Threadable.io

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO of a delivery company. We provide businesses and residential customers with the ability to place orders for things like groceries, newspapers, and kitchen cleaning products. We provide a subscription-based service that enables our customers to get regular deliveries.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Threadable.io?

Our customers used to place orders via email and phone calls. We had about 150 customers and used to get 10–20 calls a day with people changing their orders, so we had someone taking phone calls full-time and updating order information manually. Then, we would use paper orders every morning to gather and deliver the products. 

The challenge was that it took us too long to pick and pack. Moreover, we made too many mistakes, received many customer complaints, and it was too expensive to run our business manually. During that time, it took me five days to generate invoices at the end of every month. We wanted to enable customers to manage their orders and streamline our pick and pack process. 

This solution had another challenge: we needed to charge different prices because we do tenders so that businesses can win the best prices on different products. We also the system to manage changes in prices according to manufacturers. We hired Threadable to help us transform our business and make it digital.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Threadable provides us with software development services. First, we had a discovery phase where we explained the way things worked. They came into our warehouse and watched us. They also sat with the people taking phone calls and monitored them to understand the detail of the problem we faced. 

Then, they went through a design phase for the operational and back office system, screens, and features we needed. They went through a few iterations and then built the software. The team would deliver a new version of it every week; we would give feedback and incorporate new ideas to put into the next release. 

After that, we went through a parallel testing phase whereby we would still use our paper-based solution and the new one simultaneously to automate the picking and packing. Threadable did checks and balances to ensure that everything was working correctly and that they fixed any bugs. 

Then, they launched the tool, which includes an invoicing system, pick and pack, an order change management system, and a billing system. The team used a SQL database, PHP, Flutter, and Javascript. The mobile app is for iOS and Android. Additionally, they helped us with an information security manual and a data processing manual. 

What is the team composition?

We worked with a core team of five people from Threadable: Tim (Product Manager), Tomasz (CTO & Architect), a lead engineer, a QA person, and Pablo (Senior Principal Software Engineer), who built all our servers. 

How did you come to work with Threadable.io?

One of our drivers used to work with a logistics company, and it turned out that Threadable was involved in building a tool for them. 

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent $200,000–$999,999.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in August 2019, and the engagement is ongoing. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Thanks to Threadable’s work, our pick and pack time has been reduced by about 40%, from three hours to around one hour. That’s a huge difference, enabling us to pack more in less time. As a result, we can serve more customers, so we’ve taken on 50% more business since the system went live. Moreover, we’ve only had to increase the drivers without increasing our back office operations staff. 

Additionally, our office is pretty much paperless now. While it used to take me 4–5 days to type up the detailed invoices my clients wanted, now I just press a button, which takes me two minutes. We were doing the parallel testing in February 2020, and then the country went into lockdown in March 2020, so if it weren’t for Threadable’s work, we probably wouldn’t be in business today.

How did Threadable.io perform from a project management standpoint?

During the bulk of development, they had a daily meeting every morning, and I would attend a couple of those a week. We would also have a formal agenda meeting every Wednesday to look at what had been done the previous week and any course corrections. 

Overall, we have a lot of communication, and they’re great at that. We use Jira as a project management tool to give them feedback. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

Threadable has bought into our business and become part of our team. They care and want this system to be an enormous success. I’ve recommended them to many people I know due to their attention to detail. I appreciate that they’ve guided us in terms of information security, governance, and data protection; they’ve gone above and beyond. 

At first, I was really scared to make this investment, but the product is amazing. Threadable has held our hand through the entire process. They understand we’re not a technology company and have treated us with the utmost respect. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

I don’t think there’s anything they need to improve.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm CEO of Peeled. Peeled connects brands and lenders, enabling any brand to offer loans. With Peeled, brands can embed a customised, digital lending experience into their product, transforming the way people access money.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Threadable.io, and what were your goals?

Peeled is a FinTech start-up. We needed a third party business to lead the technical area of our business. Our goal was to out in place rigouress dev lifecycle management and build an MVP. Additionally, building our own tech team was an objective.

SOLUTION

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

Vendor short-list was via trusted referals. We ran an assessment process with three vendors. These were categorised as follows:

• Ownership, Drive & Ambition Technology vision
• Relationship & Fit– including partners
• Plan to deliver the MVP - Approach, timing, deliverables, roles and responsibilities, working arrangements etc
• Outline architecture & tech stack - Including rational
• Operating rhythm - How we engage, tools, planning, reporting, management
• Resource allocation - How this is organised, who, roles etc- we would like to see who is on the team.
• Commercial arrangement
• Cost A plan to support the building of PF’s IT team and the handover
• References / Sites/ Track Record
• Delivery of required scope
• Leadership & Commerciality
• Ability to support BD
• Quality of team
• Location of Team

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

Peeled required a technology and architecture strategy and engineering capability to build and launch an MVP Version 1.0 of their consumer finance platform Primary delierables included:

• [Infrastructure] The provisioning of a hosted environment for Peeled Infrastructure & configuration of appropriate Security practices around the processing and management of data (incl. backups and failover / recovery)
• [Platform Build] The architecture, build and delivery of the core Peeled platform to meet the documented UX Journeys, secure integration of 3rd Party service providers APIs and design of business processes outside of the software to enable the objectives of the project to be realized. 
• [Capability Building] Implementation and training of appropriate Peeled staff in a best practice engineering process to include Product Management, Engineering, Automation, Security, QA and Release Management.
• [Tooling] Configuration of tooling (Jira, Confluence, Rancher, TeamCity, Azure/AWS, Failover, High Availability, Backups, Automated testing, Continuous Integration and Release/Rollback processes, etc.) to enable automation, auditing and traceability of activities across the infrastructure 
• [Recruitment] Interviewing, testing and short-listing of potential full-time technical candidates to the Peeled management team. Recommended candidates will be capable of supporting, enhancing and managing the best practice engineering process upon dis-engagement of the Threadable team and thus providing the minimum level of self-sufficiency to the Peeled team. A Project/ Product roadmap was created. It included core EPIC's and was timebound. The process included for example, design workshops, functional requirement definition, infrastructure, integration, engineering and launch elements. Effort was organised around sprints.

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

CTO / Product Management Senior Architect DevOps Engineer / Architect Senior Software Engineer HTML Designer

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The MVP launched as planned on the 14th December 2018. The objective of supporting Peeled to hire it's own tech team was achieved.

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

Collaboration was effective, disciplined and clear. We primarily communicated with Jira and via Slack. Daily stand-ups were run and management met weekly to review progress and engage in design/ functional discussions.

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

Our engagement allowed us direct access to senior professionals. Threadable.io made us feel like we were one team. Were flexible and empathised with the commercial and business elements of our engagement. In effect we our own part-time CTO and his team, that were focused on delivering results.

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

Nothing to add here.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO of xWave Technologies, a digital health startup. We create electric smart referral platforms for hospitals. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Threadable.io?

Around 20%–50% of radiology referrals for patients are inappropriate for them. Given that, we want to develop a cloud-based platform that enables clinicians to select the most appropriate scans for patients based on their clinical problems. We’ve hired Threadable to provide custom software development services for this project. 

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We initially engaged with Threadable through Mark (CEO & CTO), who served as our consultant. Our teams ran a series of planning workshops with him to scope out the workflow before writing any code. We then brought the workflow to hospitals and potential users to refine it. Once it was refined and signed off by stakeholders, Threadable engineered the platform from scratch and coded it until we had the first go-live, hospital-ready version of the app.

Moreover, Mark and the Threadable team have supported us through our cybersecurity and data protection-related activities. He’s worked with us on developing an integration engine based on AWS, which we’ve also integrated into our health systems. 

Since this project, we’ve hired internal engineers. However, we still work with Threadable. They provide us with additional engineering resources whenever we need them. Mark also continues to be our consultant CTO. 

What is the team composition?

We’ve interacted with five people from their team. Mark serves as the project leader and CTO, while two software engineers build the platform and its integrations. A project manager keeps everything on track, while a UI/UX designer works on the platform designs and wireframes. 

How did you come to work with Threadable.io?

We were looking for a team with specific expertise in health technology. Threadable had a great reputation in the health and life sciences industry, and they’d already worked with two leading startups. As a result, we chose them for this project. 

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent around €200,000 (approximately $230,000 USD) on the project. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We started the workshops in January 2020, and the actual development and engineering commenced in April 2020. We’re still working with them. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

To measure success, we check the appropriateness of the product’s radiology referrals. After implementing Threadable’s work, we’ve seen an 8% increase in the radiology referrals’ positive impact. We’ve also seen a 99.63% reduction in the average referral transit time; it’s now down to 14 minutes from 7.5 working days previously — a truly strong success data. 

How did Threadable.io perform from a project management standpoint?

Threadable’s project management has been excellent. Mark is an excellent technology planner, and under this guidance, the team has managed our budgets and resources carefully and balanced them with our requirements. Mark has also come up with solutions for when we scale up and move to different countries. In other words, he’s also brought much efficiency to our future and to the way we develop our system. 

In terms of project management tools, we handle everything through Confluence and Jira. Moreover, we do all of our development work in sprints; we do either week-long or two-week sprints. Everything is clear, and all tickets are active. All of our backlogs are also there. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

Threadable’s ability to plan is quite impressive. When we hear back from a potential customer, I come up with a feature that will meet their needs. Then, I bring Mark and his team in to build the product well — they always build products that can last for the long term. Overall, they develop sophisticated platforms, and we never run into dead ends. This partnership has been invaluable to us. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, there aren’t any. It’s been an exceptional experience for us. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Communicate your intentions clearly with Threadable, and you won’t regret hiring them.