just doing what we’re asking them to do, Octobot has given them that extra layer which we hope to see with any third-party partner.

Are there any areas Octobot could improve?

There were issues here and there, but their project management was very professional. Given what downsides could have occurred, I have no complaints. We were given results for testing in order to eliminate any issues later on.

What tips or recommendations could you share that might increase the likelihood of success with Octobot?

Having had the same dev shop from the beginning has allowed us to find a good rhythm, and I strongly recommend that others find the same kind of partner. There is a lot of added value in sticking with one team.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the founder of zealpath.com

What challenge were you trying to address with Octobot?

We wanted to find a developer to create an MVP solution. We went on to consider several developers and Octobot appeared as one of them. We went ahead and developed an MVP with them.

What was the scope of their involvement?

They used Python, AngularJS, AWS. In terms of the project, we had a team of 3-4 developers assigned to the project. We’ve had a great experience in the requirements process. They wanted to understand the value proposition and add a business outlook. They weren’t limited to only develop the functionalities but to understand our business objective. They’ve gone above and beyond, contributing and helping us greatly with design. This has contributed to our value proposition and their understanding of how the business works so they can continue helping us.

How did you come to work with Octobot?

We found them online. It’s good to highlight that we wanted to work in English in case the project is transferred to another development. But all of our meetings are in Spanish. The documentation and everything else is in English. This is an advantage.

Their time zone works perfectly with our times in Europe. This is fundamental as we get to catch up with Octobot at the end of our workday.

How much have you invested with Octobot?

10k-50k

What is the status of this engagement?

We’re still working with them until May for now.

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

Octobot’s reactions to issues that arise has been very good. They’ve also recognized when parts of the solution needed to be readdressed without charging us extra. Their dedication and client service is really good. They want us to be happy.

How did Octobot perform from a project management standpoint?

We’ve used Google Hangouts to do the weekly catchup meetings. We have always used a project manager and they have created all tasks. We haven’t had to figure things out too much. Wireframes included related explanations with the users’ flows. They’ve been able to create their own sprints and tasks.

We haven’t needed Slack. They resolved their issues. Communication was efficient. Our time zones work very well with them.

What did you find most impressive about Octobot?

They were able to question themselves on why do certain things before working on a task. In some cases, they found weak points of the product. Having the scrum master who also acted a product manager was able to understand the product.

Were there any areas for improvement?

I think this happens with every company with some junior programmers. The person who started to develop the product wasn’t as qualified as others but this didn’t represent a cost for us. People need to learn and we understand companies need to have some junior developers. There were some changes in the assigned developer but it wasn’t a loss for us.