Software Development for Online Marketing Platform
- Custom Software Development
- $200,000 to $999,999
- Sep. 2007 - Ongoing
- Quality
- 5.0
- Schedule
- 5.0
- Cost
- 5.0
- Willing to Refer
- 5.0
"Onix-Systems is extremely reliable, hard working, and intelligent."
- Information technology
- San Francisco, California
- 11-50 Employees
- Phone Interview
- Verified
Onix-Systems partners with an IT company to work on complex projects in two development areas: enterprise business system platforms and creating a standard development kit for social robotics.
The team is speedy and accurate. Onix-Systems works on high-end, big budget projects and always demonstrates a desire to grow and improve. They are available on a daily basis and have perfect English. The partnership will create a specialized robotics team in the next few weeks.
A Clutch analyst personally interviewed this client over the phone. Below is an edited transcript.
BACKGROUND
Please describe your organization.
We have two companies that do business with Onix. The first company is called Virtual Workflow. Virtual Workflow produces a product called ROI Genius, which is an enterprise level end-to-end business solutions system.
The other company is Alternative Spaces Inc. We are developing a social robotics department, and we'll be bringing people together to be developing for Jibo. You can read about it on the Jibo website. It's the first evolution out the door of a social robot that's able to recognize faces, recognize natural language and they're going to be releasing a VSDK [vertical solution development kit] in October [2015].
At that point, we will have a team from Onix that will be able to write skills for the robot, which will be sold on the Jibo skill store, and we will be able to service other developers who wish to develop their own skills for Jibo and add it to the robot.
Jibo started out as a brainchild of our firm, but this is a competitive space now. It's a good place to start, but Jibo was originally developed by a person at MIT [Massachusetts Institute of Technology] and she did a Kickstarter and raised about $2.3 million . Then, they went out and raised about $20 million to manufacture the product. Now, they've expanded it to China, and I think they've raised another $11 million.
The other thing we do at Alternative Spaces is represent Onix in English speaking countries. We work primarily in the United States and we have a sales and marketing team who is able to take and refine all the needs of the clients in fluent English with directions that are easy for Onix to be able to complete the tasks rapidly and accurately.
What is your position?
My position in both of them is CEO.
OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE
What business challenge were you trying to address with Onix-Systems?
We decided to find a long-term development partner for complicated projects. The best recommendation that I can give to firms in our situation is that when you start with a team of people, then you should continue developing with the same resources because platform development builds on itself. It's a full-service platform.
SOLUTION
Please describe the scope of their involvement in detail.
They are developing a standard development kit for the robotics firm and providing ongoing platform development work for the marketing firm.
How did you come to work with Onix-Systems?
I looked at firms with my partner, who is a computer scientist. When we decided to launch our startup, he put together a simple routine and went out and found five different companies that could write the routine and sent out the requests. He wanted to see how much it would cost and what would come back. He picked two American companies. He picked an Indian company. He picked a Ukranian company, and I believe he picked a Chinese company too.
All of the quotes from the offshore companies in India and China came back with many questions and the American companies were very expensive. Onix came back the next day with the task complete and said it was simple.
Onix's competency level was so much higher than everybody else's that there was no question about whom we wanted to work with. When we started working with Onix-System, we created a team that could turn things around overnight. So we became a 24/5 shop for production and 24/7 shop for support, which is important because of things that needed to get done the next day were done as our team here was sleeping. We got up in the morning and everything was tuned to the client, which has built us a tremendous business. I think speed and accuracy make a big difference.
Could you provide a sense of the size of this initiative in financial terms?
It was between $200,000 and $1 million. But, I will also say that in 2016 we'll be above $1 million. It will keep growing. We found that there's not too much difference between people in the west and the east except the east was the Soviet Union and so, while they had all the technology, they needed there was some base infrastructure that we had available to us that people in Eastern Europe didn't. Even though they were extremely proficient in programming everything they were doing. The structure of the company and the structure of all the companies that I watched over there – they vary greatly. The CEO at Onix and I have become very close and so we work together to make sure that everything works smoothly. It's a giant advantage.
What is the status of this engagement?
We've been doing business with them now for eight years. We have the same team member who started with us and been with us the entire time. Onix-Systems is extremely reliable, hard working, and intelligent.
We're actually increasing the amount of work that we're doing together. An example of that would be the social robotics piece we're putting together. This is going to be a brand new department we're putting together because there's not a lot of expertise in this area right now and one of the things that Onix wants and that we want is always to be ahead of the curve.
Before even the SDK is released, we will have the team in place. They'll have done their homework, and people will be practicing so that when we hit the ground, we can hit the ground running.
RESULTS & FEEDBACK
Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?
I can't give you statistics from the customers. That wouldn't make any sense. We went to Asbury Park where they had no people and found a way to bring 51,000 Facebook fans on and then wrote software and protocols to convert them to 11,000 leads. That's kind of personal for the people that are running that business. We send out millions of pieces of mail.
Onix is primarily interested in doing business with mid-range companies, so I'm talking with somebody tomorrow who's got a privately owned $250 million company and he's the type of person that will need ongoing help as he moves on.
We do work with startups, but it's a lot more difficult because they're usually missing one or more important elements and you have to walk them through that. It's more time consuming.
How did Onix-Systems perform from a project management standpoint?
Right now, there's 90 people who are programming, and the capacity is to build up to 200 people in the current building that they own. The capacity is there to do bigger jobs, and I know they have the project management ability to take on jobs in the $1 million range.
What distinguishes Onix-Systems from other providers?
I would say the fact that they tutor everybody in English is a unique benefit. Everybody there either speaks or write English perfectly. They also have a learning center to bring new technologies and new people aboard. As a growing company, they're not isolated.
Is there anything Onix-systems could have improved or done differently?
No, I speak to them on a daily basis and my representatives speak to them on a daily basis. They even have conversations with some of my clients – direct one to one so I would say that there's nothing they could improve upon because we are in contact every single day. We're in voice contact and face-to-face contact almost daily. It's not writing back and forth. It's understanding the issue or the task and really understanding why that task needs to be done that's turning out really superior work.
RATINGS
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Quality
5.0Service & Deliverables
-
Schedule
5.0On time / deadlines
-
Cost
5.0Value / within estimates
-
Willing to Refer
5.0NPS