Seasoned

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

CEO

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

Development of mobile application and backend to transition niche wordpress-site into custom built tech stack for scaling and new features.

SOLUTION

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

Had met the CEO of Seasoned on social media, and quoted the project with four different providers. The specificity of the plan, the choices in each of the multiple infrastructure components, the depth of the pre-quote conversations, the flexibility in changing ideas to adapt to our context, and the fairness of the negotiations where what tipped the scales toward Seasoned.

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

ReactNative mobile application for IOS and Android and backend infrastructure. Features are those commonly found in content/media applications, from hosted courses to media feed, custom players and push notifications.

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

Team included CTO who was also the backend lead, frontend lead, and 3+ junior developers on both teams.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Presence on appstores 3x our revenue and set us up for the next stage in scaling. Though all apps require ongoing maintenance, most components have lasted over 4 years and remain in good shape.

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

Daily, ongoing communication with weekly meetings and impromptu conversations to make key decisions as a team. It genuinely felt like they were a part of our internal team.

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

Not make important decisions for the client. Coustom software development requires dozens of important decisions a day, all which can have huge implications for the future of the company running that software - from cost, to ease of maintenance, to scaling considerations. Many companies like Seasoned do not communicate these choices to the end client, and make them internally based on what will be faster, cheaper, and easier in terms of delivering an end result that fits the client specifications. This is very dangerous, for a client may find themselves with the app they requested but find out two years later that the stack, APIs, or implementation methods that were used now cost 4x more to maintain and cannot be covered by their revenue. The client needs to make those decisions, and they need assistance from the outsourcing partner in understanding the tradeoffs between what's faster now and what makes sense long term (not to mention the potential longevity of the tools that are being chosen).

With Seasoned - I felt both prepared and informed to make those decisions as well as free to make them, even if my choices sometimes went against the desired path of their team.

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

None

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m an executive at a jewelry company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Seasoned?

We needed help creating a portal for our consumers to scale our business.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Seasoned is doing software design and development for us. Based on the wireframes we gave them, they’re creating a platform that allows us to communicate via messaging with our customers, manage our inventory and production timelines, and sell our products.

How did you come to work with Seasoned?

A friend referred them to us.

How much money have you invested in this partnership?

So far, we’ve spent over $500,000 with them.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in December 2019, and the engagement is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

They ensure that our customers’ needs come first.

How did Seasoned perform from a project management standpoint?

Project management is excellent; communication is great, and they take ownership when things don’t go according to plan, like delays.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’re a fair and honest team.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They’ve constantly been improving. They’re not the same company as the one they were when we first met them because they keep on getting better, which talks highly about them.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Have a clear vision of what you want to build and what aspects you want to prioritize within the product.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO of an emotional wellness company that maintains and offers a platform to public schools.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Seasoned?

They built our entire platform. Initially, we contracted them just to build our MVP and test our idea in the marketplace, but we ended up working with them for the full development as well.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Initially, we built a very limited mental health check-in for K-12 students. This took about 4–6 weeks, and then we built a very limited version of the full product to test it in the market. We quickly gained several thousand users.

This adoption generated lots of feedback, which we took and implemented into the full platform that we have today for K-12 students. One of these changes was a dashboard for educators that allows them to intervene regarding their students’ mental health needs when appropriate.

To start, a school counselor will register the students in the school on the platform, and then students log in through their own accounts and complete mental health check-ins, answering questions like: How are things going with you parents? How are things going with your peer group? Etc. We funnel this information into a dashboard that educators can use to intervene in real-time via check-ins from counselors, and potentially a school psychologist if appropriate.

Seasoned also helped us build a premium product where we provide data visualizations for the school that combines all the information we capture to show what’s going on at a systems level, allowing for large-scale intervention. Specifically, we’ve had schools implement programs like food pantries and anti-bullying days based on the data we provide.

What is the team composition?

I worked very closely with Daniel (CEO), who actually started acting as our CTO. After a while, we began working with Phillip (CTO), a number of designers and software engineers, and more. In total, we’ve worked with around 10 people, and they’re all incredibly competent.

How did you come to work with Seasoned?

I’d talked to a few other development shops about acting as my CTO, but none of them felt right. A friend of mine then emailed me about Seasoned, and I loved their website. They seemed to care a lot about our mission, which is rare for technical partners.

How much have you invested with them?

The cost was around $300,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from February 2019–December 2021.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We are now used in almost 50 schools and are receiving earned revenue from the platform. We’re a nonprofit, so we take in donations, but the money that comes from selling the premium product to schools and districts has helped us achieve a sustainable business model.

Initially, our retention rate of school usage was over 70%, and now it’s up to over 90%. In terms of users, we started with around 10,000 and are now at 100,000. The timing was very interesting in that, as soon as we launched our MVP, the pandemic hit, so we had to scale very quickly, which is difficult for a startup, but we were able to rely heavily on Seasoned.

Everyone loves the design of the app and the UX. Educators are not always the most technology-savvy individuals, but they find our app extremely easy to use.

How did Seasoned perform from a project management standpoint?

They always met our deadlines. If we were a bit late, they put in the time to make sure it never happened again. This happens sometimes in every software development as well. They learned from every issue to make sure they could overcome it faster next time. Collaboration happened through their internal tools, and we communicated over WhatsApp, Slack, and Zoom. They were an extension of our team, right down to us texting back and forth with each other.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They truly cared about us as clients and the impact that our solution would have. Oftentimes, you’re not working with someone who believes in your product, but Seasoned did. Rather than defining scope and sticking to a hard boundary, they supported us as clients and handled things when they came up. Things will change if you define your work three months prior, so you have to be flexible.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Nothing comes to my mind when I think of ways to improve.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Work with Seasoned, as they’re much better than any other development shop that I’ve encountered. Additionally, constantly talk to them about aspects of the project that may not be working. They’ll absolutely make improvements and adjustments to the software as you discuss your processes and communication.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the CPTO of Metadados, a HR Tech company with more than 1,500 customers in Brazil.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

We were a traditional technology company with innovation problems. We needed upgrade our company business model and offer products with great UX, scalable, allowing our customers to implement a great people culture and retain their talents.

SOLUTION

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

We found then through a referral. I have had a few bad experiences with other vendors and I could see a huge difference between there since the beginning. There were an authentic interest to solve my problems. We had a high level conversation and a great objectives alignment. The most important: we had a monthly flat-fee contract. I don't believe in hourly rate contracts for software developing.

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

They designed and developed a HCM software. We started with career and 1:1 conversations, performance management and a talent management review features. Because of them, we identified new features, like a org chart feature as well. Everything was delivered with a great UX using React, Ruby and Heroku. After that, we developed workflow, docs and time and attendance features. We will keep working until creating an all-in-one people platform.

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

There were a client CTO with 2 dev teams with a PO and 3 devs each.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We were able do launch the product in April, as we needed. Before that we had 3 success PoCs and we did some sells without churn until now. We will be able to start PoCs in September for workflow, docs and time and attendance features.

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

The project management was great, especially compared with other vendors we've worked before. We had daily meetings and a weekly sprint planning meeting to deal with more strategic issues. They use Unison, an owner software, to implement shape-up methodology that is amazing. We can see the pitch being developing in real time!

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

The commitment. They always saying the truth and working fast to deal with the issues. They have a DevEx team to deal with more complex features or issues without using dev resources to lessen the project impact. I've never ever seen something like this before. The UX team is amazing. The product is amazing because of them.

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

Nothing that deserve more attention. They are great!