Sorcible

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am General Manager of JobTiger, founded in 2000, the biggest complex HR services company in Bulgaria. We own one of the largest job search platforms in Bulgaria, we have a recruitment agency, offer staff augmentation, HR services & consultancy, we organize the biggest and most popular job-fests nation-wide, etc.

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

We are looking to enter the online education space, seeing the tremendous growth there in the last couple of years. Our product - an online education platform with extensive easy-to-use communication channels for users and gamification elements to boost traction, offering a more interesting and fun experience for students.

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

We have worked with Sorcible before, we hired developers from them and worked with them on developing new features for our job platform. We knew they deliver and have experience with building cloud-based multi-tenant start-up projects, so we approached them to see if they can build a platform like we wanted.

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

Our platforms enables educators to create learning content (courses / modules) which can be assigned to students. Students can select learning area and attend/complete the courses. Key feature is the gamification element - points are granted for completing the courses/modules/elements as well as for different actions on the platform (posting content, likes, comments, games, etc).

The platform also offers variety of content related features, internal messaging system, ideas sharing, topics discussions, articles, news, small games and all content and features and fully managed and configured by the admin panel.

Having all that said, the scope of the project is developing the fore-mentioned features, along with subscription based payment (Stripe), ACL (roles, permissions), ensuring high-level of security and performance. The platform is based on PHP with Laravel framework and uses PHP, MySQL, VueJS, LiveWire, SASS, JS/jQuery, Multi-tenancy, AWS, etc. The project is developed using Agile/Scrum method, having 2-weeks sprints.

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

We work with three developers, a QA and a tech-lead that also acts as a scrum master.

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

The platform is demo-ready and we plan to launch it before the upcoming Fall semester starts. Overall we are very happy with how the platform looks and performs, pending the final improvements, optimizations and bug fixes currently under way. So far we are moving on schedule, the agile way of working and project management proves to be very helpful.

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

At the sprint start, a project planning meeting is held so tasks for the upcoming sprint are selected (based on estimates) out of the backlog. On the Daily stand-ups, blockers/impediments and current assignments are discussed and after each sprint, a retrospective meeting is conducted to evaluate how the sprint well.

Sprint/project velocity is also tracked by the scrum master. JIRA is used for issue tracking, Git + GitFlow for source control and several deployment tools for CI/CD. Sorcible’s team members are skilled, dedicated, and good communicators, we get regular updates and our expectations are managed and covered properly.

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

I wouldn’t say there is something unique but they do their job well and on time. The project is a quite complex start-up MVP with shifting priorities regularly so getting it done on schedule is impressive in itself. Being able to get a hold of the developer even after-hours when required is also something we appreciate.

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

Can’t think of such, all is going well.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the CEO and we manufacture soft plush therapeutic devices for anxiety, trauma, autism, Alzheimer’s, disabilities, emotional or mental conditions – one device for the whole range of mental diversity. Exceptional HEROES™ uses five senses to promote a calmer, healthier, happier mind.

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

We are a brand new company, selling our products through an e-commerce website. We hired Sorcible to develop our e-commerce site and bring our vision to life. Our goal was to have an amazing site and stay within budget; the team exceeded our expectations.

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

Sorcible came highly recommended by peers in my network. Plamen Dimov has an excellent reputation in managing and executing each project with the highest quality of service and commitment to their clients.

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

We set up a Zoom meeting to discuss our vision and the objective of our website. Next, we worked with the developers on our design layout, functionality, and bells and whistles we wished to include. Finally, the Sorcible team collaborated with our in-house designer to develop our WooCommerce site incorporating product pages, interactive functions, sliders, search bar, blog page, and third-party platform links.

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, however, there were 3 developers that worked on our project.

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

After launching we had rave reviews of the site, the efficiency, and ease of navigation throughout the site.

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

We used Slack for instant communication, conducted weekly to a bi-weekly meeting at the project's initial start and the end. Finally, a live Zoom walkthrough going over every detail on every page of the site to ensure the hyperlinks worked, the interactive points rotated, the sound icons worked, and videos played. Plamen and his team only gave excellence in every aspect of the project.

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

What impressed me most about Sorcible was its patience with our staff and team. We are new to e-commerce and how to use these platforms and how they work, and the team provided live tutorials on how to use WordPress and Eliminator, add articles on our Blog page, and change photos or content later. They cared for our business and its success; it showed in how they treated us.

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

No- we are in the USA and they even accommodated our work schedule. There was never a time in my day that I could not get a hold of a developer, they were always accessible.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the CEO of one of the oldest established private publishers in Bulgaria – Kragozor.

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

Build a brand-new online store for us, as the old one had issues which were starting to hurt the business and couldn’t be upgraded, so we had to build a brand-new store.

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

We have worked with some IT companies but were not happy with results. A mutual friend in the book business recommended Sorcible to us when we told him about our problems with the current store. We liked the guys from Sorcible on the first meeting and after they advised us on the best platform and how to make a really good store, we decided to give them a try.

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

They suggested the Magento platform and explained its benefits and features. Then we agreed on the scope and features and wrote down a schedule what will happen week by week. I and my COO were meeting with them almost every week and overall we had quite a lot of calls but this helped finish the project on time. This was very important to us, so the good communication was definitely helpful.

We had to make some changes from the initial plans and they were quite flexible and responsive to the new requirements. We ran a big marketing campaign with the launch of the new store and had very good feedback from customers. The site has been fully operational for a while and we are quite happy with how sales are going and how customers are liking it. Sorcible are helping with the maintenance and we have had no big problems.

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

We communicated only with Sorcible’s CEO and the project manager, we don’t know what was their precise team structure.

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

Best is to go to our store and see for yourself.

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

Very good, no issues there.

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

They worked like a Western European company – organized with good planning, timely outputs, and high-quality services. We usually don’t expect and don’t receive this level of service in Bulgaria, so we were pleasantly surprised.

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

I can’t think of anything.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the head of marketing for a real estate investment company based in the United States. I oversee all of our marketing efforts.

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

We have been working with Plamen and his team for the past few years. Plamen built/updated or website about 3 years ago and has been making updates and changes for us. Currently, we are working on building a new website that will be completed March/April 2021.

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

My company had already been working with Plamen and Sorcible prior to me starting my role.

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

We completely redesigned a new website with many new features, fixes, and upgrades. Plamen has been very easy to work with and has always been on schedule. I have bi-weekly calls with him for updates and to review progress.

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

I mostly worked directly with Plamen however, I know he has a full team of front and back end developers working on our project.

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

Plamen has always been easy to work with and communicative. Internally we did a major SEO analysis of our current site and gave that brief to Plamen so we could make the necessary changes to improve our new site.

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

We have bi-weekly calls to review the progress that has been made. We have never had any issues with delays or bad communication.

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

Overall they do great work and we have never had any issues with them. It is easy to work with them and we trust them with building a quality website.

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

Nothing comes to mind.