QNIUM

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I'm a co-owner of a software and IT services company.

What challenge were you trying to address with QNIUM?

We engaged QNIUM to develop a recruiting mobile app for our client.

What was the scope of their involvement?

QNIUM developed and maintained an app for iOS/Android that allows users to log in and apply to jobs. Users can also send messages and receive notifications.

In addition, the team built a web-based administrative backend using React JavaScript. They integrated various cloud-based services, including Dropbox, Facebook, LinkedIn, Firebase, and Microsoft OneDrive to complement the app's features. While they provided some UX/UI work, we decided to outsource that to a third-party and have QNIUM integrate the designs.

What is the team composition?

I primarily work with one person.

How did you come to work with QNIUM?

We found them on Upwork and liked how thorough they were in their quote. We felt confident they would be able to provide solid solutions for our project.

How much have you invested with them?

We've spent about $24,000 CAD (about $17,000 USD) thus far. 

What is the status of this engagement?

The main development lasted from January–July 2017. However, we continue to work with them to upgrade the app and add new features.

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

Our client is extremely happy with the app QNIUM developed, which has helped streamline their hiring processes and given them another avenue to reach out to potential candidates. 

How did QNIUM perform from a project management standpoint?

They're very responsive and adhere to timelines for the most part; it's as if our project manager is glued to his phone. We get responses almost immediately whenever we send messages through Skype, regardless of the time zone difference. They've also been very helpful when it comes to troubleshooting bugs and issues with the app.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their greatest strength is their ability to analyze our goals and provide strong, robust solutions and code.

Are there any areas they could improve?

While they're excellent with backend development, there's room for improvement with their UI/UX design work. It would help them to hire more staff with those types of skills in the future. We ended up hiring a third-party to provide most of the design work for that reason.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Provide specific requirements so that they have a checklist to work from. If something isn't explicitly documented in the requirements, it's generally considered out of the scope of work.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I was the manager of our project with QNIUM on behalf of our client.

What challenge were you trying to address with QNIUM?

We were developing a business payment software and needed a development team to help us with the project.

What was the scope of their involvement?

QNIUM did everything in terms of development. The software is an integrated API solution. I believe it was coded in PHP. I don’t know what the size of the team was. I mainly talked to the project manager.

How did you come to work with QNIUM?

I found them on Upwork many years ago. I find Russians to be good with technology, so I chose QNIUM.

How much have you invested with QNIUM?

I have worked with QNIUM on a few projects. The cost for this project was around $50,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

I started my first project with QNIUM in 2014. The latest project was completed a few months ago. 

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

The software was done on behalf of a client, so I have no metrics. I know that they’re happy with it and don’t have any issues.

How did QNIUM perform from a project management standpoint?

The work was delivered within the scope, timeline, and budget. I was very happy with QNIUM’s performance and responsiveness. They’re a professional company. We used email and Skype for communication.

What did you find most impressive about QNIUM?

I really appreciated their professionalism. I like QNIUM, so I’ve continued to use them. I haven’t tried other companies.

Are there any areas QNIUM could improve?

No, they were very good. 

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We are an educational software that is attempting to make a productivity/note-taking app for students. I am largely the product manager. I mostly work directly with QNIUM in overseeing that they understand their tasks and do quality assurance.

What challenge were you trying to address with QNIUM?

We were just looking for an affordable, good-working team that we could reach out to on a semi-irregular basis because we are self-funded, so funding kind of fluctuates. Depending on time and money, we do or do not have so much that we can afford to ask, so we were looking for flexibility. Also, originally, when we first contacted them, our software was entirely web-based, so we were looking to transition that to desktop. What we have is a kind of patchwork of multiple plugins and services. We were trying to take this patchwork software and strengthen the foundation by making it a little more complete and have the inner workings run together a lot more smoothly. So we needed to work on mostly everything.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Actually, we're getting really close to launching our desktop application. Originally, we were web-based, so we started out just with smaller web-based projects which they helped us support across many browsers. We supported way too many browsers. With their help, we cleaned up everything for Safari, Firefox, and Chrome, instead of stopping at just one browser and having to charge our clients for fixing it if they have a problem.

We were a web-based software, so they helped us transition to desktop, and also gave us offline support and file synchronization. Basically, you could log in on your desktop software, then you could create a bunch of notes and edit things, and you could check it on the web version in the cloud. Everything would translate, and you could move back and forth that way.

It was a really huge undertaking. They did a great job walking us through. They made sure we had a very clear understanding of all the avenues that we had whenever something unexpected came up.

We used Node.js as a desktop wrapper around our editor - which is a modified version of CKEditor. The PDF framework that we used for supporting PDF is PDF.js. Those were the largest frameworks. They also worked a lot with the cURLAPIs to help us with the synchronization. Our database was MongoDB.

How did you come to work with QNIUM?

I've been a project manager for about three years now, so I've been on both client and team sides. I’ve only been working here for about a year and a half. I pretty much knew, but after talking with my partner and discussing what the long-term strategy was, when I had those features nailed down, it would only be a matter of deciding which frameworks we would be working with.

The things that we knew that weren't going to change, were CKEditor and Chrome support. Other than that, we were pretty flexible. What I was really looking for when I was interviewing teams was their strategies and recommendations to approach this project, and the depth of their answers.

The price was also a factor. We used to work with various individual freelancers in America, but we found that even though they were really good and they were really talented people, the time difference was getting to be a considerable factor because the East Coast is six hours behind us. Since we were planning to shift to a more traditional desktop application, it made more sense to have a full team instead of one person working on the frontend, one person working on the backend, and one person working on the graphic design, which is roughly what we were doing before. It makes a lot more sense from a management, but also from a productivity standpoint to have a whole team sitting in one room.

To me, it was not as important what frameworks or programming languages they had experience with, because, when it comes to development, it's how they approach solving a problem. They do their research, and depending on how big the problem is, they come back with options, we all discuss, and then pick a direction. This way of approaching problems makes the most sense to me and is the most cost-effective as well.

How much have you invested with QNIUM?

We're reaching about the $10,000 mark.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started in February. They give us their hourly/daily rates up front, and for roughly €1,000 per month, we’d give them our wish list - of course, half of it could not be done - but we’d then pair down to our most cost-effective essentials. Given how many different pieces of our software need to interact with each other, it leads to a lot of unusual complications that are very much unique to us, which a lot of other companies I have worked for would not have experienced working completely under one umbrella platform.

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

Unfortunately, it is a little bit difficult to measure impact because we already had the product up and running. It had been up for about six months. I guess I could follow up once we launch the desktop to see how many people prefer it. But otherwise, aside from just making sure it didn’t crash nearly as much as it once did, not a lot changed on the user side.

How did QNIUM perform from a project management standpoint?

The offline synchronization turned out to be a much, much bigger project than we anticipated. There were definitely some instances where they had no idea about the outcome, and admitted that they would need an extra couple of weeks to get it done, assuming nothing went wrong, which always does.

QNIUM never nitpicks, and always listen when you want to keep talking to them after their working hours. They always tried to make sure we understood all the variables that were involved, the things that we could do to help, and the things that they needed to get done.

A lot of scheduling problems has been just the normal startup insanity, where lack of funding on some days collided with an unexpected development thing, so it would have to be put on hold and things slowed down. Node.js is also a relatively new framework, so sometimes we have to reach out to those guys and wait for them to come back.

We've had a couple emergencies ourselves that weren't even caused by QNIUM. We had this horrible, horrible server based out of France. It sometimes would just randomly go down, but I knew we could ping them and they would always have it up within an hour. And they never were like, "Well, we're going to charge you for this, and these hours were worked outside of normal ones so..." or anything like that. We paid them anyway, but we could always count on them to come to our rescue.

What did you find more impressive about QNIUM?

I think they price themselves fairly. I feel I can ping them whenever there’s an emergency. And again, they make sure that they explain all the options to us. That, to me, is the most important part of any team. It’s what I personally want out of working with anybody. They are the kind of developers that are always ready to give our requests a try.

Whenever there's a problem, QNIUM will do everything within their power to figure it out. Granted, it might be way outside your budget and they will make sure you understand that, but they're the kind of developers that never say no. The closest they get to saying no is, "We have to rewrite half the code." That's the most reasonable, and the best kind of developers that you can ask for.

Are there any areas QNIUM could improve?

I really can't think of anything. The offline synchronization definitely set us back a lot further than we wanted to be set back, but it is what it is. They have gone above and beyond to make sure that we have been assisted in any way that we can and to compensate for any time that we have been lost in whatever way that we can. Even though we're a couple months behind, and that definitely hurt as a start-up, in return they made sure that we could distribute – originally we were just going to be distributing to the Mac App Store and the Windows store, but now they basically built us installers so that we can distribute anywhere. We have two extra operating systems that we can distribute on as well. I feel that's perfectly fair.

NextPay is a payment processing company enabling e-commerce merchants to accept credit cards online in a seamless and automatic way.

The challenge [was to] enable our customers to accept payment with American Express bank cards. The opportunity [is that] there are online merchants interested in a low-cost and reliable processing solution.

The solution proposed by QNIUIM was to complete the needed certification on a .Net SDK's using ISO 8583 standard fields. The certification was for an authorization and settlement file submission. QNIUIM was in a close contact with AmEx representatives and was able to complete the needed certification on time. The duration of the project was around 90 days.

We are very satisfied with the work of QNIUIM and their team, which was able to embrace the project as a whole and complete the certification. They delivered a complete solution to our customers.

Could you briefly describe your company?

I’m a one-person entrepreneur, and I develop custom software. I rely a lot on other companies, freelancers who provide code or solutions for me. I formulate the idea or the concept, and I then find others to encode it for me. That’s how I run my operation. It’s called Turtle Solutions.

Could you describe the business challenges you were attempting to address when you initiated the relationship with QNIUM?

I needed a custom Firefox plug-in developed. I had no experience in developing Firefox plug-ins myself. This is a paid Firefox application that I needed them to do. We’ve been working together for a couple of years now. They seem to respond well to my requests. They maintain a schedule pretty well, and they deliver quality code.

How did you select QNIUM as your solution partner for this endeavor?

I found them through oDesk, which is basically a freelancer portal. I’ve worked with other freelancers and other companies before, too. After a while, I realized that QNIUM was more reliable that many of their counterparts. If we have an arrangement, they honor it. They’re very professional in that manner. 

Could you describe the scope of this particular project?

There was some substantial coding for the plug-in itself in JavaScript, database configuration, authorization for users, and some database management and set up. They also set up the server that the plug-in can sync with.

Could you provide a sense of the size of this initiative in monetary terms? 

I’ve invested approximately $50,000.

When was this project completed?

Our first version went live in June of last year [2013].

In terms of results, could you share any statistics, metrics, or user feedback that would demonstrate the effectiveness of the work that they’ve delivered?

The user feedback I’ve received so far been very positive. The plug-in solves the problem that people run into very effectively. It has a daily high download, retention, and usage rate with users. I’ve gotten a sizable amount of great reviews.

When working with QNIUM, is there anything you would consider special or unique about their approach or methodology that differentiates them from other vendors you’ve used in the past?

Their professionalism really stands out for me. It’s very basic stuff like being able to maintain an agreed upon schedule. If something changes, they will send you an email. They communicate very well and very consistently. When you outsource development to different countries in which English isn’t their native language, it can be challenging to establish and maintain communication. Sometimes, it’s a cultural thing, and other times it has to do with logistics. Either way, it can be a very difficult experience to deal with. QNIUM isn’t like that. 

In retrospect, are there areas you think that they could improve upon as a service provider, or are there things that you’d do differently as the client before initiating a project with QNIUM?

My only recommendation would be some additional creative talent on their end. Although that’s really my job in this relationship. They’re very technically savvy there, which is why I utilize them. That’s the only area I could see they need to improve upon, but it’s not really a part of their wheelhouse anyway. 

Please describe your company.

Our company is located in South Germany, and we produce parking meters. We have 250 people in Germany, and we have some people in France, India, and the United States.

What is your role and responsibilities?

I am the project manager in parking with a software focus.

What was your goal for working with QNIUM?

We have a Web-based solution for our parking meters, and we use the application for programming the machines. We also use the application to visualize, and to have live monitoring on the machines in all of the installations. With QNIUM, we have a project on the backend of our application as well as a project on enforcement, GUI, and preparing some data provided for different countries.

Please describe the scope of their work.

At the beginning, QNIUM worked with parking and business. They did not do software or hardware. Two years ago, we were looking for .NET experts on the backend side. We heard [they had experience with] parking; they visited us from time to time, and we had some meetings. That was how we connected with QNIUM. We had four or five year's history with them.

What was your process for selecting QNIUM?

We heard from the parking division, but I don’t know how they got in touch with us. I believe they were our parking partner with the same division in Russia.

Can you provide a ballpark figure for the size of the work that they’ve done for you?

Each project took between three weeks to two months.

When was the latest milestone completed for that work?

The last project was completed in early February of 2014.

Do you have any statistics or metrics to track improvement from the project?

I don’t have any metrics at this time. The project that they are doing for us is used as a software. Some of our customers and partners are using it, but we have no metrics. The customers are happy, and the product is working. There are no complaints. It is difficult when they do a project on the backend side, so nobody sees it. You provide the service and it works, but you don’t hear from the customer. We are happy with them, and we plan to work with them further.

Is there anything unique about them that really makes them stand out, compared to other companies?

QNIUM understands our ideas very quickly, and I provide specifications from the customers or from a management point of view. When we provide a software specification, they start right away. It's good that they communicate by email every day, and they understand the ideas very quickly. We communicate by Skype very occasionally to clarify small items. They are reliable in meeting deadlines, and that is a special quality. That is why we are very happy with QNIUM.

Looking back on the work so far, is there any area that you think they could improve upon or that you might do differently?

No. They have a lot of knowledge, and we trust them. There is a long history between our company and QNIUM, and they visit from time to time. Our relationship is based on trust. We count on their knowledge, and everything is fine.