Somnio Software

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the co-founder of Geektastic. We provide take-home code challenges as a service to scaling tech teams. We provide the platform, the technical assessments and a team of experts who carry out the reviews on candidates' submissions.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

We needed a technical assessment created in Flutter. This is a new area for us so we needed to work with a team of experts who understood the space. We were also up against the clock and needed something delivered quickly.

SOLUTION

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

I met with their CEO Mauricio when he was visiting London and we stayed in touch until we needed to expand our offering to cover Dart/Flutter.

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

We had the basic challenge but this needed to be migrated to test Flutter skills so various elements of the challenge had to be rewritten.

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

We worked with Alvaro - who then liaised with the team.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

They were a pleasure to work with. They quickly understood what we needed and delivered promptly.

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

We were given constant updates and they delivered exactly what we scoped and within the agreed timeframe. We couldn't have asked for more.

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

They are laser focussed on Flutter. They were a pleasure to work with.

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

Nothing to add here.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the COO of a community learning platform company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

Our team was stuck on some really complicated technical authentication issues that stemmed from moving between the mobile app and the web app. We needed help with that specific problem but also refactoring sections of the entire platform.

SOLUTION

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

They were easy to work with and came up with a model we could afford. It was obvious they had deep understanding of flutter and experience on all kinds of solutions.

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

First step was onboarding and some work on key refactoring, then moved quickly into helping solve the authentication issues. We successfully deployed on android, iOS and the web our fixes.

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

2 key team members worked with us. A developer and QA tester.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

100% resolved authentication issue which was blocking users from using the app. That reduced 85% of the support calls we were seeing on the platform.

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

Collaborative and listening to key feedback and what as most important.

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

Their skills and professionalism in development was amazing. You had a sense that they knew how to solve complicated problems and wanted to work with the team in an agile way.

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

Nothing I can think of.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the Engineer Manager of the Mental Health application and our healthcare company that focuses on creating simple, personalized, and accessible mental health support by combining evidence, cutting-edge tech, and user-centred design.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

We needed a team of Flutter experts capable of developing a web application with this technology that should be based on our existing mobile application, which was also developed with Flutter. We hired Somnio Software for their staff augmentation service to work on one of our main products: Foundations, which is focused on mental health. They provided multiple engineers and a project manager to fulfil our requirements. Our main goal was to create a web version of one of our products, which already existed as a mobile application. After developing this web application and reaching one hundred per cent feature parity, the next step was to make the required refactors and changes to have a single modularized codebase that could be shared between mobile and web applications.

SOLUTION

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

We had our mobile application developed with Flutter, so we knew that we required a company with the experience and skills in both Flutter and Dart, and, more importantly, in developing web applications with the technologies mentioned above. When we met with Somnio, we saw they had the expertise we were looking for.

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

Foundations is a mobile application available for iOS and Android; it is an evidence-based, science-backed application focused on improving the user’s mental health by providing them with multiple activities composed of different multimedia elements. Apart from that, the app also provides users with information about mental health and has an interactive feature where they can earn badges by completing activities. Somnio’s team started to work almost immediately and managed to meet both our expectations and the deadlines in every single stage. They were also dedicated and eager to improve and learn from our guidelines. While working on the web app, they implemented Flutter best practices and some architecture improvements compared to the existing mobile product. In addition, they worked closely with our cybersecurity team to meet our security requirements and with our backend team to integrate the web application with a completely new backend. Last but not least, they implemented unit and widget testing to the web application to increase the team performance and the code quality.

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

The team was composed of multiple developers and a project manager from Somnio Software, who worked on the initial features of Foundations web, such as the authentication process and the addition of the main content. After finishing this stage, the team changed and was composed of 4 developers that took care of reaching the 100% mentioned above feature parity and then focused on adding improvements to the existing project and finished the single code base project.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Foundations is one of our main products; therefore, offering a web version allowed us to reach more clients and grow our user base. And since our vision is “mental health, for all”, the web application allowed us to improve the user’s accessibility to the product.

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

The project was divided into three stages, in which Somnio Software managed the project exemplary. They could always fulfil our close deadlines and communicate with our team, regardless of the time zone difference.

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

Somnio Software had an incredible knowledge of Flutter, which was impressive. They defined a highly scalable architecture and were up-to-date with Flutter’s best practices. Moreover, they worked on every new feature with excitement, always taking into account border cases, going one step further, and aiming to have the highest code quality.

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

It's hard for me to think of anything at this point. Their work has been excellent, and we look forward to continuing our partnership.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the COO of ICUC, a medical research group focused on medical education. Through our platform, orthopedic surgeons and residents can access surgical cases, review treatments from the world's leading surgeons, and learn from them. Managing ICUC team operations, dealing with day-to-day issues to ensure processes run smoothly is my responsibility.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

ICUC already had an iPad-specific application, so we hired Somnio Software to migrate this application to the web, including desktop, iOS, and Android platforms. The aim of the migration was to make ICUC platform available in any device while adding new features.

SOLUTION

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

We became aware of Somnio Software through a recommendation. After a few meetings with Somnio Software team, becoming familiar with their work methodologies, processes, and experience and their presentation of the project proposal, we decided to hire them.

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

Somnio Software developed ICUC web application for multi platforms from the previous iPad-specific application. This job required a review and deep understanding of the code done for the previous application as well as our needs as clients. They successfully developed and thoroughly tested the application.

They also did a good management of the project. Our goals consisted of two parts: first, we wanted to renovate our platform towards something newer, more accessible, with better usability and user experience, that was easy to navigate. In addition, our main objective was to be able to present a demo of the application at one of the world’s most significant traumatology events, for which we had a tight deadline.

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

The team was composed of three software engineers, one project manager and a QA tester.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

As a result of the project, a user friendly, fast and functional web application was created that works well both on desktop and mobile devices. With ICUC web app, the user can easily navigate through the complete series of surgical cases as well as easily search for specific cases they are interested in.

Now we have a unified platform with a very large database of surgical cases, including navigation of 3D models. This project was done in a very tight schedule as we had to run a demo of ICUC web app in the world’s most significant orthopedic course, just after three months of the kick-start.

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

The project management was very effective. We had weekly meetings where Somnio Software team showed us their progress, we grounded our expectations, exchanged ideas and suggestions with the aim of delivering the bes version of the app. They quickly understood our goal and made very good use of the code that was already available.

The project was very challenging due to the short deadlines, but they managed it very well, effectively prioritizing what was most important to get done for the demo. Somnio Software also performed usability tests with real users (orthopedic surgeons and residents), from which they gathered many insights. On the basis of these results, they implemented several improvements.

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

Being a recently born company, Somnio Software greatly contributed to our platform beyond the product they developed by advising us on how to implement certain features. They managed to meet the tight deadlines of our project while delivering a fast, responsive, and intuitive application for a complex data base with nice features.

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

There is always something to improve, but I see nothing meaningful to mention. They were very open to suggestions and quickly adapted to our expectations.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I’m the Founder of SquadProfile, a mobile application for real-time Lacrosse Stats and Analytics. The objective of SquadProfile is to allow users to record and view their team's lacrosse stats live and keep track of records each season.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

We partnered with Somnio for the software development of the SquadProfile mobile application. Our goal with this project was to provide real-time game stats, facilitate the filing of these numbers, and store unlimited team histories for record keeping, career statistics, and analytics. We aimed to create a top-notch mobile application designed to eliminate the need to create and maintain multiple spreadsheets.

SOLUTION

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

Somnio was recommended to us for their impressive work and expertise in Flutter technology. We were looking for Flutter experts to improve the architecture and ensure the scalability of the project.

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

Somnio helps us develop a solid and scalable Flutter mobile application that works on iOS and Android. We already had the first version of the app that had things to improve, and they immensely helped us define the architecture of the app and improve its functionality and value. They not only delivered a high-quality app, but also made suggestions regarding UI design and services to use and integrate. We have ongoing cycles that we work through.

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

Somnio’s Flutter Mobile App Developer worked in-sync with a back-end developer.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Somnio’s work and expertise enabled the creation of a high-quality app version taking us closer to go live and reach end users. Application performance and functionality have increased dramatically and is ready to continue scaling together with our business’ growth and needs.

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

The project management was managed by us but they were accommodating and used our tools and workflow.

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

Their expertise in Flutter is very impressive. Without question, though, is the experience and knowledge in software development combined with their direct and transparent communication that we found most impressive. I love having a team that can code and communicate. They were sincere when transmitting the areas of improvement, technical suggestions, and business analysis. Furthermore, they were very clear and strategic when proposing the improvement and what had to be done to achieve a functional and high-performant application. In addition, we highly valued their recommendations, especially the UI designs and services to integrate to improve functionality and user retention.

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

We are very happy with their work and results.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I’m the Co-Founder of a consumer healthtech company building an app for people living with chronic illness.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

We hired Somnio to assist with building our MVP designed to help people with Long Covid and Myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS). Somnio provided a full service team including a project manager.

SOLUTION

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

We had decided that Flutter was the best fit for our needs, in terms of cross-platform app development. After speaking with different agencies and receiving proposals and information from several agencies, Somnio turned out to be the most solid in terms of Flutter expertise. They also seemed to understand the project and our goals, and shared a comprehensive and transparent proposal that allowed us to make an informed decision.

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

Somnio helped us to build an MVP including an onboarding flow and core functionality including an integration with a third party SDK. Somnio helped us iterate initially using Firebase, then helped us migrate to a SQL backend based on GraphQL. During this process we had several sessions with the team to have a deep analysis into our requirements, and discussions about the appropriate technical architecture to cater to our specific needs.

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

Somnio provided a full service development team including three engineers and a project manager. Some members of the team were full time, while others were working on other projects.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Somnio Software brought our app to life. We were able to release a first version of the app that was released to 100 users, which started adding value to the project immediately. We were able to gather meaningful feedback on the functionality, the design and user experience. Somnio delivered value to our project. The codebase is structured well, and the code quality is generally excellent. In a short period of time, they managed to deliver results very quickly, and we are very grateful for their work.

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

We had a lot of collaboration and fluent communication with Somnio’s team, so whenever we needed advice or an additional hand, we got a quick response. We worked based on Scrum and had flexibility to adapt the methodology depending on our needs, so that we didn’t have a rigid structure of meetings and planning but a framework to support our goals.

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

We are extremely pleased with the partnership, Somnio was able to adapt to our needs quickly showing great flexibility. Our closeness to the development team enabled us to enhance the impact we set our minds to. We were also impressed by the expertise and technical level regarding Flutter.

When the project got challenging, they defined precise action plans, and they were always willing to help and solve our problems, with their excellent customer advocacy. We appreciate their commitment and enthusiasm toward our idea and project.

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

We sensed a little hesitancy about moving towards a dedicated backend from Firebase. However, once this decision was made to implement a backend with GraphQL, Somnio were able to provide the relevant expertise quickly and provide a lot of value.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the Head of Program Management at a Flutter development company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

We needed additional staff for Flutter development, and Somnio had the experience we were looking for. They joined our in-house team for a few projects.

SOLUTION

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

We needed to quickly incorporate team members which had solid Flutter experience and aligned with our development standards.

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

While the details of each project changed based on client the consistent standard was the use of Flutter and our shared engineering standards. This was the driving force behind all deliverables.

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

Multiple Flutter developers.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Expectations and deadlines for the projects were all met and our client was satisfied with the output as well. Unfortunately, no other metrics can be shared at this time.

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

Our communication with their team was typically done via Slack or simple phone calls which were are very pleasant interactions. Overall they were always accommodating to our needs for staffing changes.

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

Overall Somnio developers are hungry for work and enjoy learning and implementing new things throughout the course of a project. They never ran away from a hard problem and continued to push through to find the correct solution every time.

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

At the moment, no. It's really hard to find Flutter developers with this expertise and that aspire to the same high-quality standards as we do.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

CEO of a platform providing B2B and B2C services

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Somnio Software?

We wanted to create a platform for restaurants in the F&B industry. We needed two apps, one for the experience of the customers in the restaurant in Flutter and one PWA for the organization and management of its staff members. The guest app was created in React as Flutter Web was not in production yet and the app for the staff in Flutter. The Back-End was built with Node.js, DevOps, and other technologies.

We needed a software agency for the Full Product Development of the Jaac application. Somnio Software quickly became our technological partners and helped in the complete cycle from strategy, design, development to delivery and maintenance. They immensely helped in the development of the product as a whole.

What were your goals for this project?

Our objective was to create a solid platform, by using new technologies like Flutter. This allowed our app to perform all the functionalities we needed. It was essential to select the best software architecture design and decide the best approach within the time we had. We wanted to choose a flexible path to all the functionalities that were emerging.

In that sense, we needed to create a platform with several microservices and components interacting with each other that allowed us to carry out extended functionalities involving the interaction between the applications. This was the biggest challenge for the team since the project required many technologies and several applications interacting with each other. Therefore, in order to make it scalable, maintainable, and performant, Somnio had to create an outstanding software architecture that sustained it.

The team was able to carry out these requirements efficiently and was able to achieve and fulfill all the objectives that were set. Jaac is a platform that changed a lot as users requested different functionalities so the team had to adapt and keep it agile. The Somnio Team did an excellent job achieving this.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

I selected Somnio Software from their portfolio and success cases. They showed their technical expertise and were very supportive with ideas and fluent communication. They proved they could solve problems that may arise while continuing to get things done in the time we had stipulated.

These were the things that attracted me the most to select them and then continue working with them. At the same time, they recommend us to work with Flutter, which was a success for speeding mobile development.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

The project consisted of the Development of two applications, one of them was a PWA and the other a Flutter App, next to a solid backend. They created from scratch through the Full Product Development process. It began in a technical consultancy that led to the complete creation of the product.

The team took the time to deeply understand the project’s needs and the best road to follow. They continued to carefully inform us and guide us in the tech and strategy needs of our project to achieve our desired results. In that sense, they started by analyzing which architecture design would be most suitable for our project, evaluated what was the best technology for our case, and helped us decide the appropriate workflow to follow.

One of the app's challenges is the integration of many functionalities and the effective performance of both apps working together. Plus, each restaurant needed to be able to add or remove some functionalities to customize Jaac and adapt it to their business. Therefore, Somnio built a quick and performant app with an easily modifiable system that allowed quick changes in functionalities depending on the needs and preferences of each restaurant.

What was the team composition?

The team included several people, some were fixed and some joined through the process. Throughout the process, Somnio provided an Internal Project Manager, a Back-End Developer, 2 Front-End web developers and 2 Mobile Developers. The team was made up of professionals, experienced developers that were able to achieve our desired results and who communicated very well to keep us updated and informed of the progress.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

They enabled us to offer the system that today continues operating in several cities around the world. They managed to create a high-level application with modern technology such as Flutter and create a quality architecture for the entire platform. The level of the product allowed Jaac to continue growing and reach more restaurants.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

Somnio’s internal management was exemplary. They acted quickly when more professionals were needed by quickly incorporating them in the project and rapidly achieving productivity. Communication with them was always very fluent, sincere, clear, and transparent. Their experience working with software development was reflected in their great ability to manage the project. We worked together with the team of Somnio Software to ensure that things worked well.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

We were amazed by the commitment they quickly adapted for the project. They weren't just developers, but our technological partners with strategists, architects, designers, and testers. They successfully modeled the databases and prepared scalable structures. They were able to efficiently solve and attend to all the needs we had. The use of Flutter technology was an important part in quickly and successfully solving the challenges that arose and implementing the requested solutions.

Are there any areas for improvement?

Working in different time zones had its complexities, but the team made its best effort and managed to adapt to the time difference and look for mechanisms to continue synchronizing. We know it isn’t easy, but they were constantly looking for ways to improve it and solve this difficulty. Thank you for all the hard and excellent work. We will continue to recommend them without a doubt.

UPDATED REVIEW

This review was published on March 2, 2020.

Tony Andris

CEO, ADcrew Limited

Information technology

1-10 Employees

Hong Kong, Hong Kong

$10,000 to $49,999

Sep 2019 - Ongoing

Project summary

Somnio Software developed a native app for a B2B company. After the first version was created, they enhanced the features.

Feedback summary

The project was successful. Somnio Software tackled challenges head-on and created client-oriented solutions.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

CEO of a platform providing B2B and B2C services

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Somnio Software?

B2B native app development

What were your goals for this project?

Create a first version of an app and further enhance its features

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

Based on price and experience

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

App development and DevOps

What was the team composition?

We worked with up to 3 people. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Enabled us to provide an app

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

We were managing the project

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Deep knowledge about the used technologies and always looking at challenges and solutions from the client's perspective

Are there any areas for improvement?

Working across many timezones has been a challenge and ensuring communication across the entire distributed team

Star Ratings

Overall rating: 5

Quality: 5

Cost: 5 – great value for money

Schedule: 5

Willing to refer: 5

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Technical Content Project Manager for a gamified coding platform.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Somnio Software?

Somnio Software helped us create questions for our recruiting platform. We needed technical questions about Flutter for the interview stage of the recruitment processes for people from all over the world. The selection process takes a long time in a growing company where they need to interview many people. Therefore, filtering candidates by skills from these questions makes it scalable.

For this, we needed Flutter experts who could create questions for these tests. It was important that these questions couldn’t be answered by searching on the internet so Somnio had to put a lot of thinking into their creation.

SOLUTION

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

We found Somnio Software on the internet and saw that they had very good reviews an impressive portfolio of projects created. We interviewed them and really liked their way of communicating, how they were going to carry out the work and how they managed the process from the start. We decided to work with them also based on the trust they gave us from the beginning and we have achieved all the results we aspired to.

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

The project was based on the creation of complex questions about Flutter to be able to enter into a platform used in job interviews. We needed them to evaluate a candidate’s skills in using Flutter. For this, the questions had to be appropriate to calculate the knowledge level of a Flutter Developer. The team provided by Somnio Software consisted of Flutter experts who were dedicated to strategically thinking about these questions in order to detect all levels of seniority.

We needed original content and not content directly copied/pasted from the internet. Plus, we worked on testing the questions to see if we were reaching the level and result we aspired to. We were truly impressed by the wide and deep knowledge Somnio Software has about Flutter.

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

The team consisted of the CEO, the CTO, and a Senior Developer.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Thanks to the work done and the expertise provided by Somnio Software we can now conduct hundreds of interviews with Flutter Developers around the world in a scalable way. Thanks to the creation of this platform we will be able to reach up to thousands of programmers in an effective way.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

The project management was very well managed. The team consisted of technical people who were in charge of putting together and analyzing the questions as well as people who monitored that the work was being delivered on time. They focused on us being satisfied with the result. They also took great care of the relationship between the customer and supplier.

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

Somnio Software focused on providing a great experience. Their service was very professional and complete. They maintained fluent and clear communication throughout the whole project and focused on meeting the requirements while gladly incorporating our feedback.

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

It was a challenge incorporating all the points needed, at the beginning there was a little back and forth to finish to understand our needs, but at the end it was successfully accomplished. From Somnio Software they were always open to incorporating feedback, improving and reaching our expectations. Everything went excellent, we achieved what we needed and now this platform has Flutter questions of the high level that we expected.