Please describe the scope of their involvement.
They developed using Ruby on Rails, and we use MongoDB also for the database, and a zillion other tools, as well, but those are the main ones. Like I said, we used a different amount of developers depending on what stage we were working on, or what specific features. They always handled the custom coding and testing, and we offered guidance and helped with specifications.
How did you come to work with Revelry Labs?
John, their sales guy, might've reached out to me at some point. It was good timing. I went through my email and looked for anybody that was saying, "Hey, we want to outsource development work," or whatever. Then I looked at everybody's portfolio and what they had done. I liked that these guys were based in the United States. We hadn't used anybody before in this manner, so I didn't want to have to have any of the challenges of having somebody in another country or anything like that. I wanted somebody that spoke fluent English and worked the basic same hours that we worked because I knew it could've been a challenge.
It's been good. We started out with just two developers, and then we – I think we're at six now, and they all work on a full-time basis. They work 40 hours a week.
Could you provide a sense of the size of this initiative in financial terms?
We've spent half a million, at least.
What is the status of this engagement?
They're working every day on stuff. All of our different projects and teams have different clients they're working for with different projects, and so stuff is ending all the time. We work in sprints, so then with very specific pieces and parts to those sprints. They're literally giving us something every couple of days. We have used them on some major projects where they worked independently. We've approached them with, "Hey, we need to get this system and processing company to work with our e-commerce platform. We don't have time to focus on this. Can you guys knock it out?" They've been good at that. The quality and reliability are great and we rarely get negative feedback about bugs or malfunctions.
Pros include the ability to proactively innovate on behalf of clients and help them refine their product strategy.