Requestum

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am a founder and CEO of XSCALE Limited (UK). We represent ourselves as an innovative logistics company, transforming the freight forwarding process into the digital level.

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

We had a challenging task to synchronize several tasks into a single platform to achieve smooth and reliable performance. The logistics industry operates in a wide spectrum of tasks and fields, which makes our task more complicated to achieve.

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

I interviewed 5 different companies for this task. Requestum came as my favorite one with their unique solutions. Their expertise was also confirmed by strong referrals from my network

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

They designed and developed a Drupal-based business management solution. We first started with a discovery workshop to go over our business challenges. Then, they gave us workflows and design mock-ups to approve before starting production. They completed the project in 8 sprints, which allowed us to test functions and give feedback. The final product was also tested by our focus group customers.

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

Total 8 people:

• Design
• Front-end 
• Back-end
• PM
• QA Engineer 
• Deployment
• Business Analyst

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

We were able to launch the platform on time and this has helped my team to offer our services to our existing clients to hit the ground running. After the initial stage of introduction of this platform to the potential customers, we were able to induce 12 new customers within the first months of our operations. This number has tripled during the second month and we are optimistic that the demand will keep growing.

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

The project management was great, especially compared to other vendors we've worked with. They regularly met the deadlines, and we never had unexpected turnovers. We communicated through Zoom, Slack, Jira, and GitHub.

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

Requestum was always accessable and ready to discuss new ideas. Every suggestion that I have made during th eproject was carefully considered, and went through feasibility pipeline which worked perfectly for my platform.

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

While the quality of work was great, they could have been more diligent about documentation.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the owner of Municipal Blackflow, a plumbing company. We test and certify backflow valves for the EPA.

What challenge were you trying to address with Requestum?

The system that we use requires a lot of custom software and the ability to integrate the office with the technicians in the field, the customers' databases, QuickBooks billing, and all sorts of different areas. We needed a company that could build a central hub that brings everything all together for communication.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Requestum designed and built a custom LAMP stack from the ground up. We custom write code from scratch to do all the specific things that we need to do in this business because nobody offered anything out of the box, especially in the subscription model, that would be able to handle our needs.

The custom solution manages all of the data that we have. It’s been a constant evolution for quite some time — in the beginning, Requestum had to build our first data set and database to help us process and house our data. After that was released, we just kept adding to it and building it as a central hub until it got fully-featured and sustainable on its own. Even to this day, we're constantly adding new features and enhancements to the solution.

Aside from this, Requestum has helped us come up with other solutions and look for different tech stacks that work with our current budget. As our company evolved, we also started implementing newer and better technologies. Requestum really excels at harmonizing with what our business needs at a certain time and coming up with the solutions and the budget we need to get to where we want to go.

What is the team composition?

I’ve worked with full-stack developers, iOS developers, WordPress developers, machine learning engineers, data scientists, and a Linux administrator from Requestum.

How did you come to work with Requestum?

Requestum was recommended to us by a previous business partner who had experimented with a lot of different offshore developers. We started out with smaller projects to see if our partnership was going to work, and they did not disappoint. All of their work was solid, on time, and within budget.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in December 2015, and the engagement is ongoing.
 

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

I can definitely say that there would be no way to keep our business going without the custom solution that Requestum built for us. Our company’s main differentiator is based on our software — I didn’t have to hire as many people to do the work that I could just automate via the software. This model keeps our payroll down, and a lot of that money saved then gets reinvested in the software as we keep on enhancing it.

Without the software, our workload would get so complicated, and there would be so many nuances. It would probably take at least 10 employees to do the work that the software and three people do for me.

How did Requestum perform from a project management standpoint?

Requestum has performed well in terms of project management. They’re incredibly honest, and they’re able to quickly figure out the problems that we have and figure out innovative ways to get past them.

We typically communicate through video calls and phone calls.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Requestum is highly knowledgeable in all the different technologies that are available. We also appreciate their ability to stick to the tried and tested ways of building this software. We trust in their ability to come up with a long-term plan to further improve the software.
    
Are there any areas they could improve?

No, I don’t think there’s anything they could do differently.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Make sure to spend a lot of time in the beginning to really iron out what your business needs and to anticipate where the business projections are going. There has to be a lot of communication and thought put into what the big picture is going to be.

Please describe your company and your position there.

We are FinTech in gaming, located in Estonia and the heart of Switzerland. I am CoB of the company and in the technical lead.

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

We hired Requestum to build a marketplace in the gaming space with us. Our goal was that the system can scale, easy to use, a sexy looking frontend and a functional backend with reporting function.

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

We were looking for a full service provider (server, backend, frontend, design) and found Requestum. The project lead and the developer team did understood our needs from day one - that convinced us.

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

The work was divided in 6 sprints with different tasks, server setup, onboarding, user management, trading engine (incl. the first shop which is based on an exchange engine in real-time with best price execution), charting, accounting, backend, reporting and a chat system which was building (not a 3rd parties)

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

There were up to 11 people in the team, depending on the various needs. We had one project lead who were coordinating the teams so that we could concentrate on our business.

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

The core system which was ordered, was delivered on time. Our project lead did a fantastic work in keeping all daily work away from us. Is our project ready? Yes, like Rom is build readily ;-) So, we found always ideas how to enhance this and we are still happy to work with Requestum on changes, new features and enhancements.

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

We are communicating with the project lead in near/real time. If there is anything, she gives us a call, write a message, send an email and depending on the urgency we ll fix it. (even over weekends). We would call this real agile working. Deadlines have been meet.

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

The dedication of the project team was impressive. That you are not 08/15, you even can speak with the CEO.

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

Ukraine, back then was not easy to wire money, but we found a way and these days you can even use PayPal to wire money, so that improved already.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the CEO of a multinational home and living e-commerce company.

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

Maintenance and improvement of existing functions. 

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

Requestum gave an extensive list of programmers, including their CV's, that we could choose from. We let two of them perform test jobs. We were very satisfied with both of them, so we hired both

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

Our custom application handles product, stock, order, shipment, returned product & refund data. The following (e-commerce) channels are used:

• woocommerce
• bol.com
• wayfair
• channable

There are also several other API integrations involved, from supplier inventory to financing & shipping. Besides the background tasks that are executed using cronjobs & queues, the middleware also has 4 web interfaces for direct input / output actions:

• Admin panel for employees
• Shipment scans used by suppliers
• Returned product forms used by end customers
• Reporting tool used by accountant

The application was built using PHP 7.4, Symfony 5, MySQL 8, rabbitmq, redis and docker. It is hosted on a private VPS using docker. Sentry is used for monitoring & reporting.

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

There were two symfony developers in the team

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

Maintenance and improvement of existing functions. Such as:

• Setting new shipping rules for existing shipping providers
• Creating interfaces for already existing functions such as stock locations, setting shipping rules, creating accounts, etc
• Adding features to current revenue report CSV's
• Updating e-mail templates
• Adding new features, such as:
  • Creating a dashboard with revenues and costs
  • Creating stock order function based on certain rules
  • Connecting API of new PSP
  • Connecting API of new shipment company
  • Creating dashboard for customer service, with simple information about orders

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

We communicated through Skype and Asana. Communication was easy

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

There were no long communication lines. We were directly in touch with their experienced programmers.

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

There could have been more insights, in how each hour of the day was spend

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the technical director at a design and development agency focused on building intelligent media and automated communications tools for enterprise clients

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

Requestum created a series of dynamic Highcharts graphs which responded intelligently to changing data in the HTML page

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

We found them online and after an interview with some of the exco and project managers selected them for their clear comms and project plan

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

We communicated primarily on Slack with occasional Zoom calls for status updates, the back and forth with the primary project manager made the ease of the project seamless, as he coordinated all the developers in the background

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

We worked with about 4 or 5 of their team, from exco to developers to project managers.

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

Our ask was unique to our platform and process, so my endless customisation and odd requests were met with technically sound solutions each time, we've used them on a follow up project already and plan to continue to do so for this specific type of development going forward.

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

Most comms went through their PM, with occasional technical queries from the developer on a particular task on more detailed clarification, everything ran through Slack / Zoom which was a seamless experience

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

The ease of working with the variety of dev skills I have access to. They could accommodate all the requests that I passed to them with ease.

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

Nothing comes to mind, and we've already started on a follow up project, so fairly happy to continue working with them

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm a software engineer for a smart solutions company with various sites across the US.

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

We had massive amounts of data that required thorough review with ongoing human interaction. Differences in the data can be subtle, and we needed a solution to help sort, highlight, and categorize it. Requestum presented a plan, to do this and meet all of our requirements.

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

We found them through a referral, and considered them along with approximately a half dozen other candidates. Requestum was the only candidate that could clearly show they had a team of experts in all areas of the project.

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

We started by sharing example datasets, and the various methods for analysis. Then we went through the many challenges faced the entire process. They responded with workflows and mockups of visualizations to assist us in speeding up the analysis. The final product drastically cut our time down in continual analyses.

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

We worked with four different engineers and scientists, as well as one project manager and two technical associates.

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

With few resources to embark on expanding new technologies, Requestum allowed us to jump start our project, saving us over a year of development time.

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

Project management has been extremely professional and timely. There was a point when progress slowed for a bit. They were very transparent of the issues, and added resources on their end to overcome them.

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

I am impressed with their technical expertise, professionalism, and great communication skills. Our project had a wide variety of components, and they had experts to work in every area.

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

I'm honestly struggling to come up with something. We're so happy with their work that we're continuing to work with them.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the CEO of Veeper. We build free customerized loyalty programs for online stores and reward customers with automatic incremental discounts, instead of cashback or points.

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

We hired Requestum to build our entire frontend interface.

How did you select Requestum and what were the deciding factors?

We were contacted by a Requestum sales representative through Linkedin and they sold themselves with the case studies on their website, price and effective communication during our initial consultation.

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

The frontend was built using Vue.js and worked alongside our APIs and aggregations. Which consisted of the sign in pages, customer on-boarding, analytic report dashboards, personalized email promo code marketing system, email marketing templates linked to Hubspot's API and customer account creation / deletion.

Our deliverable date was within two months, which they met, even though we made adjustments to the workload through the contract.

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

Business Development Manager, 2x Project Managers, Several product, frontend and QA developers.

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

We were able to launch the product on time while adding a few extra features.

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

The project management was great, even with the time difference they were very effective communicators, professional, patient, understanding and explained everything in clear terms. Which for a non-technical guy was very helpful.

They also provided diligent documentation, development timelines, completed work updates and a clear breakdown of the hours and costs.

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

Their level of communication and patience. We were never left in the dark or wondering how far along the project was. We added them to our Slack group and they communicated with all of our team members throughout the project.

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

No, I highly recommend them to anyone looking for high quality well priced development. We plan to work with them again in the near future.

Please describe your company and your position there.

As an Entrepreneur and Managing Director I develop and release digital products and new business models. This project will be the main and central product of a newly founded company as a start-up.

For what projects/services did your company hire Requestum?

Even thogh the market offers diverse possibilities for video chatting and remote conferencing, as well as various platform to purchase and consume digital content and books, the area around families with children is not covered by established solutions to purchase independent digital content for children and youngsters.

While we combine established technologies we have developed an all-on one solution to digitize physical books, read them during travel or even conduct remote reading sessions by using screen sharing and video chat functionalities.

What were your goals for this project?

We had a vision of a product for families with children that love to read books and stories together. In case they are separated, e.g. during business travel, we still want to allow them reading bedtime stories together and continue with their family rituals by using technology that perfectly supports such use cases. So we started with a project to develop the MVP of this product.

How did you select this vendor?

We worked already together with requestum in several projects already for more than two years. During this time they have already proven to have the right way of working, mindset and service orientation needed for our agile approach. This made it easy for us to chose Requestum as our strategic technology partner for this brand new product and new company from scratch.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

In this early phase it is important to focus on the development of the Minimum Viable Product (MVP). While we could focus on developing the business, conducting user research and defining and prioritizing the backlog, requestum completely integrated into our product development process by ensuring timely and quality assured realization of the product.

They developed for us an iOS App, a web application and admin portal. During the product they covered all technical aspects as well as product management of the realisation in alignment with the Product Owner. We've chosen am agile approach with Kanban as our management method which turned out to match perfectly our approach in all other business-related workstreams.

What was the team composition?

We had three teams working in parallel for each part of the solution. Two frontend teams with 2-3 developer each worked on the web and admin app. One backend team consisting of two developers working on the backend and needed APIs. In addition to that we had a full-time project manager, as well as a part-time business analyst and a part-time QA engineer.

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

We have successfully released the MVP and are now in the process of promoting the product. Marketing activities have started a few weeks ago and we see already first positive results. This is the starting point of a new company and a new business.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

The project management offered turned out to be one of the most critical roles to understand and communicate the product owners vision and ideas. We can say, the project manager was not only managing the project and progress, as well as budget and available resources, it became a proxy and a remote extension of the Product Owner.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Requestum met all our requirements expectations and also came up with their own ideas. They had suggestions on what can be improved and always with an adequate solutions to challenges we faced. All together we became one team and worked highly integrated and fast.

Are there any areas for improvement?

During the high pace and time pressure we had in the last six months various changes to concept and the requirements happened. Even though all requirements, changes and decisions are well documented, we were a little lazy with documenting the software aspects of the solutions. This is now something we need to deliver later.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We’re a small startup that specializes in sports technology to help college & American football programs and professional football organizations.  

What challenge were you trying to address with Requestum?

We hired Requestum to help us develop a tool that would calculate advanced performance metrics using Computer Vision.

What was the scope of their involvement?

The team at Requestum developed a proprietary algorithm that calculates player performance for American high school, college, and professional football players. Along with developing other algorithms to assess player metrics, we engaged with them to also design the UI for the consumer version of the solution. They used Python for their work.

What is the team composition?

We had a project manager and several developers. There were 3–4 developers, one of them being a senior developer on staff. My primary contact was with the project manager. I also spent time with one of the senior project managers. The first person I interacted with was on the sales side of things. I established the scope with him, sharing my vision and roadmap.

How did you come to work with Requestum?

At the start, we had a different service provider. We wanted to challenge them from a time and speed perspective. We felt that if we had a second team working on our solution, we could get to market faster.

We also felt that another team could be challenged to develop something more sophisticated and more accurate in terms of the Computer Vision technology. From a cost-efficiency standpoint, there is more leverage with multiple suppliers.

When we first brought Requestum on, it was a slow build. The initial challenge was to develop a proof of concept. Once they passed that milestone, we were able to give them an additional assignment.

How much have you invested with them?

The project cost around $21,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Requestum in October 2019.

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

In January, we had a soft launch of the platform. One of the ways we’re creating awareness is through a robust Twitter following that showcases the technology and what we’re able to do. During the soft launch, we were able to showcase our platform to several potential clients. As a result, we were able to increase our following by 26%.

We were also one of the few companies that had two head football coaches visit our booth during the showcase. If head coaches come to your booth, it means that they’re impressed with what they’ve heard. We also had two potential investors talk to us at the soft launch. Discussions have started because of that. Since then, we’ve had three different companies look to partner with us.

The Sports Innovation Society also featured our technology. The platform has been talked about in the industry as groundbreaking and innovative.

How did Requestum perform from a project management standpoint?

From a project management standpoint, they’re fantastic.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their level of professionalism and responsiveness separates them from other suppliers. The developers’ level of sophistication of the tools and algorithms they bring to the market is also impressive.

Are there any areas they could improve?

The value we’ve been able to get from their team has been relatively stable. I don’t have many improvements from them. They’re great strategic partners.

Please describe your company and your position there.

Monitoring systems/hardware manufacturing in Telecommunication area, custom monitoring systems. Position: Head of Project Department – RIT LTD

For what projects/services did your company hire Requestum?

Remote monitoring systems for mobile operators, firmware assembly/upgrade/testing. Website updates, development and support.

What were your goals for this project?

Keep the projects website up-to-date in terms of content, plugins, functionality. Meet the SCADA communication protocol requirements for low-level equipment. Extend the team of developers without the need to hire full-time workers.

How did you select this vendor?

They were recommended by partner who worked with the company and provided a positive feedback about their approaches and price/quality ratio.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

1. Prototyping, development and support of the project's internal website.
2. Examine SCADA communication protocol requirements for low-level equipment.
3. Provide recommendations about possible options of how to communicate with high-level SCADA software.
4. Development and further upgrade/maintenance of communication part of low-level equipment firmware.
5. Testing of the solution.

What was the team composition?

Business analyst Solution architect Frontend developer Backend developer 3 C developers Quality Assurance engineer

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

The project was really effective due to the fact that successfully completeness of this project opened new possibilities on the market for our company. Quick coverage of the on-demand development needs keeps us confident in the day-to-day operations with such a reliable partner.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

Management is a separate topic. They've perfectly fulfilled the ''feel supported" need of a client. I never had feeling of being along with my affairs. Also special thanks for patience of management persons in case of emergency situations and technical requirements roll-up. Rapid feedbacks, best solutions, perfect timelines.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

These guys are true professionals. You have a need - you are covered. Communication is the key. Customer success is their religion. They help doing business instead of providing services.

Are there any areas for improvement?

Nothing to say.