Surf

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Head of the Information Systems Group of Melon Fashion Group

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Melon Fashion Group is one of the leading companies in the fashion retail domain, managing Zarina, Befree and Sela brands.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Surf to accomplish?

• Our goal was to build a corporate application for the brands’ current business workflows aimed to automate retail processes with the possibility to cover other types of devices.

SOLUTION

How did you find Surf?

Online Search, Referral

Why did you select Surf over others?

High ratings, Pricing first our budget, Great culture fit, Good value for cost, Company values aligned, Other

What was the size of Surf’s team?

6-10 Employees

What was your primary form of communication with Surf?

Virtual Meeting, Email or Messaging App

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

We have an iOS app with similar functionality. We assigned Surf with a task to build a cross-platform app with Flutter in order to expand the retailer's fleet of devices and to improve the functionality in line with MFG requirements. The Surf team created a minimalist brand-style design in two themes.

A dark theme has been added to save battery on devices that are used for 12 hours a day. This should enhance the phone's ability to stay on without charging.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

• Surf implemented most of the features/processes in the application within a year of our collaborative work.
• The high development speed allowed us to expand the fleet of devices and start working with them six months after the project started.
• The app does meet our expectations.

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

The Surf team was easy to find common ground with. The team has obviously long-term experience with software development for various business goals and they are capable of delivering valuable suggestions for our app. Their work is well-organized and adjusted for all the needs of our business.

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

Overall, the collaboration with Surf has been very productive. The team is always ready to interact, promptly answer questions and make fixes. I liked their quality-focused and professional approach to the key tasks of designing and developing the mobile app.

I can also mention their systematic approach to solving issues and speed of communication and problem solving, as well as bug fixing, which is vital when retail immediately uses the functionality and cannot run the business process in case of a problem.

Are there any areas for improvement or something {provider_name} could have done differently?

At the moment, we are comfortable working with Surf, their level of competence in mobile development responds fully to our needs.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I’m a Product owner in the IT department of the company. Our company is one of the international chains of fast food restaurants, represented in more than 100 countries around the world.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

Surf needed to implement a Web application, which would transform these processes from paper to digital media. It had to be suitable for employees of different levels - managers, directors, territorial managers. Another task was to allow executives to work out of the office via a mobile app and monitor the restaurants' operational indicators online.

SOLUTION

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

We sent out a purchase proposal to our IT partners, including Surf. The deciding factors for choosing Surf were: Extensive experience developing mobile apps for major brands Readiness to allocate a sufficient number of specialists to our project Price, timing and quality of development

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

Surf has developed a Web and mobile application for this system. The app has become one of its most important parts. With its help, restaurant managers and area managers can install the app on their personal phones, monitor indicators remotely, and adjust restaurant performance in real time.

Key features of the mobile app: Dashboard with online restaurant performance metrics, Daily checklists for restaurant shift managers and area coaches, Restaurant Team Rating and KPIs, Restaurant Rating. Surf created a striking design in the company colors and a very user-friendly interface for our app, which makes interaction with the app easy and pleasant.

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

On the Surf side:

• 3 backend
• 1 frontend
• 1 flutter
• 2 BA
• 1 qa
• 1 service manager
• 1 pm

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The system helped move business processes - reporting, scheduling employees, planning and control - from paper to digital media and integrate into a unified IT system. The system has become an important service that the company offers to all of its franchisee partners.

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

Surf showed a very good level of technical competence - they are able to implement the solution at a high technical level. It is important that the team understands the specifics of large geographically distributed companies. At the same time, they helped us to reduce development costs by offering a great solution - the cross-platform Flutter framework. I would also like to note that Surf has a productive and well-organized communication process, both within the team and with the client.

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

Surf was able to offer us a solution that helped us cover all our needs at once: speed up development and reduce the project budget. It is a cross-platform application development on Flutter (it allows creating a single application for Android and iOS) and the concept of Bring Your Own Device (restaurant directors and area managers use the application on their personal phones).

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

We continue to cooperate with Surf and we really like the level of their professional competence and well-organized communication.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am a Product manager of the company. Izzisoft is an aggregator for SMEs providing tire and car wash services. The company's services are used by 10,000+ drivers and more than 300 corporate clients with their own fleets.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

We already had a mobile app, which was used by the employees of tire shops. However, we aimed to bring our services to a new level by providing convenient tools for our customers and business partners (tire shops and car washes).

SOLUTION

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

We held several meetings with companies from the top 10 mobile developers rankings. Surf's offer turned out to be the most interesting.

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

Three different tasks were to be solved at once meeting a tight deadline:

• To design and develop a mobile application for b2c-clients to make it easier for them to access multiple car services such as tire fitting, car washing and seasonal tire storage services.
• To design and develop a b2b solution for both service providers and business customers owning car parks.
• To build and deploy the back-end infrastructure for the above-mentioned products and integrate it with the existing infrastructure supporting the business mobile app.

Surf has successfully accomplished all our goals.

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

Our team had business communications with two project managers and up to four analysts on a daily basis. Several Surf's leading technical specialists were also joining us when necessary.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Our project has been quite ambitious and complicated from the very beginning. So, having all 3 products working now is the greatest outcome we could expect. Over those 9 months of hard work our teams also generated numerous ideas for the development phase, which we've just started working on with the same team.

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

It was not always easy to keep everyone updated as we had the third team supporting the old back-end infrastructure to communicate with. However, it was great to realize that Surf's project managers were always able to stay on top of it and establish effective communication between all members. We had 2 status calls every week to discuss all the relevant questions. All our requests were answered on time and extra meetings were scheduled on demand.

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

In order to meet our deadline we decided to skip the research phase starting the project. As a result, we had to explore and learn many things on the go. We constantly have brainstorming sessions with the Surf team to generate the best solutions together. We're really grateful to them for helping us in this work. It was very easy to track changes and progress because we had permanent access to the working process via Atlassian services.

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

I'm really impressed with our collaboration. Now I find it difficult to advise what can be improved.