Ralabs

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the Head of Sales and Strategy at ODSC. We host large scale Data Science conferences globally. I lead the corporate sales team.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

With the pandemic hitting, in-person events disappeared from the map and many organizations were hosting virtual events with platforms that were "ok" but not to our standards.

SOLUTION

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

We searched for a company that could help us build the next virtual conference platform and when we found Ralabs and their vast experience in a wide variety of projects we decided to go with them.

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

We had a kick-off meeting when we presented our project and what were our goals. After that, we presented a project plan with the requirements for the first MVP. Then we worked in bi-weekly sprints to make sure all priority requirements were in track.

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

A project manager was our primary POC. We also had 2 full-stack engineers, one front end engineer, a designer and a QA.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Clients and conference attendees have praised the user experience when using our platform. The look and feel of it has been also a point many people have enhanced.

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

We had a sprint planning call at the beginning of every week. Daily standups and one platform every other week. Timelines were always set realistically and if any delay would happen the Ralabs team would explain the situation and work thoroughly to deliver on time or the less delay possible.

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

It's very easy to work with an organization and team. They were very flexible and always willing to help. They really adapt to last-minute changes.

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

A few minor bugs appeared during the conference but they were promptly fixed.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am a front-end lead developer at a startup. We are developing a highly innovative product in the facial recognition industry.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

• Support with React Development. We hired a couple of developers to help us boost our software development process. The main goal was to launch the MVP fast and the team helped us with it.
• Also we were cooperating with the Project Manager to ensure smooth communication and great task management.

SOLUTION

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

• A friend of mine recommended reaching out to Ralabs since they have proven to be a reliable and professional team.

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

• We have been working with React developers that were helping out with fronted tasks. Mostly we were working on the dashboard, login page and incorporating designs that UI/UX agency has provided us.
• The project manager Olha was taking care of the communication, task management and tracking the progress.

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

• 3 people have been involved. 2 Senior/Middle React Devs and a Project Manager.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Thanks to Ralabs team we were managed to release a great MVP in a short period of time. Our investors were pleased to see the outcomes so did the first users. Now were are getting ready to proceed with more complex functionality and we will ask Ralabs team to help us with it.

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

We had regular daily meetings, always on time. The team always were within the deadline. We used slack for written communication and hangouts for online meetings. All the tasks were tracked in Jira and supervised by the PM.

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

Being a human being. They were always trying to find the best approach, or a win-win solution to benefit us in the first place. Also, they are very professional to work with while also very friendly and easy to talk to.

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

all was good!

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the digital marketing director at a financial tech firm called InvestiNet. We simplify the debt collection process by automating it through software.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Ralabs?

We needed someone to provide us with React software development and UI/UX design.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Ralabs uses a lean methodology to develop our web app through WordPress. They work in two-week sprints that start with UI/UX, which will eventually move into breaking down different items into time buckets and prioritization. From there, several aspects are implemented and further developed.

It’s fundamentally a payment portal, but we also incorporate different payment types and connect it to APIs and various systems — we also send information to Google products like Analytics through JavaScript.

What is the team composition?

Over the past year, we’ve worked with several front- and backend developers, DevOps engineers, UI/UX designers, and senior designers.

How did you come to work with Ralabs?

Our company was already engaged with Ralabs prior to me accepting this position. We’re continuing to work with them because we’re pleasantly surprised by the results they give us.

How much have you invested with them?

So far, we’ve invested somewhere close to $200,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

The ongoing partnership with Ralabs started in January 2018.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The quality of their work is superb and as a result, we haven’t experienced any bugs or technical issues on our web app.

How did Ralabs perform from a project management standpoint?

We had some turnover where Ralabs had to bring in a new product manager, but the handoff was excellent, and the team continues to deliver and stay on top of our projects.

They manage the project through JIRA and we typically communicate through Slack and Google Meet.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We’re impressed with how they manage the project because they don’t let anything slip. We also like how their UX designer is able to translate our weird and complex challenges into a great experience consistently.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I don’t have any constructive criticism at the moment.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I would say hire them sooner rather than later.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the technology director for House Buyers of America, a real estate company that’s into home buying and selling. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Ralabs Design?

We have our own website, but we want to start a new project and design a new system. Because of that, we’ve hired Ralabs. 

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Ralabs is designing a new portal for us using various front- and backend technologies, including Angular. They’ve built APIs on the front- and backend sides using PHP, among other tech stacks. Meanwhile, they’re also creating a mobile app that uses a piece of technology that can be used on both Android and iOS systems. 

The portal and the mobile app talk to each other using various APIs, and the idea behind this entire system is to manage our business operations better. The Ralabs team has designed the project from scratch, and they’re currently working on the products’ development. Their resources also do QA tests; they’ll also provide post-delivery support.  

Right now, we haven’t officially gone into the maintenance phase, but we’ve already gone live. We’ve finished phase one, and we’re only working on some fixes and mobile app design tasks. To be clear, the portal isn’t a public site; it’s only for our internal business operations. The same goes for the app. 

What is the team composition?

We’ve worked with around 10 people from their team, including junior and senior developers and designers. A project manager also works with us. If I want to split the team in two to work on the portal and the mobile app, 3–4 people will work on the app, and 3–4 people will handle the portal; one QA tester, one project manager, and a DevOps specialist will work in both teams. 

How did you come to work with Ralabs Design?

We found Ralabs through Clutch — we use Clutch when searching for vendors because of the reviews; we’ve also found good companies on the platform — and that was how we connected with them. We wanted to outsource the project to a team in a different time zone, and Ralabs matched our requirements. 

Apart from that, we also asked them for references and looked at the quality of the websites they’d done before. We asked them to present those sites, too. Then, we explained the project to their resources, who gave us the best technical feedback we’ve heard. 

Another deciding factor was their pricing and hourly rate. We didn’t want to hire a team that was too cheap. We also checked whether they could provide senior technical experts. Other vendors would tell us they provided us with senior developers, but they’d only deploy junior developers in reality. Given that, Ralabs let us talk to their designers and developers. Finally, Andrew (CEO) himself was also a technical specialist, so he understood technology. That was another deciding factor for us. 

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve invested between $100,000–$200,000. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Ralabs in June 2020, and the engagement is ongoing. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Ralabs provides great designs. Their designs don’t have many flaws, and their designers are always available for review. 

Moving forward, we expect to have 100% dependency on the system; we’re trying to move away from manual paperwork — we want to do everything online. In a couple of months, our operations will be 80% dependent on the system that Ralabs has designed — we expect that that will have a high business impact on us. 

How did Ralabs Design perform from a project management standpoint?

Ralabs is great in terms of deadlines. They’ve missed some timelines since we’ve changed some orders, but their overall performance has been great. To communicate, we use Zoom. Our members use Jira as a project management tool. Their resources also use good design tools such as Figma when designing wireframes.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their design is highly intuitive, and the team understands our business needs. They have amazing designers that seem to read our minds because of the way they know exactly what we need. They’ve spent about a month learning about our needs, and then they’ve delivered perfect designs. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

Their QA tests weren’t good at first. However, they’ve gotten better eventually. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Your requirements should be written out so Ralabs can start working on them quickly. Your requirements should be clear — that’s the most important thing in any engagement. You should discuss such requirements with the team.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am a founder, CEO of a flower shop - theleno.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Ralabs Design?

Our offline shop was doing good and we decided to expand by creating a website that could help us reach customers we don't reach offline.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

Friend of mine recommended them so we met for a coffee and decided to shake hands.

Describe the project in detail and walk through the stages of the project.

• The design team started by collecting my requirements, goals and expectations.
• We had extensive calls and interviews to gather all needed info.
• Afterwards they proceeded with research
• analysing market, competitors and best practices for flower shop website.
• In couple of weeks they showed me a mood board with different concepts to pick from.
• Once we agreed on the visual identity they proceeded with wireframes and the overall structure.
• Once a week we had a call to discuss the progress and soom enough the UI part was ready.

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

• we talked with Lead Designer and two more designers were involved.
• also there was a project manager to keep track of everything

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

I was very happy with the result since we had be delivered a great website where people could purchase flowers and compositions. Also they managed to keep the same look and feel online as we had in our physical store so the visuals didn't contradict. once the website was live we managed to increase our sales a lot!

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

It was easy to communicate with a design team and an assigned project manager. We had regular meetings and follow ups send via emails.

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

I appreciated how they truly wanted us to succeed. They take your business goals very seriously and help out not only with design but giving you some business advice too. They came up with amazing upsell opportunity while designing a shopping cart.

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

all was perfect!

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am a Lead Engineer driving all fronted work.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Ralabs Design?

We have cooperated with Ralabs Design to create our dashboard. They did amazing work working with us, listening to our needs, and communicating flawlessly. They did UI/UX research, proposed a roadmap, and created both web and app designs. Also, they helped us with React development, they have a great dev team available as well.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

A friend of mine recommended them. After working with a freelancer who ghosted us, we decided to reach out to an agency for better speed and stability and it was the best choice ever.

Describe the project in detail and walk through the stages of the project.

We have discussed with the Ralabs Design team our needs, goals, and expectations. The team conducted a reaserch and showed us the first concept. When we agreed on the concept they produced all the designs we requested and proposed some things from their side. They were always on time with all the mockups and the fronted team appreciated the easiness of implementing them. We believe that their designs will help us find the right customers and raise funds.

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

We have worked with 2 designers, a project manager and a middle react developer. It's a hack of the team!

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

https://getxix.com/

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

We had a regular daily meeting organized by the project manager where we discussed the progress and feedback. They were always available for our requests.

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

Their discipline mixed with problem-solving skills amazed us. The Lead Designer - Serhii seems to have deep knowledge in Ui/UX design and has suggested to us some ideas that we have never would come up on our own.

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

all good! we hope to continue a fruitful collaboration.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am a product manager at Utopic Software located in Tampa, Florida. We provide products to all forms of business, government, hospitals, schools, etc to keep their devices always up and running and have minimal downtime.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Ralabs?

We hired Ralabs for Web Design (UI/UX) for our management console. Our current management console is very dated and we wanted to completely redesign it to make us more functional and easy to use for our customers.

What were your goals for this project?

Our goal was to make sure that the user would have a better experience and ease of navigation on the new UI. We wanted to minimize the number of clicks and more visual information. Also, we wanted to add support for the UI/UX for phones and tablets so that customers can easily do the same functions on it.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

We searched online and looked at the vendors that had used them in the past and felt that Ralabs was perfect for this project.

Describe the project in detail.

Once we started the project with Ralabs, we went over the current web management console. We went through the areas that we knew about where we needed to add improvements. Ralabs also performed interviews with some of our customers to get their feedback on what areas that they felt needed improvements.

Once we had all the feedback, Ralabs proposed few design options based on our and customer inputs. They provided pros and cons of all designs and we selected the design that we felt was best for our customers and our product.

What was the team composition?

We were assigned one project manager and two UI/UX engineers.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The project was completed successfully within the time frame. We are extremely happy with the new management console and the improvements that it will provide to our current and future customers. It will take some time for us to release this new management console to our customers but customers are really excited about this new management console.

The feedback from UI/UX engineers and giving their inputs based on their experience was very helpful to make this a very modern and easy to use web management console.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

The communication was very clear and had weekly calls with the Ralabs team to go over completed functionality and the next steps. They brought up issues and possible solutions right away to make sure the project would not be delayed. Ralabs performed demo and completed functionality and provided their inputs as the project move forward.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

We were extremely happy with the Ralabs team and their knowledge. They were extremely professional yet fun to work with. The communication was great and we were always looking forward to our weekly calls with the Ralabs team. We are very happy with how the project was handled and completed successfully.

Are there any areas for improvement?

We are fully satisfied with Ralabs work on this project and looking forward to working with them in future.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I oversee the software development of one of the products of our company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Ralabs?

We hired people from Ralabs to augment our software development team with frontend and backend developers.

What were your goals for this project?

The goals were to develop a product (web application) being able to use the data processed by our company and provide actionable insights to our customers for maximizing the profits from their business.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

I had to conduct a series of interviews with the company's top management and their software engineers to see if they had the right talent to augment my software development team.

Ralabs' pitch was that they will provide us the top-performing talent and in case we claim anyone not being a good fit - they would provide alternatives with no questions asked and without impacting our project's deadlines. They were very motivated to be engaged in our project.

Describe the project in detail.

Once this vendor was selected for our project we had a series of interviews with the candidates submitted by Ralabs. I needed very strong senior software engineers into my team to develop the front-end and the back-end of the product.

What was the team composition?

We hired 2 front-end and 1 back-end developers from Ralabs with the plans to extend further our relationship.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The vendor's employees have blended into my team and quickly became an integral part of the team. They were part of all the scrum ceremonies actively contributing in every stage of the SDLC.

They were technically strong, producing deliverables with high quality and working transparently. There was no need to micromanage them and they quickly earned my trust and built the confidence that they will deliver the committed features on time.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

I had a dedicated delivery manager who was in continuous contact with me helping to make all organizational aspects of our collaboration go smooth. And it worked very well.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

This vendor has access to great talent and their services are reasonably priced. They work very hard to earn and maintain trusted relationships. They ensure a guaranteed quality of service and stick to their promises.

Are there any areas for improvement?

Since our requirements for the candidates were very strong and demanding, it took us some time until we have found the best fit. But it was worth it since the software engineers I got were of top-notch.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the head of engineering at a health tech machine learning startup. Our focus is on combining data science with findings in the health domain. Basically, we aim to drive insights from clinical data.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Ralabs?

We started creating a product that gave clinicians a dashboard for viewing the insights provided by our machine learning algorithms. As an example, if there was an increase in a certain type of caseload, this dashboard would allow a clinician or, more likely, the head of the department to explore what might be going on.

We came up with a prototype internally, and we needed to add a lot of functionalities that would support the clinicians. We needed Ralabs’ expertise to refactor it into a format that was more easily maintainable.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

At first, we engaged Ralabs as an advisor, to consult and explore a few technology options T.hen, we had them rebuild the platform in the new tech stack. Ralabs is particularly fluent in WebAssembly, but also Python and any JavaScript-based languages. We talked about AngularJS and Vue.js versus React.js, and we ended up going with React.js after talking with them.

For the backend machine learning algorithm, we ended up using Python because our data scientists were more familiar with it, and they found out that the models we were running would run less efficiently in WebAssembly. It was worth the extra work to do it that way. We hosted it on Google Cloud Compute. Ralabs also helped us a lot with DevOps, because we weren’t familiar with deploying something at scale. 

The platform is a web application that’s also formatted for mobile use. The more exploratory parts of it function as a web app. Once a clinician figures out what they’re more interested in, it’s pretty easy to pull up the information on their mobile phone in-between rounds or when they have a bit of time to review it.

Ralabs also had a designer look over the solution, and gave us a lot of good suggestions for UI improvements.

What is the team composition?

I worked with Andrew (CEO) and several of their developers. I also worked with one of their product managers, a designer, and a DevOps person for a little bit. One of the nice things about using them is that we could use some of their resources for a limited time on an as-needed basis, and didn’t need to hire full-time employees. That also made vetting easier.

How did you come to work with Ralabs?

I think it was through a referral from a friend.

How much have you invested with them?

The total cost was $14,000–$15,000. It was a pretty small project, but we added on a bit of work as we went.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Ralabs in Q1 of 2019, and we wrapped everything up about three months later.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

They were on time most of the time, more than any other set of developers I’ve used before, and even more than our internal team. That was really nice, and also pretty rare.

As far as code goes, Ralabs adhered to modern Python and JavaScript standards. Their quality and style were fantastic. If we told them that we needed to do it another way, they would adhere to it pretty quickly, within a few days. They also gave us some advice on good branching and deployment strategies, and we adopted those in accordance with their advice. It was great to incorporate them into our team and quickly execute on the goals we had.

How did Ralabs perform from a project management standpoint?

We used Jira, which we were already using internally. Originally, Ralabs had a project manager work with us to make sure everything was up to date, but we eventually decided that they’d just adhere to our project management. We stopped using their project manager about a week into it. Throughout the project, they were pleasantly fast with getting everything done, and pleasantly on time.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They did a good job of advising us on what to do when it was relevant to do so, but they also communicated and listened to what we’d already learned. There were things that we knew about the domain that they didn’t, and there were things that they knew about development and deployment that we didn’t. They did a good job of working together with us and keeping us in the loop, whether it was through Slack or email. 

Aside from technical hard skills, they were also really good about being on time for meetings. They’re based in Ukraine, but they were still available in accordance with our time zone. We engaged them with the expectation that we’d have a couple of hours of overlap per day, but they were certainly more available than that. 

The Ralabs team woke up earlier and stayed up later, especially when we needed it. There were a couple of times when we needed something at what would’ve been the middle of the night for them, and, even though their developer was at home, he responded on Slack.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I can’t think of anything that stands out, in terms of huge problems. It was a relatively small project, but they did a good job with it. They were great technically, which was pretty obvious from the get go. 

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

Ralabs can do more than just being an execution shop. I’d definitely recommend that people talk to Andrew, show him the problem they’re trying to solve, and listen to him for 10–15 minutes, to see if he identifies anything similar or relevant. 

We’ve worked on quite a few projects, and it was nice to learn from them in the beginning what was relevant. Andrew was really helpful in detailing some of the things he’d seen, and what he’d do in those situations.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the CTO of Startup Codeworks

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Ralabs?

Web Development for a Recruitment Platform

What were your goals for this project?

Our goal was to build and improve our platform's workflow and user interface, as well as identifying and fixing the system's vulnerabilities, and the issues not identified/fixed by the previous vendors.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

We met Ralabs’ representatives at a tech conference and since then we have been in regular communication with the company’s sales rep. Given the quality failures of the previous vendors we were skeptical at first but we decided based on other clients reference checks to give it a try. The results were very good. . The expertise of the team matched, and some cases exceeded ,our expectations. We engaged a team of Ruby developers for backend development, front-end developers, and also helped us with advanced AWS configuration such as load balancing and security auditing.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

Our pivotal requirement was improving the platform’s user interface and updating the system’s workflow. They were tasked with designing and developing both the UI/UX and backend of the platform. Additionally, their team helped us rewrite and update our existing RoR framework. They also replaced our platform’s outdated interface with a much more modern design.

What was the team composition?

3 engineers, 1 product manager, 1 QA, 1 designer

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

They helped us improve the operational performance of the platform and built a user-friendly and responsive interface. This was instrumental as it allowed us to showcase to our client that we were employing the latest designs, libraries, and frameworks. As of now, Ralabs has accomplished more than four projects for us and the quality of the final product has always been very satisfactory.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

Project management was as expected. We utilized the agile methodology with weekly sprints and reviews and daily scrum meetings. They employed task tracking and reporting software and followed project management best practices and kept us well informed on milestones etc. The team has always been quick to answer any questions and overall were insightful and incredibly helpful. The company management was also very attentive and checking in with us weekly to ensure the project was on track and within our budget parameters.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Excellent technical expertise. Many companies have strong programmers like RaLabs but they also had some excellent software architects. Getting that right can have a massive positive impact on the development cycle of projects. Also, they didn’t steer us into a partial technology just because they had expertise in it. They were very thoughtful and worked with us to find the right technology for the problem at hand. They also had a good bench of full-stack developers which is often hard to find.

Are there any areas for improvement?

There’s always room for improvement even at the best of companies. We would like to see them continue to grow their data engineering team since they had a deep bench of developers and designers but sometimes we had to wait a few days to avail of their data architect who was in high demand. Overall It was our pleasure to work with Ralabs and we recommend them highly!