SerfCompany LLC | UKRAINE OUTSOURCING | IT Development

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I work in HR for an incorporated company in Luxembourg.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire SERF LTD (UKRAINE OUTSOURCING IT Development) ?

We hired them to develop a web application.

What were your goals for this project?

We needed a new process for employers and professional recruiters to use for selecting new staff members.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

We found them through an internet search.

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

SERF LTD contributed programming in PHP and JavaScript.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Since the application still needs to be tested, it's premature to have metrics. I can say, however, that the results they've produced are very good.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

The organization was excellent. SERF LTD has always been available to contact online, even at late hours.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

I was most impressed with SERF LTD's availability and competence. They offer a valuable ratio of price to quality.

Are there any areas where they can improve?

The only thing way they could improve would be to learn French or Italian, my native languages, but that's just a joke.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We're a legal analytics company based in Canada. We provide data-mining services for courts. I am the owner, founder, and president of the company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Serfcompany?

Serfcompany has developed a web-based software platform.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Serfcompany has developed our PHP Zend Framework platform, using MySQL as a database. Typically, we are working with 4 stable developers from Serfcompany.

How did you come to work with Serfcompany?

I had been working with their principal on Upwork. He worked on our proof-of-concept, but because the project was so big, he offered to set up a team for us.

How much have you invested with Serfcompany?

The cost of our project with Serfcompany has been between $10,000 and $12,000 per month.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in June 2015. We have a permanent team assigned from Serfcompany.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

As with any development work, we've had challenges, but after finding the right team, things worked out well. We needed to make sure that we had strong English-speaking resources on Serfcompany's side, given that they're working from Ukraine. I've been running international teams for 10 years and realized that things will always be rocky in the beginning. Serfcompany has been a good team for almost a year and a half.

How did Serfcompany perform from a project management standpoint?

We've needed to account for the additional management time required for the collaboration. It's not the same as running a team in the same office as us. We use Assembla as a task and ticket management system. We didn't document things in the beginning, but we got burned. We now have extensive documentation.

What did you find most impressive about Serfcompany?

The big driving factor for me was cost.

Are there any areas Serfcompany could improve?

From a customer perspective, knowing the English skills and backgrounds of each employee of Serfcompany is important. I've come to find this information out, but Serfcompany overestimated the team's English skills.