Steamclock Software

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Product Manager of a financial services company

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

We are an online wealth management firm providing managed investment portfolios as well as personalized financial advice and planning for Canadians.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Steamclock Software to accomplish?

• To develop and maintain a mobile app for our platform.

SOLUTION

How did you find Steamclock Software?

Referral

Why did you select Steamclock Software over others?

• High ratings
• Close to my geographic location
• Great culture fit
• Good value for cost
• Company values aligned

How many teammates from Steamclock Software were assigned to this project?

6-10 Employees

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

Steamclock is responsible for designing, building, and maintaining the mobile app for our online portfolio management platform on Android and iOS. They design and develop the UI/UX of the app, ensuring that it aligns with our web platform and is easy for clients to navigate. Additional services include: 

• Collaborating with our development and client services stakeholders to ensure the app meets the needs of the client and our business. 
• Working with our development team to continuously add new tools and features to the app for clients, such as the ability to upload documents and assign beneficiaries to their investment accounts. 
• Testing the app for bugs and errors, and troubleshooting issues that arise during development or are reported by clients. 
• Optimizing performance and ensuring both apps run smoothly on various mobile devices. 
• Currently working on doing so for iPad and tablets as well.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

• The mobile app developed for us by Steamclock has been widely adopted by our clients. The high ratings on the App Store and Google Play as well as the positive feedback from clients are a testament to the quality of their work.

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

The Steamclock team is always a pleasure to work with. They are friendly, professional, and extremely knowledgeable about mobile app development. Work is always completed in a timely manner. They come to every meeting prepared to review not only our requirements for the app, but with a list of their own suggestions to make it better. This demonstrates they have deep understanding of our needs and will work tirelessly to ensure that the app meets our standard of care for clients.

What was your primary form of communication with Steamclock Software?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

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

Steamclock team is so effective at maintaining our mobile app, that our own product team occasionally forgets we have one because they are so proactive when it comes to fixing bugs and optimizing the client experience.

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

Honestly, nothing comes to mind. In all our years working together, Steamclock has yet to let us down.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Director of Business Development of CI Direct Trading

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

CI Direct Trading is a self-directed investing platform for Canadians to buy and sell stocks, options, mutual funds, GICs, and bonds.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Steamclock Software to accomplish?

• Replace our previous mobile app
• Produce a competitive mobile solution for trading stocks and monitoring investment accounts
• Introduce multi-factor authentication for all users

SOLUTION

How did you find Steamclock Software?

Referral

Why did you select Steamclock Software over others?

• Pricing fit our budget
• Great culture fit
• Good value for cost
• Referred to me

What was the size of Steamclock Software’s team?

2-5 Employees

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

Scope of work: design, develop, test, deploy, and maintain a mobile application for CI Direct Trading. Steamclock manages the sprints and planning for the project, including developing the totality of the application's code on IOS and Android, with the exception of the APIs which are provided by us. 

The APIs and application are expected to support the following broad features categories: multi-factor user authentication, stock (Canadian and US) and mutual fund (Canadian) trading in real time, monitoring investment accounts in detail, accessing market data widgets, submitting and monitoring fund transfers to and from their investment accounts back to their bank accounts. 

Deliverables are 4-6 versions of the application per year, each version including either additions or improvements to the functionality mentioned above.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

• Chronologically, the first desired and positive outcome was to retire our previous mobile app. Regularity of the product releases, which were approximately 4-6 per year. Positive feedback from end users and internal stakeholders, especially through our support channels. Timely delivery of complex or time-sensitive functionality/features such as multi-factor authentication, live trading, and rebranding (new name, colors, fonts).

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

Project management appears very agile and focused on delivering results. Work was always completed within established deadlines. Business and technical requirements were always met. Communication is clear and constant. Requirements are gathered precisely, efficiently and with lots of feedback to help us define them better. Testing is also thorough and accountable. The communication style and habits are conducive to a fun experience where the project never gets off track.

What was your primary form of communication with Steamclock Software?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

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

I am very impressed by their culture, at least the side that I can see. Their employees are engaged, passionate, and creative. It is obvious that they have combined great problem solvers in a fun environment where everyone gets to be themselves. Producing a stock trading app is not easy, especially for developers that are not necessarily familiar with finance to begin with.

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

The team at Steamclock Software is exceptionally talented, creative, and effective. I cannot imagine a better technology partner for our mobile app.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the operations manager for an online booking software for tourist rentals and accommodations.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Steamclock Software?

Our goal was to allow our customers to use our booking software for their business on a mobile device through a mobile application. Having an app like this would allow our clients to stay mobile, take their bookings without having to interrupt their daily flow, and minimize the amount of staff required to take new customers. We had initially built an app that we did ourselves. But by that point, it had been outdated, it was not working properly, and we could not keep the app up to speed on both Android and iOS.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Steamclock Software redid our app in a native environment and made an initial MVP [minimum viable product] version of the app within 2 ½ months. As feedback came in about the basic version of the app, we installed more features. From this, we were able to adjust our expectations and see that some avenues that we wanted to go down were not necessary, so it was good for us to streamline that.

They have updated the app since launch for new devices and new versions of iOS and Android. They take care of our submissions through the App Store and Google Play Store. If we ever get rejected because of a bug or updates needed to our terms of service, they are always quick to let us know and work it out. They made suggestions for changes to our API to allow more access to our system without having to use the layout we created. They gave us recommendations to make our API simpler or easier to work with.

Since then, we have had an outstanding work order for them to do monthly maintenance. We have a set number of hours allocated to Steamclock to give them permission to do what they feel is required regarding maintenance of bug reports and crashes, as well as work on high-level features outlined in previous meetings with them.

How did you come to work with Steamclock Software?

When we started looking for companies, we began on a global scale looking at different companies before deciding that we wanted somebody close to us to establish a long-term relationship with. After three months of vetting different companies, we had a short list of about 10 and then decided on Steamclock. Allen and Nigel put forth a good presentation. They put together a package that allowed us to have a good idea of what their proposed plan was for our mobile app. They took the time to ask us questions and make sure that what they were making was along the lines of what we were looking for. They were willing to come travel and meet with us, and they were good people that we really got along with. So in the end, we decided to give them a shot.

How much have you invested with Steamclock Software?

We have invested $200,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We initially established contact with them March 2015 and then had our decision made by April 2015. The project started off in May 2015.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

The app we had before we started working with them was essentially broken and yet we still had a usage rate of 5-10% of our client base. Since then, our customer base has not only grown by almost double but the usage rate moved up 60%, so we have many people using the app now. We have lots of people that use the app solely for their business as opposed to using the web client that we get people to use. We have had a lot of great feedback for the app not only just in Canada and the United States but worldwide, and we are quite happy about that.

There were a couple of times where we did not realize there were functions within the app that we could use. One example was fingerprint scanning for login. A few of our customers were unhappy that they had to log into the app every single time, which we did for security reasons. Steamclock Software brought the idea that we could install fingerprint scanning for logging in. This solved many issues for those customers who then became happy and very keen in using the app.

As well, we did not have the idea of taking payments in the app, but they were able to outline a few ways that we could do it, which was beyond our expectations. We assumed that we were going to be unable to do this, and yet they were able to come up with a few methods that ended up working for us.

Over the course of the last year and a half, they have done nothing but great work for us. They have been very easy to work with. They have been very reasonable with our requests. I will be the first to admit that we have not always been the easiest client in terms of deadlines or expectations, but they are always able to manage us and keep us happy. We very much enjoy working with them.

How did Steamclock Software perform from a project management standpoint?

They have been excellent about constantly communicating with us and letting us know when things need to be done. We have phone conferences with them once a month, and sometimes they come over from Vancouver to Victoria to chat and plan. We always enjoy seeing each other, so we are more than open to that.

They gave us very reasonable estimates and expectations of their work. Their hourly rate is reasonable. They have been great about letting us know the hours allocated in the invoices that we get monthly. They break down every half hour and hour letting us know what was worked on. Every time we pay our invoices, we know exactly where our dollars are going towards, which has been great for us.

They were flexible in giving us multiple options for different project management software to use with them. We were able to put them into our JIRA and Bitbucket backlog so that they can see issues as they pop up in real-time. They made a process of reporting bugs and potential errors. They attack the crashes as they happen and are good about communicating with us when they think something should be fixed or removed. Since Steamclock Software also uses that software, it really worked out for us.

What did you most impressive about Steamclock Software?

The main thing that is always outstanding for us is that they are good people. We have great conversations that do not always involve work. We have talked personally, as friends. They are very easy to talk to. They would be someone that I would be fine going to dinner with, which you do not always find, and we are very appreciative that they see us similarly. We appreciate our relationship with them.

Are there any areas Steamclock Software could improve?

Once the majority of work was done, they go into maintenance mode and communication would not be as proactive as before. We used to do weekly checks, and that dropped off because we were not sure that they were needed, and then they completely dropped off unless we started talking with them. But once we had a conversation about it, they changed that right away.

Another small criticism of ours is when we looked at several different apps Steamclock Software created, there is a familiarness to them. But since not a lot of these apps are cross-industry, it was not a big deal for us.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO of a company called &yet. We do software development and we also have some of our own products and services in the security space.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Steamclock Software?

We have a product called Talky, which is an in-browser video chat. Because of the technology that exists in iOS, we needed some additional assistance in building an iOS-specific application for our app. 

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We reached out to Steamclock and hired them to build the application, interface, UX, etc., for the iOS side. We have some messaging experts on our team, but Steamclock has some fantastic, smart iOS developers who are capable of getting into that side of things. So, we collaborated with them mostly on the iOS side. They were the ones who encountered and worked through the bugs in the Google-provided WebRTC toolkit for iOS. I think we were one of the first production applications to use the toolkit, and Steamclock ended up identifying and fixing a number of bugs there. The expertise they brought in solving those gaps was huge. They also provided advice and made significant UX decisions for the iOS app. They did provide designs, but because we’re also a software development company, most everything was a collaborative process.

We did rely on them pretty heavily throughout some of our projects. I would say that we have worked with them on 3 or 4 projects over the course of our relationship, including 1 really large project, depending on how that’s sliced. We had an iOS developer for a period of time. Steamclock acted as team members and advisers for him so he wasn't alone. They did that on a number of different projects. I think there was a total of 3 members of their team who contributed, but we dealt primarily with 2.

How did you come to work with Steamclock Software?

I was familiar with them from the technical talks they’ve given and I’ve gotten to know members of their team. I really respected their work and saw them as basically the most well-rounded and thorough experts in the iOS field. They’re able to tackle tough technology challenges and work through a great final product, as far as UX is concerned. It was that blend that made them our only choice, really. We didn't even think of anybody else.

How much have you invested with Steamclock Software?

We’ve paid between $50,000 and $100,000 for their services.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked with them in the spring of 2014. That project has been completed. We continue to reach out to them for various consulting, small engagements, and collaborative opportunities. We get in touch with them anytime we have a need in that ballpark.  

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

The product that they contributed to does over a million calls a month; I assume having the iOS app is a critical component to the success of that product. That would probably be the most significant one I'd point to. People love the application, which is a sentiment I’ve heard from users and from members of our team. I certainly feel that way.

How did Steamclock Software perform from a project management standpoint?

They worked in a collaborative and open way. I was really impressed with the transparency they had in approaching me. They did a good job asking a lot of questions and they kept focused on the right goals. As far as project management tech goes, we used GitHub and regular stand-up meetings as we went through the project. We also used our product a lot as a video chat tool.

What did you find most impressive about Steamclock Software?

Steamclock Software has outstanding technical knowledge combined with first-rate UX. A lot of teams can do iOS and UX but not many also have the ability to get to the point where they’re pointing out flaws in a library that was written by Google. That combination is killer. In my mind, it makes them extremely unique. They have qualities I would not find easily in another company.

I really appreciated the degree to which they continued to educate us on the tradeoffs for the various options that we reviewed. They let us know when there might be a more inexpensive option and what the tradeoffs would be. For example, one of our earlier decision was to not allow the application to be rotated. That’s because switching to landscape mode would require a massive multiplication of the UX development, specifically with regard to the video rendering. I appreciated being made aware of that pretty quickly in the process so we could just say, “Well let’s not go that route in this first iteration,” because we really wanted to focus on getting a simple feature set out there while doing it as cost-effectively as possible. There were a lot of places along the way where they did a good job of keeping us aware of what our options were, and why we might choose one or the other, and what the cost implications of that decision would be.

Are there any areas Steamclock Software could improve?

None.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Ridwell helps people reduce their waste with doorstep pickups of hard-to-recycle and reusable stuff.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Steamclock Software?

We want our members to have a simple way to engage with our pickup service, understand their categories, and manage their account.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Build a iOS app for our members.

What is the team composition?

RW – product lead

RW – server support team

SC – 2 devs

SC – 1 part time designer

SC – 1 project manager

How did you come to work with the vendor?

Referral from the design firm we worked with

What is the status of this engagement?

In maintenance mode

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

• Member happiness
• 4.9 stars over 2.5K reviews
• Higher member engagement with app users

How did the vendor perform from a project management standpoint?

Well! They were very organized and helpful with keeping our team on track.

What did you find most impressive about Steamclock Software?

Partnership and engagement — I’ve worked with a ton of outside firms, and none have been so engaged and involved in Ridwell’s success.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Not, really. I’m very happy with their work and partnership