SMAAT Apps & Technologies

BACKGROUND

[Our company] was started in 2012 with an idea to create a social networking, location-based app for dog lovers worldwide.

As well as building smartphone apps, we believe in the power of community and, as such, one of our ideals is to contribute back to communities through profit sharing with charities and community groups. [Approximately] 10 percent of all profits from [the app] will be donated to animal-related charities, such as the WWF, RSPCA, and dog rescue shelters.

I am the co-founder and handle the CTO and CFO roles.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

We initially hired developers who has used a different technology altogether for development. The impact was that the development process was pretty slow, and we never got what we wanted. We lost almost nine months on this process. Working with SMAAT Apps was a breath of fresh air. They produced more in the one month than previous developers had achieved in nine months.

We wanted to create a social networking app for iOS and Android with a scalable backend. We wanted to produce a global app for dog lovers and dog-related services, enabling people to find information they required rapidly, including parks and beaches and other good dog destinations.

SOLUTION

The project scope was to recreate the UX/UI [user experience/user interface] for the Android and iOS apps. They also provided ongoing support while using the agile development methodology. They use a project management tool that made giving feedback easy and helped the project along.

We chose to go with native iOS and Android development languages to meet quality standards and on the advice of SMAAT Apps, but several other developers tendering for our business also made similar recommendations based on the fact we would be using many native features of the different platforms in question.

We opted for AWS [Amazon Web Services] for the backend and for API [application programming interface] and database handling, this was to ensure that the backend of the app would scale appropriately, our target has always been an app and backend that could scale to 100 million users. 

We found them through Elance.com, after posting a brief description of the job with references to similar apps.  We interviewed several potential candidates. We were looking for a reliable, technically sound, and committed development team.

We found the SMAAT Apps team to be highly technical and capable with dedicated teams for the platforms we wanted developed. They have also acted as a thought partner, suggesting ways to improve what we are proposing and also told us when something was not feasible or breached rules by Apple or Android.

The cost of the project was around $20,000 and it was completed in July of 2014. They will offer ongoing support and development for future versions of our app.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

We felt that the technology platform we selected was right and we are getting good feedback from our customers and clients. 

SMAAT Apps was responsive, easy to work with and fast as they did more in one month than we had been able to drag out of the previous developer in nine months, and we had a completed project within four months.

SMAAT Apps have been very flexible, working with us to refine our requirements and needs and resolve design flaws made by us. The project was wrapped up cleanly and very professionally.

I love their project management tool, enabling me to communicate directly with the whole team working on our project. They were quick to respond to any questions raised and any clarification needed was done over Skype. Their knowledge of iOS and Android has been fantastic, they are able to advise us of things that can or cannot be done in each platform, and the help they provided to get our App live in iTunes and Google Play went above and beyond the contract scope. Generally, our experience with them has been excellent. The project was completed to our expectation and satisfaction.

The one area of improvement would be in their QA [quality assurance] process and team. We have mentioned this to them and they have taken steps to improve. However, part of the QA issues we have had is that we have not provided SMAAT Apps with clear guidance and use-case scenarios to test against. That has been a learning experience for us to keep in mind for future development projects.

We have already recommended them to others. We will use them for our own future development projects so we are clearly happy with SMAAT Apps.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company.

We have a business-related productivity tool targeted to individuals for planning, tasking, sharing plans and tasks, and task management. It’s for semi-professional individuals.

What is your role and responsibilities?

I am the owner.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What was your goal for working with SMAAT Apps & Technologies?

We wanted to get the app out as a proof of concept, to see if we can acquire a sizable audience. For the next phase, they were putting in advertisements, or if we can sustain it ourselves, we’re going to try to grow the user base. That’s undecided at the moment.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their work.

[It was] mobile app development.

What was your process for selecting SMATT Apps  & Technologies with which to work?

I went through Elance.com.

Can you provide a ballpark dollar figure for the size of the work that they’ve done for you?

Almost $11,000. Initially their target was about six weeks, but it took longer. Part of it is our side because we have to develop a lot of the backend. So, there’s a lot of back and forth going on between us, and the longer time frame isn’t entirely their fault. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the results of the project?

We’re at the end of the project now. We’re about to launch it. On our side, we don’t consider it totally complete yet because there’s still a lot of features that we would like to implement. So, we consider it to be in beta, but it’s basically done as far as they are concerned.

Are you satisfied with their work?

Overall, yes, I’m satisfied. Everything considered, given the cost, what they did for us, I would say I am satisfied. They’re very good at implementing the details if you have it well documented.

Is there anything unique about them that really makes them stand out, compared to other companies?

To be honest, I’ve never worked with other developers so it’s hard to compare. I deal directly with their developers, which is one aspect I really enjoyed. One of the co-owners was also technically savvy, so that was an added benefit

Looking back on the work so far, is there any area that you think they could improve upon or something that you might do differently?

I would have all high-level details ironed out and test cases documented ahead of time so we'd know what to expect.