Svitla Systems

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the VP of engineering at Novantas, a fintech company.

What challenge were you trying to address with Svitla Systems?

We were having trouble finding people with the specific skillsets we were looking for. We decided to look for a company that would help with development, allowing us to scale up and down as needed.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Svitla Systems provided developers who worked alongside us. They've worked on multiple of our key products. On the big data side, their team used Scala. While implementing projects in Java and Angular, their team was able to assist with the UI, creating APIs, building a modern tier, and even helping on the database side.

What is the team composition?

We were able to get a team of full-stack of engineers. There are 4–5 developers.

How did you come to work with Svitla Systems?

We evaluated multiple vendors. We liked that their team overlapped time zones and fave us a better overlap with our engineering team. Our team was impressed with Svitla Systems’ technical resources and capabilities.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our engagement with Svitla Systems began in February 2018.

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

Working with Svitla Systems is easy. Their developers are smart and help us integrate efficiently.

How did Svitla Systems perform from a project management standpoint?

Since they worked directly with our engineering team, we work in an agile methodology to capture daily progress. They have access to our network, and we use GitLab. Communication has never been an issue. Their team is self-driven and motivated. We had one person that wasn’t performing well, and they were more than happy to manage that.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The most impressive thing to me is their technical knowledge.

Are there any areas they could improve?

We gave them feedback when we wanted their top few candidates to perform the streamlining. They were able to incorporate those changes quickly. There’s nothing we need to be changed.

Please describe your company and your position there.

Rainmaker, a Cendyn company, specializes in Revenue Management software in the Hospitality industry. I am the VP of Engineering.

For what projects/services did your company hire Svitla Systems?

We engaged Svitla in 2014 for a variety of projects as development resources to augment our onsite teams..

What were your goals for this project?

Rainmaker was looking to expand our development teams with cost-efficient, skilled talent.

How did you select this vendor?

Our former CTO established the relationship.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

The Svitla developers have been working mostly on front-end and middle-layer development of using C#, ASP.NET, and various web technologies.

What was the team composition?

The Svitla developers have been woven into our Agile Scrum teams, working side-by-side with our North America-based employees. The engagement has been long-term and successful.

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

All of the developers have been skilled, good communicators, and very positive contributors to our products. They require minimal supervision, commensurate with their skill level.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

The Svitla developers typically worked similar hours to our US-based team members. We utilized Skype, Teams, Jira, and e-mail for communication. The team integration has been very solid.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

I am impressed with the consistent level of skilled software developers, as well as the stability of the engagement with each developer.

Are there any areas for improvement?

I have been very happy with our involvement with Svitla. If I were to make one suggestion, it would be to have better coordination of vacation between our management and theirs.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the vice president of IT at an organization that provides financing for commercial buildings to upgrade their infrastructure and clean energy, which means investing in solar, HVAC, and various energy-efficient projects.

What challenge were you trying to address with Svitla Systems?

We wanted to provide an online quoting tool that would help our clients understand the financing rate to give them a little bit more information about our programs.

What was the scope of their involvement?

I worked with them for about two years, starting with 1–2 developers and then adding more resources as our needs expanded. I acted as a project and product manager and worked with the developers on the Ruby on Rails stack to build an online quoting tool.

I was providing wireframes and writing the user stories, but we quickly realized that we needed higher-fidelity UX designs. I found a local UX person to help form the user stories, and the development team implemented them into the product.

What is the team composition?

At the peak of the project, I worked with four developers and one QA resource from Svitla Systems.

How did you come to work with Svitla Systems?

One of their local reps stopped by our building, and it happened to be great timing because I was looking to hire a team. We’re north of San Francisco, so it’s sometimes tough to attract talent to here. With that in mind, I was looking at various outsourced options, and I decided to go with what Svitla Systems proposed. I worked with one developer at first, which was a great experience, and we continued to add more people to the project.

How much have you invested with them?

I'd estimate that we spent between $150,000–$200,000.

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

They built us an online tool that is still used today. The tool notwithstanding, we do not see as much success from a sales perspective as we’d like, so I had to discontinue the team. But the software they’ve put in place is still being used.

How did Svitla Systems perform from a project management standpoint?

We used an agile methodology, which required daily stand-ups and weekly retrospectives using Zoom. I acted as the project manager. We’d hold our meetings at the end of their day and the beginning of my day. Communication throughout the day was on Slack.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Everybody I worked with from Svitla Systems was great. They have a team of smart people who want to do the right thing for their clients. We had an open dialogue to the point that they were comfortable challenging our ideas and presenting new ones.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, it was a great experience. I was sad when I had to disband the team because we worked really well together. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I’d recommend that the client takes on the project management role. It’s hard to delegate that piece of it. Having a strong state-side project manager will go a long way.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the director of product development for a tax management company. Our company assists state and local governments in the processing of ad valorem taxes. Part of our services includes custom software solutions.

For what projects/services did your company hire Svitla Systems?

We hired Svitla systems as an extension of our team whose primary duty was the maintenance and support of existing applications.

What were your goals for this project?

The goals of the project were cost reduction on maintenance and support as well as freeing up internal resources for new initiatives.

How did you select this vendor?

After reviewing several options, Svitla best met our needs both from a professional as well as a cultural fit.

Describe the project in detail.

The project is on-going production support for established systems. This includes regular maintenance, minor changes as well as any enhancements.

What was the team composition?

The team has varied in size according to our needs. They have been able to be very responsive to changes in demand and have provided excellent full-stack developers in all cases.

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

Svitla has been instrumental in keeping our support costs within budget and works independently enough that our resources have been successful with new initiatives.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

We use an agile method with daily stand-ups and a ticketing system with a development board. Teamwork and communication have been excellent.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

We have been very impressed with the skill sets of the resources Svitla provides. They have learned our systems quickly and have taken pride and ownership of them.

Are there any areas for improvement?

The entire experience has been seamless.

Please describe your company and your position there.

We are RizeHQ, a small but rapidly growing startup in the Los Angeles area that's building elegant business services solutions. I am the CEO.

For what projects/services did your company hire Svitla Systems?

We work with Svitla to staff our small but growing startup software development team. We've come to rely on them extensively for quality software development.

What were your goals for this project?

Our goal was to cultivate a long-term relationship with Svitla to launch our MVP and iterate on that product.

How did you select this vendor?

We were introduced to Svitla by a local engineering leader who highly recommended them.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

We worked with Svitla to staff a full-time software development team focused on the build-out of our MVP. Our relationship with Svitla is a long-term one, and we see ourselves working with Svitla indefinitely, owing to the excellent customer service we receive from their VP of Engagement Solutions, Joel, and the high quality of the development team.

What was the team composition?

At this point, our full-time Svitla team members consist of: Senior frontend software developer (React, React Native) and Senior backend developer (Python 3, GCP, etc.). 

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

The team members we work with on a daily basis from Svitla are vital to our product development efforts, and they blend seamlessly with our team.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

My co-founder and I integrated our Svitla team members seamlessly into our product development workflow. We adhere to a rigorous roadmap and sprint-planning system.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

The level of customer engagement is outstanding. Our main point of contact, Joel Kepple, is so responsive and supportive that he's become a trusted colleague with whom we regularly consult. In short, they are high-touch, attentive, and professional.

Additionally, our relationship started on the right foot. They were able to find us candidates who matched our job requisition very quickly, and they tuned their search based on our feedback. As they were swift to put candidates in front of us, we ended up quickly finding the right person to join our team. Very impressive workstream for finding and identifying candidates!

Are there any areas for improvement?

Thus far, I don't have any negative comments.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm with ABB Optical Group. We build dashboards that help clients understand their data. We also use industry benchmarking to achieve more accurate comparisons and predictive modeling.

For what projects/services did your company hire Svitla Systems?

We hired Svitla Systems to help with data validation and mapping.

What were your goals for this project?

We wanted faster, more accurate data validation. 

How did you select this vendor?

We searched for vendors with experience working on data projects and an agile environment, possessed excellent communication skills, and were able to identify and troubleshoot issues without micromanagement.

Describe the project in detail.

After quickly getting them up to speed on industry terminology and shorthand, they began interpreting logical classifications for unmapped data. They also compiled training materials to quickly bring additional team members up to speed.

What was the team composition?

The team initially included our main contact and another team member. Over time, the Svitla Systems team grew to include a project manager, project lead, and several more team members. I oversaw the project scope and ensured implementation.

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

Their work gave my employees more time to focus on implementation. We have added more clients and increased our onboarding speed. Svitla Systems has helped us reduce costs, increase our revenue, and grow the business.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Everything from the project management to documentation to training is excellent. Svitla Systems is extremely proactive in communicating with our team and setting reasonable goals.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Svitla Systems is extremely adaptable. When circumstances change, they quickly shift to the projects we need them to deliver. Their people are also truly impressive. Our point of contact is excellent. A company is only as good as its people, and Svitla Systems has excellent people. Our team is always impressed with their prowess and professionalism. 

Are there any areas for improvement?

Nothing comes to mind. 

Please describe your company and your position there.

CRMa, LLC is a provider of credit management systems and services to community banks. We are based in Raleigh, NC and have approximately 150 customers located throughout the US and a few international customers. I am the president and CEO

For what projects/services did your company hire Svitla Systems?

We engaged Svitla to help us transfer very sophisticated financial models to a cloud-based system, and to improve and maintain the system ongoing.

What were your goals for this project?

To have it customer-ready within six months; to provided advanced data entry and mapping features; allow for easy integration with other company systems; to be fast, highly flexible, easy to use and intuitive; and most importantly, to produce reliable, error-free output.

How did you select this vendor?

They were recommended through an association with Stanford University.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

Svitla was engaged to program a cloud-based system using advanced models designed for financial institutions to use in determining capital adequacy, stress testing and credit concentrations that were built primarily in Excel as the base to an expanded system to include data entry, mapping and flexible output (reports).

The project is managed through daily calls with the CRMa Executive VP of Analytics and project lead, the Svitla project lead and programmers to discuss 2-week sprint progress and other project issues around specs, testing and migrating customers to the new system.

What was the team composition?

The team consists of a CRMa project lead (EVP of Analytics) and technical support (VP of Technology); a Svitla project lead, one full-time programmer; spec development and additional programmers and system support as needed from both CRMa and Svitla.

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

This new system is essential to the execution of our core strategy, which is rooted in reducing the cost, simplifying and improving the process of credit management for financial institutions through the integration of technology and services. It is critical to enabling growth on the back of a distinct and difficult-to-replicate competitive advantage.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

Project management has been second to none. No turnover and impressive understanding of finance, formulas and math among the team. Reliable daily communication and availability outside normal hours made for high confidence in the ability to deliver against promises and high quality of output.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Svitla's willingness to go above and beyond in accessibility to whomever we need whenever we need them and to engage wider resources for additional expertise in overcoming unexpected issues that arise with any project. They have consistently delivered in high-demand situations beyond reasonable expectations.

Are there any areas for improvement?

Obviously, anything can be made better; but in our relationship with Svitla, anything we could suggest would not fall within the scope of our engagement and could not be cited as expected improvement.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I’m the CIO of Harvest/Sherwood, a food distributor located throughout the US.

For what projects/services did your company hire Svitla Systems?

We run four different ERP solutions, which were all out of vendor support and extremely outdated, resulting in reporting and data consistency issues. I needed a team with modern .NET/SQL skills that could build solutions on top of the ERP solutions, creating APIs into the ERPs to transfer data and to provide our users a single source of truth in reporting.

What were your goals for this project?

The goal for the project was to build a common interface overlaying the ERP solution, allowing for data to be consolidated, maintained, and reported in a consistent and standard manner.

How did you select this vendor?

I reviewed and spoke with many vendors that promised great offshore resources at reduced rates. I needed to support our applications during our daytime, which ranges from EST to PST time zones, as well as compatible offshore prices. Svitla Systems has offices in Mexico, which made them an appealing choice. After interviewing them, the decision was easy and we couldn't be happier with that.

Describe the project in detail.

I wanted to augment our in-house staff’s efforts to help achieve our goals of converting to .NET/SQL for better managing centralized business functions. This entailed building out a central data repository (SSIS), a .NET tool to manage transactions, an API tool to get and post data to the four different ERPs, and a dashboarding tool (Power BI) to present results to the users. Additionally, we wanted to leverage Power BI and SSRS to create a standard reporting package to replace all the one-off reports that our IT department does.

What was the team composition?

Initially, we hired a .NET/SQL developer but have since expanded the team to five people and are looking to add a few more in the near future. They operate as a separate Scrum team, with our initial hire leading the rest of the team.

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

We’ve built the templates for success, including a .NET-based framework for data management, a Power BI interface, a database for reporting, and an API framework for integrations. We’ve deployed operational KPI reports, helping the operations team better manage their shifts, and are working on Rebate reporting solutions to improve financials.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Integration has been seamless between our two teams.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

It's impressive how quickly Svitla Systems responds to our needs for additional resources, especially since I want them in Mexico instead of their home base in Europe.

Are there any areas for improvement?

They’ve resolved any staff-related issues promptly and have worked to ensure my success, so I really can't think of anything for them to improve.

Could you briefly describe your organization?

We’re an academic publishing company. We create projects for professors that wish to bring materials in from numerous textbooks and consolidate them into a single item. We put it together, we clear the content, and then we sell it directly to students at these respective schools through an e-commerce store.

What is your position?

I’m the vice president of technology.

Could you describe the business challenges you were attempting to address when you began the relationship with Svitla Systems?

We needed some additional development talent for our IT [information technology] projects. We had the conceptual design and the deployment strategy prepared, but we didn’t have anyone capable of building the solution for us. That’s why we needed to find a development partner.

Could you describe the scope of this project in greater detail?

The majority of it was customization work of our existing open source tools, Magento and SugarCRM. They came in and did all of the custom programming. They also cleaned up our data and configured our backend systems to manage it properly. They basically handled all of the technical aspects of the project.

How did you select Svitla Systems as your solution partner for this endeavor?

I actually don’t recall. It was five years ago. We’ve been with them for a while.

Could you provide a sense of the size of this initiative in monetary terms?

I can’t disclose that information.

In terms of results, could you share any statistics, metrics or user feedback that you’ve received that would demonstrate the effectiveness of their work?

I can certainly share some user feedback. It’s been solid from my point of view and my employers enjoy the features that they build because it’s often for their own efficiencies. Not all team members are equal, of course. We’d received some constructive criticism as well but, on the whole, most of our users have been very satisfied.

When working with Svitla Systems, is there anything you’d consider unique about their approach or development methodology that distinguishes them from other vendors?

I haven’t had a ton of experience with other vendors in this same type of relationship where I worked with them so closely. We use a team extension model with them. It’s staff augmentation. We have several dedicated programmers working alongside our team. We talk with them daily. They chat with our internal developers on every task. They’ve really become an integral part of the team. I wouldn’t say that’s unique, but that’s one alternative of working with companies like this as opposed to a more project-based requirement and deliverables approach. It’s nice to treat them as members of our team. They deliver some high quality work. Other companies allow a team extension type model as well and they go for that. That’s one feature that we definitely enjoy. It helped my decision to go with them, I recall that, when we were evaluating various companies five years ago.

In retrospect, are there areas that you think they could improve on as a service provider?

Yes. For example, the consistent quality of material submitted, and level of testing that they’ve undergone on their own can always improve. That’s generally true with everybody. They’re a team extension so it could be our internal QA [quality assurance] processes that we ask them to use that can be improved. It’s the testing phase that could use the most work, in my opinion. Other than that, they’ve been great with us.

Please describe your company and your position there.

IT company in the logistics sector. My position is CTO.

For what projects/services did your company hire Svitla Systems?

We hired Svitla for driving our core product.

What were your goals for this project?

Driving the core product. Scale up the team.

How did you select this vendor?

A few vendors contacted us. We checked them and contacted some. Then we chose the one with the best contact behaviour and customer service.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

Extending the development and dev ops team.

What was the team composition?

Team of developers in our offices, one remote developer, one remote dev ops person.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

Project management is done on our side. It went well.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

They have a very good system of pre-screening candidates. Svitla finds new people very fast.

Are there any areas for improvement?

When screening candidates, also look for pro-activity and very good English skills.