Sciant

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the global director of technology for a supply chain management company. We handle both the process and technology.

What challenge were you trying to address with Sciant?

We had multiple challenges and wanted to provide ourselves with a pool of flexible resources for outside support.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Sciant provides IT, cloud consulting, and development services. After a discovery phase, they executed on a scope of work, working with our ASP.NET stack. Their team helps us with some issues we were having with our ERP. They also help us maintain and improve our relationship with our CRM.

What is the team composition?

We worked with five members of Sciant’s team.

How did you come to work with Sciant?

I had an ongoing relationship with members of their board. I approached them with specific project work, and they said they could help.

How much have you invested with them?

We invest about $50,000 per month.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our ongoing engagement began in November 2020 and it’s ongoing.

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

The project is still ongoing, so we don’t have any results yet, but it’s been going well so far.

How did Sciant perform from a project management standpoint?

Sciant always delivers on time and within budget. Our teams communicated over email, video calls, and Slack.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Sciant is easy to communicate with. They always make sure we get what we want. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, everything has been great.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Be open and transparent to get the best out of the engagement.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the Chief Growth Officer at a Swedish based pricing optimisation software-as-a-service provider.

For what projects/services did your company hire Sciant?

In order to accurately price hotel rooms we require a real-time feed of reservation data from the hotel's property management system. The deployment of a new customer is dependent of the configuration of the system interface.

This can be a time consuming and complex process. We use Sciant's services to ensure that these interfaces are configured and deployed in fastest manner possible.

What were your goals for this project?

Our objective to to ensure our customers get to realise the value of our services in the shortest time possible. A critical component in achieving this is to streamline the system interface configuration.

How did you select Sciant?

Sciant was selected because of their proven track record over many years in configuring hotel property management system interfaces and their vast experience and expertise in hotel technology.

Describe the project in detail.

Sciant have been contracted on an ongoing basis to configure the interface between our proprietary pricing application and a variety of hotel property management systems. This service is provided for each new customer deployment.

What was the team composition?

The Sciant team consists of a project manager and pool of system analysts. The number of people working for us is directly dependent on the number of new customer deployments.

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

Sciant's knowledge, experience, expertise and contacts in the hospitality technology space means that they are able to achieve results that we could not achieve on our own.

It is s great comfort to us and our customers that the deployment of our software is less dependent on the availability of the relevant vendor resources and can be deployed in a predictable and consistent manner.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

The engagement between the teams is well defined and efficient resulting in predictable outcomes. The Sciant team is very responsive to any queries raised and provide a good visibility into the project progress.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

I am most impressed with the depth of domain knowledge that the entire team possesses. This is extremely beneficial in over coming challenges and getting things done.

I also greatly value their responsiveness. The Sciant team understand the importance of responding quickly to questions and queries, and meeting the expectations of our customers.

Are there any areas for improvement?

None that I can think of.

Please describe your company and your position there.

Our company provides revenue management services for hotels in Asia Pacific. We have also developed a BI tool that assists hotels in automating all their reporting needs. I am the managing director of the company.

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

The goal was to provide a solution to extract data from the Property Management Systems from the hotels that we are working with full accuracy.

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

I chose to work with Sciant because they already had the experience on such project. As the development of IT solutions in hospitality is a very niche area it is hard to find qualified companies. I previously worked with another company which was unable to deliver the accuracy promised.

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

We had a first meeting with the developer where we went to the potential solutions of implementing the interface. After we agree on what would be the best course of action we set a timeline on the steps of development of the project. This included an initial meeting to go through all the required specifications of the required export. We then had meetings every 2 weeks to review the progress and for me to share my feedback on the proposed solution and adjustments required. The deliverables were custom reports to install on the Property management systems of our clients. The main technology used for this development is Oracle SQL.

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

I have worked with 3 people during the time. At first I was in touch with the commercial director to identify the potential solutions for my project based on their experience. I then worked mainly with their developer so that they understand the key specifications and required outcomes of the project. During the time of the project we were also supported by the Director services to ensure the regular progress and quality control.

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

The deliverables are matching the expected accuracy which was the main challenges for the project. I am very pleased to have the correct exports which will allow us to complete our tool and start selling in a month. There are however compromises that needed to be made to get to that level but I do not think this is the vendor's fault.

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

We used basecamp to managed the overall development of the project and Atlassian for the technical specifications. We also had several meetings on Google meet so that we could discuss directly the issues and potential solutions. I appreciated that I could discuss directly with the developer as this definitely played a major role in finding a functional solution to the project. The project took a few weeks delay due to unforeseen challenges related to the specifications required. In my experiences these kind of projects always have slight delays due to challenges so I found it acceptable.

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

I think their knowledge and transparency were most impressive. Sciant delivered what they promised where other vendors failed. It the industry that I am it is very hard o find reliable vendors and I would be confident doing more projects with Sciant in the future.

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

As mentioned I had to do some compromises which are unfortunate but the deliverables still fulfil their main functions so I cannot blame the vendor for this.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the CTO in a startup based in the UK.

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

We work in the hospitality sector where integration to specific supplier systems are needed to create end-to-end solutions - in our case leveraging mobile services for guests. We needed a partner who could work with our tech stack (Python / AWS) and had experience with the systems we needed to integrate with. Our goal was to develop multiple 3 integrations with different vendors over the course of 2020.

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

We selected Sciant after doing after looking around the market and doing an initial scoping / discovery exercise. We were impressed with the depth of their knowledge and their open communication style.

We were able to discuss multiple architectural options and they listed valuable insights that led to us deciding on a chosen architectural approach. Communication was also key - we wanted a provider who we felt understand our needs and would work with us as a partner to accomplish our goals.

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

After an initial discovery workshop, they spent time with us going over specific user flows in more detail and assessing various elements like API sequence diagrams and specific protocol specification points. We then moved into implementation phase where they worked over the course of weeks and months (depending on vendor availability) to implement the solution.

We had regular meetings with them where we shared progress updates and clarifying questions were surfaced for quick resolution. The resulting integrations were delivered on time and we deployed them with pilot projects after smooth internal testing which they also supported.

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

We worked with 2 Software Engineers, 1 Test Lead and 1 Project Manager.

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

Over the course of 2020, we successfully developed the specified integrations which became a major part of our product set. We had clients using each of the integrations to some degree and were able to validate solutions end-to-end in a real world situations. This significantly enhanced our product offering, opening up new sales opportunities and increasing our customer base.

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

We communicated openly through regular meetings but, more importantly, using Slack for day-to-day questions and issues. This allowed for quick resolution and direct, informal communication between appropriate technical contacts resulting in quick turnaround for any issues.

They also tracked project issues through Basecamp to document any proposals which required review and assign actions from meetings. Financial updates and project updates were provided regularly throughout the project.

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

I was most impressed with their commitment and determination to help us achieve our goal. In true partnership, they didn't just implement what we asked them but validated situations they felt may lead to the wrong outcome and suggested different approaches where appropriate that could help us reduce effort or further enhance our product offering with little effort. This translated to a high degree of trust where they would work directly with vendors while keeping us involved and updated.

They also impressed us with the level of direct access to technical team members. By making their entire team available directly on Slack, we had open discussions across teams which led to quicker issue resolution and a higher quality outcome in the end.

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

We were really happy with the service and quality provided so it's hard to identify any specific area where they could have improved. We're continuing to work with them on new projects which says a lot about our views on their work!

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a product manager for Sonder. I’m in charge of the distribution strategy.  

What challenge were you trying to address with Sciant?

I hired them for a consulting engagement.

What was the scope of their involvement?

They sent independent contractors to work with our team and they provided business consulting services, followed by architecture and software development services.

During one project, we outlined the product requirements and business specification documents, while Sciant fleshed out the design. They also had a couple of projects where their business consultants did the discovery and created specifications.

What is the team composition?

I was working with one business consultant, one technical architect, and two team leads. I had 12 developers from Sciant at peak.

How did you come to work with Sciant?

My relationship with them goes back to my previous company, where Sciant was working on an integration project. I was very impressed with their work and hired them for multiple projects at that company. They came in highly recommended from one of my former partners, so I wanted to work with them again.

Additionally, the leader of their hospitality vertical is well-known in the industry for his work on other integration projects. During our vendor selection process, he led the presentation.  In the end, we selected him because of his domain knowledge and experience in the hospitality space.

How much have you invested with them?

If I total all the projects together, we spent close to $500,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

The latest project ran between October 2020–January 2021.

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

When Sciant started, they took over a project that had been delayed by one year because the previous team wasn’t able to deliver. They came in and finished the project in three months.

How did Sciant perform from a project management standpoint?

They work with any tools that we have. Even though we’ve used Jira and Microsoft Teams before, Sciant was happy to work with Asana and Slack. We had calls through Zoom and Google Meet, and we exchanged instant messages on Skype and Teams. We also used WhatsApp during the peak of the project.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I’ve been impressed by their domain expertise.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Sciant is really good, but I wish they would bring more team members on-site. I requested that they send their developers to visit us for a couple of months, but they only sent their leadership.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

Expectations should be very clear about what they want. They should specify whether they want them to come in purely as a development partner or if they should also do the discovery. There needs to be a good structure in place—an agreement on deliverables and approval processes.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the COO of DGROOPS, a travel tech startup. We have a SaaS platform that facilitates group bookings. We basically connect hotels with tour operators and travel agents for B2B customers only, in a way that they can do business directly, preserve their margins, and bring in the right bookings. 

We are also giving them the software that streams the entire end to end process so that they can become more efficient.

What challenge were you trying to address with Sciant?

We are dealing with group bookings, which is a very complex process. The prices are very dynamic and depend on the season, how well you know the tour operator, how serious the tour operator is, and how long you have had the corporation. 

We needed to figure out how to display availability in a way that’s not shown to the public, but optimizes their request. 

We needed to find someone who understands property management systems (PMS) of hotels. It was a big pain for us to find someone who has deep knowledge in the travel vertical.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Sciant provides both consulting and IT and engineering. They did a consultancy with us to understand our needs, and then they provided us with the solution. The commercial director showed us everything and helped us choose which PMS system to try. 

They provided an MSA which was pretty straightforward. After that, we had the SOW agreement with everything in detail like diagrams, how it will look, how many hours the senior developer, normal developers, project manager, QA specialists will need, and the total time charges and material charges.

Sciant delivered a middleware application for us. They analyzed and provided us with the API for every PMS system they were integrating us with. The app delivers information about what we need and how we need it to our endpoint. Plus, the team also provided us with their onboarding knowledge.

After the development process, Sciant provided a few weeks of support for any questions we might have. There was also a knowledge transfer process for our team.

What is the team composition?

The commercial director was always in charge, and we worked with someone in accounting, senior developers, junior developers, a project manager, and QA people.

How did you come to work with Sciant?

We had been looking for over a year. We couldn’t find anyone that could understand why we needed to integrate with a PMS and not a channel manager but Sciant were the only ones. 

I approached their commercial director through LinkedIn. I was lucky to find them. They had a deep knowledge, and the team knows what they’re talking about.

How much have you invested in them?

It was €12,000 (approximately $14,500 USD). They managed to split the budget that we had in a very efficient way.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started in September 2020. Right now, they are still providing us with support. We have three more integrations, and we see our partnership with them long-term. 

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

For us, it was important that the job was done. Everything Sciant said they would deliver, they delivered. There was no need to micromanage them. They are very responsive, and they help us communicate with the PMS. 

They went the extra mile. We are now official partners of a well-known company that is 11th in the world. Thanks to Sciant, we are now in their marketplace, our logo is there, and we have passed the certification. They did a quality job.

Moreover, I would recommend them to everyone. I would highly recommend Sciant to any startup because they really understand the specifics and they understand that you need to be very careful.

How did Sciant perform from a project management standpoint?

We had a Slack channel with their IT team and our IT team. They have instant communication. I was also in communication with them through email, WhatsApp, and phone calls often.

I am not an IT professional and rather in a commercial position, so it was explained to me what was being done and I was able to track it. Our IT department had the possibility to have great communication with their IT team. It wasn’t like something was happening and we didn’t understand. Their commercial department was always explaining things to us. Another thing that is really great is that their estimate is 100 percent right. They are very professional.

Most of the time development teams don’t know travel tech. We are a very specific niche that now unfortunately is not in favor, but Sciant has tons of knowledge in that niche.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They never overpromise and underdeliver. They give you all the information in detail. Sciant tells you exactly what you are going to have, and they are always there for you.

Are there any areas they could improve?

If their price was similar to India or Belarus, it would be even better, but it isn’t possible because it is Bulgaria and you cannot expect that. It isn’t them; it is the taxes, minimum salaries, and the standard they have in Bulgaria.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

They have several verticals. I would say get in touch with the commercial director of the vertical that you are dealing with. Schedule a call and talk to them regarding your business development. 

Tell them what your problem is and listen to their input. Let them help you because they have a lot of knowledge in their company that you as a startup can benefit from because you are learning every day.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO and co-founder of Clear Chain Travel. We provide IT services to the travel industry, specifically the corporate travel segment.

What challenge were you trying to address with Sciant?

We’re a startup, so we were creating the first piece of our MVP. We needed to build some user input screens and were looking for UX technology that was flexible enough to be integrated into other people’s systems.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Sciant built a piece of our UX platform’s MVP from scratch. We had two fact-gathering calls, and then they went off and developed a web app on top of our proprietary software platform. They helped us build a simple web app that is also capable of capturing rich data, specifically data fields that have free text input. 

The purpose of the MVP is to organize paperwork, documentation, and automated outputs for corporate business meetings involving multiple people coming from various origin points.

What is the team composition?

Our primary point of contact was Stephen (CCO/Practice Lead, Travel & Hospitality).

How did you come to work with Sciant?

Stephen and I have appeared on a couple of travel industry panels, so I knew him peripherally. We also have a mutual contact who was very positive about Sciant, and he recommended them to me. 

How much have you invested with them?

We spent about $7,400 on this project.

What is the status of this engagement?

This was a three-week project that took place in December 2020. They delivered this project, but I imagine we will engage them for other projects as they come up.

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

I measured their ability to closely follow the business requirements document that we sent them. My partner, who is our head of technology, was very impressed by the simplicity of their code writing, and he found it to be exceptionally done. 

How did Sciant perform from a project management standpoint?

Sciant was excellent — they were very responsive. We used GitHub for coding.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They delivered the solution accurately and completely the first time; we didn’t have to do any rewrites. We previously worked with other providers who couldn’t deliver, and Sciant did so very well.

I also found their travel industry knowledge — specifically domain expertise in travel technology — to be exceptional.

Are there any areas they could improve?

The only thing I’d mention is that they’re based in Bulgaria, so paying the bill was a bit challenging, but it all worked out fine. 

Any advice for potential customers?

I recommend them highly — they’re a great group to work with. As with any technology engagement, have your documentation correct. However, nothing jumped out as problematic from my point of view.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a program manager for Nova Futur, Ltd. I supervise all the company’s projects. The company was founded three years ago, and we’re working on two main streams, the first being a digital bank for customers in Switzerland. 

We’re working with about 30 people on this project. On the other side, we’re working on machine learning projects for customer behavior analysis, with another team of 30 people.

What challenge were you trying to address with Sciant?

Sciant provides us with DevOps support.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Sciant is providing DevOps resources for multiple projects. They work task-based, depending on the need.

Starting with January 2021, we’ve moved all three Sciant resources to the banking project. Until that time, they were split across different tasks, related to machine learning and banking.

What is the team composition?

We started with one DevOps full-time resource and have expanded to three. They work with us on a time and materials basis, for 220 days a year.

How did you come to work with Sciant?

I’d worked with them on a previous project, about 3–4 years earlier. We had a shortage of developers at the time, and we engaged Sciant for staff augmentation on an e-commerce project.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent around €40,000 (approximately $48,000 USD) with Sciant. We plan to invest €240,000 (approximately $289,000 USD) in 2012.

What is the status of this engagement?

We began the current engagement in August 2020, and it’s ongoing. I first worked with them in the summer of 2015, and that engagement lasted for a few months.

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

We work on a task basis, and we track metrics on task completion within the allocated time. Sciant’s performance is also measured on the overall project.

How did Sciant perform from a project management standpoint?

We use Jira and Slack.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I understand that they’re always under pressure, because I push them a lot to perform, but they never complain.

Are there any areas they could improve?

We’re also working with them on Google Cloud, which wasn’t their first choice. They had no experience on it when we first started. They had experience with AWS, Azure, and so on. They had a learning period, and they were keen to learn.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

They’re good professionals. We can speak to them, they understand our needs, and they come back with explanations. It’s very nice to work with Sciant; we have no problems at all.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I’m the CTO of an online travel agency based in Singapore. We are an all-in-one travel platform that enables travelers around the world to travel and discover local destinations.

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

We had put together a product roadmap that would allow us to scale our operation and growth by connecting with multiple hotel content sources. As a result, we hired this team to develop a customer API service layer that could handle our needs.

Our goal was to have a scalable and stable API service layer that would normalize the various connectivity requirements from different data sources and partners.

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

We were introduced to them through a referral and considered them along with multiple other options. The referral was made by a trusted-partner of ours within the same industry. Due to the potential impact and outcome of having the capability of seamless connectivity, we needed to choose a vendor with a credible portfolio as well as relevant industry experience.

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

The engagement initiated with a kickoff meeting to align the expectation and requirements between both parties, followed by a thorough technical discovery phase. From the initial phase, a detailed project planning document which described the high level design of a system was provided by the vendor.

They completed the project in modules which were broken down in 2-week sprints. After completion of each module, testing on staging was conducted and certification processes required by each module provider were also conducted with the assistance of the vendor.

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

There were 5 people in the team who were hired and assigned to our project. - Technical Lead - 2x Senior Developers - Quality Assurance - Project Manager

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

We were able to deploy each phase of the project on designated environments from staging-to-production as originally scheduled. Apart from delays caused by a few 3rd parties, the launch of each module and the core service layer was launched on time.

In addition, the vendor had provided industry knowledge and shared use cases which improved our understanding of future change requests which might occur. This was highly beneficial apart from the code base deliverable.

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

Communication was fluid and transparent. Project management was conducted with immense responsibility and detail oriented. Emails and group messengers such a Slack and Skype were used as communication tools throughout the project.

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

I believe communication was one of the greatest merits working with the vendor. And their ability to deliver solutions in tranches also helped us greatly, especially running a project using an agile method.

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

While the quality of work and communication skills were all great, due to their location being based in Central Europe, perhaps having a satellite office (e.g. tech support) in other regions and timezone could also be beneficials for clients located outside the EU.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the chief revenue officer for a hospitality tech software company. We provide revenue management and CRM technology to hotels.

What challenge were you trying to address with Sciant?

We needed help with third-party CRM integrations.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We hired them to help us streamline our third-party integrations. They also provide documentation around those integrations and support hands-on projects within Europe and Asia. 

The integrations are with third party technology companies that were used by hotels where we need to bring that data into our enterprise CRM solution. We’d have to build either to the vendors API or they’d write to ours. Sciant would oversee that integration. Typically, we’d write to their API, and Sciant would do that work for us, document it, and pass it over to our own in-connectivity team to certify and bring that data into our company environment.

What is the team composition?

We worked with Stephen (SVP Travel & Hospitality) and one other person. I don’t know how many people there were because they didn’t report to me. I think there were quite a few people.

How did you come to work with Sciant?

There’s a number of executives within our company who have known Stephen for a number of years. His reputation in the marketplace is good. I don’t believe we looked at anybody else. He was recommended to the CEO and the CEO then interviewed Stephen and gave Sciant a contract.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent between $500,000-$1 million.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from December 2018–March 2020.

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

Those integrations went live, and they work. They provided documentation around the integrations they worked on. They provided a full scoping document and also an overview of the interface so that sales knew exactly what each interface supported and didn’t support.

How did Sciant perform from a project management standpoint?

Their project management was very good. There was a clear direction for the work. We never had any issues as it relates to how they worked with us. We had regular meetings face-to-face and over the phone. They often went to our head office in Florida to provide updates. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their knowledge and the process of how they actually did the integrations and documented it is impressive. They’re a professional team.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, they did a very good job. They delivered exactly what was required.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

They have a lot of expertise. If I was taking them on again or recommending them to someone, keep an open mind and listen to the advice they give. They’re very knowledgeable, incredibly professional, and very discreet. Rely on them to provide advice.