Tucanoo Solutions Ltd

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the founder of an international money transfer operator with headquarters in Canada. We send money to a number of countries, including Nigeria, which is our primary corridor.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Tucanoo Solutions Ltd?

We needed a secure online platform that supports multiple payment options and provides a rich experience for our customers. We offer a couple of products on the online platform. The first one is remittance, which is the ability to spend money and have it delivered in less than a minute to the recipients. That option allows us to have competitive exchange rates that require integrations with different online platforms as well.

The second product is called mobile top-up. It allows users to send credits instead of funds on their mobile phones, so they can use them to make phone calls and data plans. Beyond that, we also offer bill payment. This consists of paying utility bills from anywhere in the world for people who can’t go through that process.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Tucanoo Solutions is working with the technology aspect of our business. For any online platform, the risk profile is very high, and Tucanoo has helped us design different workflows for each phase of the project, including UI/UX based on the site’s design we’ve already had.

Tucanoo also built the infrastructure, in terms of the backend. This includes the encryption and hosting on the AWS platform to pop out the elasticity and other things with AWS.

Tucanoo has been able to help us with operations enhancements, resulting defects, and social media marketing. They’ve also created content for FAQ and email notifications.

What is the team composition?

David (Founder) is my main point of contact, and Tucanoo has engaged 2–3 people over the course of the project.

How did you come to work with Tucanoo Solutions Ltd?

We found Tucanoo online. They seemed to be the company that better understood what we were trying to do. We knew we had the right firm because, with the first demo, Tucanoo brought our idea into life better than any other company we had worked with.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent around $50,000–$100,000 CAD (approximately $41,000–$81,000 USD).

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Tucanoo in April 2012. The partnership is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

In terms of rating and guest feedback, we have BBB and BBB+ bond credit ratings. We’re not on the big board yet, but our flow competes easily with any of the top providers. I’d say it’s actually better because it’s seamless — we haven’t done things in a conventional way.

We have received positive feedback on our website flow’s implementation. It’s a simple one-page spreadsheet where users can do all their calculations and finish the process. I don’t see any competitor doing that. Our competitors’ flows follow different steps, and if people forget something, they can go back to the beginning.

We’ve had a different social media marketing strategy, but Tucanoo has given us the idea to invest a certain amount of money to test and see what happens. We’ve seen a growth in our signup conversion rate. The results have been crazy and exponential. Tucanoo has done a very good job on that.

How did Tucanoo Solutions Ltd perform from a project management standpoint?

We have different time zones, so Skype has been our primary communication channel for chat, voice, and video. 

Tucanoo works with another company in the UK that helps with some aspects of project management. We’ve been using Jira and Java to develop the workflow and Atlassian for the documentation. Tucanoo does their work very well.

We have a production deployment multiple times a day. The time to market that Tucanoo has achieved is fantastic. Without them, we wouldn’t be able to do this quickly. They respond to our ideas positively, and they’ve been able to improve on any idea we’ve had. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

 The quality of Tucanoo’s work is most impressive. That’s very important to us, especially in the financial aspect. We’re constantly under threats from attackers who are trying to hack the system. We’ve been able to sleep at night knowing that the system Tucanoo has developed is secure. That’s outstanding for us. 

I feel Tucanoo is a diamond we’ve found. We’ve worked together for 10 years, and we’ve never met, but they’re part of our business.

Are there any areas they could improve?

 It would be very helpful to know how Tucanoo is growing and expanding into new capabilities. We’re looking for someone who can work on some services we want to offer. Tucanoo helps us with them, without even knowing they can do it. 

Any advice for potential customers?

Be clear and understand what you want. It’d help you and Tucanoo to not waste time. We've defined our project very well and I think that’s one of the things that helps Tucanoo bring our ideas to life quickly — it has been like magic.