Stermedia

Please describe your company and your position there.

WMC IT Solutions Ltd. is a Swiss company, founded in 1981, providing digitals insurance brokerage software to the Swiss insurance industry. I am the Chairman of the board at our company and acting also as senior consultant of the company.

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

At the beginning Stermedia was ask to build a new version of BrokerStar. Later Stermidia became a worthful amd solid development partner, who is fully integrated in our development team. Within our scrum development we are in a daily and fluent information exchange.

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

The requirement was a deep knwowledge in LAMP especially in the Symfony framework. After an internet research Stermedia was the best choice in the evaluation.

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

Today the scope is to improve the code und the usability of the application. An important requirement is to keep the application always on an actual version. This is strategic change to the former two yearly updates. The technologies used today are LAMP (Symfony), JavaScript and TIBCO Jasper Reports as BI component.

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

In the initial phases there was a whole team with a project leader an 4-5 developers. At the moment there is a senior developer, a tester and when needed further developers.

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

Stermedia delivered high-quality software on time and within budget. The outcome is improved so much from month to month that we have less bugs, better performance, a lot of new functions and therefore WMC IT Solutions Ltd is a leader of digital insurance brokerage in Switzerland in all language regions.

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

The communication with the team is always seamless, team members answer on time. They are engaged in their work and while facing challenges they propose new solutions.

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

We appreciate their high integration with our team, confidence, and dedication for the result of our common project. Also, what is important, we have been cooperating since 2014 and during that time we feel that we can fully trust them and treat them as a part of our company.

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

We are discussing possibilities for a deaper cooperation between both companies. There is nothing to change for we are fully satisfied.

Please describe your company and your position there.

Trials.ai is working to bring treatments to patients faster by optimizing the clinical trial design process using AI/ML. I am a co-founder and the CTO and serve as primary architect for the company.

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

We hired Stermedia to help us create the application we are developing. The app is designed to revolutionize the manual way research teams design clinical trials. We do this by mining massive amounts of trial-related documents from both customers and the public domain.

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

We found Stermedia by way of introduction from friends that we met as part of the DreamIt Startup accelerator. We interviewed several boutique shops specializing in AI/ML development and ultimately decided on Stermedia because they came highly recommended and provided high quality output at a reasonable price.

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

The scope of work for this project was to focus on developing machine learning based solutions for our product. These solutions were 2-fold:

1. to provide natural language processing using BERT and other transformer technologies to process healthcare related documents.
2. to develop machine learning models that can predict trial outcomes based on trial design input.

Most of the development was done in python and key deliverables were trained models to perform various NLP related tasks as well as models to predict trial impact.

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

The team engaged in the project contains 2 data scientists. It wasn’t only their machine learning expertise that was a great help to us though - the Stermedia scrum team supported us in software development of the web application: frontend in Angular, backend in Python - rewriting a part of the code as well as building new functionalities and micro-services deployed on docker.

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

During a period of cooperation lasting almost a year, Data Scientists from Stermedia prepared an easy to use framework that simplifies the deployment of new analytical tasks, and participated in the design and implementation of analytical solutions. They prepared a set of heuristics for identifying concepts in medical text.

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

Stermedia was open to using our existing organizational tools including Asana, Slack and Google Workspace. Initially I was worried we would have an issue with the time difference, however during the project I felt that communication was smooth and seamless.

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

The quality of Stermedia’s work is not their only asset: they also have excellent communication standards and are always on time. It never seemed like there were 8 time zones between us! They provided a tremendous amount of value and were real team members of our company.

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

They were responsive when I shared any concerns and consistently exceeded my expectations. I can't think of anything I would improve about the team and their approach. I would work with this group again if given the chance.

What challenge were you trying to address with Stermedia?

We needed an IT partner to help us with custom software development.

What challenge were you trying to address with Stermedia?

We needed an IT partner to help us with custom software development.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Stermedia provides machine-learning custom software development for us. In the beginning, we had a conversation about our expectations regarding the product that we were trying to design, then got to work.

What is the team composition?

Throughout the project, we've worked with several members of their team, but there have been three people at maximum at a time. Overall, we've had about seven people involved so far.

How did you come to work with Stermedia?

Our investor had used their solutions before with another startup and referred them to us. We reached out and interviewed them, and we liked what they were offering.

How much have you invested with them?

We've spent €100,000 (approximately $113,000 USD) with them so far.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in August 2020, and the engagement is ongoing.

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

In terms of metrics, we focus on the activity of the algorithms. We set our bar at 0.75, and they exceeded our expectations — we are getting up to 0.9.  

How did Stermedia perform from a project management standpoint?

We handle the project's management, and we use Jira, GitHub, and Trello in terms of tools. For communication, we use Slack and three weekly meetings.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They've been very responsive, and I’m happy we chose them as a vendor.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I don't think there's anything they can improve on.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Time is money, so prepare your project design in advance to save time — that gives them a better idea of what you want.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am a specialist engineer at the City Water and Sewage company in Wroclaw. We are a joint-stock company.

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

We approached Stermedia with a request to create an application that allows for clear graphical visualization of the measurement values of water parameters taken from subsequent stages of the water treatment process in Mokry Dwór Research Station.

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

Stermedia initiated contact with our company, and then together we decided to implement the data presentation improvement project.

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

At the beginning Stermedia asked for a description of the data series that needed to be displayed. It had specific needs, which Stermedia selected by proven methods, such as ready-made frameworks and libraries.

While facing a challenge with working with the database (backend) and mapping data series (frontend) they contact us. Thanks to clear communication and our domain knowledge, Stermedia correctly verified all endpoints and provided an application that greatly facilitates the interpretation of data.

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

Overall, 13 people participated in the project. I worked the closest with PM and 3 developers (frontend and backend).

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

The amount of time needed for data verification has significantly decreased and new possibilities of comparing data have opened up thanks to implemented improvement.

The result of the project facilitates the daily work and viewing of the data collected in the big database. The tool created by the Stermedia team also allows the presentation of data in the form of tables and their export and download as CSV files. Thanks to the Responsive Web Design approach, the application is suitable for use on desktops and laptops, as well as on mobile devices.

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

The project managment was very good. We comunicated regulary with GitLab and Google Meet and we never had unexpected turnovers. Daily, short team meetings, were useful in this regard. Thanks to this work system, each party was aware of the current arrangements and could freely exchange knowledge.

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

What I liked the most was that Stermedia completed the project on time as promised. I also appreciate working at SCRUM. Everything was transparent and I felt informed.

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

The application fully meets our needs and does not require changes.

Please describe your company and your position there.

Proxi.Cloud, is a proven and secure solution to collecting and storing anonymous location data collected through mobile applications. It gathers relevant location data and targets online ads to specific audiences. This solution is based on geofencing, Wi-Fi, and beacons. 
I am Proxi.cloud's CTO

For what projects/services did your company hire Stermedia.ai?

We hired Stermedia to do analyze and prepare a recommendation about techniques used in the project. Both technological and in terms of processes.

What were your goals for this project?

One of the main goal in this project was to provide users with well-tailored information depending on their localization. For example: while entering the cinema, a user gets information about a combined promotion for popcorn and ticket; while shopping, he receives information about dedicated sales in the specific stores he is passing by.  

How did you select this vendor?

We have considered a number of companies to carry on the project. Stermedia was selected due to their proven track of delivered projects and experts in our tech stack (Ruby on Rails) readily avaliable to audit and take over our existing code. 

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

Stermedia focused on determining the quality of the platform’s code – the ease of development and further maintenance, so the report could be used in an investor’s decision-making process: software architecture (Microservice Architecture, Object Services, javascript code), automatic tests, software code syntax (Ruby and JavaScript code, HTML code syntax, good practices in the CSS catalogs structure, used libraries).

They also took care of the level of complexity of starting up new instances in Azure environment (or similar) and filled gaps in documentation.

In the end they provided a full report of the current state, implementation of software for the new production environment based on Azure platform, deployment automatization (GitLab CI), improved process of implementing the application into the production environment (Docker and Rancher), and supply of a new function of the software.

What was the team composition?

The team compromised of 2 or 3 software developers (depending on the project stage) one of which was the tech leader for the entire project. 

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

The platform we developed with Stermedia became our business core product. It helped us grow from a startup financed by by investors to self-sustaining business with its own customer base and products. 

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

Stermedia managment helped us to save the project which at the time was very questionable. Nowadays we can develop our product and build our own team. 

What did you find most impressive about this company?

It is important to us that their developers are elastic, have a quick reaction time, proactiveness and build technical trust.

Are there any areas for improvement?

No, the project was 100% successfull and left in a state that could be easily picked up by our in-house team. 

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We provide IT support for the Polish state railway. I’m a system architect for the company.

What challenge were you trying to address with Stermedia?

We didn’t have sufficient internal resources to develop and update our customer applications and were looking for a partner that could assist.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We’ve been working with Stermedia for a long time. Their team has a solid understanding of the business functions that we supply to customers through our IT system. Stermedia has primarily worked on a system that supports the claiming process for passengers. We’ve also worked with them on a system for managing card payments at ticket offices and stations. Our technology is about eight years old. We use an Oracle database, and the middle tier is an internet application server running a Java application.

What is the team composition?

The size of the team has varied over time. We were initially working with about seven people, but we have less work at the moment, so we’re only working with four. We have a project manager on their side, but I sometimes explain business cases directly to the developers. The project manager doesn’t always know all the details concerning our product functionality.

How did you come to work with Stermedia?

We have requirements related to processing graphs, and our colleagues in Wroclaw had contracts with Stermedia. It was apparent that they could develop different types of software quickly, so we decided to work with them when we had a larger project.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent around 400,000 Polish zloty (approximately $110,000) on their services.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Stermedia in May 2009. There was a period of two or three years when we had no work for them, but we started the collaboration again after we received a larger task from the client.

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

I don’t have statistics available right now, but I can say that Stermedia delivered good work on time, in most cases. There were some projects in which the timeline was not held, but our customer accepted the fact, taking into account the complexity of some of the functionalities we were looking to implement.

How did Stermedia perform from a project management standpoint?

We use Microsoft Project to plan the work and Redmine to exchange information, which enables the project manager on Stermedia’s side to manage the team. I can see the progress of their work on my side. The tool is also used to send any issues directly to me.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I’ve been impressed with their ability to work on different applications using a variety of tools. We’ve had a meeting with Stermedia about future projects, and while we haven’t yet solidified additional contracts yet, I think that Stermedia has great potential.

Are there any areas they could improve?

We have no stable contracts with our customer in the area of updating the application, which makes it difficult for Stermedia to accommodate new tasks. This isn’t at all their fault, but it makes collaboration difficult sometimes.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the co-founder of a medical diagnosis platform. We create medical software and specialize in image processing technology.

What challenge were you trying to address with Stermedia?

We needed to develop a software platform that could share the data morphology of images. It needed to have basic registration and login functionalities. We didn’t have any in-house software engineers, so we needed a partner experienced with machine learning to build a market-ready system.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We developed a Python-based algorithm for determining the ratio between healthy and cancerous cells in samples. This created some limitations as there were specific flows for how the data should be shared. Stermedia participated in our weekly scrums to access our goals and work towards achieving them. They built the platform and integrated our algorithm into the software’s code.

What is the team composition?

The team varied depending on our needs across the project. We’ve worked with around four people including a scrum master, two developers, and a machine learning specialist.

How did you come to work with Stermedia?

I worked with them on previous projects, so I knew they had experience with Python-based environments and tools. Those prior efforts were more development focused, but also involved some tasks related to machine learning. They quickly came to mind as a viable development partner.

How much have you invested with them?

The project cost between $50,000 and $100,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Stermedia in April 2015 and the collaboration is ongoing. The main development is complete, but we still have some small fixes to make. It’s easier for us to use their team than to hire new developers at this stage.

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

Their work has simplified our process in terms of human resources. Even though some of their members left the project, Stermedia found replacements and kept development progressing consistently. We’re happy with the results.

How did Stermedia perform from a project management standpoint?

They handled the workload expertly and the project was delivered within the initial budget and timeline. The communication was excellent on both the development and managerial fronts.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They have the ability to provide both development and machine learning services. Whenever we had a problem, we could reach out to a member who had either a mathematical or machine learning background. As a result, Stermedia’s team helped us to quickly implement changes on both the algorithmic and application parts of the project. As the application progressed, we had to adjust the requirements. They made this process simple and transparent for us.

Are there any areas they could improve?

We didn’t have any significant issues with them. They used GitLab for billing and we found that platform to be unintuitive.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the founder and CEO of a company developing a communications solution for businesses to serve families.

What challenge were you trying to address with Stermedia?

We were looking for a partner to strengthen our product development team and assist with more complicated software development tasks.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Stermedia initially helped deliver a proof of concept so we could secure the necessary funding to develop a messaging app for both iOS and Android. Then, their team helped build a fully functioning alpha version. We market-tested the app and Stermedia made necessary bug fixes, functionality tweaks, and improvements. The latest engineering accomplishment included architecting an end-to-end encryption solution fitting our unique business requirements. Their team contributed to research, design, and UX/UI efforts throughout the project, and continues to provide top-notch support and assistance.

What is the team composition?

Since the beginning of the engagement, we have worked with a number of software engineers including two backend engineers, three frontend developers, two different scrum masters, and a designer.  These are very competent full-stack developers.

How did you come to work with Stermedia?

A colleague in our local co-working space recommended them for our development needs.

How much have you invested with them?

We have spent between $150,000—$200,000 on the project so far.

What is the status of this engagement?

We began working together in January 2017 and the project is ongoing.

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

We will be launching a beta version in the near future, and we are looking forward to successful results.

How did Stermedia perform from a project management standpoint?

Though English is their second language, the Stermedia team communicates very well. We have comfortably interacted through Backlog, GitLab, and Trello at different points, in person throughout the engagement, and we have worked from each other's offices.

What did you find most impressive about them?

In addition to excellent engineers, they’re creative thinkers that do thorough research, which helps them provide suggestions, alternatives, and improvements to the initial project plan.

Are there any areas they could improve?

First, there has at times been miscommunication about the estimated time to complete major deliverables, which have impacted our marketing plans.  Also, we have had back and front end queues out of sync at times resulting in inefficiency.  If they had more flexibility with their staffing across projects then estimates could be provided with more certainty. Secondly, we were lacking a scrum master during part of the project and that delayed progress a little.