Symfa

BACKGROUND

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

• Built some time ago, our client’s algorithm-based transportation management solution became harder to maintain and expand with new functionality as the underlying technologies became obsolete. We needed to migrate the solution to a newer tech stack to be able to further enhance its performance, features, and overall user experience.

SOLUTION

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

• Requirements elicitation and analysis and stepwise roadmap creation;
• Step-by-step migration from legacy ASP Classic code to the latest React version; 
• Implementing new features to the migrated part of the app.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

BACKGROUND

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

• We were looking to enhance a business process automation portal and mobile app for a client from the Real-estate industry and needed full-stack developers experienced with MS Azure to join our team. This was the reason why we turned to Symfa for help.

SOLUTION

• Pricing fit our budget
• Referred to me
• Company values aligned

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the COO of PieSoft LLC

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

A company providing full-cycle software development services to startups and large businesses.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

We needed to develop an IoT-enabled solution intended for transportation of biomaterials and medicines and were looking for engineering specialists to help us complete the task.

SOLUTION

How did you find Symfa?

Online Search

Why did you select Symfa over others?

• High ratings
• Good value for cost
• Company values aligned

How many teammates from Symfa were assigned to this project?

1 Employee

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

Symfa was responsible for the frontend part of the solution. They developed an interface that allowed tracking vehicles with transported healthcare materials by integrating with OpenStreetMap. The team also implemented data visualization capabilities for easy stats analysis and enabled the configuration of important parameters to notify users about any critical values.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

At the moment the system is successfully being used. We have plans to expand its functionality, and we will definitely seek their assistance in doing so.

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

Symfa met its obligations in full within the agreed-upon timelines. Communication was quite easy and smooth.

What was your primary form of communication with Symfa?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

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

Some requirements were changing on the fly. Despite that, they did their job right and on schedule.

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

They executed their tasks swiftly and efficiently, so we could not identify any shortcomings in our collaboration.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Applications Project Manager of a telecommunications company

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Providence provides full service telecommunications site development services including site identification, leasing, A/E, environmental, and zoning/permitting to the Wireless Telecommunications industry.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

Develop Web Application to Run Business Operations

SOLUTION

How did you find Symfa?

Upwork

Why did you select Symfa over others?

• Pricing fit our budget
• Proposal that closely aligned with Business needs

How many teammates from Symfa were assigned to this project?

6-10 Employees

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

Small company needing implementation of a database web application. This will involve both front end and back end development & design. Functions of the application include, but not limited to, locations, projects, work flow, email integration, bulk uploading, reporting, and dashboard.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Phase one work on the Web Application has reached a production environment that has been thoroughly tested and approved by the business.

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

The business requirements became more complex as the project proceeded, but Symfa has adjusted and supported the business with more development support.

What was your primary form of communication with Symfa?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

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

CEO and management has always been quick to communicate and provide support. Quick responses to any issues so that resolution was prompt and in support of the business. Overall good team flexibility and communication.

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

Overall the process is working well. Early on we did adjust to from more of a waterfall methodology to Agile. This really helped us improve our velocity and quality. This partnership has been a great joint effort, and the work Symfa has done and continues to do is much appreciated. Highly recommend Symfa to other companies looking for development and support.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the CEO&Co-Founder of IZDAT Venture Studio

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

We build, co-found and invest in early stage tech startups

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

• Our main goal was to connect the analytics based on video creators' performance with the efforts and costs. To do so, we needed to build an ML-powered custom analytics dashboard able to track our video channels performance (TilTok, YouTube, and Instagram)

SOLUTION

How did you find Symfa?

• Online Search
• Referral

Why did you select Symfa over others?

• High ratings
• Close to my geographic location
• Pricing fit our budget
• Great culture fit
• Good value for cost
• Referred to me
• Company values aligned

How many teammates from Symfa were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

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

To build the dashboard tailored to our needs, the Symfa team took several steps:

1. Proceeded with integrations through a number of APIs available for short video platforms;
2. Longitudinal data warehouse creation for efficient data storage;
3. Creation of a dashboard, displaying data in graphs and charts;
4. Forecast platform creation for better insight into promotional algorithms.

After the dashboard was built, we involved Symfa’s data scientist to:

1. Explore factors affecting the number of views on social media channels;
2. Develop a formula for views forecasting on the basis of video performance and account analytics.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Thanks to Symfa, we successfully achieved our goal of promoting our video channels. After we started using visualization, we were able to better understand the performance of our viral short videos, what factors are behind a successful video asset and how to create one that will catch on with our audience. The solution helps us promote our video channels with millions of organic views.

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

Symfa's project manager played a pivotal role in facilitating a seamless development process, ensuring that each step occurred without any delays. Communication with the PM and other team members was seamless as if they were in-house.

What was your primary form of communication with Symfa?

• In-Person Meeting
• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

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

They take into account all the requirements, even minor ones, so you could gain the product you really expect. The work was carried out absolutely transparently – we could monitor each development step and slightly adjust our requirements if needed.

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

The entire development cycle proceeded without a single hitch; we were completely satisfied with the deliverables.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the CEO of IntexSoft

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

IntexSoft is a software product development company providing end-to-end software development services for businesses and IT companies worldwide.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

• We were building a comprehensive analytics platform for precision agriculture and we needed to augment our team with an experienced Python developer. Symfa’s Python engineer worked on the web and mobile solution, specifically helping us automate workflows and assisting with data analysis and visualization.

SOLUTION

How did you find Symfa?

Referral

Why did you select Symfa over others?

• Referred to me
• Company values aligned
• Our partners referred Symfa to us as a reliable software development vendor

How many teammates from Symfa were assigned to this project?

1 Employee

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

Symfa's Python engineer played a crucial role in the project. They worked on both the web and mobile solutions, with a particular emphasis on Python development. This encompassed various tasks, including coding, scripting, and application development. Key deliverables included a fully-functioning precision agriculture analytics platform, automated workflows, data analysis reports, data visualization dashboards, and custom software components.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

This engagement allowed us to ramp up our capacity and fill in the expertise gap within days. The new talent seamlessly integrated with our team and shared our high standards of work ethic and quality. And the most obvious and important outcome is the fully-functioning analytics platform that can process any set of agricultural data – soil data, yield data, etc.

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

For this project, we used the Scrum framework to deliver business value iteratively. The team worked under a tight schedule but no deadlines were missed. Communication was clear and effective with regular meetings and discussion sessions.

What was your primary form of communication with Symfa?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

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

In addition to the high level of professionalism, it was inspiring to see how invested they were in the project. It was clear that you can rely on them to deliver high-quality work.

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

Our experience with Symfa was great. Nothing that comes to mind.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the President of a luxury good retailer.

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

eCommere luxury retailer selling home goods products accross US and Canada.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

• Development, design and conversion of 4 eCommerce sites to current .NET Framework
• Insure the sites are moible friendly with excellent performance
• Provide ongoing support and development of eCommerce sites
• Take on various development projects with complex requirements

SOLUTION

How did you find Symfa?

Online Search

Why did you select Symfa over others?

• Pricing fit our budget
• Great culture fit
• Good value for cost
• Company values aligned

How many teammates from Symfa were assigned to this project?

6-10 Employees

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

Symfa has been an amazing partner to work with for all our software development needs. Throughout the years, we have engaged with Symfa on different complex technology projects related to web development, eCommerce sites development, application development, software architecture & design and on-going support. 

Symfa management has always partnered with us to provide the right resources for each project. The software engineers involved on our projects were always top notch, even when it was difficult to get talent elsewhere. I definitely recommend Symfa for any software architecture & development related projects.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Sucesfull implementation of eCommerce sites that incrased revenue and conversions.

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

Symfa management always delivered on time with superior quality. There were challenging projects with tight deadlines and management always found the right resources and planned appropriately to get the job done.

What was your primary form of communication with Symfa?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

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

Unique talent of software engineers Management that understands our needs Overall business understanding of the projects and excellent execution

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

We were very happy with Symfa; they were an excellent partner.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I'm the head of operations for Ringmaster. We provide offshore management for various companies in the U.K. fintech industry.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with AIS Novations?

We have hired them as the development team for one of our U.K. clients.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They provided a full team for developing software that managed remortgages. It's the biggest project we’ve worked on together with them. They helped our client build an entire product from the beginning, structuring the technical side, setting up databases and servers, and developing the back and frontend of the software. The main technologies used were Node.js and React.

We’ve also hired them for a project on behalf of a new client we’re working with. They’re currently developing the technical side of a solution based on chatbot technologies, artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning.

What is the team composition?

Our main point of contact was Sergey (Founder, AIS Novations). They assigned around 15 developers for our biggest project and two or three for our smaller ones.

How did you come to work with AIS Novations?

Some of my colleagues had had a collaboration with Sergey and then recommended AIS Novations to us. The team sent us their offer, we had interviews with the developers, and we got to test them. Based on that, we decided who we preferred to work with.

How much have you invested with them?

The total has definitely been above $50,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started talking to them in June or August 2017, then started the development for our biggest project at the end of August or beginning of September. We started the smaller ones recently, around a month ago. Our work with AIS Novations is still ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Our clients are extremely happy with them. We’ve had comments like 'Where did you find that genius team?'. They know the code well and they perform well even when they inherit code, rather than writing it from the beginning. They're able to read other people’s code and fix it.

We'll continue working with them in the long run. The client was happy with the results from our biggest project, and are insisting on having AIS Novations’ developers continue to work on the project.

How did AIS Novations perform from a project management standpoint?

We're satisfied with their performance. Each of our clients has their own project management standards, but AIS Novations has a good ability to adjust to all kinds of tools, including Jira, Slack, and Trello. There haven’t been any problems on that side. Even if there is a communication issue, they have project managers that can help resolve it. We haven’t encountered any issues on that level.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The most impressive thing to me was the speed at which they’ve been able to learn new technologies, and how fast they’ve been able to adjust inherited code based on new specifications and client requirements.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

Clients need to be specific about what their requirements and specifications are. The clearer they state their requirements and tasks, the better the code will be, and the faster the team will work.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I’m the CEO of Recrutoid Kazakhstan, a recruiting company with a qualitative database of CVs and vacancies for professionals. We focus on those fluent in English or other international languages, as well as those seeking to work in international or large Kazakh companies.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire AIS Novations?

AIS Novations helped us build our website.

What were your goals for this project?

To build a high-level job board where companies can post vacancies and match with great CVs.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

They were recommended by a friend.

Can you go into detail about the services they provided and the scope of the project?

They took over our frontend development almost from scratch because the previous team couldn’t handle it. They helped us to develop our job board in a full scope, from design until we launched.

What was the team composition?

We had a breaking point when we noticed that our previous frontend development team couldn’t handle the project. For that reason, since the beginning, we asked for strong Angular developers. There were people participating in the web development. One backend developer, two frontend developers, two tech project managers.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We had very strict deadlines and the project scope was huge, but their developers did a really great job. They were fast and delivered on time for the website’s launch.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

They immediately provided us with two developers who nailed the interview and jumped into the project. We used Telegram for real-time chat, as well as Jira. It was very effective and the developers were always in touch.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

The most impressive thing is their ability to have only best developers on board, whether it’s a frontend developer or a QA resource. They were always the best.

Are there any areas where they can improve?

Everything is great at this point. We will definitely have more projects with them in the future, as they saved this one.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I’m the IT project manager at RBC Life Sciences and I specialize in outsourced project management. We manufacture, market, and distribute nutritional supplements and personal care products in North America, Southeast Asia, and Australia. We sell through a network of independent distributors and license arrangements.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire AIS Novations?

We needed a knowledgeable and reliable IT team to handle our ongoing e-commerce projects and improve our IT system's efficiency and accuracy.

What were your goals for this project?

RBC Life is a multi-level marketing (MLM) company and we rely on our associates to recruit new customers, so our main goal was to build and improve our enrollment system and our e-commerce websites.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

I had previously hired Sergey Galuze (Founder, AIS Novations) as a contractor for a small project from Elance, which is now Upwork. The project went very well and I felt that he was the reliable, responsive, and knowledgeable tech person we were looking for, so we started the relationship again.

Can you go into detail about the services they provided and the scope of the project?

As an MLM company, we have to build our website and enrollment system based on a commission engine, which is serviced and supported by specialized commission providers. We’ve changed our commission provider a couple of times during the past decades, and it was AIS that helped us build our enrollment and e-commerce websites accordingly, with different technologies, from traditional ASP to .NET, from a C# web form to MVC, and from a customized CMS to popular a CMS in the market.

They also helped us develop an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system which ties together the online orders, shipping system, accounting system, commission system, and our intranet. It flows orders from our web database to the commission database and accounting database respectively.

What was the team composition?

We have a team of three to four developers depending on the workload. Most of the time, the team is made up of one CTO from AIS and two developers, though sometimes we may need help from a UI/UX designer and a database administrator.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

With AIS, we can successfully launch marketing projects and have improved our IT system.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

We’ve worked with several other teams before but it has never worked out. The most challenging part of IT outsourcing is communication as most outsourced teams are in different time zones and speak different languages, which makes the communication over the phone very difficult.

AIS is online whenever you are working, and when emergencies come up, they work day and night until the problem is solved.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

They communicate extremely well.

Are there any areas where they can improve?

I’d recommend for them to create their own QA department. They rely on our QA, which is handled by a business analyst, but I think they need to have their own QA specialists in order to control the quality of their projects.