Solid Software Solutions

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We are one of the biggest, if not the biggest, digital agency/media company/creative company. It’s an umbrella company that has multiple smaller organizations underneath. I’m working for one of those sub-companies as the head of technology.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Solid Software Solutions?

Solid Software provides services for 2 of our sub-companies. There were 2 separate companies, but one of them only existed in Poland and the other existed in 80 countries worldwide. When we started our cooperation with Solid Software, the companies hadn’t merged yet.

We were in desperate need of really active, driven, passionate Sitecore developers. At that point in time, some of our developers left and we weren’t able to continue on a client project. That’s why we were in desperate need of a third-party organization to help us with delivering a Sitecore skillset. We contacted Solid Software and they were able to deliver a solution.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Imagine that you have a website similar to Expedia. We had to create a website that allows you to search for various trains to get you from point A to point B. This website should present the time table for a trip, allowing you to learn when the next train is, how long it’ll take you to get to your destination, and how much it will cost you. It will also show if there are any current delays or notifications like track amendment plans, so you know about any minor or major delays.

Sitecore is a CMS [content management system], but it is based on a .NET or C# platform. Solid Software has a lot of knowledge in both .NET and C#, and they’ve got the knowledge in Sitecore. What I need to highlight is that their team was driving the project; Tomasz [Founder and CEO, Solid Software] took the role of scrum master and he’s really active in the development of this project. They were not waiting for us to create a sprint or backlog to monitor what was going on. They were proactive and able to organize everything and ask questions if they needed anything.

What is the team dynamic?

I wanted a team that was really active and that would have a Scrum master on their end. I also wanted a project manager on their end, but it was not needed. Tomasz contacted our organization if he had any questions.

I don’t remember how large his team was. There were some QA guys and some C# and .NET developers, and a majority of them were learning Sitecore as the project progressed.

How did you come to work with Solid Software Solutions?

It was hard to find a Sitecore developer on the market. But I had worked with Solid Software on multiple projects in my previous role where I was a principal developer, so I reached out to them.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent 800,000 Polish Zloty. [$218,600]

What is the status of this engagement?

We contacted Solid Software in November of last year. It was a 4-month project.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We enjoyed good earnings from the project.

How did Solid Software Solutions perform from a project management standpoint?

I liked it a lot. At that time, I didn’t have many project managers or Scrum masters that could assist the team in project management duties. Tomasz was proactive and was able to do whatever was necessary to push the project forward without huge support on our end.

My previous company is still actively cooperating with Solid Software—that’s where I learned that I don’t need to worry about Solid Software; I don’t need to spend too much time and wonder if what they’re doing is going to be delivered on time or not.

They are doing great, but at the same time, I need to mention that they always work with us remotely. They are based in Katowice in Poland, and our Polish branch is based in Warsaw. It was the same situation when I was working at my previous company in London. There are various challenges when you’re working with a team remotely.

What did you find most impressive about them?

What impressed me is that they’re a small team without very many specialists, but they are good at picking up new technologies and new parts of projects. They’re able to jump into projects and develop on top of them.

They are quick to learn really complex systems and they don’t complain. You can ask them to help you in dealing with a very old, complex legacy system that no one wants to touch in your organization, and Tomasz will do it. This is great; I really like his attitude.

Are there any areas they could improve?

If there is anything, I would love to have one person on-site from Tomasz’ team. I know that would greatly improve communication because they’d be more up to date with what’s going on. The person would be much more aware of various politics, issues, and stuff like that. But it’s not that Solid Software is lacking anything—that’s typical for a remote team.

Do you have any advice for potential clients?

Tomasz has got a strong personality. He’s smart, and he has a talent for feeling out what’s needed for a project or in an organization. That’s why he’s able to lead the conversation and clarify various things. I don’t think it’s necessary to give any advice or warn someone about something or suggest anything.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We are a technology and digital consulting company in the travel industry. We provide software tools to people and businesses like travel agencies. We use various complex software, which include interactions between our corporation, our agents, our resellers, and our customers.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Solid Software Solutions?

The whole of our business is managed by one piece of software, a monolithic Java application. It’s very complex, as are all our business tools. We needed someone who would put a lot of care, like us, into interacting with it—a lot of attention to detail and quality. We needed professional experience in software engineering, architecture, implementation, as well as management of software engineering teams for a global solution. Solid Software would maintain this main application for us.

The application is over 10 years old and has lots of different changes in it, so most of the knowledge and processes around the application were unknown. Plus, the software wasn’t very well-tested. It was very difficult to make changes in it without some parts of it breaking.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They have worked on multiple projects. We initially engaged them for maintenance, but after a few years of working with Solid Software, we developed bigger features and increased the feature set with them. Now they’re taking on larger pieces of work and working on longer-term projects.

One project was a business operations platform, or a bespoke ERP [Enterprise Resource Planning] system for a global platform within the travel industry. This involved supporting multiple businesses and optimizing the business operations all the way from defining a product, building it, launching it, upgrading it, and then handling any exceptional business events that happen. Solid Software contributed to the frontend and backend systems, web-based user experience, and the workflows. It was a full-spec development.

Another project was increasing search results for flight booking. Our reservation agents often couldn’t find a good enough option to give our customers, which was impacting business. This also increased internal calls to our air department, which we couldn’t do through the software. So, we were either turning away our customers, or we were increasing overhead and having to contact our air department to find a good enough flight.

Solid Software took this problem that the reservation agents had and drilled down to what the actual issues were. With easy metrics to measure (whether we were still increasing the number of good flights or not), they started improving the software bit by bit. They spoke to the people on the ground that were using the software to find out when and whether things were improving. That project was all about improving the quality of the flight results so that we could book them for our customers.

They also helped us with a pricing bundle feature. In order to sell our tools and flights, we had to bundle up the price, not show flight-to-flight results separately. That was very time-sensitive; we did it in a month or so.

Solid Software also built a product from the ground-up, a content platform that basically distributes tour information to third parties so that our resellers can effectively sell our products. They’ve been enhancing that ever since.

Beyond these projects, Solid Software is a team of people that can understand network issues and that can administer Linux machines. They’re not software developers who just throw their hands up; virtually nothing is beyond their expertise. There’s always someone at Solid Software that will pick something up who’s an expert in something else.

They produce really good reports for us, they’ve done research, and they’ve even done some work in artificial intelligence [AI]. They looked through our historical data to find patterns in our customer behavior. They showed us where our customers, for example, canceled some of our products or wouldn’t continue with the booking process.

They understand the business aspect of our company, and they like questions. They’re not afraid to ask the right questions. They challenge us. If we come up with something we want them to do, they’ll question it and try and find a better way, or they’ll try to prove that our way works best. They won’t just accept something as given. I really like the guys.

In terms of the technology used, it was a mixture of open source and commercial technologies. We used Java with open source JavaScript frameworks. At the backend, we used Oracle Databases, as well as some open source databases. We used several open source business intelligence and data visualization technologies, together with some pretty advanced backend logging frameworks. It was to allow us to blend business operations data and technical data. They’ve used R, which is a statistical modeling language. That’s when they’re outputting reports and things like that. The main skills they had were in Java and Test-Driven Development. They have also made changes in our C# application. They use Linux scripting skills as well, and they know Web Services, REST [RESTful web API services], SOAP [Simple Object Access Protocol], Hibernate, and ORMs [object relational mapping techniques].

One more project they did that was technically challenging, as well as challenging in terms of getting a handle on the business requirements, was a coach touring product. This is where you can book a trip from Los Angeles through a bunch of countries throughout Europe with the help of coaches. The hotels are organized, supplies and payments are managed, and the scheduling is done for you. Every single little aspect is scheduled and managed. The backend operational systems for this product are phenomenally complex. Tomasz [Founder & CEO, Solid Software Solutions] and his team deepened and improved the whole system. They had the knowledge, experience, and the ability to understand it, implement solutions, and make appropriate adjustments.

Solid Software is currently assisting us with a very discreet global initiative in the financial services space. They are involved in very advanced modern technologies, including things like AI and blockchain. I can’t give any more details as it's confidential, but we’re in the midst of some very cool stuff.

What is the team dynamic?

They had the full gamut of people you’d expect on a development team. They had an architect, team manager, full stack enterprise developers, backend specialists, testers, analysts, and data analytics expertise as well. The sweet spot is really the experienced enterprise software developers. They worked on international solutions, multi-language, multi-currency, and multi-tenanted solutions, cloud-based solutions, everything.

How did you come to work with Solid Software Solutions?

Tomasz used to work for this company here in London. He moved back to Poland, created Solid Software. We go back a long way and we didn’t want to lose him. He’s grown it from a couple people to the size of the team he’s got now. It’s great to have been part of that journey from day one.

How much have you invested with them?

It’s significant; I can’t disclose that. They work at a massive scale, but they can also work on a pure startup initiative as well. They can run the gamut all the way from a startup team to a serious multi-million-dollar deal.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together about nine years ago, and the work is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The flight results project was a great success. We increased the results that we were getting and managed to please customers and give them what they wanted. We also reduced the calls to our internal air department. Solid Software pleased the internal stakeholders as well.

I was at the beginning of that project and, and I tried to get the right people together. After they started working on it, I could step away. I knew that it was being handled. They got some very nice comments from our internal stakeholders about how well things were going and what the improvements were. It was good they found out what changes people really needed.

In terms of the timeline to roll out that new travel coaching product, Solid Software’s help probably improved our go-to-market time by at least 20%. That’s a good result for the commercial side of the business.

Solid Software gave us valuable intelligence tools, of which I know Tomasz was very hands-on with. This enabled us to deliver insights to global executive teams to allow them to analyze the business’ performance on a global, regional, and country basis, by brand and by product. It allowed them to easily identify interesting trends in terms of unanswered BEPS [base erosion and profit shifting] in the marketplace. We saw the benefit when we put those tools in place and got the executives trained on it.

Tomasz would get involved in business conversations to make sure that those executive managers, no matter where they were around the world, knew how to use the tools and had examples of the sort of things they should look for in the data. With these intelligence tools, sometimes you don’t know what you’re looking for; it’s a discovery process. Here they had visual tools and access to data they’d never seen before. The benefits were visibility of the business, the ability to look for new opportunities, and the ability to look for trends that they could nip in the bud before they became a problem.

For me, it meant that I could deliver to the business what I had promised I would deliver. In terms of my business now, it means I’ve got access to skills, expertise, and experience to deliver solutions to my customers, and they expect that from me. Solid Software is the reason I can do that. They deliver, which means I can deliver solutions to the business. They expand my capabilities and deliver enterprise-level solutions.

How did Solid Software Solutions perform from a project management standpoint?

They’re dependable in Agile development. Tomasz is the main guy there; he acts as a Scrum master. They have standups every day and they call us whenever they need any kind of input. They’re happy to call whoever they need to get the job done; they certainly don’t sit back and wait for someone to say what’s going on.

Since they’re an agile development shop, they also have regular retrospectives. They publish those and invite other people to attend as well. The team measures everything to see what’s good and what needs improvement. They’re very open and honest about what they do and how they can improve.

On top of that, every day Tomasz publishes a small report that shows where tickets were spending longer in QA than normal. They’re useful indications of what might be going on in the flow of the team. They’re more than happy to pick up the phone, they’re very communicative, and they’re not afraid to say what they think either, which is refreshing.

Over time, Tomasz has brought in more expertise and grown his team. Since then, cloud-based solutions have taken a lot more prominence in the marketplace and he has moved with the times. He’s brought people onboard with experience in that area. They’ve been scaling up with more prominence and more structure, evolving their project management and approach.

Verbal English skills are excellent. They’re very professional. Tomasz has personally lived and worked in the UK, as has a lot of his team. The communication has always been transparent, very real-time, and structured. They always make good use of available collaboration and best practice tools, down to Slack, JIRA, Google Hangouts, and Skype. They’re accommodating, they don’t force you to use their preferred tools, but they’ll give their recommendations. They’re very flexible, and fit in with the client regarding style of communication, level of communication, frequency, and tools to support that. They’re good about asking us questions upfront and being very black and white in agreeing to how they’re going to do something, what tools they’re going to use, and how frequently.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’ve always been very dependable. That’s invaluable. There’s nothing that we couldn’t ask them about. They’re very quick to reply. If there’s any problem, I know I can confront them and I’ll be assured that they’ll be on the case. They’re not just going to do what people write down for them; they’re going to make sure that they understand fully what they’re doing as well.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No. I have frequent conversations with Tomasz and his team. We talk about recommendations and suggestions on a regular basis. They take the feedback immediately and, if it’s a good idea, they’ll implement it. They’re very open-minded and always looking to learn. It’s quite impressive and unique.

Do you have any advice for potential clients?

It’s easy to have a big project and think you know what the results are going to be or what you want for the business. If you let Solid Software loose on it, you’ll soon find out that maybe your assumptions were wrong. Let them look at what you’re trying to do. Give them a bit of time and see what they come back with.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the technical director at a technology and software solutions firm. We perform software consultancy, bring firms into the digital era, and supply program management pieces. Our flagship product, Prosper, is a practice management tool for small-to-medium-sized accountant firms.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Solid Software?

One of our clients needed a practice management software to help with workflow aspects like onboarding, prospecting, team scheduling, and time-keeping. We found nothing that existed to the degree we wanted, so we needed a software company to help us build the solution.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Solid Software practically built and developed everything from scratch. Prosper is a cloud-based, multi-tenanted piece of software that can be used on any device. It’s primarily for desktops, but Solid made it accessible on tablets and other mobile devices. Eventually, we want Solid to build a native mobile application.

Prosper is an Office Shop product that allows accounting firms to reduce administrative overhead and increase billable hours. The product incorporates a lot of business intelligence, and Solid Software integrated it all together. They built an architecture that’s compatible for nearly any accounting firm, not just the original client. Now, companies can go to the site, click a button, enter a few details, and they automatically get their own tenancy.

Solid Software not only developed the software, but they also ran automated and manual testing. We hired another company to do penetration testing, and Solid worked closely with them. We identified some vulnerabilities, and Solid Software did the necessary work to remove those vulnerabilities.

What is the team dynamic?

My go-to person was Cuba, an expert BA [Business Analyst]. Solid also has an additional Scrum team to manage databases, front end, UX/UI [User Experience/User Interface], integration, and QA [Quality Assurance].

How did you come to work with Solid Software?

I was familiar with someone there through earlier career work. When we started this project, we looked at a number of providers, but we chose Solid Software because they could provide the transparency we needed.

What is the status of this engagement?

We signed a contract in November 2015, and the work is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Our goal was to get 100 license holders of our product, and we're at 80 right now.

Nearly all of the feedback from our clients has been positive. Functionally, the software is very rich. It’s worked on every device and operating system that our clients use. We set out to build something off-the-shelf that anyone could use, and Solid Software helped us accomplish that. Because they brought the right people on board, we also integrated with Xero and QuickBooks, which was a big milestone for us.

How did Solid Software perform from a project management standpoint?

We had a few regularly scheduled meetings that made the workflow efficient and effective. First thing in the morning, someone on my team joined a conference call for 10–15 minutes to hammer out the objectives of the day. Every Wednesday, we had a 2-hour grooming session. We looked at the backlog of tickets and refined them so we could evaluate them and estimate how many story points it'd take to deliver those tickets. We also assessed the skills of the team, clarified business objectives, and evaluated success criteria and measurements. Some days we only got through two or three tickets, if they were big, but it was an efficient way of approaching the business tasks and solutions. From there, the Scrum lead and I determined the best development order with respect to our commercial strategy.

We also had a demo and planning call every Monday after the 2-week sprint cycle. Solid screened the pre-production environment so we could walk through what had been built in the previous 2-weeks and give feedback. Outside of that, we used Slack, usually for instant messaging, but we also shared files, business process diagrams, and use case diagrams. We even had some of our clients work directly with Solid Software to get business and technical feedback.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I appreciated their level of transparency. I've worked with other software companies that didn’t offer full visibility of what resources were doing or even access to the team itself. Solid Software was the exact opposite; we never had that problem. They always told us what they were building and were honest about their limitations.

Our project lead is also very organized and runs a tight ship. They're open about their limitations and inform us when requirements aren't clear. They don’t let anything go into development until it’s defined with clarity. Their level of engagement is excellent, and we can always clear any big technical or commercial challenges as a team. They take it at our speed and use intuitive software development tools.

Are there any areas they could improve?

The only thing would be to have additional QA capability within a team. However, that's probably symptomatic of their funding rather than the team or its expertise.