SmartApp

Please describe your company and your position there.

TheBankingOffer.com is an end-to-end training platform for undergraduate students interested in careers in investment banking. We combine a self-serve learning platform with 1:1 mentorship from professionals at the top firms across Wall Street. I am the founder and CEO of the company.

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

Our website was developed on a very tight budget previously for our MVP year in 2021. After generating significant revenue off the low-cost MVP, we decided it was time to recreate the website for a much more advanced lead funnel & fulfillment platform.

Our price point is anywhere from $5,000 to $10,000 per student, which is a very high-ticket price point and requires an extremely polished UI & feature set for the end customer. Our partner needed to be able to deliver on design quality & functionality that warranted such a high price point on a self-serve platform.

Specifically, these were the challenges we needed SmartApp to solve for us:

1. Creation of a streamlined learning platform that mimicked Khan Academy & CodeAcademy's UI and features set
2. Re-designing & re-recreating our branding and positioning from the ground-up for all lead-funnel pages, including more advanced lead funnels such as a personality test
3. Analytics, reporting, & optimization based on traffic & site interactions to make conclusions on our A/B tests and support final development decisions with data

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

We hired SmartApp as our full-stack, end-to-end web development, e-commerce, and mobile development team. We were looking for a team that could be a one-stop-shop for us and coordinate across all the complex back-end tasks that we wanted to complete.

There were options available for us across different development specialties, such as WordPress, Moodle, and graphic designs, but we wanted a one-stop shop that would streamline all of our design and development needs. In addition, we wanted a vendor that was flexible and willing to grow alongside the company.

We were/are a young and fast-growing company, and we needed assistance making critical decisions through the earliest stages of the development process. We also had unpredictable cash-flow at times, and needed development to hit deadlines that enabled customer fulfillment as we recognized revenue.

In this regard, there were two key factors we were looking for:

1. payment flexibility & structured payment plans and
2. thorough advice & decision-making support about which products & features to prioritize & execute.

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

Scope of work:

1. We had a thorough conversation about the business itself, our products, and our timelines. This was very encouraging as SmartApp spent a lot of understanding the underlying problem we were trying to solve instead of just offering to execute what we felt needed to be done
2. We provided a detailed background on the current backend, the current development process, and the hurdles we had experienced to date
3. We explained all of the individual details and features that we wanted completed for the project
4. martApp provided recommendations & revisions to details & features, asked clarifying questions, and through a few rounds of back-and-forth, finalized the list of features that we wanted
5. We coordinated on prioritization of all features over 8 phases of development based on necessity & budget
6. We finalized pricing & payment structures and the project was kicked off. All projects were managed using Trello, which was very effective for streamlining our communications
7. The first phase of project execution was finalizing designs. This was primarily through Figma
8. Then, after development against designs, we coordinated on final touch-ups and QAs in the staging website

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

90% of work was coordinated through a single project manager that understood our project end-to-end, making it very convenient for us to execute the project. There were some light communications with at least ~5 others on the team between graphic designers, developers, QA leads, etc.

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

The website has received incredible feedback from our students and has helped us really differentiate ourselves from other sin our industry.

Not only was the UI and feature set very unique & effective, SmartApp actually helped us change our market positioning itself and unlock a new market segment. In general, we see SmartApp as a business partner now instead of just our development team.

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

We had daily communications with the project manager, who kept us posted with all progress and updates across their entire team.

She understood that we were busy working on several things ourselves, and would summarize everything for us and keep progress-tracking extremely organized so that we could manage the entire development process with only 10-20 minutes per day or every other day. Primary tools we used to communicate were Figma, Slack, and Trello.

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

There are 2 things that made SmartApp extremely impressive:

• Versatility: Their experience across so many different plugins, development styles, and e-learning features made them extremely easy to work with, because they were a one-stop shop for all of our concerns.

Could you help us develop a gamified profile section in the learning platform that syncs across quizzes completed? Yes! Could you build a personality test lead funnel? Sure! Can you convert this into a mobile app? No problem! I never got a "no, this can't be done" on any of the ambitious tasks that we had in mind.

• Business Acumen: I've worked with development teams that take instructions and execute with confidence.

SmartApp takes it a step further. They are true e-commerce experts, understanding the intricacies of lead funnels & different marketing tactics to improve our site's conversion. Their advice & recommendations through the design and development process proved monumental to us.

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

Early in the development process, the Trello board became overwhelming with so many moving parts going on at the same time. We communicated about archiving projects so that only the 3 to 5 high-priority, current projects would be visible on the Trello board to make it much easier to execute our projects and keep our eyes on what really mattered most.

Please describe your company and your position there.

My name is Tatyana Dragunova. I am a founder and CEO of the OasisStyle store. We are a reseller of women’s clothes.

For what projects/services did your company hire SmartApp?

We have been working offline for quite a long time. One day we decided that it is the right moment to go online.

What were your goals for this project?

Being on the same page with your clients is extremely important. As our target audience is online, we should have been there as well. Of course, we could create just social network accounts and content ourselves with that but we decided to go beyond and turn to the idea of website development. Our main goal was to create a website for new clothes collection presentations as we renew them every season.

How did you select this vendor?

We are a Minsk-based store and work for the local market only. We were looking for a development company with a strong knowledge of the local market nature. An opportunity to discuss all issues face-to-face was also very important for us that’s why office location was one of the criteria. SmartApp meets all our requirements. Besides, they have great recommendations.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

The company developed a Drupal-based website for us. They did everything: from web design and prototyping to web development from scratch and its SEO-optimization. They took all our wishes, helped us transform them into technical requirements and then just did their best to fulfill them and deliver a website we like. Now they manage website support and online-promotion for us.

What was the team composition?

It was a team of 5 experts: project manager, web designer, 2 developers and SEO-manager.

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

SmartApp helped us achieve our goal: move online and get more customers. The amount of our online clients is growing weekly and we are very happy about this fact.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

The project manager responsible for our project was always online and keep us informed of every step of the design and development process. They negotiated every detail. It helped achieve the brilliant result we are fully satisfied with.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

For sure, it is their responsibility and readiness to help and explain everything. They managed the project with respect to our budget and deadlines. We are impressed by the work they’ve done and the level of services they’ve provided.

Are there any areas for improvement?

Our collaboration grows into a long-lasting partnership. We are happy to work together and see SmartApp growing and extending its services. The only thing that we could say is that they are a great vendor to work with and you will be more than lucky to have them for your project.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a freelancer that’s associated with several companies. I have business in digital signal processing and cryptocurrency.

What challenge were you trying to address with SmartApp?

SmartApp developed an advanced web portal.

What was the scope of their involvement?

I had a cryptocurrency project that was an online pooling solution for collecting and managing funds from several sources. SmartApp started from scratch. We sent over what needed to be done, and then their team created a few wireframes for implementation. They initially used PHP, but at our request, the platform was later redone in Vue.js.

Our intended users for the platform were individual traders that wanted to participate in the acquisition of ICO crypto tokens from different startups. It was targeted at a final user with a customer system for tracking and registration, along with the transaction handling portion.

What is the team composition?

While I communicated with three people initially, there were more involved. I was in touch with Sergei (Co-Founder & CTO), one of the programmers, and a designer. Sergei made sure everything was correct, and the programmer answered all of my technical questions.

How did you come to work with SmartApp?

They were recommended to me through several sources. I knew them from some time ago, but I thought that they didn’t specialize in this field. I asked a few other companies for their quotes and what the conditions would be. Ultimately, SmartApp was chosen.

How much have you invested with them?

The total cost of the project was $25,000–$50,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

I started working with SmartApp in February or March 2018, and we finished up in August or September of that year. There was some maintenance work after that.

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

I was very happy that the team could work without my direct involvement. After I specified a few ideas, they worked on those, and then came back to me to ask more questions. They made decisions on UI elements and filled in the blanks when needed, and the end result was excellent.

How did SmartApp perform from a project management standpoint?

We’d normally have Telegram or Skype communication. I’d throw some ideas to Sergei, and he’d make some sketches and come back to me in a few days. I’d discuss things further with him, and when the actual implementation of the details started, I’d receive messages from their programmer directly.

The entire process was comfortable for me. I only interacted with a few people, and always had continuity. They asked relevant questions that made things move forward pretty fast.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I’ve worked with many outsourcing companies where our situations operated similarly. There would just be a few aspects done wrong between the lines. What I really like is the amount of responsibility and ownership on SmartApp’s side.

They have a big picture understanding of what it should look like, and they really owned the process. I didn’t have to correct and pinpoint them to functionality issues. That’s the most precious quality of this collaboration.

Are there any areas they could improve?

As far as my side goes, it went without glitches. The communication was very clear. When something was at the edge of not happening, they’d catch it beforehand and ask questions that notified us of any problems. We paid them a decent amount, but I’d work with them again.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

First of all, I’d say that it’s best to have a set form of communication and tell things as they are. The first thing in working with SmartApp is to have them sign some form of NDA to disclose all of the pieces. We did it this way.

Since they were looking at the bigger picture, they helped us with some things we didn’t ask for and found problems within the system. The important thing is clarity of communication. Whoever hires SmartApp should give all of their trust to the company. If they have an overview of what needs to be done, there’ll be no problems whatsoever.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CTO of Alconost, we’re a translation and localization company.

What challenge were you trying to address with SmartApp?

We had a major client that we’d been building a continuous localization process for. However, we needed someone to help us with the infrastructure and full-model development because our team didn’t have any experience with that.

What was the scope of their involvement?

SmartApp deployed and supported the solution’s infrastructure model. They handled the custom development of an API for a Moodle platform that was vital to building the continuous localization process. Their team also built a custom plug-in for Moodle, and we’re planning to opensource it. 

What is the team composition?

There were about five people, including a project manager. We usually collaborated directly with the developers.

How did you come to work with SmartApp?

They're local to our company because they’re located in Minsk as well. I heard of them through word-of-mouth. They fit the project very well, and we had no doubt about their abilities to complete it.

How much have you invested with them?

We invested between $25,000–$50,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

The project lasted from May 2019–March 2020.

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

The project was successful, and they completed everything our client needed. I give them five out of five stars.

How did SmartApp perform from a project management standpoint?

There were no issues with project management and if there were, they were fixed quickly. We communicated through Slack.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Communication was easy.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, everything was okay.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

They’re a good partner for backend development. I highly recommend using them.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the head of the IT department for Firebird Tours. We are in the travel market and organize and sell tours, as well as train tickets.

What challenge were you trying to address with SmartApp?

We needed help to develop a website for train ticket sales.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We had an existing website that SmartApp helped us develop new features for. They did some new integrations with different kinds of data providers and worked on the back office as well. It was mostly backend work. They used PHP and Drupal 8.

What is the team composition?

We worked directly with anywhere from 1–3 developers.

How did you come to work with SmartApp?

We are based in the same city as SmartApp so we found each other locally.

How much have you invested in them?

We spent about $50,000 USD, although I don’t remember the exact amount.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from October 2019–March 2020.

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

It is hard to measure success, but I am very happy with their work. Their specialists are very strong, and they provided us with a very good level of service.

How did SmartApp perform from a project management standpoint?

We didn’t use any project management tools, as we had internal project managers. Their developers were good, though. They were very responsive and would get back to us on the same day. Communication was done through Skype and was very good.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their quality of work was the most impressive.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They could expand their range of services.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I would highly recommend hiring them because they provide really good quality of work.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a product owner for WorkFusion, a software company that provides intelligent automation products. We offer solutions that utilize machine learning and robotics to automate processes in the banking, healthcare, and insurance industries.

What challenge were you trying to address with SmartApp?

We have a digital product team that’s responsible for the development of our corporate website, our educational platform, and our internal/external portals. SmartApp provides additional web development, web design, and digital marketing support.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We have customer-facing solutions like our corporate site and automation platform, but we also have internal solutions, such as a Partner Portal. SmartApp helped with development on both sides.

Utilizing Moodle and coding in PHP, SmartApp enhanced our website which is built on Drupal and WordPress (and hosted on AWS). They also built new products—like a Use Case Navigator and a Partner Portal—from scratch. They focused on UX/UI design for a lot of it.

Last year, we launched localizations for all of our digital projects. It was a large and sophisticated project that targeted the Japanese and Spanish markets. They assisted in the technical side of website translation and other elements.

Now, in addition to all of the development support, their team even conducts SEO and helps us boost our marketing.

What is the team composition?

We currently have several teams of 4–5 developers, overseen by a project manager, on different projects. SmartApp has also provided us with designers, QA engineers, and SEO specialists as needed. In total, we work with around 15 people.

We interface with both the project manager and CTO, but we also communicate directly with the developers. We use Slack.

How did you come to work with SmartApp?

In preparation for the launch of our Moodle-based system in 2017, we were looking for local Minsk companies to help us with development. We found SmartApp after doing some market research.

How much have you invested with them?

We pay them around $250,000 per year.

What is the status of this engagement?

The collaboration is ongoing; we’re currently engaging them for different projects of varying complexity.

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

With SmartApp’s help, we were able to launch several platforms this year alone. We wouldn’t have been able to do it without them; their dedication and involvement have been stellar.

We’ve been especially pleased by their eagerness to accommodate our needs. Even if they don’t have the precise competencies for a complex project, they’re still ready to learn and provide the required skills. We’re completely satisfied with their work.

How did SmartApp perform from a project management standpoint?

They’ve been excellent at ensuring that we hit all deadlines and milestones. We manage projects through JIRA and use Confluence to create checklists and workflows for each project. By handling operations and DevOps completely by themselves, they’ve facilitated processes. Daily communication has made the engagement seamless.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I’m more impressed by their readiness to adapt and change for us. Even though we initially engaged them for the sole purpose of creating our Automation Academy, we’ve since enlarged their responsibilities.

When we created websites and developed new platforms, they picked up skills along the way to provide us with SEO and content marketing work. It’s been a true partnership; we develop together, instead of them developing for us.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, I can’t think of anything. Because we encourage inter-team transparency, we’ll hold a retrospective after each project launch. We’ll openly share areas of improvement to implement in the next project. It’s been a very beneficial process.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

Clients shouldn’t hesitate when choosing SmartApp. Any customer will be impressed by the results since their team is eager to make the project a success.

Please describe your company and your position there.

VP, International Bus Dev for an educational content provider

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

The old website was created in-house by people who were no longer with the company and thus the site was not supported or updated. The site was outdated and not device agnostic. We hired SmaprtApp to develop a new, modern-looking website adopted for mobile browsing and complaint with the latest privacy and accesobility regualtions.

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

We were looking for a vendor with significant web development experience, with expertise in WordPress, PHP, and SEO optimization. SmartApp was recommended to us as a reliable and knowledgeable vendor. Their quote was also within our budget.

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

We gave SmartApp our requirements, they reviewed and came up with a few questions. Then we had a kick off meeting, followed by a few iterations of wireframes and moved to sandbox.

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

We worked with the CEO of the company and the Project Manager.

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

After the launch of the site, we saw a significant increase in traffic which resulted in a higher purchase volume.

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

Weekly ZOOM calls, bug reports, sandbox access. Very quick and appropriate response from SmartApp.

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

We are very pleased with the quality of work, as well as the responsiveness and skills of the team

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

We are pleased with our partnership.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the Owner and CEO of a company that publish crowd-sourced reviews about businesses.

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

We hired SmartApp to assume dev responsibility for the launch new website for a company that publishes crowd-sourced reviews about businesses. Our goal was to launch with their assistance and scale the company.

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

We searched extensively online and found SmartApp to be highly professional and attentive.

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

They designed and developed a Custom-based business management solution. We started with a discovery phase to go over our business challenges. Then, SmartApp gave us workflows and design mock-ups to approve before starting developing. They have incredible designers! We used two-week sprints in our work and the whole team was available whenever I needed it. After each sprint, they made a demo. After the completion of the development, there was an implementation phase that took one month.

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

SmartApp has provided us with support from their CTO and Technical Team, Project Manager, Business Analytic, Design Team, SEO Management team, and several developers. If necessary, I had access to all members of their team.

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

We went from pre-launch to a product in the market with thousands users!

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

We used Slack, Jira, as well as Confluence to coordinate project management tasks. Until this point, our team had no experience with either of these tools, and SmartApp has been wonderful at helping us to understand and maximize our use of these tools.

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

SmartApp has been amazing to work with. Super reliable and would go above and beyond to help us resolve issues. They are always professional and trustworthy, and they deliver on their promises.

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

At this time we're highly satisfied with their work!

Please describe your company and your position there.

Pavel Kharytonau IT Business Development Manager BelITSoft - Software Development & IT Consulting

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

We applied the skills of a specialist and expert of SmartApp in our Project to ensure that the project gets delivered on time, within budget, and to the required quality.

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

This vendor was recommended to us by our another software development company that we regularly cooperate with.

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

SmartApp supplied us with the skills of a qualified PHP(WordPress) Developer for a corporate website with a showcase, resellers, and general information about the company

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

On this specific project we had one PHP (WordPress) Developer who supplemented our own team of developers

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

The developer did a great job. Our client clearly had no issues with his work, and was quite happy with the developer's performance, productivity, and work ethics. In addition, it was very nice to deal with SmartApp company management.

They acted professionally, and were quite willing to help when their input was needed. The work of the developer, and of his management definitely met my expectations, and helped me to help my customer meet their deliverables.

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

We PMed the project on our side.

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

Highly professional approach, work ethics, efficiency in dealing with requests, flexibility in resolving any potential issues before they appear.

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

Have not identified any yet

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the marketing manager at Rampiq agency. We've decided to develop a new website to present our services. Our main services are Digital Marketing: SEO, Web Analytics, PPC & Content marketing

For what projects/services did your company hire SmartApp?

New website design

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

Quality & ability to meet deadlines were the major factors. SmartApp grasped our requirements & wishes for the job rather precisely - so after the first call we already understood that SmartApp can “pull off” our project in the way we need it.

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

The main goal of the project was to create a design that positions our marketing agency on the U.S. market. The design project included key pages (such as Home, About, etc.) as well as pages for every specific niche our agency focuses on. First we received overall concepts to choose from, and, after approval of one of those, the team proceeded with the design for the rest of the pages. We would like to mention the graphics & attention to detail the SmartApp team demonstrated. Every image and element was customly made/adjusted to our website’s style, so everything looks organic and smooth. Also SmartApp helped us to create our brands’ UI/UX kit (fonts, colors, styles,etc.) that we will definitely use in our marketing materials.

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

We worked with a client’s manager, project manager & 2 design specialists. They were easy to access, we could organize a call in 15 minutes - it was absolutely no problem for them.

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

Absolutely - you can visit our website rampiq.agency to see the final result.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

As mentioned above - the team’s availability satisfied us to the full extent. We were glad that SmartApp team was available on every step of the project. If we had commentary/feedback/adjustments/questions the team assisted us promptly.

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

As a client we felt that SmartApp’s processes are set up & adjusted perfectly to meet the client’s goal in the designated deadlines.

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

No, everything was perfect. Thanks again!