ScienceSoft

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a network engineer of Advisors Asset Management, Inc, which is a brokerage firm that only provides services to other brokerage firms. We’re a distributor of certain financial products and don’t deal with the public directly.

What challenge were you trying to address with ScienceSoft?

We’re in a highly regulated industry and answer to the SEC and FINRA, so it’s required for us to have a penetration test. This test makes sure that the safeguards we have in place are adequate to prevent data loss and interference with our business process. We had a penetration tester that raised their prices about 40% from the previous year but offered no additional services.

What was the scope of their involvement?

ScienceSoft started the engagement by giving us a questionnaire asking about our different parameters. Their team then conducted a black box penetration test. They hacked and used exploits to try to bypass our security and gain access to either information or computer systems within our organization. They tried to find any exploits or vulnerabilities. They retested after we remediated any initial flaws they found in our security.

What is the team composition?

I worked with a total of three people.

How did you come to work with ScienceSoft?

I found them on the internet. I searched for the top 10 penetration testers and came up with a website that listed quite a few companies. I requested quotes from several agencies. ScienceSoft met all of our testing parameters and came in with the best price, which was a big concern of ours.

How much have you invested with them?

The charge for these services was $8,540.

What is the status of this engagement?

I initially reached out to ScienceSoft in December 2019 and the actual test took place in March 2020.

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

After the testing was complete, their team provided an initial report of their findings with an initial security rating level. Initially, they gave us a medium rating for our security because they found about four flaws. Their team detailed their findings as well as solutions for particular problems. They were extremely cooperative and helpful in finding solutions.

How did ScienceSoft perform from a project management standpoint?

We communicated by email. Their team was exactly on time, so there weren’t any delays to the work. We actually requested to push out our retest because our organization has a strict change process. They were cooperative and pushed back that deadline to give us time to do what we needed to do. Their team made the process simple.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their willingness to customize their services to our needs stood out to us. There was one problem that ScienceSoft found that we had trouble resolving. They sent us links with solutions but that solution wasn’t specific to the version of our software. I told them that and they took the time to find a solution that applied to us.

When we weren’t sure if the solution worked, they did an ad hoc retest of that particular system to confirm that we resolved the problem. That was prior to the final test, which was important because they were going to give us a final report. In this case, the solution raised our security level to high. That’s important because we need to provide this information to our business partners. We need to answer their questions when they're doing their due diligence to ensure that we're protecting their data to satisfaction.  

Are there any areas they could improve?

The only changes that we would make are internal.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I would highly recommend them.

Please describe your company and your position there.

Investment firm with an average of 14 employees, I'm the IT Manager.

For what projects/services did your company hire ScienceSoft?

Penetration & Vulnerability Testing

What were your goals for this project?

To determine the current state of our network security from an external POV.

How did you select this vendor?

Googling.. then reading a bit about the company, services offered, and then reading reviews. Made contact, staff was responsive and price was within budget.

Describe the project in detail.

Pretty simple. Determine what vulnerabilities may exist on our network through outside penetration testing. Methodology and timing was largely left to the vendor.

What was the team composition?

Sales Rep and individual assigned to do the testing.

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

The outcome was success. Testing was accomplished and any issues found were addressed and then retested.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Primary communications was handled via email without problems.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

They took an interest in our security posture, stayed in communication with us, and offered us solutions. Then they conducted a retest to determine the effectiveness of the updates, vs just giving us a report and moving on.

Are there any areas for improvement?

At this time I can think of no improvements that are needed. Am a very satisfied customer!

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I'm the national manager of a roofing company.

What challenge were you trying to address with ScienceSoft?

We wanted to speed up our invoicing, ordering, and production department and make those processes paperless, so we reached out to ScienceSoft to help automate and streamline certain internal processes. 

What was the scope of their involvement?

ScienceSoft has worked on a variety of projects, including streamlining our PO process by creating and customizing some features within Salesforce. They've implemented a lot of custom Apex code to automate certain fields inside the program.

What is the team composition? 

We're currently working with about six developers, but I also work closely with a project manager, sales lead, and lead programmer. 

How did you come to work with ScienceSoft?

I researched programmers from all around the world that could provide high-quality coding work for a reasonable rate. I found that ScienceSoft offered a high level of professionalism, but didn't charge impossibly high rates like most American-based companies. They also provided an impressive amount of detail in their initial bid. 

How much have you invested with them?

We've invested about $70,000 thus far.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them around September 2018 and the relationship is ongoing.

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

ScienceSoft has done an amazing job of making our internal processes more efficient, implementing changes without causing any interruptions to the business. The changes they've made within Salesforce are reliable and functional overall, and any bugs are fixed very quickly. 

How did ScienceSoft perform from a project management standpoint?

Working within a different timezone than our team has been beneficial, because they're able to fix any issues or work on tasks overnight in our timezone. They've been very organized throughout the engagement, checking in with us each week to go over results, priorities, etc. We haven't had any communications issues; they send clean emails with screen captures and are available on Skype for meetings that require more in-depth conversations. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

They're experts in Apex code, which can be very complex and hard to find teams with expertise in.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Although they're strong in Apex code, it would make it easier to make changes to our templates in the future if they used more of Salesforce's key features, but it's something they're working on now. We appreciate that they're taking those steps and working hard to maintain a strong relationship with us. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

With any vendor it's important to understand the breakdown of work being done each hour. It's possible to find cheaper programmers, but that may mean losing skilled project managers overseeing the work. ScienceSoft is one of the few vendors I've been able to find that offers both high-quality development and high-quality project management all in one. 

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a web developer for the South Ayrshire Council in Scotland.

What challenge were you trying to address with ScienceSoft?

We needed a company to handle maintenance and support for our SharePoint platform since we didn’t have enough in-house staff to manage it.

What was the scope of their involvement?

They essentially served as additional tech support. If we encountered a problem with the system that we couldn’t resolve in-house, we’d contact them to fix it. For example, if our SharePoint sites were unavailable or if we had an issue with our servers, they’d address that for us. They’re also helping us prepare to upgrade our SharePoint software, but we’re not quite ready to go through that process yet in-house.

In addition to SharePoint, they also provide maintenance and support for our 24-hour SQL servers. Lately, they’ve been checking on our backups and server logs.

What is the team composition?

We have a project manager and two developers.

How did you come to work with ScienceSoft?

Since we’re a local authority, we had to post a bid for contractors. ScienceSoft was one of the groups that got back to us with a quote and we chose to go with them.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent about $8,000. We typically receive 240 hours of service per year.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in June 2017 and the work is ongoing.

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

They’re usually very responsive and they’ll allocate a developer to our project as soon as we contact them. We haven’t had many situations where the system’s gone down, but they’re quick to respond when it does and they find a way to get us back online. They’ve done a good job of ensuring things run smoothly.

How did ScienceSoft perform from a project management standpoint?

We touch base via email and then we use Jira for project management and teleconferencing. We use Skype for our business calls as well. They reply to emails within the hour.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their depth of knowledge on both SharePoint and SQL was impressive. Other companies we talked to only knew one or the other, so it was fortunate that we found a company good at both. As a small company, we don’t always have the skills in-house to resolve a major issue like system downtime.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Not that I can think of right now.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Not in particular. All of our dealings with them have been good.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a professor at Miami Dade College. I teach machine learning, business intelligence, and SQL server database.

What challenge were you trying to address with ScienceSoft?

We needed someone to install an Apache Hadoop system. We have servers dedicated to our own Hadoop lab.

What was the scope of their involvement?

They installed and configured our Hadoop system such that we could avoid cloud storage, which would cost a lot of money. We provided them with specifications and they followed, installing Linux to support Hadoop and then installing related components such as Python and Zeppelin.

What is the team composition?

Our main point of contact was the lead technician for our project. We also worked with a team leader and a couple of other technicians.

How did you come to work with ScienceSoft?

I searched online for a big data consultant. I contacted them and we agreed on a contract, schedule, and price.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in August 2018 and the engagement concluded in October 2018.

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

They finished the project on schedule and answered all of my questions.

How did ScienceSoft perform from a project management standpoint?

The main technician visited us for two days. He gave me some manuals to explain the work, and we discussed the project details. We communicated through email and managed the project through TeamViewer. Their team was very responsive.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They provide expertise and accountability and they’re easy to work with.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, I can’t think of anything.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Clients should communicate their needs clearly.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Edgewell Personal Care manufactures personal care products, mostly Schick razor blades. 

What challenge were you trying to address with ScienceSoft?

Our company has a tool evaluation report site to submit products at various stages of the life cycle and keep track of them during different revisions. It generates reports that indicate whether we need to manufacture related parts for specific products. 

Our original site demanded a lot of manual effort. We had to print out forms and walk around the office to get everybody's signature before uploading it again. We asked ScienceSoft to clean up the design and make our site more user-friendly.

What was the scope of their involvement?

ScienceSoft introduced a workflow within the platform that lets us input various colleagues' email addresses. It automatically sends them emails so they can approve reports. Using this system eliminates the need to physically approach an individual to request a written signature. 

We wanted to maintain our website on SharePoint, so ScienceSoft created the entire new workflow and report format using SharePoint designer within the existing system and website. 

What is the team composition? 

We interfaced with three developers including a project manager. 

How did you come to work with ScienceSoft?

I looked up SharePoint consultants online and found ScienceSoft's website. They seemed to be offering what I was looking for, so I reached out to them. 

How much have you invested with them?

We spent about $7,000. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We notified ScienceSoft in May 2018 and started the project in July due to internal resource constraints. We wrapped up the project by the end of September 2018. After they finalized the website in August, we held a couple of additional meetings to make sure that it worked within our system. 

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

Since I was the one who started the project, I reached out to the rest of my team who would be using the site to get feedback. ScienceSoft implemented all the requests I initially collected from various people within the website. Our users were pleased to see all the new options it includes. We're very satisfied. 

The platform and automation system make our work easier and faster. The site is mostly for administrative tasks and tracking products. Now that our employees don’t have to handle those responsibilities, they have time to focus on other more technically demanding projects. 

How did ScienceSoft perform from a project management standpoint?

ScienceSoft listened carefully to all the ideas I proposed. They broke my concept down into individual tasks we needed to accomplish. Having a list of actionable goals gave us a more realistic picture of what would happen. 

We mostly interacted with the development team through phone calls. We used relatively informal communication. We tracked progress as they completed different steps of the project.

What did you find most impressive about them?

ScienceSoft understood and implemented everything I requested. They never pushed back on any of my requirements. Instead, they managed to accomplish all of my requirements. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

Not necessarily. There might have been a minor language barrier, but that was about it. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I suggest writing a formal, written plan that describes what you want the end result to look like. Setting the goals from the very beginning will help the project get started earlier and potentially completed faster. 

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the senior technical and security fellow. I work at a managed service provider (MSP), and we supply IT services to our clients.   

For what projects/services did your company hire ScienceSoft?

We don’t provide software or app development internally, so we needed to outsource a project from one of our clients. We wanted ScienceSoft to migrate and develop a company intranet on SharePoint for a client in the financial sector. 

What were your goals for this project?

We needed the intranet site to be redesigned to use many of the built-in features on SharePoint. The site also needed to be customized and fall within the client’s deadline and budget.

How did you select this vendor?

We searched online and had meetings with the top three vendors. We reviewed their work histories and spoke to references before deciding on ScienceSoft.

Can you go into detail about the services they provided and the scope of the project?

They began by migrating content from an on-premise web server to SharePoint and OneDrive. Once they transferred and shared these files, they customized the SharePoint site to match the end-client’s design requirements.

What was the team composition?

They provided a project manager and a team of four developers.

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

Our end-client was fully satisfied with the quality and timing of the deliverables. They’ve asked to continue with another project because of this work, and we’ll be hiring ScienceSoft for that, as well.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

We worked directly through our project manager, which was effective. We were able to access the developers as needed and resolve issues quickly.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

ScienceSoft’s availability was valuable, along with their expertise. Being able to reach someone when needed was important to us.

Are there any areas where they can improve?

They could improve the amount and quality of the documentation after completing the project.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the head of operations and resourcing manager for GuideVision. Our development consultancy specializes in Agile Scrum projects in ServiceNow implementation.  

What challenge were you trying to address with ScienceSoft?

My company was looking for new resources and hired ScienceSoft to extend our team of consultants. We’ve trained them for the ServiceNow platform and have worked together on several of our projects.
 

What was the scope of their involvement?

ScienceSoft supports our efforts through consultation, client request analysis, and platform implementation. Most projects involve ServiceNow, a tool that automates company processes. Initially, this cloud application platform was used mainly for IT Service Management (ITSM). The current iteration features modules for HR, financial management, and security. 

The team has developed custom applications that optimize unique processes the existing functionalities couldn’t facilitate. Many of these projects are based on specific customer requests, but around 60% of our work with ScienceSoft has focused on ITSM.

What is the team composition?

We’ve hired around 12 people from ScienceSoft to support our team of 100 internal consultants. The team assigns specific technical consultants to each of our projects. They work remotely with our in-house project managers. 

How did you come to work with ScienceSoft?

The owner of my company met ScienceSoft’s head of operations one year ago during a convention.

How much have you invested with them?

We pay ScienceSoft a monthly fee of $70,000–$100,000. The total cost of their work has exceeded $1 million.

What is the status of this engagement?

We’ve been working with ScienceSoft since June 2017. We have an agreement that extends for the next three years.

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

We usually send monthly feedback on each specific consultant. These reports outline factors like delivery quality.  Even though many of their members are junior staff, I’m satisfied with ScienceSoft’s strong performance. The process of using an external resource isn’t perfect. We trained some resources just two months ago, so they haven’t had as much experience in the service area.

Our collaboration is time-and-materials-based, so they resolve any problems they encounter to deliver their work. ScienceSoft announces any occurrence as soon as possible, and their reporting is excellent. Some of our resources left, and they weren’t able to replace them. We weren’t very satisfied from that standpoint, but they’re doing well regarding quality. They regularly offer quick responses to important issues. 

How did ScienceSoft perform from a project management standpoint?

We are using our own project managers. All the resources ScienceSoft assigns to our projects work as an integrated part of our team. I can’t comment on their project management skills or performance.

Our projects are Agile. We’re using the Scrum methodology with daily standup meetings. Skype and Slack are our primary communication tools. Our scrum master or project manager has daily contact with ScienceSoft through Skype meetings.  

What did you find most impressive about them?

ScienceSoft is open to training and consistently makes an effort to improve their team. We can feel their dedication to becoming better and better.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They could add new services to their offer, like mobile solutions.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

My advice is to find the right person to lead the communication. It can be challenging to identify the correct point of contact for business-level communication, as an example

Introduce your business and what you do there.

At the time the project happened I worked as a project manager at a wireless carrier company. I supervised software development and IT.

What challenge were you trying to address with ScienceSoft?

We were working on several technology projects and we were having some challenges in recruiting and keeping the appropriate technology staff on site. We either couldn't find quality software engineers or we couldn't keep those engineers long enough to make meaningful progress on our projects. We were a small company so we couldn't afford to employ a large team. This is the reason we started looking for a contractor with expertise in app development.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We worked on many projects together over years. Their team developed web applications, web API services, mobile applications, mobile APIs, and a web service for automatic processing for us. They provided design services, including user experience design, marketing material, and technical writing services. We also had database ETL and analytics. My senior developer and myself worked closely with them to schedule and execute tasks in a scrum agile methodology.

One of our most recent projects was also one of the largest. For this project, they provided backend services, exposed APIs, and a message queuing system for a very large mobile application. The mobile applications were loaded on all of our clients' Android smartphones, and this application had to send and receive data from all of those handsets periodically throughout the day. It managed a massive amount of data efficiently and provided value to us and to our end customers.

Our backend technology was primarily written in PHP and Symfony 2 framework. Some of the technology stacks around communicating with the mobile devices are MQTT, Kafka, Redshift, and Amazon S3.

What is the team composition?

They assigned a development team to us, and, eventually, we grew into having a full-time project manager. We also had a full-time database ETL engineer, a part-time lead software architect, a part-time designer for UX, a user experience expert, a technical writing and marketing expert, and part-time infrastructure support for our Amazon Web Services.

How did you come to work with them?

Our CEO had a colleague who recommended them to us after having a positive experience with them in the past. We reviewed them against other providers and chose them partially based on good presentation and good service offerings, not so much on price (they're a little pricey).

How much have you invested with them?

We spent over $1,000,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

I started working with them in May 2015 and we worked with them them during my entire time there – up through October 2017.

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

They delivered a high quality product. Most of the time they had high quality contributors on their team and were always eager to help us find and replace the team members who weren't pulling their weight.

How did they perform from a project management standpoint?

Initially, we handled the project management process in-house, and they worked with that. When they started providing some project management resources, they did an excellent job. We used Slack and Jira. We also had UberConference for our daily conference calls.

They were very responsive and available during business hours. Even after they went home (which was about 11:00 AM my time), they were back online, signed into Slack, available to answer my questions.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We always had an honest and trustworthy relationship: I trusted their guidance and their actions as far as the quality of their code. They never gave me any reason for distrust. Their engineers always gave us honest and frank feedback, which made the technology projects go much smoother. I had worked with different outsourced providers in different countries and was not always supplied with that kind of upfront feedback, which could sometimes really hinder our projects with those vendors.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Sometimes the quality of the voice connections to Belarus was not good. I eventually had to implement a conference call system to fix that but it was still poor every now and then.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Be open to constructive feedback from your resources. Sometimes they can be very blunt, so embrace that and turn that into a positive experience.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Emolytics provides automated market research technology (e.g., easy-to-customize survey and feedback technology for websites, email, and point-of-sale) for B2C companies. I am the CEO.

What challenge were you trying to address with ScienceSoft?

I was looking for an high-quality, reasonably priced outsourcing partner for PHP and JavaScript. I’d had experience with several outsourcing partners in Russia, Belgium, and other countries, but wanted to find an outsourced group that could become a part of the team. They also needed to be near us geographically in order to reduce time-zone issues.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We worked together on the whole spectrum of our technology—feedback capture to data processing, reporting, data analysis, etc. ScienceSoft was tasked with full-stack development for email, website, and point-of-sale survey and feedback tools. They also improved the report-generating piece of our solution and reworked many of our APIs and backend SQL database structures.

What is the team composition?

The project was small, consisting of two resources from their end in the first few months, which was reduced to one. Despite having an account manager on ScienceSoft’s end, we interacted directly with the developer. Their account management is in place only for our contract and other details.

How did you come to work with ScienceSoft?

I explored a few countries, including Russia, Belarus, Romania, Poland and even France. Price was one factor, but the main one was quality. I wanted to find someone I could feel comfortable with. Beyond junior or senior resources, we wanted to find someone who was willing to learn and evolve alongside our product.

I interviewed several less-expensive providers in other countries, but ScienceSoft stood out in terms of quality and price. Our communication with them was very good and they were the right size. Plus, they were able to work with different technologies and could help me in the future with data analysis, security, and testing. Their extra capabilities aren’t being exploited at the moment, but they will likely be helpful in the future.

How much have you invested with them?

The investment to date has been over 100-150K€. 

​​​​​​What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in May 2016 and they are still a part of the team.

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

The quality of the work produced by our engineer as well as the overall skill set is better than any of my previous outsourced experiences. The team is motivated and hard-working, and my account manager has been friendly.

How did ScienceSoft perform from a project management standpoint?

While we’ve never met anyone from ScienceSoft in person, they’ve been very responsive over Skype, Slack, Google Hangouts, and email. I’ve never had a problem in communicating with them.

Our developer reacted quickly whenever there was an issue to solve. He was reactive and always willing to make sure that the features being released worked well. It was a pleasant surprise to see his level of involvement and motivation.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They deliver the work and often go the extra mile. If I find a bug, I know that I can count on the person I’m working with. He’s been there to solve issues and monitor the work. This trait is difficult to find and it’s a very good fit for us from a cultural standpoint.

Are there any areas they could improve?

English language skills on their end can be inconsistent. I had a choice between several developers and chose someone stronger in that area. Their development knowledge is high and they’re not client-facing, so I don’t really care about English, but I would recommend making your own screening if you want to work with them for client support.