Rebased

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

When I worked with them, I was the managing director of a Swiss telematics company called Mobisat SAGL. We manufacture telematics devices and software to remote control objects such as vehicles. Now I am the head of development at an IT product distribution company called Siewert & Kau Services.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Rebased?

The challenge was trying to offer better services to our clients. Our competitors were offering fee-based services. We wanted to give our clients something that was free and better.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They’ve developed many different web and mobile applications for us. Some are meant to be used directly by our clients, some are rebranded for our clients’ clients like resellers, dealers or insurance companies. For example, Kia Motors, the car company, uses our technology, including the mobile and browser apps developed by Rebased.

The range of services is pretty wide. They’ve built a number of client-side applications. They developed functionalities like setting speed limits with alarms for when the vehicle exceeds those limits, and route tracking with customizable jail zones with alarms for when the vehicle exits the zone. They built a dashboard that represents the actual vehicle dashboard to monitor in real time and control it remotely. The clients use the applications to monitor in real time not just a vehicle’s position but also the parameters of it like frontal valve position, engine diagnostics, any remote diagnoses of errors the vehicle might have.

The technology they use is generally web browser technology. They’re built our mobile apps on platforms that can manage different mobile operating systems to only have one app for all operating systems.

What is the team composition?

We work with a project manager, who is our primary contact. We have up to 30 developers available to us.

How did you come to work with Rebased?

We had teams of developers in both Italy and Switzerland. We also worked with people in the US. We tried to differentiate our suppliers as much as we could so that if we had trouble with any of them, we could count on different teams.

Eventually, we really decided to give everything to Rebased based on their personal attitudes towards the work they do. It's not often that you get real-time support on Skype anytime, even weekends. If we have anything urgent, I can contact our project manager. She passes it to the developers. They will fix things even during nonworking hours. Based on their professionality and the degree of services we get from, we decided to give them exclusivity on all our projects.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent approximately 200,000€.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in mid-2013 and its ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Telematics is about the black box that is installed in the vehicles. We’re not selling products that are nice looking or sexy. The client may never see the devices – what they know is the service. The services are what Rebased has developed for us, which are very attractive to our clients. We get requests every day from different clients for similar kinds of services. For example, our client Kia Motors Italy is expanding their work with us at the European level to Kia Motors Europe. Rebased's work has had a great amount of impact on our business and has allowed us to focus more on research and development of new functionality.

How did Rebased perform from a project management standpoint?

We have a very tight relationship with them, especially with our project manager. We communicate with her on a daily basis, sometimes multiple times a day. We discuss ideas with her and she discusses them with the developers. Within hours, she comes back with a new project proposal including detailed analysis of the task involved and anticipated hours to complete it. If I like it, they start working on it. She often proposes better solutions than the one we are proposing.

Our project manager provides an outstanding service. She's always available on Skype. Whenever there is a need or emergency we can count on them. We get fast responses and there's a whole team working on our project, including backend developers, frontend developers, and designers. We know the developers personally if we need to talk to them. We speak via Skype or email. They’re very quick to analyze what we need and provide solutions.

We also have an online ticketing system which we use for complex projects and tasks. We can keep everything in one place and see the status in real time.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Rebased is always using the latest technology out there. We used to work with some developers that always worked with the same language, with the same technologies. Rebased are constantly experimenting and testing new technologies. This makes us feel that we are constantly ahead, or at least in line with future technologies, which is really great. And, as an entrepreneur, it also matters to me that the pricing we get is very good and attractive.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I'm not saying that there aren't any, but I can't think of one right now.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I would advise them to be as precise as they can with the project. Sometimes when you need something developed, you expect that the developer will immediately understand what's in your mind. Often it is the opposite. The approach which I found to work is spending a little more time on our side to make our requests as precise as possible. That saves time for both developers and clients. It also saves money which we can invest in developing different projects. The more precise the request, the more attractive the final project and the lower the cost will be.