Relout

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the COO of animalhotels.com

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

animalhotels.com - we created an app to find and book a trusted sitter for your pet everywhere you need

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Relout to accomplish?

• Find front-end developer who match our startup culture and has skills to move the project forward

SOLUTION

How did you find Relout?

conference

Why did you select Relout over others?

• Great culture fit
• Good value for cost
• Company values aligned

How many teammates from Relout were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

detailed interview about our needs (technical and also organizational culture), preparation for whole recruitment process, screening candidates, scheduling meetings with final candidates, technical skill verification

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

We found our current front-end developer and we still cooperate after more than three months. Our developer has appropriate technical skills and matches our startup's culture perfectly.

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

We had comprehensive descriptions about every stage of the recruitment process. Everything was prepared on defined schedule. Even we needed additional meeting in order to select final candidate (each proposed candidate was great so we had real struggle to select the one :)) Relout helped us a lot in order to organize additional meeting with tree candidates - the meeting was no planed before. Thank you once again!

What was your primary form of communication with Relout?

In-Person Meeting

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

• Organized process and clear, detailed text and in-person communication so it was easy to understand where we are and what to do next.
• Real and deep techincal verification so we hadn't to ask any additional questions to verify the candidate - it was huge help for us.
• Great understaning of our specific needs.

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

Everything they did was perfect from our perspective.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I was the CTO of a Swedish startup that provided software services for restaurants to help them manage food orders. My company no longer exists.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Relout?

We didn’t have any internal DevOps infrastructure management staff for five years, so we needed their team’s DevOps infrastructure support.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Relout provided outsourced DevOps services; they provided us with site reliability engineers.

During the discovery phase, they had to determine what had been done to our DevOps infrastructure without any documentation. After that, they were responsible for managing our infrastructure. Relout set up Kubernetes clusters, which was new machinery.

Our company was going through financial difficulties, so we also tasked Relout with identifying areas where we could cut costs. Our team and Relout’s team were trying to optimize and group together processes. Gerard (Founder & CEO) tried to get credit, deals, or discounts from Amazon to cut costs.

About halfway through the engagement, we asked Relout to provide software developers as well, specifically backend Java developers. 

What is the team composition?

We started working with two teammates, Gerard and Adam (Head of Site Reliability). The team eventually grew to four. Then, we added software developers.

How much have you invested with them?

Initially, we spent around 400,000 Swedish crowns (approximately $37,000 USD) per month, and then 700,000 Swedish crowns (approximately $65,000 USD) per month.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together on this project from January 2022 until our company stopped existing in December 2022.

How did you come to work with Relout?

We found them through a British recruitment company. Relout had already been hired when I became CTO.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Relout helped us cut costs by 50% in six months; the team went the extra mile to make this happen. We were very satisfied with their services.

Relout worked with our company during a stressful time, and most of the great work we did was because of their support.

How did the company perform from a project management standpoint?

I was the manager for the initial team, and Relout integrated seamlessly into our company; we never felt that they were an outsourced agency. The team was engaged and felt like part of our team. I even worked with them in person in Poland for a while after we had established a rapport and good communication. I communicated with Relout every day — 50% through Slack and 50% through Google Meet — and I’m still friends with many of their teammates.

Relout was very organized and did a great job meeting deadlines. They managed their own Jira board, which was the best board in our whole organization. Each internal team had a Jira board, and we always used Relout’s board as an example. They created tickets and followed up on every task that was mentioned.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Relout’s teammates were experts at cloud services, specifically Amazon Web Services. I’ve been in this business for about 15 years, and I can say from the bottom of my heart that Relout’s team is the best I’ve ever seen. They were great, especially at delivering results without specific instructions; their level of commitment was extraordinary, and I trusted them to do their jobs. Their level of knowledge was mind-blowing.

Also, Relout had never provided developers before, but they accommodated our request for developers. The infrastructure team had been working together for a long time, so they were easy to work with.

Are there any areas they could improve?

There was some room for improvement when Relout brought in software developers because they had never managed developers before. Once we discussed our expectations, we eventually got aligned.

Also, since they were so engaged in the project, they occasionally overstepped into my area of responsibility. This stems from a positive trait, though.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

Hire Relout and trust them; let them do their job.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I was the CTO at SaaS software company delivering services to the food industry. Point of Sale, Order channels etc.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Relout?

I got in contact with Relout to build up our AWS infrastructure from scratch. We wanted to have build pipelines, monitoring, deployment using kubernetes in AWS environment. Overlook AWS usage in form of cost, usage and best practices.

SOLUTION

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

I was searching for two SRE and devOps engineering to help us running the project. I got help from a a recruiter firm to locate Relout, that just had started to setup the business. They wanted to take on the project as a duo, the guys at relout had previous worked together with similar project and was doing that successfully as a team. I was looking for two people, so for me that was a good fit. During the interview and after it was obvious I had found someone with both knowledge, experience and the motivation for the assignment.

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

In the early stages focus was on current production environment, what we had and needed. Get the current production environment stable and with insight so we could start building up the target platform in parallel. Next phase was on training and building up training material for the team and developments team, best practices, for self-learning and scale-up knowledge. During the training, the team started to build up our Kubernetes cluster and deployment to staging and production. This needed to be done from scratch.

We aimed to let new development projects to go to production with the new setup as starting point. At the same time focused was also spent on cost reduction, security/access hardening, number of account that should be active and in use, size and number of resource in use to optimize stability, performance and cost. Last part of the project was focused on monitoring and production testing on the Kubernetes setup and also launching the new services into the new AWS environment.

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

From start we had two, over time we expanded it to a team of four. We had Site Reliability Engineering with skills divided into infrastructure, devops way of working and monitoring.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We had success in so many areas. AWS cost was reduced with 40% and decreasing. Stability and insight was provided. From no control to full control over AWS resources and accounts. Related training material with best practices to scale knowledge to development teams and as part of onboarding

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

The new team created a good base for knowledge and expertise in the company. With the new team we managed to move forward with new development project carried on by another team, that was blocked from AWS resources and know-how.

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

Their willingness to share know-how and to produce results with high quality in a very professional way was impressive.

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

Nothing really, we took decision to not invest to much time in legacy platform to give focus on the target platform.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the CEO of Beryboo

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

An intelligent tool for e-commerce in the SaaS model 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Relout to accomplish?

• Find a senior developer with a specific technology stack and skillset

SOLUTION

How did you find Relout?

Referral

Why did you select Relout over others?

• High ratings
• Referred to me
• Company values aligned

How many teammates from Relout were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

1. Determine the purpose of hiring a new developer to the team
2. Identify the required skills, experience and approach to work:
   • presenting the candidates
   • conducting interviews with candidates
   • negotiating the terms of the contract
   • onboarding the employee

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

Presenting us with a dozen or so applicants, setting up meetings with the selected ones, and then conducting the signing and onboarding process. We are very satisfied with the employee the company recruited for us. 

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

Relout presents the number of candidates very professionally and carefully, describes them, verifies their skills, and presents us with the best. The entire process was done on schedule and with full access to the Relout team. 

What was your primary form of communication with Relout?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

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

Patience with our requirements, high quality candidates, assistance in the onboarding process and formal issues. Care during the implementation process. 

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

No, they do everything great

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the R&D Manager of an agriculture company

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Producer of dairy and farming machinery

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Relout to accomplish?

• Add more backend developers to one of the teams
• Get in better control of an important part of our system, and diminish vulnerability

SOLUTION

How did you find Relout?

Collegue

Why did you select Relout over others?

Collegue

How many teammates from Relout were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

Backend software development of core areas.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

New functionality and features released each sprint, as well as monitoring and test automation of the core areas.

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

It is a complex area and the team members have delivered valuable backend software features for the core business. Responding quickly to new needs, working creatively and focusing on the business value.

What was your primary form of communication with Relout?

Email or Messaging App

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

Their dedication and never giving up even though it has been difficult and complex. They constantly work to improve processes and way of working.

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

Can't think of any. :-)

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Managing Director of J15 Digital

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Software house producing bespoke web applications and websites.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Relout to accomplish?

• Migrate to new infrastructure
• Discover bottlenecks in current infrastructure (high traffic web portal)
• Plan new cloud infrastructure and select provider(s)

SOLUTION

How did you find Relout?

• Referral
• Other

Why did you select Relout over others?

• High ratings
• Close to my geographic location
• Great culture fit
• Good value for cost
• Referred to me
• Company values aligned

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

Our client running a high traffic online publication got to a place where infrastructure became quite unreliable. Being unable to receive satysfying solution from the provider, we've reached out to Relout for help. They've started from evaluating our existing infrastructure and identifyfing bottlenecks.In the next step they've proposed some general plans for a infrastructure better suited for the job.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

• Reduced downtime and other connected issues
• Increased performance
• Confidence about migration

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

The team delivered on time on every stage. We've received report and advice far more extensive than what we've asked for directly.

What was your primary form of communication with Relout?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

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

Vast expertise

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

Nothing comes to mind. I'm very happy with the service.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the CEO of (a/an) Consulting

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

We are helping businesses delivering CRM's based on Salesforce platform

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Relout to accomplish?

• consultancy with area expert

SOLUTION

How did you find Relout?

Referral

Why did you select Relout over others?

• Close to my geographic location
• Great culture fit
• Good value for cost
• Referred to me

What was the size of Relout’s team?

2-5 Employees

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

• deployment time

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

From my experience working with them, they have shown a strong commitment to delivering items on time and meeting project deadlines. Their project management approach is highly organized and efficient, ensuring that all team members are on the same page and working towards the same goal.

In terms of their responsiveness to my needs, I have found them to be highly attentive and responsive to any questions or concerns that I may have had throughout the project. They are always quick to address any issues and provide prompt solutions to ensure the project stays on track. Overall, I have been impressed with their project management process and would highly recommend them to anyone in need of high-quality software development services.

What was your primary form of communication with Relout?

• In-Person Meeting
• Email
• Messaging App

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

Customer-centric approach

Are there any areas for improvement or something {provider_name} could have done differently?

Some areas for improvement could include adding more communication channels with clients