Quintagroup

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a real estate broker. I was in the process of designing an online auction marketplace platform called Real Estate Brokerage Auctions.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Quintagroup?

I teamed up with Quintagroup to design my platform for online real estate auctions.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Quintagroup was in charge of designing all the agent and broker templates that I gave them as a membership plan. Also, they were in charge of the backend software for the different types of auctions — online, direct offer, insider, and seal bid. Then, they were going to handle the payment through a payment gateway.

What is the team composition?

I worked with four people. Alex (Engagement Manager) was the project manager, and then there were two people that were in charge of the software and design.

How did you come to work with Quintagroup?

I researched online and came across them. They said they had experience in developing online auction software, and they had a very impressive website and good reviews.

I called someone in Florida that had worked with them. He said he was happy, but he had wished he had gotten a consultant because they weren’t familiar with commercial real estate, so they just put together something that wasn’t what he needed.

How much have you invested with them?

I thought I had spent $95,320, but in December, Alex told me to send them more money. In total, I spent $126,320.

What is the status of this engagement?

I worked with them from October 2020–February 2021.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

How did your relationship with the vendor evolve?

We signed a contract when we started. It said that they would bill me as items were completed, but I don’t think Alex was looking at the scope of things completed, so he sent me a bill each month. However, they were far behind budget and scope.

When I started to have my concerns, they’d already charged me $126,000, but they’d only completed $51,000 of legitimate work on the site. I hoped they could reimburse me $40,000, but they told me they couldn’t give me anything because the company had already spent the money. They charged me for services that weren’t rendered yet and excused themselves by saying that was the way their billing worked. However, the contract said the budget and scope were charged based on when things were completed.

I haven’t had an answer to that, so I haven’t been able to solve it.

How did Quintagroup address the challenges that arose?

Alex was nice; he tried to figure it out. He told me they could provide the features that weren’t completed because a refund wasn’t an option. He claimed that they had more than 20 people involved on the project, but I never saw them. Now, I have a website that’s just not worth $120,000 of work. I asked them if my lawyer could see them, but they never responded back.

Describe the impact this engagement has had on your business.

I contacted another software company, and they looked at their site and told me they hadn’t done much. I ended up switching to them, and so far they’ve only charged me $40,000 to do exactly what Quintagroup did, and they’re miles ahead of them.

I had $220,000 set aside to invest in this project, and Quintagroup pretty much took my money, because there’s nothing that the new software developer can use from that site. I’m out for nearly half of my budget, but at least this company knows what happened and is willing to do it better and for a lot less.

How was project management handled?

The biggest thing was that they charged and overcharged me, and part of it was my fault. I had so much trust in Alex. When I started seeing that things just weren’t getting done or looking right, that’s when I started questioning them.

Is there anything that the vendor did well or that you would consider a strength?

Their strength was probably communication, but their weakness was honesty.

What advice do you have for clients with similar needs to yours?

Ask for multiple references or sites that you can go to, and then call people and ask them if the company was knowledgeable about your area. I had to educate them on a lot of things, but I finally saw that they weren’t getting it.

Company Responses

The vendor responded on June 29, 2021.

The total estimated budget was 235k (a budget for a scalable and multitenant system with various auction types) An experienced system architect was assigned to design this solution from scratch. The client was kept well informed about the project's timeframe and payment schedules. (monthly payments per two sprints for a dedicated team)

The system was developed with technologies such as AWS, Lambda, Python, Terraform, and VueJS.

The client was timely informed on the project's progress and was in regular contact with the PM/BA (weekly meetings)

Suddenly, out of the blue, he decided to terminate the contract in the middle of the development without warning. Some features had only been partially completed. We have offered/asked many times to set up a group call to understand his pain and the reason to stop the project; we were genuinely hoping to find a way out that would be suitable for both parties.

Unfortunately, this never happened.

To add some color to the canvas, the client came to us from one supplier, and in the development process, moved to another vendor.

Change requests...We had a situation where the team had to entirely redesign and rebuild the website's look after it had been approved and realized.

To sum up, it's quite a pity that the client has stopped the project and did not give us a chance to prove that we are a reliable partner, who can deliver a project on time and on budget.

We hope the client will find what he seeks...

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the founder and COO of a fintech company that builds treasury technology for hedge funds.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Quintagroup?

We hired them for their software development services.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Quintagroup sourced one person for us that we use as a full-stack Python developer. In his role, he is our leading backend Python developer.

He is building our software using different frameworks and databases. He is building the tech stack that we’re disturbing to clients.

What is the team composition?

We work with the one developer at the moment.

How did you come to work with Quintagroup?

My co-founder came across them through one of his contacts. I don’t know the exact answer.

How much have you invested with them?

We pay about $70,000 a year.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in December 2019.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We see the output of the work every day, which is reliable and stable. The high-quality work is turned around very quickly. All of our in-house developers have great feedback. The developer is organized, knowledgeable, and responsive.

How did Quintagroup perform from a project management standpoint?

The work is set from our side. Up until a month ago, he was working on it alone, but now, we’ve hired a few in-house developers that are interacting with him. There’s great communication through email and chat. We also speak through Zoom daily.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Quintagroup cares a lot about how everything is going. With each monthly bill, they’ll check in and see how things are going. They care if their clients are happy.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Not that I can think of.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

They have a broad range of skills. Be as clear as possible regarding technical requirements.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

We are a predictive insights company who provides analytics to manufacturers and brands about what products they should make and the risks/opportunities of going into new categories. I am the CEO of the company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Quintagroup?

We hired Quintagroup to help scale, optimize, and extend our data acquisition system AND to build a dashboard so that we have better visibility into the system itself.

What were your goals for this project?

(#1) The main goals for the project were to help build a minimal set of metrics (KPIs) that would enable us to track the performance acquisition system. (#2) Update and add features to the acquisition system improve its performance and increase the amount of data we are acquiring and processing.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

They reached out to us at the right time, we had multiple introductory calls with their team, they shared references. We were very impressed by their team and our initial conversations with them.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

Quintagroup (QG) not only provided the development work, but also worked with our leadership to help build out the product roadmap and allocated the project management capabilities to make sure everything stayed on track. Initially, QG worked with our team closely to understand our objectives and did a deep dive on our codebase, this then enabled them to help successfully re-articulate our technical roadmap and built out the execution plan. They then built out a Cloudwatch dashboard on AWS and created the logging for each KPI/metric that helped us gain visibility into our system. QG also developed numerous features in our system to help increase it's performance and stability.

What was the team composition?

We primarily worked with about 4 people: a fractional CTO, 2 FT developers, and a product manager.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any information that demonstrates the impact that this project has had on your business?

It is hard to understate the impact of the Cloudwatch dashboard they developed for us. Prior to this development, we had near-zero visibility into the performance of our system. This enabled us to see if/when our system went down and where problems were occurring. These insights enabled our team to be massively more data-driven and better use our time/resources to address issues. QG also built tooling that automated some time-intensive tasks for our data-ops team that saved them double-digit hours per week.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

The project management system implemented by QG was incredibly effective. We utilized the agile framework, planning out sprints in advance on Github (which we used exclusively). For planning, we prioritized tasks based on a size score and priority score based points system. This helped us make sure we fit the most value into each sprint. I have since implemented their planning framework into other parts of our business.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

I was very impressed by QG's ability to communicate very effectively. I think there is a fear sometimes as a business owner working with remote teams in other countries. Their team did a tremendous job of quickly understanding our business objectives and our system with minimal guidance or oversight. Especially considering the complexity of our underlying system, their ability to quickly ask the right questions and get to the meat of the matter was exceptional and appreciated. This strong insight was followed with strong execution.

Are there any areas for improvement?

Frankly, they are strong across the board. I do not have any strong recommendations for improvements.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m one of the founders of Exchange That Loan. We’re a marketplace where lenders can buy and sell loans.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Quintagroup?

We’ve relied on them to execute our shift from a consulting service to an online marketplace model. We needed them to build a platform for transactions.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They built our online marketplace from the ground up using Python and Django. We wanted a polished frontend and a functional backend. As our requirements, we used an FDIC-issued RFP detailing what the ideal platform would be for loan exchanges.

They delivered the first-stage MVP around a month ago, and we went back to implement changes, updates, and fixes. We’ll be starting beta-testing soon.

What is the team composition?

I have three full-time teammates and 3–4 part-time members. The team consisted of a frontend engineer, a few backend engineers, a DevOps specialist, and a designer.

How did you come to work with Quintagroup?

One of their marketers reached out to my co-founder via LinkedIn. They’d built online market solutions for large enterprises in the past. It was perfect timing because we were already considering building our own platform.

How much have you invested with them?

We’re just under $100,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We began working together in November of last year, and our partnership is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The functionality of the platform is excellent. I’m particularly impressed with the work they did on our admin dashboard, but the other dashboards they created —for sellers and buyers, respectively — are also great. We’re really happy with how they’ve materialized the platform’s features.

How did Quintagroup perform from a project management standpoint?

They’ve been very easy to work with. They’re very communicative; we talk every day on Slack. In Ukraine, they’re on a martial-law lockdown during the pandemic, but they still manage to keep us up to speed. They were also very understanding vis-à-vis our financial difficulties, where we had some contracts canceled because of Covid-19. We’ve been able to come to flexible agreements with them.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their overall professionalism is stellar. On top of keeping them on board for maintenance, we’re planning to secure them for continued collaboration.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They’re excellent at constructing backend functionalities, but they could probably be slightly stronger on the frontend side. I only say that because the frontend is important for us from a marketing and branding perspective; since we’re only at the MVP stage, this isn’t a significant criticism.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Clearly and precisely define what you want. Collaborate with them to create workflow charts, to ensure that you’re getting the functionalities and flows you really need.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CTO of a creative IT company that builds various solutions for both public sector clients and private entities. One of our branches focuses on intranet sites, and another deals with automation and machine learning.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Quintagroup?

We partnered with Quintagroup to help develop solutions for our clients using the Plone CMS.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement? 

Quintagroup acts as a remote extension of our development team. Together, we’ve built about 25–30 solutions for our clients, each with a unique business challenge. All projects involved using Plone, which is a specialized CMS platform that we’ve been using for years, as well as Python, HTML, and JavaScript.

What is the team composition? 

We’ve been involved with between 6–10 resources over the years, but our account manager has remained the same.

How did you come to work with Quintagroup?

We chose Quintagroup because they were visible within the open source community and had resources who were specialized in Plone. It’s difficult to find good Plone developers since it’s such a unique platform, but Quintagroup has been creating tools and plug-ins for a while.

As for the process, we had a few conference calls before visiting them in Ukraine. We spent a few days together and decided that we were a good fit.

How much have you invested with them?

In total, we’ve probably spent around $200,000–$400,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We’ve worked with them from January 2007–December 2017. The engagement ended as the projects transitioned into more of a maintenance role.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

It’s hard to give any individual hard metric, but Quintagroup delivered consistently throughout all of the projects, and client satisfaction was high. They followed plans and were easy to work with thanks to their no-nonsense attitude. 

How did Quintagroup perform from a project management standpoint?

We mostly used GitHub and LiquidPlanner to coordinate. The team was always willing to follow existing processes and tools, which made it easy to bring them on as a remote partner. They’re adaptive, quickly finding the right resources to complete tasks on time. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’ve done a lot for the open source community. It’s clear that they have a mutual interest in growing the platform and making solutions that are good for all, not just building something specific to a client. That’s why we recommend Quintagroup as a development partner.

Are there any areas they could improve?

There were smaller things that occurred on a more personal level. Some consultants were less mature than others.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?
 
When working with a remote team, it’s important to communicate with them so that you’re on the same page. You can’t fix everything through a Jira ticket. But you can get a better solution by establishing a personal relationship with them.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO and shareholder of a health organization. We work with veterinary medicine and veterinary products.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Quintagroup?

I needed help with web development for our veterinarian business. We needed to be able to link veterinarian prescriptions with the correct veterinarian and veterinary clinic, as well as the French database of veterinarian drugs.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

The project has included application development, software development, and e-commerce development. 

They developed an e-commerce platform using Python and JavaScript. They also developed a database because we need to record each time that we sell any veterinary drugs with a prescription. In addition, their work included creating a health management application where we can record sales and vet prescriptions.

What is the team composition?

I worked with a project manager, and there were about 10 other people who worked on the project. 

How did you come to work with Quintagroup?

A friend of mine had recommended Quintagroup to me. I began working with them a long time ago when I was at a different company (where they developed a healthcare software and application).

How much have you invested in them?

I have spent around €300,000 Euros so far (approximately $330,662 USD).

What is the status of this engagement?

I started working with them in 2013, and the work is still ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

When they finish a task, even if the task takes five minutes, at the end of the month we can track all their work. They send us an Excel document where we can see exactly the time they spend and what they have done.

How did Quintagroup perform from a project management standpoint?

Their communication is very good. I communicate directly with the project manager. We have used Basecamp and Asana. We’ve spoken via Skype a lot before, and we now use Telegram for video conferencing.

What did you find most impressive about them?

In the beginning, when I would ask for something it would be a bit difficult. Now, when I request something, it is always possible, and they have no limits. I don’t think there is anything they can’t do. If you want something, they will do it.

Are there any areas they could improve?

It has been a pleasure to work with them, and I think what we’ve developed is very good.

They could check for bugs a little more. If there isn’t time to check, there might end up being a bug. However, they’ll fix it.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I think they have a team for everything and offer a full service. They can do full development and design. You don’t need to bring other people on for specific tasks, which makes the partnership easier.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We provide training and consulting worldwide. I'm the president of the company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Quintagroup?

We started our business about 15 years ago, and we needed a team to develop our initial website.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They developed our website and maintained it for about ten years. Additionally, we did at least two or three rounds of major enhancements to the site. They added and edited content, and they added a variety of features that included video functionality and intranet capabilities for our clients.

We provided them with a fair amount of detail for each project, and they asked a lot of questions. We iterated through each project, and they made sure they clarified everything to avoid any mistakes. The CMS they used wasn't hard coded, and all their designs were stored in a database.

What is the team composition?

I worked with six or seven people over the years. We had one principal point of contact, and we communicated with a few individuals from their design and editing teams.

How did you come to work with Quintagroup?

A friend of mine had a good experience with them and referred them.

How much have you invested with them?

Over the years we worked together, we spent about $35,000-$40,000 on their services.

What is the status of this engagement?

The partnership began around August 2005 and wrapped up in December 2015.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The website was designed to all our specifications, and it met all our requirements. It was well designed and reliable, and we had a good uptime record. We were very satisfied with the work they did, and the only reason we moved away from them was because we changed the platform to WordPress.

How did Quintagroup perform from a project management standpoint?

Our principal project manager did an excellent job. We used Basecamp to post our requirements, and they tracked each task as they completed it. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

They had a real flair for design and a high degree of responsiveness. They were a conscientious team, and they cared about our opinions. They listened to us and met all our needs.

Are there any areas they could improve?

When we first started, their English wasn't the best. That was only an issue for the first two or three years, and they improved dramatically over time. They eventually hired a bilingual content editor that acted as an interpreter. That eliminated all our communication difficulties. That was almost 15 years ago, and I don't think it’s an issue anymore.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

We had no difficulties working with them, so I don't have any advice to make the experience better. I would recommend them highly to any prospective client.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

We are Ukrainian state-owned enterprise which perform electronic auctions for various government entities. My role is Head of IT department

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Quintagroup?

We've hired Quintagroup to develop central components of our main e-auction trading system

What were your goals for this project?

The goal was to deliver central component of two-level distributed system which should contain several business workflow modules and real-time auction modules

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

Quintagroup accepted challenge to deliver innovative solution in terms which are almost twice shorter than other competitors proposed

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

They've provided full cycle of development including system analysis (we had only general business requirements), backend and frontend development, automated testing, deployment and project coordination. As a result during several stages we received three completely different real-time auction modules and 5+ business workflows integrated to each other

What was the team composition?

On different stages team size changed from 10 to 20 engineers of different specialities (development, QA, devops) and one project coordinator. From our side only product owners were involved

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any information that demonstrates the impact that this project has had on your business?

Oh, well, e-auction system developed by Quintagroup is just the core solution which our enterprise is built around :)

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

Project management is quite close, and some of the processes are hidden from customer which was slightly uncomfortable at some points of time. From another hand - Quintagroup took full responsibility for all agreed terms and never failed delivery, which means (for me) that this project management approach works fine

What did you find most impressive about this company?

The company was inspired by our project all the time. It was not just a job to complete for them—they actively thought about the project's future.

Are there any areas for improvement?

I'd suggest to work a bit on sharing the information about progress and describing reasons of particular technical decisions

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Arkus, Inc. is a Salesforce Gold and Salesforce.org Premium consulting partner.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Quintagroup?

We were pleased to continue working with Quintagroup to further customize and optimize the performance of our Plone website.

What were your goals for this project?

We wished to add enhanced functionality that connected our Plone website to Salesforce and to customize the look of the site.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

We have worked with Quintagroup in the past with excellent results and were glad to continue our working relationship.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

The Quintagroup team are experts at Plone development and were able to assist us in working together to enhance the Salesforce Plone connection. They are efficient and responsive and assist with Plone related solutions to customize and develop the site.

What was the team composition?

We work with a wonderful project manager lead and developer.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any information that demonstrates the impact that this project has had on your business?

Quintagroup's help has made our website more streamlined and efficient, easier to navigate, and more valuable to us and to those who visit our website.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

Project management has been via email coordination by our project lead and a project manager on their side who coordinates with their developer.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

They are a team of experts working with Plone and we especially appreciate that they are able to deliver their solutions quickly and effectively while also being pleasant to work with.

Are there any areas for improvement?

We would be glad to have Quintagroup's help with additional site management and future development.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

The Australian and New Zealand College of Anaesthetists (ANZCA) is the professional organization for 6,400 anaesthetists and 1,500 trainees. We train, examine, and accredit anaesthetists and pain medicine specialists, and set standards of clinical practice in Australia and New Zealand. We also advance anaesthesia in Southeast Asia and the South Pacific islands.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Quintagroup?

The primary project was to develop a custom website based on the Plone CMS.

What were your goals for this project?

We wanted to develop an attractive design that would last for three to five years.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

We searched for Plone CMS development experts.

Can you go into detail about the services they provided and the scope of the project?

Quintagroup worked from requirements documents and received direction directly from the webmaster. They provided development, architectural support, and ongoing customization. 

What was the team composition?

The team included a project manager, a developer, a designer, and a communication specialist.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any information that demonstrates the impact that this project has had on your business?

Through this online resource, we significantly improved our stakeholder engagement. 

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

A management handover and staff changes made this project tricky, but Quintagroup wasn't responsible for that. 

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Quintagroup is an affordable, effective team with excellent expertise and communication skills. Despite the distance and language difference, working with them was enjoyable. They turned tasks around inside our deadlines while maintaining a high degree of accuracy.