Railwaymen

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the co-founder a UK based FinTech providing full funding of customer invoices within 24 hours, with the right conditions. Our mission is to build a bridge between a business and its customers and to remove the barrier of waiting for payment by helping businesses to succeed and to thrive. We're proud to be a signatory to the UK Government's Prompt Payment code. This sets out all the standards for payment practices between organizations of all sizes and their suppliers.

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

We approached Railwaymen with the intention of building a product that would target the SME market in the UK. The purpose of the product was to source data from our engine in a short period of time and then essentially provide decisions which allows us to fund invoices.

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

Before we started working with Railwaymen we did some research on companies that could meet our challenges. Railwaymen caught our attention through references from previous clients. After identifying several companies, we approached them to discuss their ideas. The proposals from the software house appealed to us and we decided to enter into a partnership. Additional motivation was the company's experience in projects similar to ours.

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

We began our collaboration with a joint workshop in October 2020, where we had the opportunity to work on actions to improve our process. We then got down to the business of developing an MVP and onboarding that would allow us to accurately verify the clients who come to us. The next step was to create a decision engine responsible for automating actions on our side. In addition, our project was enriched with 7 useful integrations in the field of invoicing, data security and customer verification.

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

The Railwaymen project team consisted of 7 people. Among them were people responsible for project management, front end development, back end development, UX/UI design and QA.

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

Thanks to our joint efforts we have been able to shorten the standard factoring process, which in the case of many competitors takes more than 2 weeks. The process is now completed in just 23 hours. The automation of our operations has also reduced the number of analysts that were involved in the factoring flow. This has resulted in lower costs for the customer.

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

Communication between our team and Railwaymen has been flawless. We discussed all current issues via Slack messenger and once a week we held a project call together, where we summarized our work progress. Additionally, with each milestone achieved, we presented a demo of the system and exchanged substantive comments.

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

What we find exceptional about working with Railwaymen is the professionalism and communication that was at a high level at every stage of the project. An additional advantage is their punctuality respecting pre-agreed deadlines.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

Working on a long-term project often provides conclusions that are unexpected at first. Nevertheless, I don't see an area in our collaboration that needs improvement. I wish Railwaymen to sustain the current level they represent in their work.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the founder and CEO of the company Fourth Street Connections, which is the parent company of the dating app Blind'a. Blind'a is a new dating app focused on matchmaking, so now friends and family can search for matches for the single people in their life.

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

After working diligently on wireframes and spec sheets and everything that goes before the coding of the app took place, we hired Railwaymen to build out the whole app and get it to production.

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

We had actually began working with a different dev shop to help us refine our UI/UX with the idea being to continue with them to development. Luckily we got out of that relationship and found RWM through a combination of online searches/reviews as well as some referrals.

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

We had a series of meetings going over all of the wireframes and spec sheets we had been making, honing in on the final scope. After a few months, we were ready to start development. The first step they did was have their UI/UX person refine our app and she really did a great job turning it into something we were very proud to launch.

After that, the project was broken down into 4 milestones, which was a nice way to see the project come together. They also developed the whole backend to our specs and made it easy to change/monitor the things we wanted. We were given the choice to have the iOS version written in Swift and Android in Kotlin, but we decided to have the front end in React Native to help reduce time/costs and it also made sense given the nature of the app.

The backend was written in Ruby on Rails. They also set up everything for AWS hosting, push notifications, sms notifications with Twilio, and got everything squared away on the Apple and Google developer consoles and set up TestFlight and Firebase for the beta testing.

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

I initially interacted primarily with the CEO, Lukasz, and then after that mostly talked with the product manager who was the main point of contact. I also had direct contact with their UI/UX person and a couple of the programmers every so often. I think all in all, a team of 7 was assigned to the project: 1 PM, 1 UI/UX, 1 QA, 2 front-end mobile engineers, and 2 backend engineers.

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

The app was just recently released and we have not begun our big marketing push yet. But the app was initially delivered in about 5 months, which was in line with estimates.

From there, we went back and forth adding/changing some things not in the original scope, and fixing some small bugs along the way. They were very understanding whenever I asked for something to be changed or fixed and I'm very happy with the deliverables.

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

The project manager was very easy to communicate with, and the timelines were easy to follow. Every new milestone or change was first evaluated, and then broken down segment by segment for expected hours of each unique part. Like any development project, some things took longer than expected, but this was always clearly communicated.

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

I think they did a great job developing a pretty complex mobile app. It was nice they have a lot of different pieces in the company that can be strategically placed as they are needed.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

I don't know what could have been done differently. The only real issue we ever had was when there were some unexpected bugs that may have snuck through QA or some new change/feature requests, would take a longer time than desired. However, the clear reason for this, and was communicated very well too, was that they were also busy helping other clients with their projects, so they did a great job of communicating this and working with me to find availability with the team.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the CEO and Founder. My role is to work with the software development team and lead all sales and marketing efforts.

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

We needed to build a platform that met the needs of a difficult and crowded US market for Quizzes and contests as an ad unit. We needed to be provide a Muti-user, multi-client platform that agencies and brands could easily use to deploy ad campaigns.

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

We met with a number of companies that offered varying levels of experience in the SaaS world. We noticed that most of them offered parts of the series we needed, but none were able to take our concept from wireframes to end product while managing all aspects of our needs. UX/UI, Project management, Design consultation. Persona development and so on.

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

We began with consultation around the design and desired needs. From there the team began to develop the personas and wireframe the platform to develop the stages of delivery. The team had multiple internal meetings to decide the best path to build the MVP. RoR was determined to be the best playroom for us based on growth and the roadmap we had for the platform year over year.

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

We worked with up to 10 people depending on the stage we were at. There were the UX/UI team, Project management, front end developers, back end developers, and QA were engaged once the product had reached MVP level, and again when we launched in full in December.

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

As we went through the development cycle we did make changes to the original design. One major advantage was the knowledge and experience the team brought to make suggestions to the path we were on. This really helped us not just take our own design ideas, but to have a team of experts that had been through this many times before and could offer market knowledge an experience.

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

Project management made detain that user stories were created and outlined for each and every feature of the product. Using Jira with kanban boards, we could monitor each step of the development as it moved from design, to in progress, to testing and finally to completed. this made all aspects of the work very easy to track,

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

The most unique aspects of the company was their flexibility and ability to work closely with our team and understand our customers needs as it applied to our end product. The team of experts always offered us options when deciding on how best to create modules and generate shortcuts even if it meant it would lower our over all costs. That's not what you see from most software houses.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

I would be hard pressed to find anything that could be done differently. The team are my choice for the next stages of development in our next round of funding.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the founder and CEO of LaunchMatic.app, which let's mobile app developers and marketers instantly design screenshots for the Apple App Store and Google Play Store without needing a designer.

For what projects/services did your company hire Railwaymen?

I hired Railwaymen to build out our React web app, starting from the MVP (currently built) to full product launch (in the process).

What were your goals for this project?

To build an interactive React web app where app designs are done without any help or assistance. Has Stripe integration for payment processing.

How did you select this vendor?

Not only have I used Railwaymen before, but we have a long 7 year relationship and I have used them at prior companies.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

They are a fantastic option for any stage of your company. I've used them to built entire products, to take slack off my full-time engineers, and to work on other side-projects that aren't assigned priority within the team. They are great with web and native apps.

What was the team composition?

Typically 2 engineers that focus on front and back end with a PM to help navigate between my needs and what's being prioritized.

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

We just launched our MVP and it's fully automated for user signups, designs, and checkout. They've quite literally built everything from the ground up and there wouldn't be a product without them.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

Unless you are a highly technical product manager I suggest getting a PM. Not only will they help manage your engineers while you're asleep (granted you live in the West) but they provide a much needed buffer for some of the less technical clients to ask questions to. Also much easier to plan meetings and agendas with them as they will be much more communicative.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

They have highly skilled engineers that are willing to work crazy hours. And they have an hourly rate that doesn't break the bank.

Are there any areas for improvement?

None so far.

Please describe your company and your position there.

James Publishing has been publishing content for lawyers since 1981. I'm the founder of James, and the co-founder of our new software, Marketing Amplifier.

For what projects/services did your company hire Railwaymen?

After speaking with several development agencies, we retained Railwaymen to turn our raw idea into first a clickable prototype for which we could obtain customer feedback, and second, into functioning software.

What were your goals for this project?

A totally new type of product for which there no models in any industry or profession.

How did you select this vendor?

A marketing agency recommended Railwaymen, saying she had sent several people to them and all had spoken positively of their experience. A nice bonus was that Railwaymen's pricing was way more reasonable than the U.S. developers we had spoken with.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

Railwaymen handled 100% of the design and development. We had neither a wireframe nor a clear vision for what we wanted developed, but their team worked patiently through several iterations before we settled on a super-simple interface for our less sophisticated audience of small law firms.

Sylwia deserves a big pat on the back for highly creative and eye-pleasing work. Once we had a winning prototype, Railwaymen moved quickly through development and testing even though COVID roared in just as development was beginning.

What was the team composition?

Several devs, one designer, and one product manager handled our project. The head of the Railwaymen periodically checked in to make sure all was going well.

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

Arriving in the first two months of the COVID lockdown, the new software has been a lifesaver for us. It has provided work for our team that they can do from home, it is generating substantial numbers of new customers for our company, and perhaps most important, it has transformed us from being a stodgy old book publisher to an innovative software publisher with a product unlike any other.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

Our product manager Bartosz has been great start to 1.0 finish, and is now getting our 1.1 and 1.2 versions started. He has stayed in close touch, helped us work through the inevitable challenges, accurately projected a completion date, and has been pleasant and calm throughout.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Creative design and problem-solving have had the biggest impact. But the unwavering support and patience of their team is a close second.

Are there any areas for improvement?

Nope. Railwaymen is a first class, high-quality operation which charges reasonable rates and does great work. We are extremely happy with the relationship, and plan to stay with Railwaymen through future versions of the software.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO and founder of Frindow Ltd. It’s a startup social networking platform for people who feel lonely and want to make new friends and connections.

What challenge were you trying to address with Railwaymen?

I needed them to build a website for our startup. We don’t have those capabilities in-house, so we needed to outsource the development. Essentially, we needed their technical expertise.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Railwaymen developed our website from scratch. I provided them with specifications on the technical functions and features. We also had a third-party designer who created the look and feel of the site; this included the color scheme and landing page. Railwaymen fully implemented the design.

We worked in bi-weekly sprints, and they handled both front- and backend development. It was high-level work. After putting a task into Jira, they completed it, then I’d provide feedback at the end of each sprint.

What is the team composition?

There are two backend developers, one frontend developer, and two QA testers. I work directly with the developers, but my main point of contact is Bartosz (Project Manager). He answers any questions I have, and I answer questions he may have for me.

Directly interacting with the developers works well for me because I have a technical background. Normally, the project manager would do this, but we made this agreement in order to keep the budget reasonably tight.

How did you come to work with Railwaymen?

I looked on Clutch and received a shortlist of potential companies, all of which were based in Krakow, Poland. So, I traveled there and spent a few days visiting each company and speaking to their managers. Essentially, I wanted to observe their standard practices, get a general feel of their environment, and see how their company was organized.

After visiting about six companies, I decided to go with Railwaymen. Overall, I really liked their management and after viewing their portfolio, they seemed very capable of doing what I wanted. Also, they were very supportive of the project itself, which was important to me. More than just being willing to do it, they understood what I was trying to achieve and were keen on helping me obtain my objectives.

I liked their company and made sure they had the level of expertise the website required. Going over and visiting them allowed a lot of flexibility because I got to meet the people who’d be working on the project.

How much have you invested with them?

So far, we’ve invested £100,000 (approximately $120,000 USD).

What is the status of this engagement?

The project started in April 2019, and it’s still ongoing. As of three weeks ago, the website is up and running. Now, we’re preparing for the next phase of development which will be based on user feedback.

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

It’s early days because we only just went live. However, the impact has been positive overall. There have been no problems raised by my users. Our friends, family, colleagues, and users — basically anyone who’s interacted with the website — have all given praiseworthy feedback.

Google Analytics shows that people tend to stay on the site for a long time. Yes, that has more to do with content than functionality, but if there were performance issues, the page views would reflect that. People are using the site as if it’s been around much longer than it has. There are some things I want to change in relation to user behavior, but we’ll tackle those in our next steps.

How did Railwaymen perform from a project management standpoint?

We communicate through Slack, Jira, and Zoom. Throughout the engagement, we’ve held a few standup meetings.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I’m very fortunate to have the partnership that I’ve had with them. Their team appreciates that we’re a startup and privately-funded project. I’ve received tremendous amounts of work compared to the amount of money I’ve given them. In other words, Railwaymen has spent many additional hours working on the project than what we paid for.

They’re very comfortable fixing bugs and rectifying issues. Had I gone to another company, they would’ve charged me for every single additional minute worked. However, Railwaymen hasn’t been like that at all — this really sets them apart from their competitors. They’re very eager to please and have gone above and beyond on technical matters.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Sometimes, they spend a bit more time on a task than anticipated. Generally, their time estimates are accurate. But sometimes, the task takes them a longer amount of time to complete. Overall, they’ve been a tremendous help. If they spent more time figuring out how long a task will actually take, that’d be helpful. Also, if something isn’t clear, they should ask more questions.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the Co-Founder and Product Manager of Famtree - a Social Networking platform that helps you to find and connect with your relatives around the world.

For what projects/services did your company hire Railwaymen?

We wanted to develop a mobile app, that will enable users to create their personal accounts, invite their friends and family, and together - build their own family trees. In that way, they can find their relatives, that they didn't know to exist!

What were your goals for this project?

The goal of the project was to build a mobile application, which will be very intuitive (users from a very different age range might use it) and technologically reliable. We wanted to create a real community around Famtree, consisting of people who found their relatives through the app.

How did you select this vendor?

I was looking for a software development partner with years of experience and high-quality projects. As Railwaymen has got very good reviews on Clutch and talented senior developers on board, I decided to entrust them with my project.

Describe the project in detail.

Together with Railwaymen, we created a Famtree iOS mobile application. The backend of the application was developed in the Ruby on Rails framework. Other technologies/integrations used in the mobile app development were PostgreSQL, Redis, D3 and Twilio. The Famtree mobile app is available in 2 languages, English and Arabic, which means there are two completely different language scripts available: RTL and LTR.

Due to cultural differences, the main app feature of building a family tree was a pretty big challenge, for example - it is pretty common in the GCC region to have more than one wife. Nevertheless, Railwaymen easily adjusted to those requirements and built exactly what we wanted.

What was the team composition?

The Development team consisted of four people: CTO, Project Manager, iOS Developer, and Quality Assurance. Thanks to that we not only had our app built but also fully tested after only 5 months!

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

The Famtree iOS mobile app works flawlessly, without any bugs and errors. The feedback from users is positive and they like how the app is helping them to find their family members, that they even didn't know about.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Despite a small time difference between our and Railwaymen office, our cooperation went smoothly. We worked in weekly sprints matter, which kept us up-to-date through the whole development process. They speak English very well and take their time, to explain even the most complex technological matters, if you ask for it.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

What distinguishes Railwaymen team from other software companies is their open-mindedness. Even if they encounter some cultural or language differences, which is completely new for them - they won't stop, before they find a solution. They use technology as a key, that'll open for you a door to a completely new dimension! Without their creativity and problem-solving attitude, my project definitely wouldn't exist.

Are there any areas for improvement?

None from my perspective - keep up the good work!

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CTO and former CEO of an online educational technology platform.

What challenge were you trying to address with Railwaymen?

We had a unique case. The quality of our previous third-party provider was slipping, and we needed a new vendor urgently. We had very little control over our infrastructure, and I didn’t trust the previous company to handle all of it any longer.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Railwaymen went in immediately and got us sorted out before we even signed a contract. Our old platform was full of holes, and it crashed and broke all the time. The previous company provided almost no documentation, but Railwaymen worked through every issue. The platform runs on Ruby on Rails, and they did a lot of backend work to fix all the bad code. We’re currently working on web-responsive mobile development, and we’re moving more heavily into iOS development now.

What is the team composition?

We worked directly with a developer at the beginning. Starting in April, we added a project manager as we moved them into iOS. We also have a designer working on the project.

How did you come to work with Railwaymen?

We found them through Clutch. When we first started, we considered two companies, but the company we chose underperformed, as I mentioned. Railwaymen contacted us just as we were considering a new partnership, and we decided to work with them instead.

How much have you invested with them?

Our total expense is somewhere between $50,000–$200,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in January 2019, and the work is ongoing.

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

We had no real uptime before they started working with us, so the improvements are on several orders of magnitude. Before, we were bleeding customers, but the infrastructure they put in place saved us. We’ve more or less doubled our userbase.

How did Railwaymen perform from a project management standpoint?

I can message them at any time, and they’re always available to make changes. Most of our communication is through Slack, and we speak with their developers on a daily basis.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They balance my needs but are willing to push back if they know an idea of mine won’t work properly. They have a good network, and they’ve added design resources and other team members that we needed. They put deadlines first, which we value.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Their receipts come in different languages, which can be confusing. It would be helpful to have them just in English, but that’s really the only pain point I can think of.

Please describe your company and your position there.

We're an agency that is involved with anything regarding digitalization, strategy, concept, design, and development of digital products. We've been founded in 2017, we're around 15 people and my role is coordinating projects development.

For what projects/services did your company hire Railwaymen?

The challenge was building a learning platform that interacts with an existing Ruby on Rails app in a very short time. In a very agile way and with requirements not fully defined.

What were your goals for this project?

The solution was a service-oriented ruby on rails app that provides a CMS, user service, messaging service and notification service all managed via an admin panel that provides the user a learning journey. At the same time interacting with an existing platform.

How did you select this vendor?

They were recommended to us also the online reviews help make the decision.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

The project's requirements were documented in a very brief manner. As the requirements were very agile and shifting often. The project needed to provide a user service that handles participants in the program and also admins and editors for the content creation and program admin. The project gathers together users that participate in a learning program.

A CMS was built to provide content maintained by editors. The Admin panel allows the creation of a guided learning journey for the end-user. On the end-user side, the user receives an account sets a password and participates in the program. Which allows guided learning and interaction with other users in the program via the chat.

The team developed all functionality from scratch also using existing standards as example: the chat via XMPP.

What was the team composition?

The team size fluctuated from over 10 developers to 3 at times. Depending on the workload. The team consists of senior and junior developers that are willing to step over their comfort zone.

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

The project was very important for us, the start was bumpy due to many factors. One of time: the short time to develop a new solution and integrating it with an existing solution. However, since the beginning, we've come a long way and we're continuously improving.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

As the timeline was very short and the requirements flexible we had issues with meeting quality standards that were expected. The project's requirements were setup in Confluence. We worked with Jira for ticketing and Sprints. And direct communication via Slack.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

As our relationship evolved the team got more attached and involved in the project. They do care about quality however that requires time. Which, in an agile environment, is not always an asset you can rely on. The team has even worked in shifts to deliver features that were required.

Are there any areas for improvement?

As with any project and looking in the past you can find space for improvement. Would have been great to have a more realistic time estimation in the beginning and more consulting on what can be achieved in what period of time. Managing the expectations on what can be delivered would have released some stress we had along the way.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the founder of a media technology business. We analyze video and audio files.

What challenge were you trying to address with Railwaymen?

We needed to add a number of new features to our platform, but the developers we were working with didn’t have the capacity. We hired Railwaymen to help with this development, particularly with Ruby on Rails, to create a type of turnkey solution.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Railwaymen performed quite a bit of backend development for us, using Ruby on Rails. They also did frontend work on the platform. Their team handled a lot of the integration and project management tasks for the engagement. 

What is the team composition?

Three people from their team worked with us. 

How did you come to work with Railwaymen?

After looking on Clutch, we found a number of potential companies with the proper skill set. We wanted the right size vendor that wasn’t too big or small as to stay in our budget. After interviewing each and considering recommendations, we chose Railwaymen. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together between Feburary–April 2019. 

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

Although I don’t have specific metrics, we were very happy with their work. 

How did Railwaymen perform from a project management standpoint?

They provided a high level of project management, which was exceptional. We used Slack and Jira. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’re a very friendly team to work with. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

Although there’s always room to improve, I’m happy with the services they provided.