Sednor Holdings Limited

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the President of AMTS LLC

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

AMTS is a software/knowledge company that works with animal nutrition models to improve production, efficiency and profitability of farms in a environmentally sustainable fashion.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Sednor Holdings Limited to accomplish?

• Work with our team to develop the UI for a new cloud application
• Develop a new version of one of our products
• Work with our team to develop the UI for our new Admin/Billing/CRM system

SOLUTION

How did you find Sednor Holdings Limited?

Referral

Why did you select Sednor Holdings Limited over others?

• Great culture fit
• Good value for cost
• Referred to me
• Company values aligned

How many teammates from Sednor Holdings Limited were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

What started as one project (developing a UI for for a new web app) morphed into multiple projects that are integrated. Several projects involve them working with our developers (backend) to develop clean, modern UI for workflows by clients. One project we had them do backend and frontend. We gave them general guidelines and flows for UI, and they then applied their 'magic' to make user-friendly, modern, clean interfaces.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

• Projects are ongoing, However, established timelines have been met every time, even when we throw new ideas or changes at them. Our entire new platform will be entering beta soon. Current testing (internally) has shown a high level of quality from Sednor. Using Jira to set timelines and deliverables. All continue to be met.

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

Thus far, between using Slack and JIra, timelines have been met routinely. Given the growing complexity of the projects, they are bringing a dedicated project manager to the team to assist them and us. We have daily standup meetings with them and regular communication via slack during the day. Amazing responsiveness and quality of work.

What was your primary form of communication with Sednor Holdings Limited?

Virtual Meeting

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

This is a young team. Their skills, creativity, quality of work, are thoroughly amazing. And, given their geographical location (Ukraine), they have maintained this amazing quality and communication throughout. They have NOT missed a stand-up meeting!

Are there any areas for improvement or something Sednor Holdings Limited could have done differently?

No. This is a top-notch, professional team.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the CEO of a software development company. We build software for the medical device industry.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Sednor Holdings Limited?

As a startup software company, we were trying to build a number of software that could solve communication challenges within the medical device industry between surgeons and sales reps. We hired Sednor Holdings to help us.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We have built a couple of software that Sednor Holdings has helped put together. Their team has been working with us to bring an MVP to its marketable phase. Sednor Holdings oversees all the development and architecture in this project. 

Our scope of work has included building a mobile app in Flutter to work on iOS and Andriod, coupled with a web-based administration portal built in React. All are connected via a real-time secure cloud database capable of running load at a global scale.

What is the team composition?

We’ve worked with between 1–4 developers, scaling up or down as we go through sprints. We have two main points of contact, including their team leader who manages the developers for us. 

When we need more developers, we get the opportunity to interview candidates to make sure they are the right fit for us and our team. Once we bring them on, the team lead makes sure that they are hitting all of their goals. We also talk on a fairly regular basis with their CTO when we need to make some decisions on the architecture or the direction of implementations. 

How did you come to work with Sednor Holdings Limited?

We were trying to find a new development agency that had little code quality and documentation issues, so we searched via Upwork for a number of agencies and then went through directly to other markets as well. We went through a rigorous interview process with many development teams and agencies to assess their technical skills and ability to interact and work with us. 

Sednor Holdings was amongst the group that we found that could deliver the service and topped the interview process for their technical expertise and their proposal around how and when they were going to deliver the product. They presented their case very professionally, critically analyzed problems, and provided great development solutions, which made them stand out to us. We were also really impressed with their ability to communicate technical terms in English, so we decided to go with them.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve probably invested around $90,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

The project began in January 2020, and we are still working with them.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The project was delivered by Sednor on time and on budget over the course of a year, which is a significant achievement given the scale of the project. The product is now in the market and is being used globally with great effect.

We have worked with many agencies in the past so Sednor Holdings was certainly not our first development partner. We pushed their team very hard during the interview process but from a quality standpoint, we have very few problems. Once we run the process correctly and agree on a deadline, they pretty much always deliver on time.

Sednor Holdings has some of the best developers that we’ve ever seen. We had been trying to solve problems with other agencies in the past only to come to a dead end. We had assumed there was no further action that we could do, but their team came in and allowed us to fulfill our vision and ambition. I would say their technical abilities set them way ahead of other development agencies.

How did Sednor Holdings Limited perform from a project management standpoint?

We felt that they have been very professional from the start of the whole interaction. They are based in Ukraine but their team leader can communicate in English really well. We have struck up a really good and friendly productive relationship with them, which is great.

We do daily calls with the guys there, but the time difference is always a little bit challenging since we’re based in different countries. However, Sednor Holdings has been very good at managing that, accommodating us outside of their work hours to make sure that they are on those daily calls. 

Projects are organized into two-week sprints by the team, tasks are divided and allocated in Trello, and we have daily Scrum meetings to check progress and remove obstacles. The Trello board makes sure that all the tasks are up to date, clearly defined, and actionable. Their team has been really good at managing that as well, making sure that they are compliant, that the notes are written up, and that the documentation is added. ReadMe files and code documentation are also written up when parts of the deployment are finished. 

Sednor Holdings offers really good resources. They have a highly experienced CTO that can talk to us about the project, critically assess plans, and give advice on which way to go as opposed to letting us blindly build things. That has been a really good service.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Quality is one of the things that we have been very impressed with Sednor on. Overall, Sednor Holdings has been really great in terms of work quality, communication, and delivery. Sometimes you don’t get all three of those in development agencies; you only get one or two. I think their real strength is that they are pretty good in multiple areas. They deliver and ship code on time every time which, when you are building a start-up, is very important.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They could use more developers on their team. Though they are great and the quality of their work is always good, they aren’t the biggest development agency. There definitely have been a few times where we have required some more developers but Sednor Holdings didn’t have anyone available. That would be the only very small thing that I would say they could improve upon.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

One of the things that you will need to work with Sednor Holdings is to make sure that you are very clear on what you need to be developed and built. Communicate that very well. Do daily meetings with them to make sure that the developers are on track and are building the right thing. 

I think the same rules apply to any agency. Sednor Holdings is very good from a technical perspective, but they are developers and they don’t know the products or the business process, so there needs to be a concerted effort to make sure that communication is regular and clear.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I’m the founder and CTO of Esports Group, an advisory firm in the e-sports industry.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Sednor Holdings Limited?

We hired Sednor to build an analytics dashboard portal.

What were your goals for this project?

We set out to build a scalable, secure dashboard environment. It had to have integrated authentication, purchase support, and administration management. We also had to create deployment artifacts and documentation.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

We selected Sednor via their ratings/feedback on Upwork.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

Sednor developed the entire analytics portal. They translated our Behavior Driven Development (BDD) stories into development milestones for one-week sprints. They held demonstrations the last day of each sprint. Feedback and bug fixes were integrated into the development workflow.

What was the team composition?

The Sednor team consisted of two developers (front- and backend) and a project coordinator.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The value they delivered, regarding both time and cost, was outstanding.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

Sednor’s project management was professional and very effective. The project coordinator was extremely communicative and responsive. Their approach bridged the seven-hour time difference seamlessly.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

We were quoted two times the amount by other vendors, including some that estimated twice as long to do the same work.

Are there any areas for improvement?

No.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m VP and Principal Architect with Hewlett Packard’s cloud technology partners group. I'm responsible for overall development efforts across a portfolio of tools.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Sednor Holdings Limited?

We had a series of tools written to support our service delivery and needed development work on one of those new products.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Sednor Holdings Limited built our web-based application hosted in Amazon Web Services (AWS). It’s a fairly standard stack with Java API on the backend and React JavaScript on the frontend.

They were involved from the beginning of the project and built it from scratch. They scaled up a team for us and handled both front- and backend development. We had to close the project when we were acquired due to new restrictions on vendors.

What is the team composition?

I worked with the two principals.

How did you come to work with Sednor Holdings Limited?

I had experience working with them for a couple of prior companies that I had been with. I originally found them through Upwork when I was with a startup I had created. I also worked with them with another client before bringing them on to continue the relationship.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent more than $500,000 with them.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from October 2016 to March 2018.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We've driven a significant amount of revenue with this service offering. It's been a substantial effort of ours over the last year.

Their work is great. They do high-quality work and they're a great group to work with. I would gladly work within them again.

How did Sednor Holdings Limited perform from a project management standpoint?

Given we were globally-distributed teams, we communicated via tools like Slack, Skype, and GoToMeeting. We managed the product itself but they did a great job of managing their team.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their technical competence. Though they're a fairly young group, they showed a lot of technical strength in the technologies we're using, specifically React and Java on the backend.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Everybody can always improve and do better. One thing I loved about these guys was their eagerness to learn. They listened to feedback and improved. That's an earmark that I like to see with anybody that I work with. I really appreciated that from them.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

If you’re going to work with an offshore group, you must be comfortable with that model. There’s a lot of value in working with offshore companies but you need to understand the dynamics, such as significant time differences, and work accordingly. Your own work must be well organized with solid processes for things like developing tickets and managing code reviews and QA. If you run a strong shop from a development standpoint, then a group like Sednor Holdings Limited can slot into it to provide the technical expertise you need to move things forward quickly and cost-efficiently.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I’m the CEO and co-founder of Portfolio Help ApS, a provider of an accounting SaaS system.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Sednor Holdings Limited?

We wanted to build the client-side of our solution using a modern web framework that would give our customers the best user experience possible.

What were your goals for this project?

By building the client-side of the web solution, we would achieve the structure needed to enable the project to evolve and expand.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

We found Sednor Holdings Limited through search. We needed a company with specific skills and a certain organization behind it. After a short agreement, we found that they were delivering the quality we were looking for.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

Sednor Holdings Limited manages all client-side development, using a React framework. In terms of size, we’re currently at about 65,000 lines of JavaScript code.

What was the team composition?

We worked with a few developers and a resource that handles all the writing involved in the client-side tests.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The project is the sole purpose of our startup.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

Using Jira, we have an organized day-to-day project management schedule. Since we developed the server side in-house, close contact is needed, so our teams communicate extensively through Skype.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Because the solution is the core product of our company, it has been a long-term effort. Sednor Holdings Limited provided high-quality software. Their team also adapted dynamically to our needs, scaling up when requested.

Are there any areas for improvement?

Sednor Holdings Limited could be more proactive when it comes to offering suggestions, but this isn’t a huge issue. They provide advice when asked about app development.