Softblues

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Agricom Group is a Ukrainian agro-industrial group specializing in producing and distributing staples. The leader in the production and processing of gluten-free oat.  

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

We needed a brand new website development with e-commerce and unique marketing solutions for a worldwide promotion.

SOLUTION

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

Our partners recommended Softblues as a reliable software service provider, as SoftBlues developed a scalable AgriTech solution for their company and continued supporting them during the last three years. Plus, Softblues has significant experience in web development and WP development which was our main request.

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

The scope of the SoftBlues involvement was to build a WP-based solution including custom design, theme development, and back-end functionality development with unique marketing features. Plus, we needed two websites, an e-commerce solution, and a personal account solution for our customers and partners.

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

The dedicated team consisted of a

• WordPress Developer
• Front-end Developer (React.js)
• UX/UI designer
• QA Engineer
• Project Manager.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The Softblues team delivered all the project features in time, which helped us start our marketing campaigns. With the new website today, we are observing more than 40% in new customers growth with a reduced bounce rate of more than 20%.

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

The Softblues team was very proactive - they helped us compose a technical description of the project, assisted with content management, and proposed many solutions that we hadn't initially included in the scope.

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

We needed a niche custom solution quickly, but as we did not have experience with new technologies, we required complex consulting during the development process. Softblues used modern technologies and worked on performance which contributed greatly to our progress.

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

I know it is hard to predict all the necessary features before the development starts, but I suggest spending more time on project estimation. To be clear, we did not pay for the discovery phase, and Softblues provided it for free. As a result, the scope was extended during the development phase, and we ran a bit beyond the budget.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am a director of Totus Construction Ltd. We are building contractors and design & build company, specialising mainly in high-end residential and commercial projects. Totus has a team of 40 highly skilled and professional personnel.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

The main idea was to create a platform that allows designers and architects to post their architecture projects and send the requirement for our construction company, so then they could manager the construction process, leave feedback and communicate with our company.

We had an idea of the project but didn’t have the ability to develop it by ourselves so we found SoftBlues as one of the best JavaScript software development companies in Ukraine, as we knew that in Ukraine there are so many talented and highly-skilled developers and. So we decided to turn to SoftBlues to develop the platform for us.

SOLUTION

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

I found SoftBlues via Clutch. I have interviewed a lot of other agencies, but I liked SoftBlues the most because they had the right balance of price and communication, and they had good reviews, and what I really liked was how they approached us during our first meetings.

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

SoftBlues provided a full-stack development for us. We started from scratch but we had a basic architecture in mind that needed to be built from a product-driven perspective. We decided to go with a JavaScript stack as SoftBlues is known as one of the best software development companies in this stack, and their highly-experienced team well-argued to us why we should dwell on JavaScript, that is React.js for frontend and Node.js for the backend.

As the project had started from scratch they were doing everything from designing wireframes to the development and delivery.

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

The team composition included:

• 2 React.js developers
• Node.js developers
• PM
• QA Engineer
• UX/UI designer.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

SoftBlues managed to deliver everything on time. Also, we have seen a significant increase in traffic during our cooperation, and the MVP they have prepared has also been very helpful as a demo when meeting with investors. We got overwhelmingly positive feedback on the new site, the way it looks and the usability it has is just amazing. Everything works fast and is reliable. In short, they followed the highest of standards with their work.

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

The communication was great. SoftBlues has been very flexible from the start. As I mentioned before, we really liked how they approached us during our first meetings. They were very clear and transparent in their communication. We meet weekly to discuss their progress and challenges. In addition, we’ve used Jira to collaborate and document our ideas. And we set up a Google Drive to exchange documents.

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

The communication and professional approach to everything they were doing just blows my mind. The team was really friendly to us and at the same time very clear with us. They provided a lot of support and expertise in JavaScript. Now I can say with confidence they are one of the best for JS development! If you want to develop something based on JS - go ahead with SoftBlues, you won’t regret it, believe me!

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

On our end, none at all. I can’t think of anything. No complaints, we loved working with SoftBlues 100%.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I’m the CEO of E-commerce Startup

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

We needed an experienced dedicated team that could build the fast and scalable frontend part and have a great experience in the e-commerce domain. Furthermore we had to launch the product fast.

SOLUTION

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

My CTO recommended SoftBlues. I have no idea how he found them, but he put them forward as one of the best JavaScript development companies in Ukraine. I saw some of their work, spoke to them, and decided to give them a go. During our process, we considered at least 10 companies if not more. Buy finally decided to start our cooperation with SoftBlues because they have a really wide expertise in JavaScript development, highly-skilled developers and most importantly experience in the e-commerce domain.

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

The scope of the SoftBlues involvement was to build a responsive and scalable frontend part for our e-commerce startup while we were building a backend part on Python. As the challenge was to launch fast and the product was to be easily scalable. The SoftBlues team suggested us to build a solution on React. And as it turned out now it was a great suggestion.

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

The dedicated team consisted of 2 ReactJS Developers, UI/UX Designer, QA Engineer and all the team was professionally organized by the Project Manager.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The numbers really speak for themselves, and we have typically grown in the 30% only by this year. Our bounce rate has dropped significantly and the average time spent on page has increased on average. On the other end of the spectrum, with regards to usability, it’s been great. The conversions we are achieving are unbelievable, and I’m happy working with them.

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

The project management standpoint was just amazing. The transparency they give, the communication they give, the proactive approach they have, everything is just at another high level. I`ve never had such a great communication and synergy in collaboration.

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

It was the proactive approach the team have, highly-experienced JavaScript developers (React.js in particular as we worked with this framework), but I’m very sure all the developers in SoftBlues are just the professionals of their field. They provided a lot of support and expertise in the areas that we had not considered. Their coding skills are phenomenal. They have a good understanding of the core areas behind building sound technology that grows, expands, and scales up.

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

No, not really. They’re great developers. Everyone’s happy with collaboration with the SoftBlues team.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

AutoBi is designed to deliver a comprehensive solution to the market and transform fleet management into a predictable and transparent process. It was designed as a versatile SaaS solution that applies to a variety of business domains i.e. freight transport, construction, agriculture, passenger traffic, and community service providers.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

SoftBlues was our technology partner from day 1. We aimed at creating an MVP and getting early adopters within a few months to see if there’s a demand on the market. SoftBlues built the right team promptly, met our deadlines, and was very adjustable to changes.

SOLUTION

How did you select Softblues and what were the deciding factors?

We learned about SoftBlues at the Ukrainian Startup Fund. The team launched a product in the agritech domain which was awarded the national grant and was truly innovative. The decision to cooperate with this vendor was based on this fact.

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

The team created a competitive product with the following features: Spareparts and equipment catalog, motoring fines tracking, interactive admin dashboard, different levels of access rights, open API for integrations,telematix for route tracking, GPS trackers connection, documentation management, 24/7 support.

SoftBlues demostrated a great level of competence using php, laravel, docker, postgres, redis, aws, node.js, react and our product’s performance is smooth. We feel very confident presenting this software to our clients.

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

The team consists of 8 people: 2 Laravel Devs, 2 React Devs, 1 React Native Dev, QA, Designer, BA and PM.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Effective fleet management requires a solid new-age business intelligence platform. AutoBI is exactly like that. No more hassle with spare parts and equipment management, uncontrollable traffic routes, expired insurances, and motoring fines.

The platform helps companies save costs just by tracking measuring and taking timely actions. The platform was implemented in over 40 companies and was awarded a national grant from the Ukrainian Startup Fund.

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

We used scum and kanban at different stages of the development process. Jira and ClickUp were used for the internatal communication.

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

They’re peolpe of the word. The deadlines are met, and all the features our clients asked for are also delivered timely.

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

Nothing comes to mind at the moment.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I’m the Chief Client Officer of Agrotop, the leading SaaS platform for land management. The platform provides GIS analytics and all necessary tools for legal and bookkeeping aspects of the AgTech business.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

We needed a tech team that had some expertise in the agriculture domain as we had to launch the product fast. The tech stack was also crucial for us.

SOLUTION

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

We selected SoftBlues because we knew that they had launched the projects for some large national agriculture companies and definitely had some expertise in the field. Their price quote was competitive and the level of communication and consulting was high.

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

The project concept was designed by our in-house experts and we knew kind of solution the market needed. SoftBlues joined at the tech discovery phase, determined the technology stack and methodology which were the most relevant to bring the project to life.

The SoftBlues team suggested building the solution on Symfony on the back-end and React on the front-end. We also used Node.JS, Python, and AWS for certain modules and services. Considerable attention was paid to security and scalability with JWT Token (for user authorization) and HTTP protocols.

As a result, we have developed a safe cloud-based platform for agribusiness management which consisted of a web application and two mobile apps (the separate ones for land managers and agronomists).

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

All the teamwork was professionally organized by the Project Manager. The tech team consisted of the Business Analyst, 2 ReactJS Developers, 2 ReactNative Developers, 3 Symfony/Python/NodeJS Developers, UI/UX Designer, QA Engineer.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The «Land manager» module has been sold well on the Ukrainian market for 16 months. Over 50 corporate clients, with 200k+ hectares of land, are working within the system. The «Agronomist» module has already obtained MVP status and is ready for selling on the Ukrainian market. The platform has demonstrated a good track record.

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

The team has provided transparency and has been easily accessible throughout the development process. We had regular meetings and sprint progress updates. The mobile application was finished 2 weeks earlier.

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

The tech team is very professional and proactive. They provided a lot of support and expertise in the areas that we had not considered. All the critical issues were reported in advance and we managed to plan properly all our interactions with potential clients.

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

I wish we had 2 QA Engineers on the project so that we could test all the features faster. However, we had some budget constraints.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Qurated provides Product Data Management and augmentation services to online retailers. As CTO I head up the product development.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

Build a Proof Of Concept that involves in a Minimal Viable Product which allows for specific areas to be built out in specific areas. Do so based on proven open source technologies, and prepare it for a seamless integration into GCP. On top of that the functionalities are diverse and require keen engineering to be performant.

SOLUTION

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

Softblues works closely with us, providing top engineering talents that are flexible and receptive. Through some amazing teamwork we were, and still are, able to deliver value both on IT as well as product and business level in every sprint.

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

Built on top of Laravel, VueJS and hosted on GCP with a heavy focus on delivering a powerful and simple to use UI for our internal teams.

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

We were provided with a developer. Early on in the project also someone for DevOps

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

As it is still ongoing measurable results are not available. I can only say we have been able to meet milestones consecutively

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

We worked with Jira as sprint tool, slack and zoom for communication.

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

their ability to deliver the right developer and the emphasis of the management and sales team on a close collaboration

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

Nothing I would change so far.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the owner if digital marketing and consulting firm

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

We needed to create integration between Woocommerce and very challenging ERP. The goal was to make smooth and full webstore integration.

SOLUTION

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

I had worked eith Softblues before and I knew they had talented professionals

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

1. Kick-off meeting: scope, resources, timetable, discussion channels and steps
2. Iteration project, where steps were done one by one.
3. All the needed jobs were done by the end of the project and the budget was met.

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

1 business analyst (at the very first stages), 1 project manager, 1 backend developer (PHP), and 1 frontend developer

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Softblues professionals were always accessible what is very important for me and my client. Their outcome code and work is excellent and the end client has nothing to complain about the results.

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

Communication tools: we used slack and it was perfect tool for this project. The management was always promt and understandable.

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

The Softblues professionals are accessible and always ready for challenging tasks. I can trust that they always deliver the tasks on time. This is why I use them innmy future projects also.

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

Absoltuletly nothing. We are all humans and if something is off, they always fix it.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the founder of The Collaborative Anthropology Network. We are a new social networking platform for anthropologists, anthropology and other field-adjacent researchers.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

Social features are the new standard for modern websites while both site owners and site users are demanding more and more services, requiring more and more plugins be installed on the same site and bogging down loading times.

Multisite networks allow for creating purpose driven sites and reducing the number of required plugins for each site on a network. Sites on a network do share data between other sites by default, however multiple conflicts between sites currently made this kind of implementation unworkable. Existing multisite solutions were severely outdated and designed to completely separate each site on the network.

SOLUTION

How did you select Softblues and what were the deciding factors?

Any solution would require expertise in several complex areas and an ability to maintain and develop the functionality of a number of features across sites on the network. Because of the complexity of the project, there was also a lot of unknowns coming into the project about the scope and time frame for completion of the project, as well as several technological points that needed to be investigated.

We discussed the project in depth with several competent development teams but we were always told by the other teams that because of the unknowns of the project, our expectations about the scope, time frame, and cost to completion needed to be wide open.

Instead of pushing against our expectations at the outset, this team proposed to start with an initial research phase to answer all questions as best as possible to determine the scope of the project. We paid for the initial research phase as its own project to determine the next step forward.

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

The research phase included a report with a description of the relevant technology space of the project and a proposed outline for completing the project with 2 additional phases.

The second and third phase of the projects were created to allow the developers to focus on different categories of functionality and included a break down of estimated times for each task in each phase.

However, there were still some questions about the coding architecture and development time and so these kinds of tasks were moved to the third phase in order to be answered before the final estimate of the third phase could be created.

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

A project manager was our main point of contact throughout the development process. There was also at least one developer working on the project.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The project was to develop a multisite solution that allows different network configurations for sites on the same network to share data and work together as part of a larger platform. Instead of a single, large, complex site, separate sites are created as full-fledged, purpose-driven implementations.

Such a network configuration would allow site owners to identify what data they would like their network of sites to share and not share and configure each one according to its particular use-case. The final solution significantly reduces the number of plugins required to be activated on each site, reducing page load times and potential plugin conflicts of every site on the network.

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

We used a miro board with task flows and diagrams that were previously created and reviewed by the team on a regular basis. Our main line of communication was through the codeable website but we also made several calls on zoom as well.

The development work was done on a separate demo site that they created for testing. The team would contact us when a feature or functionality was ready for testing and we would discuss any issues or concerns that we had.

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

As mentioned earlier, we talked to several development teams before deciding to go with SoftBlues. We vetted every team and are certain that they were all very capable of developing a solution, but no other team was able to strategize such a complex project and work with us on determining the scope and cost of the project at the outset. Locating teams with the necessary expertise was a long process, but hiring SoftBlues to do the job was easy.

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

Creating task flows and diagrams in order to better visualize the correct functionality and behavior helps us to analyze and discuss the proposed solutions. The team did review the diagrams that we had created but as the project progressed there was additional tasks added that was beyond what we had drafted diagrams for.

We have worked with several dev teams now and it is not at all common for developers to request or create task flows and diagrams for review - which is unfortunate in my opinion and means this critique is not particular to SoftBlues. The inevitable result of working with remote teams across the world without task flows and diagrams of the proposed solutions is that there are going to be differences of expectations.

In such a dynamic, it is the developers that have to determine the correct behavior of the details of the processes, but the clients who will have the final say, which unnecessarily increases development time.

Again, this is something that is an issue that unfortunately applies to every dev team we've ever worked with, they do not ask for task flows and diagrams, but all of them are very happy when we provide task flows and diagrams for review.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am responsible for online sales at MÄSER group, an Austrian-based company group in the dinnerware and drinking glass vertical.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

The management of our subsidiary MÄSER GLÄSER wanted to have its own website, as they felt that their subsidiary was underrepresented on the company group website.

The goal for this project was to provide our subsidiary MÄSER GLÄSER with a showcase website for their products. In an additional step we would like to add product configuration possibilites, maybe even combined with an e-commerce checkout process.

SOLUTION

How did you select Softblues and what were the deciding factors?

We knew that we wanted to have a Wordpress-based website and were thus looking for an agency with a strong track record in Wordpress. We searched on Upwork and Google and asked 3 specialised Wordpress agencies with nice reference projects for a proposal and a quote based on our briefing. We finally decided to go with Softblues mainly because:

1. they have sent us a very comprehensive proposal (regarding which plugins they'd recommend, which components they would develop on a custom basis, etc.),
2. they had really good portfolio of similar reference project,
3. they had great reviews on Upwork and
4.  they proposed a reasonable price.

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

After our RfP, we wrote a detailed requirements paper, partly including screendesigns which we have sent to Softblues. We then had a kick-off meeting where we were introduced to the project manager and discussed open questions in detail. Within a remarkably short period of time, Softblues delivered first results, and within two more iterations, the first website version was done.

While filling the website with content and product data for the next weeks and months, the MÄSER GLÄSER management came up with some change and feature requests, so before the website actually went live, two more iterations had been implemented (actually going live with website version 1.2).

The techology used was Wordpress, using a mix of standard features and plugins and custom-developed features by Softblues.

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

• BA - Yaroslav T.
• PM - Mariya D.
• Backend developer (PHP) - Ivan K. 
• Frontend developer - Taras A.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We have not definied quantifiable goals for the MÄSER GLÄSER website in the first step, but the MÄSER GLÄSER management was more than happy to now have the possibility to present its product range to interested B2B clients in an adequate and attractive way.

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

For the initial website version (1.0) and the two upgrades (1.1 and 1.2), we have created a requirements paper. Softblues gave us a fix-priced quote for each of our requested requirements and change requests, so we were able to decide which features and changes we finally wanted to implement.

I was in constant contact with the project manager Mariya via Slack, which resulted in a very quick and smooth communications process. All delays were actually on our side, where as Softblues has always delivered on time.

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

Softblues did a great job within an impressive timeframe and within our budget. The communication was perfect. Of course, there were a few little bugs within each iteration, however Softblues did their best in fixing those right after we reported them.

For me personally, the plain and easy contract was quite impressive too - nothing compared to the complicated agreement we had with a previous software development company, where we had to negotiate for weeks until we could finally start working. In a nutshell, I always felt that Softblues was an honest company which never intended to rip us off.

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

The only thing that Softblues could have done better might be to double-check for bugs before handing the website over to us. However, as I stated above, they were always quick to fix all issues we reported - which I think is most important.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the owner of Skim New Media Ltd

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

We were creating a professional directory website for a start up and needed to deliver a large amount of functionality with a relatively small budget. We were able to purchase a pro theme to deliver most of what we needed but this left some technical requirements that required custom work.

SOLUTION

How did you select Softblues and what were the deciding factors?

We had worked with them previously and been impressed with the quality of the work and customer service.

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

We needed bespoke solutions to extend the listings system. This included

• An accreditation system which linked into the taxonomy of listings;
• Adding a verification loop to submitted reviews;
• Sorting search results into groups by status and;
• Location verification against geographical pricing plans.

These were developed as a custom plugin by Softblues.

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

We worked with four key team members -

• 1 business analyst (at the very first stages)
• 1 project manager
• 1 backend developer (PHP)
• 1 frontend developer

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Each of the tasks were briefed to the team and they took time to look carefully at this and fully understand the requirements. on all tasks they developed the solutions very quickly. We were given access to the work early on and were able to feed back any comments so these were quickly tackled too.

The plugin they developed was able to deliver all of the additional functions we needed for the website. It was delivered on time and on budget.

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

Communication was excellent throughout the process. This began from the initial contact and care was taken to fully understand the brief and provide a realistic budget.

Once the project had begun, we had direct access to an account manager who responded very quickly to any communications from us. The whole project was completed in a matter of days from commencement.

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

Their ability to tackle any request in a swift and efficient manner.

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

No, we were very happy with the service.