Sagacity Softwares Pvt Ltd

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Skewb is a two-and-a-half-year-old company primarily providing services for the utility sector. We look at selling business outcomes as part of the service, and we offer a data-driven solution system. I’m the director of digital in the company. I manage all digital activities, from writing routines on the clients’ estates to providing SaaS offerings.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Sagacity Softwares Pvt Ltd?

We were working with a mid-sized water company in the UK, and we were trying to use that opportunity to build our product, to then roll it out to different companies around the world. The intention was to exit our company within the next five years, so we needed a product that would help our valuation during the exiting.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Sagacity Software was our main offshore development partner for a services portal solution, which was meant to manage the workflow going through a developer services organization. We need to get water, gas, and electricity into new utilities projects, and there’s management around that to ensure that everything is done according to regulations. All of that is done on our platform.

As a spin-off to that, whatever functionalities we built for our initial client were productized in order to be rolled out to other clients. We’ve rolled the platform out to four other clients so far.

I had in-house architects that think through the entire solution and how it’s going to fit together. Once that was done, Sagacity Software provided full-stack development. They also gave us some architectural input. They haven’t provided infrastructure architecture, but they’ve worked on data, solution, and application architecture. The AWS infrastructure has been managed by my onshore team.

The app has MySQL and PostgreSQL components, and I know that they’ve also used PL/SQL to do database operations. They used Golang on the frontend and PHP as well.

I’ve also had a project with them building a prototype mobile framework, which used the Xamarin framework.

What is the team composition?

We have two dedicated architects within their team who reviewed our requirements and determined how they fit into the product roadmap. We had 9–10 people at the peak of the project, but normally we worked with 3–4 people.

How did you come to work with Sagacity Softwares Pvt Ltd?

One of their founders was a candidate that I interviewed for my old organization as we were creating an offshore office there. He worked there up until he co-founded Sagacity Software. About five years ago, I was looking for an offshore partner for my previous organization, and I reached out to them. I gave them a small, £5,000 (approximately $6,433 USD) project, and I was really pleased with the work. I watched their organization grow from there, and I went to them again when this project came up.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent £60,000–£70,000 (approximately $77,182–$90,045 USD) so far, and we have another £40,000 (approximately $51,454 USD) worth of pipeline work for them.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Sagacity Software in July 2019, and the first phase of the software came out in September of that year. The product went into full flow by April 2020. We’re continuing to work with them for at least another six months.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The big aspect of what we do is not just building software solutions. We pride ourselves on building business outcome solutions. The business case we were trying to solve with this project was related to water regulators in the UK. There’s a particular set of metrics around enabling the building of houses. The company we were working for was ranked 17th, which meant that they had to pay a fine of about £2.5 million for not being a cooperative water company. By the end of year one, they were up to number 13, which dropped their fine down to about £1.7 million. I wouldn’t attribute all of that to the new platform, but 60–70% of it was down to how the platform managed the completion of the work.

How did Sagacity Softwares Pvt Ltd perform from a project management standpoint?

We had a very agile structure for setting up the project, and I had an onshore team responsible for the architecture while Sagacity largely did the development. I’d say that a lot of the management happened on our side.

I gave them a bit more authority to manage some aspects of the project, though there were a few areas that could’ve been managed better. However, they worked over weekends to get things back on track. Sagacity has good project managers but, as with most offshore companies, we still need a level of oversight to ensure that things are airtight. As far as small offshore companies go, I’d put Sagacity in the upper 75% for project management.

We use Jenkins to coordinate the work from a solutions point of view, and we pass our requirements to them using an agile board. My project managers use those boards to make sure all the requirements are done, and I get reviews on a fortnightly basis. I also get them to send us weekly status reports, summarizing what they’d done that week. I have no problems with how they manage requirements and report to me. We have a well-set-up DevOps estate.

What did you find most impressive about them?

One of the reasons for the success I’ve had with them was that we started with a blank slate. We were able to get both the solution and the delivery in place, and I liked the fact that Sagacity could conceptualize the kind of solution we wanted. We’ve gone from concept to product without too much intervention from my end. They came with unique ideas and product solutions. We challenged them, and they responded to those challenges in a very short period.

They were also good in managing a dual line of code, with one for the client and the other for the productization of the platform. It was a challenging means of working, but they handled it well.

Are there any areas they could improve?

There are a lot of holidays in India, and they weren’t very quick in communicating when one would come up. We only got to know about them 1–2 days in advance. This is something they’ve improved over the last few months. Apart from that, I’ve been happy with everything I’ve gotten from them.

We’re a $10 million company now, and they’re our main IT supplier. We have a new pipeline for which we’re looking at them to be our main supplier.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the head of technical services for a cloud telephony provider with headquarters in Munich, Germany. We work at a service-provider level, selling to direct businesses or through channel sales.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Sagacity Softwares Pvt Ltd?

We have a frontend that’s used to configure our systems, which our partners have access to. The problem was that we couldn’t do bulk rollouts. We have rollouts for over 100 users, and those have reached over 5,000. We had an export function that was very limited, and it was time-consuming for us to use it. We needed a tool that would happily communicate using our API.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

There are other projects they’re working with us on. For this one, we worked with Sagacity to create an easy-to-use bulk uploader. It would create users or extensions, depending on what we want to call them, and the point was for the tool to do everything up to the point where a user could plug in a phone and not have to do everything else. It was almost complete automation.

They handled design, development, and project management, and they provided us UX and functionality training. Sagacity took care of almost the entire project. Our input was purely from a UX perspective, and we worked with them to tailor the software when required. The technologies used are AngularJS and Golang.

The software was completed in four months, and we ran testing after that. We had to fine-tune the API, and couldn’t just suddenly have 30+ parallel requests hitting it.

What is the team composition?

We had a project manager who also worked on the frontend, providing customer service. There were two developers on their team, along with two database engineers and someone doing functional testing.

How did you come to work with Sagacity Softwares Pvt Ltd?

I’d known them for a long time, since around 2013. I was working for another cloud provider at the time, where Sagacity was looking after the system management tool there. My communication with Sagacity was a bit limited, but we’d constantly let our R&D team know what our requirements would be. They would then work with Sagacity to produce whatever we needed at the time, whether it was billing-related, part of the system management, or stats and reporting.

Knowing that the experience I had in the past was good, I introduced them to my current company. 

How much have you invested with them?

The initial price was £25,000 (approximately $32,100 USD), but we had a budget between £25,000–£50,000 (approximately $32,100–$64,200 USD). The cost only drifted by £3,000 (approximately $3,900 USD). 

What is the status of this engagement?

Our project ran from January–June 2020. We really got going in early-February and the project was set to take four months, but there were some holdups on our side. Change control and security are very strict in our company. There were a lot of logistical holdups, but Sagacity delivered in time.

It went live in June 2020, and we’re moving the product to a new environment now. We’re moving away from our UK cloud into the German one, in order to have full integration.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Considering that they’re quite new to my company, I’ve gotten good reviews for Sagacity. I brought a lot of trainers and project managers from other providers we use, in order to get their views on how easy to use this product actually is. Sagacity picked up the design quickly and understood what our requirements were.

We’re running three other projects with them in parallel at the moment, including one for emergency services. The team there is also saying that Sagacity picks up requirements quite quickly. They don’t have to keep repeating themselves and going into fine details. That’s been a benefit, given that the design element is always a long process in these projects. So far, the team here has been quite impressed, and so have my bosses. 

How did Sagacity Softwares Pvt Ltd perform from a project management standpoint?

They chase us for updates, which is good if they need something from us. They’re not too pushy or aggressive about it, in terms of escalating things to my boss and complaining. They just bring the matter to my radar, so that I’ll know that the action is outstanding. 

On this occasion, we would have weekly Zoom calls. I’m not sure what project management tools they use internally, but we’d get meeting minutes at the end of each call, with previous and outstanding actions, deadline changes, and so on. They likely used a tool because the data was always in a particular format.

As with any project, we think we’ll have a design in our heads, but, as it’s developing, we’ll identify better methods. There was a lot of communication with Sagacity during the project so the budget didn’t go too far over the initial cost. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

To be completely honest, the cost is a big factor in any environment, especially with tight budgets. With cost, we always expect a level of quality.

The perception would be that, given where Sagacity is based, there would be communication barriers but we had no issues in this regard, and everyone here is comfortable speaking to Sagacity. The quality was good because of this. They quickly understood what our requirements were, without us getting frustrated.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I haven’t had any complaints here and I’ve seen their team grow. Even though there have been rare communication barriers, the people we speak with are generally very good.  

Billing was quite tricky at my previous workplace, and it’s generally a hard thing to get right in telecom. There’s a lot of legislation around it, so we have to make sure that the right information is reaching the right person. If Sagacity found anything difficult, it was this area, but much of that was our fault. We couldn’t provide them with the infrastructure to do what they needed.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

Clients should trust Sagacity’s judgment and let them lead at times. They generally come up with really good ideas. With every project I’ve used them for, I thought I’d come up with the perfect design, but they brought a development point of view and suggested things that made more sense.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am Principal consultant at Arrka. Responsible for development of the product.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Sagacity Softwares Pvt Ltd?

For the design of the UI for our Platform.

What were your goals for this project?

Design the UI for our Platform in very short span of time.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

I know the Co-founder since my college days and have seen his work / delivery since then.

Describe the project in detail.

Design the UI for our Platform in very short span of time. This required design of UI for 7 modules.

What was the team composition?

1 Team lead and 2 developers.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The UI was much needed for our Platform. After the Platform was made live, we did a lot of demos to prospective clients and they did mention that the UI is quite neat and clean.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

I must say that the team lead had a great command over development and team. It was in no time he was able to understand the requirements and gave us the delivery with minimal to NO rework.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Their commitment and timely delivery set them apart.

Are there any areas for improvement?

Was very satisfied with the outcome. They didn't give me a chance to thing on these lines.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CTO of RefreshMint.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Sagacity Softwares Pvt Ltd?

We hired their team for web development services.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

The team at Sagacity Softwares Pvt Ltd developed and designed our webpage from the ground up. Their team worked from concept to completion. The page includes a customer login, profile creation, and custom recommendations for each user. The legacy app was in .NET. They used Angular for the frontend, and the backend was built using GoLang and React.

What is the team composition?

We had a full-stack lead developer, frontend developer, two designers, an architect, and a project manager. Two people were working with us full-time, while the other 3–4 worked with us on an as-needed basis.

How did you come to work with Sagacity Softwares Pvt Ltd?

I worked with them in the past. I also like that they’re close to us.

How much have you invested with them?

We invested $100,000 in their services.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked with Sagacity Softwares Pvt Ltd from April–September 2019.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

On-time delivery was a key metric. We also had a good connection with their management.

How did Sagacity Softwares Pvt Ltd perform from a project management standpoint?

They were timely with product development. We communicated mainly using Jira. We’re happy with their performance.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’re smart, not only in technologies but also in understanding our domain and its functionality.

Are there any areas they could improve?

The only recommendation I have is for them to focus more on customer documentation.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Before starting the project, clients should speak to the developers.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the founder and CEO of GypsyShack, a holiday booking website.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Sagacity Softwares Pvt Ltd?

Customers weren’t impressed by our website, and the business we’re in requires a functioning and good-looking website. We needed someone to develop a new website for us.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Sagacity Softwares Pvt Ltd developed our new holiday booking website. They made it possible for us to feature various holidays and make them configurable so that people can select their own dates and the group size that they’ll be traveling with. On the backend, they enabled us to add and edit holidays, update pictures, etc. The designer was a third-party that we chose together.

What is the team composition?

There was a project lead, two frontend developers, and two backend developers. At the end of the project, there were a couple of testers.

How did you come to work with Sagacity Softwares Pvt Ltd?

I knew one of the founders from the past. When I was looking to build my own website, he coincidentally contacted me after seeing I had started a company and said he’d love to work together. I gave them a pilot, and they did well, so I then gave them the whole project.

How much have you invested with them?

My company spent $25,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from January–June 2015.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

At the time, we were a benchmark for what a website in the adventure and activity-based travel market should look like and do. We had something called “fixed departure holidays,” which allowed us to pull departure dates from different holidays and create a list of the upcoming departures users could take. That was a new feature; previously, users would have to select their holiday and then look at the dates. Sagacity Softwares Pvt Ltd made it possible for users to look at the dates and then select their holidays. That was unique in India at the time. Some of our competitors and partners even copied our designs after our website went live.

How did Sagacity Softwares Pvt Ltd perform from a project management standpoint?

We mostly communicated over email and WhatsApp.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Many of the development companies that I’ve worked with promise the world when they start off, and either the quality or the timeline suffers. Sagacity Softwares Pvt Ltd was able to deliver good quality on time. They were very proactive in fixing any issues that arose.

Are there any areas they could improve?

A couple of engineers moved while the project was underway, which led to a couple of communication gaps. It would've been helpful if that could’ve been controlled and managed. Ultimately, though, this isn’t a big complaint, as the end product was very acceptable.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I recommend using them; I’m sure they’ll deliver good quality in the time they promise.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I head IT in Petro chemical industry

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Sagacity Softwares Pvt Ltd, and what were your goals?

ERP source code modification and database migration from DB2/400 to MS SQL

SOLUTION

How did you select Sagacity Softwares Pvt Ltd and what were the deciding factors?

Knowledge of core java, DB2/400 and Ms SQL

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

Feasibility study Identifying resources Working on timelines Execution of project User acceptance test Handover

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

One Project manager One database consultant One java developer

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

A long pending project completed

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

One year Remotely maanaged

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

Their sincere and positive management style made sure every team member was involved.

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

Project was done exactly as per our requirement.