PROBEGIN

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the founder and CEO of Tixxio, a ticketing company specialized in an all-in-one platform solution. The platform is used to organize concerts, theater shows, sports games, and other events. It provides mobile apps, interactive maps, checkout systems, and much more, all integrated into one system where the data is centralized. I started the company four years ago,

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with PROBEGIN?

My goal was to create a platform that’d give customers more options to control and manage their events. At that time, many of them were using five or more software tools to manage daily tasks.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

PROBEGIN helped me a lot to flesh out the concept. They built the platform together with our tech lead in Holland. Their team developed the frontend in React and the backend in Laravel PHP.

What is the team composition?

We’ve worked with 15–20 people from PROBEGIN. There have been 12–15 developers, a designer, two QA specialists, and a project manager.

How did you come to work with PROBEGIN?

I had a really bad experience with a different company. A friend recommended that I contact PROBEGIN for a pitch, and I did.

How much have you invested with them?

The cost so far is €3.5 million (approximately $4.1 million USD).

What is the status of this engagement?

I started working with PROBEGIN around January 2019, and the platform launched a couple of months ago. Development work is never finished, and I’m still working with PROBEGIN.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

I’ve worked with PROBEGIN closely over the last couple of years, and they really understand the concept of the solution and the market. They’ve invested hours of work to get the product to where it is now, with the result that we can easily get new customers onto the platform. It’s built in an intuitive way, with an awesome design, and is very flexible. We did a pilot with a football club, and they’re really happy with the platform.

How did PROBEGIN perform from a project management standpoint?

We have a dedicated full-time project manager, and that works great. It’s easy to solve any challenges, and the communication flows easily back and forth. Having a dedicated PM on such a big project is completely necessary.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I’m most impressed by the process of working with PROBEGIN, especially with the project manager. It’s a much better experience compared to my previous agency. We can discuss any issue easily, and everything’s resolved quickly. PROBEGIN gives me great feedback, and they come up with solutions on their own.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Everything’s been good so far, and we’re always on the same page. I’m very happy with the process. PROBEGIN is a bit technical from my perspective, but I have a very good tech lead in Holland, so they can communicate with him on that level.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

It’s important for the client to take the time to find people who match them on both a technical and personal level. I found those people with PROBEGIN. It’s also good to start with a smaller team and build from that. That will enhance the quality of the project.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I’m the director of coronatestkit.com.ua (CCB Medical Solutions LLC), a e-commerce webshop offering rapid antigen tests for Covid-19 to companies in Ukraine and the Netherlands.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

Since the Covid crisis, there is an urgent need for quick testing with immediate results. Our goal is to bring easy to use test on the Dutch and Ukrainian market for an affordable price.

One of the key points was to find a company who are hands on and which can deliver the full range, from designing the logo to implementing a smart e-commerce solution which is multi lingual. We found PROBEGIN and it is a pleasure to work with them.

SOLUTION

How did you select PROBEGIN and what were the deciding factors?

We had a talk and they right away gave us good ideas how to implement it. The advice and also bright ideas gave us the trust to work with them. Their teams are good mixture of creative people and very strong developers.

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

As we had pretty quick deadline we had to work on multiple discplines at the same time. It was a challenge but without PROBEGIN we would not have made it.

I recommend to work with them as they guide you thru the process in a very easy way, for example when we needed extra changes on the branding they made it the same day and we where on time to print everything.

I think the value of PROBEGIN is that they think with you and not only execute what you ask, they improve and create the best possible solution.

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

I worked closely with their project manager and CTO. The team included a graphic designer, frontend developer, backend developer and QA tester.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

In general our COVID19 tests are selling very well in Ukraine at the moment, the e-commerce solution they implement is working well and is easy to maintain.

I am very happy with it, also implementing Stripe payment gateway was done quickly and the result is that our webshop has good traffic and we sell our tests every day to new customers.

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

We used very efficient agile project management way of working. Most of the communication was done by Skype and Slack. Every day, they kept us up-to-date on project progress and any questions or queries were quickly answered from their side.

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

Their responsiveness and availability have been great. They’ve been super easy to work with from both a commercial and technical perspective. They were very flexible, open, and transparent.

I also find impressive how fast everything was executed, from the moment we had our kickoff meeting to the launch of MVP - they did a massive scope of work in just a little over two weeks.

Are there any areas for improvement?

So far everything is great, they keep us up-to-date and keep advising us for future improvements.