Skillo

Introduce your business and what you do there.

VMware is a global tech corporation that deals with virtualization. We’ve been around for more than 20 years with up to 30,000 employees and around $10 billion annual revenue. 

I’m a part of the European, Middle East, and African organization (EMEA) and I'm responsible for all of the technical education programs for R&D in those regions. I have a target audience of about 3,000 people, all of whom are engineering professionals, QA engineers, senior developers, product managers, and product owners.

What challenge were you trying to address with Skillo BG?

Our team’s main goal was to deliver technical training, coaching, and mentoring from internal and external sources to our audience. For a very long time, we had delivered those with organizations from the US. They were absolutely great, but we faced challenges in terms of the budget. 

We needed vendors who were local to the EMEA regions to deliver that training in the same standard as the vendors from the US and hopefully at a better price. We also needed to improve the training material itself, as our advanced audiences found some of the content to be sometimes lacking or irrelevant. We turned to Skillo for these specific challenges. 

What was the scope of their involvement?

Skillo provides instructor-led training and self-service training to teach our existing employees how to operate some of the major technologies that are part of VMware’s tech stack. They mentor the target audience, for example, on how to use Angular, AWS, Springboot, Java, and Kubernetes. The goal of the training is to improve the trainees’ acumen with the aforementioned technologies.

Internally, we conduct a needs analysis with the stakeholders to determine which technologies they would need training for. We then reach out to Skillo’s instructors, hold scoping meetings, and determine which instructor will lead specific types of training. We also assign people to manage the teams of trainees. 

On a quarterly basis, we conduct 4–5 instructor-led training sessions, two of which are being headed by the Skillo team.

What is the team composition?

Hjusein (Co-Founder) is our main point of contact. Thus far, we’ve engaged with two people to organize and administrate the classes and deal with the finances. We’ve also worked with 6–7 trainers. 

How did you come to work with Skillo BG?

When we were looking around for a vendor, I and the person governing the technical education from the US side determined that our top priority would be quality. We didn’t want to work with a vendor for the fraction of the cost only to see a drop in the caliber of the training provided. 

We did a tender with three highly recommended companies and ended up selecting Skillo because their price range was almost equal to the US vendors. They also displayed the highest-quality training skills that met our KPIs and created the strongest retention among participants. 

How much have you invested with them?

Up to this point, we’ve invested around $56,000. If we count the two upcoming classes, the figure will be up to $80,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

The partnership started at the end of February 2021. We’re still working with Skillo.

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

We do have several KPIs to measure whether or not a training session has been successful. This entails a six-month evaluation between the start and the end of the training. We normally measure a participant’s productivity and the number of bugs reported within the output code. 

We also poll the participants to measure their satisfaction with the training, if they found the material relevant to their jobs, if they found the instructor engaging, and how soon they could put their learnings to practice,

The first class we did with Skillo reaped a significant reduction in the number of bugs reported. In terms of trainee satisfaction, our minimum expectation was a score of 5.5 on a 7-point scale. Skillo produced a score of 6.3, which is quite good. 

How did Skillo BG perform from a project management standpoint?

Skillo proactively identifies learning opportunities for the specific technologies they’re providing training for. It makes it easy and convenient for me to take the training outlines to stakeholders and determine what or what doesn’t fit. I also appreciate that, beyond the training, their administration is fully automated.

Our initial correspondence was through e-mail. Now, we finetune course outlines and exchange updates through Slack and hold scoping calls on Zoom.

What did you find most impressive about them?

What stands out the most about Skillo is their ability to work quickly and in the short term. Often, when we reach out to vendors, we see who will be able to deliver with only three weeks of lead time, and Skillo almost always delivers first. They’re really able to provide instructors and course outlines at a short notice. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

They could benefit from expanding their network beyond their in-house trainers to include freelancers as well. This could help them tackle topics that they haven’t tackled before.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Do give Skillo as much information and context as possible. If you show them the big picture, they might just surprise you with the number of opportunities they can provide to help develop your teams further. 

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the head of software development and integration at Smart IT, a software company. We provide software tools for companies in the fintech space, such as ERP systems, data lakes, a credit score system, and basically whatever our partners need to operate.

What challenge were you trying to address with Skillo BG?

We identified that the software we create is rather buggy. We only had a handful of QA testers, which was nowhere near enough of what we needed, so we laid out a plan to build our QA department. We found out it would take me about two years to hire all the people that we needed, and that’s when we started to look for outside companies to help me with IT cloud consulting services.

What was the scope of their involvement?

They provide us with staff augmentation, which makes up our QA department today.

Before we start developing software, we tell the developers and the QA team what the functionality is, so while the developers are developing the functionality, the QA testers from Skillo BG will work on creating test cases. They form the test strategy and make sure we have all the things planned out, so we can test the software that we create adequately. 

After the functionality has been created by the developers, Skillo BG takes that functionality and makes sure we find the bugs before they go into production. Once that’s done, we go ahead and format the versions to production — they do all the regulation testing, and basically own the whole QA process.

While they don’t have access to our production systems, we still provide them with the hardware to work on, because they’re responsible for finding bugs before the product goes into production. 

Moreover, they’ll also be creating a few training programs for us, and we’re collaborating with them to identify topics that companies would need to develop.

What is the team composition?

The number of people we work with has grown over the last nine months. We started with just a couple, but currently, there are 10 people involved in the project. We plan to increase the team as we continue to grow.

How did you come to work with Skillo BG?

I started doing research with local companies here and took a few offers from some of them. Skillo BG was referred to me by a colleague of mine, so I compared their offer with the other vendors' and had interviews with the owner. We found that they had the specific skills and expertise that could work for us, so we went with them.

How much have you invested with them?

So far, we’ve spent €280,000 EUR (approximately $327,000 USD).

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in November 2021, and our partnership is still ongoing.

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

Statistics have shown that Skillo BG finds 40% more bugs than our team prior to production, and I’m really happy with the good job they've been doing.

The other important thing for me is they have a zero turnover rate, as prior to Skillo BG, the turnover rate for my company’s QA team was 22%. The people that we have right now went through a very rigorous selection process, and out of the ten people that they’ve provided us, I’ve not returned even one of them.

The other metric I like is the time that it takes for them to find somebody. If I have a new position open tomorrow, I would have the option of going to our HR department and have them find a mid-level QA tester, or go with Skillo BG for the same thing. The latter is five times quicker and more efficient, and I don’t have to do all the interviews — that’s what makes them reliable. 

How did Skillo BG perform from a project management standpoint?

We haven’t asked them to provide us with project management since we do it ourselves. The whole team works within our office, and they use tools like Skype for Business and the telephone. We also communicate a lot over email and WhatsApp, and it’s working really well.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I like that they’re reliable and I can always count on them. They always find me the right person that can fit my team quickly.

Are there any areas they could improve?

There have been a couple of situations where we needed them to work on their performance, and they’ve definitely improved.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

My advice is to be open with the actual problems you have, so they can help you with whatever they can — they’re really good at finding solutions that you might not know exists.

Please describe your company and your position there.

Infosys Ranked in the Top 3 IT Services Brands in the World & among the Top 150 Most Valued Brands. My position is Lead-TA for Bulgaria and Romania.

For what projects/services did your company hire Skillo ?

Our company was growing the subsidiary in Sofia and we needed recruitment support to hire the best IT specialists and managers on the local market.

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

We received very positive feedback from our network about Skillo.

Describe the project in detail and walk through the stages of the project.

They worked for numerous open position with us and managed to present valuable candidates who are still part of our company.

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

Their Recruitment manager was the main point of contact but there were several other recruiters working on the background.

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

The employees we hired with the support of Skillo are a great asset for our company and they prove this every day.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Everything was completed on time and the communication was effective and result oriented.

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

I appreciate that they took the time to understand the profiles, and they always asked the right questions.

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

There is nothing I can think of.