UIPEP Technologies Private Limited

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CTO of D8amatiks, a startup that provides a Software-as-a-service compliance solution for the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) for small and medium enterprises (SMEs).

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with UIPEP Technologies?

We’d hired other developers, but they weren’t working out, so I began looking for another development house.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We provide a framework for SMEs to become compliant with GDPR, and that includes multiple product lines. One takes them through the readiness process by asking a series of questions that change depending on their answers. UIPEP helped set up the skip logic so that the questionnaire functioned properly. The web portion is in Java and Angular, and the backend is in MongoDB.

UIPEP also helped build an automated system that allows end users to perform yearly audits, generate database and panic reports, and conduct privacy impact assessments. They helped us establish a variety of components that do the full cycle of the GDPR compliance framework. They built the system in the Amazon Web Services cloud, and it requires minimal intervention from our side. They installed help sections and glossaries that end users can access to answer their questions, making the product a self-service platform.

What is the team composition?

They provide a team of developers who work solely on our product.

How did you come to work with UIPEP Technologies?

A friend recommended them; he’d invested in a startup that worked with them. My co-founder and I did a series of interviews to make sure they were a good fit. One of their founders had done work in our niche area, so he understand things we’d been struggling to explain to other developers. We saw that they could accomplish what we needed, so we hired them.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent around $40,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We’ve been working together since July 2017. The first major portion of the project is done, and the last part has about two weeks left.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Everyone loves the look and feel of the products. We’ve only received positive feedback from test users.

How did UIPEP Technologies perform from a project management standpoint?

They don’t provide a project manager, but we have daily calls with their team to make sure we’re all on the same page. We’ll sometimes have multiple calls a day. We use Slack to document all of our communication and Amazon Chime for voice calls. We’ve also visited their headquarters in India a few times to meet with the team and get to know them face-to-face.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’re energetic and hard-working, wanting to make the best product possible. We work well as a team to maximize the partnership and do good work. If we disagree, they’ll sit down and have a conversation to come up with a solution. We’ve changed our goals quite a few times, and they’ve been quite flexible.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They need to improve their ability to communicate project timelines and stick to those deadlines. if they’re not going to meet them, they need to proactively let the client know. They used to be afraid to deliver bad news, but now they let us know right away, which we appreciate. They also need to better understand how an average user would interact with the products, not a technical person. That understanding would help them build more user-friendly products.