Uruit by Nearsure

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We provide subscription-based services for commercial real estate brokers, specifically information related to properties, listings, and relationships of the owners of those properties. We also provide a platform for brokers to show listings, link to their own websites, as well as search and look up analytics in the commercial real estate space. I am the chief technology officer of the company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with UruIT?

We were developing a new platform using a relatively new stack at the time, with heavy use of AngularJS on the frontend and Node.js on the backend. We had an Agile approach and wanted to find a nearshore partner that could participate in our standups and scrum meetings, as well as have expertise in our tech stack. UruIT fit that bill. They have a culture of quality software development which isn't typically found with third-party vendors.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

UruIT has become a partner of our company and an extension of our Agile team, as opposed to a vendor for code.

We are using around 20 resources from UruIT, most of them located in Montevideo, Uruguay. We've also had discussions with UruIT about them opening an office in Colombia, which they did. We are working with 4–5 people from that location. Most interactions are done through the actual scrum teams, including the lead, and all other members, whether they're developers, quality assurance specialists, etc. I interact with resources based on our needs, from architecture decisions, high-level refactoring, and so on. As we adjust our scrum teams and move members around, I will work closely with UruIT for that alignment. I've visited them both in Colombia and in Uruguay.

How did you come to work with UruIT?

UruIT was referred to us while we were looking at several companies in Central and South America. After interviewing several companies, we settled on UruIT.

How much have you invested with UruIT?

I don't have this information.

What is the status of this engagement?

We have been working with UruIT for 2 years.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

UruIT is well-versed in Agile development and has provided some coaching, frontend design, and user experience work. UruIT's strength is in creating well-designed, responsive front-end code, as well as full-stack development, compared to other partners we've used.

How did UruIT perform from a project management standpoint?

The velocity offered by our developers from UruIT has been equal to what we would have gotten from resources that cost 3-4 times as much in the US. We used Slack heavily for our collaboration, as well as Google Hangouts. We have several Chromeboxes for meetings, and I've also sent one each to the Uruguay and Colombia offices of UruIT.

What did you find most impressive about UruIT?

UruIT's culture is unique and very much aligns with ours. They have an Agile, creative, and customer-focused approach, looking at the actual end-users of the products that we're building.

Are there any areas UruIT could improve?

UruIT doesn't have much depth in terms of quality assurance, and we've had to supplement this with other resources. UruIT recommends partners for this front.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Gongos brings a consultative approach in developing growth strategies grounded in operationalizing customer-centricity. From product innovation to portfolio management, our teams solve for the tactical to the strategic—today and into the future. By coalescing the disciplines of primary research, data science, and insight curation, Gongos helps fuel an organization’s capacity to gain and apply data-driven wisdom that inspires great consumer-minded decisions.

I am the Senior Director of Technology. I manage our infrastructure and software development staff.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with UruIT?

Market research surveys are a major part of our activity. Our platforms for conducting these were aging, and we wanted to rethink how we integrate them with our other technologies. We had a grand vision for how we wanted them to work together, but didn't have enough developers in-house. We started looking for an outsourced partner which would work as an extension of our team.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We're a solid Microsoft stack company, utilizing Visual Studio, C#, ASP.NET, and SQL server on the backend. UruIT provided database design help, overall system architecture, user interface design and brute-force coding.

How did you come to work with UruIT?

UruIT was referred to us by another market research company. They had been using UruIT and were happy with the services. We assigned a couple of very small projects to UruIT, just to try them out. We were satisfied, so we entered into a much larger engagement.

How much have you invested with UruIT?

The total cost of UruIT's services has been between $500,000 and $1,000,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We have a continual contract with UruIT. They're a permanent part of our team. We started the project in January 2014.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

I don't have any exact stats or metrics, but as a result of our work with UruIT, our communities have been much more efficiently-run. Many processes have been automated, allowing our staff to have more think time, instead of handling tedious tasks. We've restructured our data collection team, based on the platform. It allows a much greater propensity to collaborate in any data collection process. Initially, our survey programmers did 100% of the work. Our redesigned platform allows them to only worry about the programming details, while non-programmers can handle the bulk of the data collection challenge.

What did you find most impressive about UruIT?

UruIT's time zone aligns with ours very well. If we were partnering with someone in India or some other part of the world, it would be very hard for us to sync unless they were working in the middle of the night. Uruguay only has a 1-2-hour difference to our location.

UruIT has become a true member of our team instead of simply taking orders and building something in which they don't believe. UruIT will always call us on any poorly-written user stories, instead of developing the feature regardless.

Finally, UruIT is set apart by the quality of their people; they integrate really well with our team. Their team is laid-back, fun, and not at all stuffy. Everyone has great English skills as well.

Are there any areas UruIT could improve?

Not anymore. At the very beginning, it took some time for our teams to acquire a routine. This isn't necessarily a knock against UruIT. It's true for any teams that are starting out together and creating a platform as large as ours. Having a significant part of our team be exclusively remote came with a learning curve for us as much as for UruIT.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

We are a commercial real estate data and services provider in the United States. We provide data, and applications to use that data, to commercial real estate professionals, including brokers, appraisers, investors, tenants, owners, and pretty much anyone who's involved in commercial real estate. We are one of two companies that provide this service in the United States, and we have been growing aggressively during the last five years. We are currently in about 40 markets, and we are planning to be in the top 65 markets within the next two to three years.

What is your position?

When I began working with UruIT, I was the chief technology officer. I have since taken on a different role as the operations president of one of our business units.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with UruIT?

I reached out to UruIT about a year and a half ago. At that point, we had not been doing anything with an offshore or nearshore provider. The company had worked with offshore and nearshore providers prior to my coming onboard, but they had mixed experiences with that. Our very first engagement was a very short pilot project. We needed some additional capacity with some database work, so we asked them if we could do a three-week trial.

They provided us with one of their people, and we were very impressed with his performance from the get-go. Even within that period of three weeks, we went ahead and brought on another developer, in addition to extending the three weeks. At that point, we went with a six-month engagement. Before the six months was complete, we added even more people to the team.

During that time, due to the type of work we were doing in different departments, we did expand and started using some other offshore providers in India and Pakistan. Our experience with them wasn't bad, but it was not as positive as our experience with UruIT. We are actually in the process of moving all of our outsourced work to UruIT.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement.

We started with database development. At this point, they're engaged across the full stack of development. On the front end, they use mostly AngularJS, but also some.NET NodeJS. We're also looking at using some additional libraries and frameworks out there, like React, as we move forward.

We have service layers, APIs [application programming interfaces], database, and security concerns to address, a lot of front end application development, and integration, so database ETLs [extract, transform and loads], feeds – that type of thing. We have engaged them on UI/UX [user interface/user experience], with very good results. We're also using their scrum master on a couple of projects, and one person is engaged as a by proxy product owner.

We provide our own custom software as a service to clients, so the software we're working on is all custom, and it's web or mobile based.

We are using a blended team approach, and we use agile methodology. Our development teams are typically anywhere from two to five people, and we break the work down to units that team can focus on. Most of the teams are comprised of both stateside and UruIT people, so we make a lot of use of technologies like Google Hangouts and Skype to do daily scrums, stand ups, and retrospectives. We've also brought people from UruIT to our location to have an initial ramp-up period, which I think has contributed a lot to the success in our relationship.

We had no previous experience with blended teams. Initially, it was because UruIT had the technical knowledge, but our development staff had more of the business knowledge. The blended approach allowed that to be transitioned and disseminated.

How did you come to work with UruIT?

I had been provided their information from a business colleague.

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

I don't have an exact figure, but it's been several hundred thousand dollars. It's probably in the range of $200,000 to $1 million.

What is the status of this engagement?

We currently engage 10 or 11 people from UruIT, and we plan to increase that number within the next several months.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

We don't have anything that's quantifiable; however, the feedback we've received has all been positive. Initially, our United States developers were concerned that we were going to move all IT [information technology] operations offshore, or somehow relegate them to just maintenance. The interaction with the UruIT team has been great because, now, it's just like one big team. There's not this concern from our developers; they really enjoy working with the people at UruIT. In some cases, they've developed personal relationships outside of the working relationship, so it's been a very positive experience.

How did UruIT perform from a project management standpoint?

They consistently deliver their assigned work on time and within budget. If they have concerns, they're very proactive about communicating those upfront, and bringing that to the product owner's attention. We were actually less mature than they were when it came to agile methodology, so we've learned from them and have increased our maturity in that. I would classify them as very mature in that respect.

We use an agile software tool called VersionOne to manage all of our user stories, any kind of defect management, that type of thing. We're also using a handful of other tools, like Trello, for metric retrospectives. On a couple of the smaller projects, which were not as involved, we used a tool that UruIT was already using, called Assembla.

Prior to my time with the company, our developers used the waterfall approach. When we engaged with UruIT, we originally planned to mix scrum with waterfall and have a modified agile process. We came to realize that we really just had to commit to agile, that the blended approach was not good. If you are not committed to an agile process, and you wanted to have the blended team approach, it would not work. That's one of the value propositions UruIT brings, that they are definitely an agile team. If you're going to ask them to work on projects in a waterfall approach, it's probably not going to be a good fit.

What distinguishes UruIT from other providers?

UruIT is very proactive in communication, and they're very adept at being direct or blunt in a very professional way. If there are things that we're dropping the ball on, or if they're concerned that we're not following through, they'll make that known in a proactive way. The communication was initially a concern since they speak Spanish as their native language, but we've been very pleased with their communication and presentation skills.

Is there anything UruIT could have improved or done differently?

I can't think of anything. It's been such a positive experience. If anything, my reluctance to be too positive about them is only because I don't want to start competing with other clients for their services.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

We are a consultant company located in St. Louis, Missouri. We have a strong relationship with Microsoft, locally and nationally. We provide software development, architecture, implementation, and deployment services to companies, both in St. Louis and around the country.

What is your position?

I am one of the principals of the company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with UruIT?

We were explicitly looking for an opportunity to add nearshoring as an offering to our customers. We had lost business because the cost to do this work was too high. Previously, I had done some work with nearshore companies, and I had done a bunch of work with offshore companies, and I was definitely interested in seeing if there was some way that we could potentially leverage nearshore work for some of our clients.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement.

It was all on the .NET platform, so it was basically web development. Some of the project work was building a brand new application from scratch, and some of it was making changes to an existing legacy application that was complicated and needed some significant work done to it. Both of them were nontrivial.

We had two projects running concurrently with them, and our intended model was for them to be an extension of us. We were the project leads and the face of the project to our local customer, but this was all done with our customer being well aware of our relationship with them.

In the first project, it was more or less spread evenly between our developers and theirs. Then, on the next project, it was more heavily laid on them. We were still involved, but they had more of a partnership and leadership role in that particular project. They had proven themselves to us, and we were comfortable with them taking on more responsibility because their performance was good on the first project. Our teams had about five of their people altogether. We really didn't want anything larger than that. That was sort of the perfect size.

How did you come to work with UruIT?

We were actively looking for a partner and had been exploring and actually done some traveling down to Costa Rica and other places, looking for a suitable partner. Then, we had a specific opportunity; one of our customers, a marketing services firm here in St. Louis, had a series of projects that they needed help with. We needed some good pricing, so we pitched a nearshore model to them, and pitched how we would manage that with them, and they accepted, and we moved on. That's how it got started.

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

I don't really know for sure, but somewhere in the $150,000 to $200,000 range.

What is the status of this engagement?

The most recent project was completed about a year and a half ago. We're not working with them actively at this point.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

We managed the two projects a little bit differently. One had a very fixed budget and scope, and the other one was a little bit more open-ended. They were good about staying focused on the task that we had set up for them. There wasn't any room in our budget to rework anything; it was important that it be done correct upfront. One of the nice things about working with them was that they strongly embraced agile as a philosophy, and specifically they embraced Scrum as a project management approach, which is exactly how we like to work as well.

By setting up that structure in place, they fell into it naturally because they were comfortable with it. Even though they were a long way away from us, it felt like we were on top of and in complete control of the project at all times. There was never any, "So, what have you been working on?" type of questions during the projects with them.

They were able to integrate themselves with our team quickly on both projects, in a way that allowed them to get up and running, productive, and contribute on the schedule that we absolutely needed to have in order to be successful, on both projects. For me, that was crucial. We just didn't have time to spend cycles figuring out how we would work together. We said, "Hey, how about we work together this way?" They were like, "Perfect" and we just clicked.

How did UruIT perform from a project management standpoint?

We used Bitbucket and GitHub for all of our source code control, between all the developers. We had developers in three different locations working together: the customer's location, our location, and theirs. The company behind Bitbucket has an offering called JIRA, which is a well-known solution, and they have templates specifically designed for Scrum, and we leveraged those. We were all kind of new to JIRA, and specifically Scrum on JIRA, so it took us a little bit to sort of figure out how to leverage it the right way, but that's the tool we used to manage the project.

The Scrum methodology is a great way to make sure that you're on top of what they're doing, and they're getting that all-important feedback on a daily basis. They were smart enough to be aware of this, too. I think it was good to have that kind of structure in place to make sure that all the different remote teams were in sync.

We also leveraged Skype's chat feature, and that was nice. We were in IM [instant messaging] contact with each other all day long, in addition to our daily stand-ups and the Scrum board. I think that really made all the difference in the success of the projects for us. I would be reluctant to set up any kind of nearshore relationship without that in place. 

What distinguishes UruIT from other providers?

I haven't worked with a lot of other nearshore companies. I've worked with a couple out of Costa Rica, and I had good luck with them, too. I wish nearshore arrangements were a little bit of a better-kept secret because sometimes it's hard to get a hold of them. They get very busy. I think what's unique about these guys, in particular, compared to some other nearshore companies I've worked with, is that they're pretty good about making sure that their people are on top of things.

Even though we haven't done business with them for a little while, I stay in touch with them regularly. It's interesting that every time we get into a new technology, like node.js, or Angular.js, or whatever it is, I'll find out that they're dabbling with it, too. UruIT's company culture is very conducive for learning, for them to stay on top of new technologies. I think that that helps because, that way, they're ready, willing, and able to hit the ground running on new projects.

Is there anything UruIT could have improved or done differently?

My honest answer is that I would use them again in a heartbeat, and definitely pitch them to our clients to this day. I was pleased with the quality of the people on their project, especially the technical leaders, who were sharp. I was impressed by the caliber of the technical talent, number one.

Number two, and some of this might be cultural, but compared to offshoring, where you run into the estimation problem time and time again, if they didn't understand something, they would put on the brakes and say, "I don't get it, please explain this to me, so that I don't do it wrong." That was just hugely valuable to us because it meant that the overall quality coming from them was high to begin with before we got into all the testing and system acceptance.

We had one incident where we had one developer who wasn't performing very well. We voiced our concerns with them, and he was replaced with somebody we were pleased with. Honestly, I can't really level any overall criticisms for them.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

We're a digital consultant agency. We have several different practices, including e-commerce, web development, social media consulting, and analytics. My practice focuses on enterprise collaboration, which is typically portal builds, intranets, and extranets, mostly on the Microsoft stack.

What is your position?

I'm the director of enterprise collaboration.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with UruIT?

We did a custom enhancement to a previously existing portal. It was a very niche customization. I believe we were adding a financial calculator application to a portal site that used LazyData. They used Microsoft technologies to do this, mostly .NET.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement in more detail.

We've basically retained the development team for more than a year now. We had them augment our team on multiple different projects, and we used two of their developers. At the moment, we don't utilize a project manager, we interact directly with their folks. We may be adding another layer if we add additional team members in the future, possibly a project manager and a QA [quality assurance] specialist. Right now, it's working fine as it is. We currently handle QA internally with the deliverables they give us.

How did you come to work with UruIT?

I was using one of the freelance sites, seeing what skill sets were around and what the market rates were. We tried to focus on Central America because of the time zone similarity and the cost savings. I started doing research on the different areas, and I noticed that Uruguay seemed to have a lot of potential. I looked at the track records for some development teams there, and I found that UruIT was one of the most reputable companies there. They seemed to have some of the best background information and client experience.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our relationship is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

I don't really have specific figures. I can tell, quality-wise, based on the demand for their services from the other managers and consultants on my team. They're part of several developers we have on staff, and they're requested just as much or more than some of our onsite developers. That's my gauge of how well it's working. 

How did UruIT perform from a project management standpoint?

They're pretty consistent. It is technology, so it's not perfect every time. However, they're well within the bell curve. I've not had to swap developers due to inadequate expertise or anything like that. We use a technology called Assembla, which is just a simple ticketing system. We also use Slack for our communication between the teams, which I recommended. It definitely sets things up well and makes it easy for us to track their progress and provide feedback.

What distinguishes UruIT from other providers?

I believe UruIT's retention rate is unusually good. I'm still using the same folks we worked with at the start. When you're contracting out like this, it's obviously very key for success is not having to deal with the turnover I've seen before, which can have serious detrimental effects on project success.

Is there anything UruIT could have improved or done differently?

Not at the moment. I think as we expand and add more team members from their side, we'll probably find something they can improve. Right now, they're matching up with what we expected from them.

BACKGROUND

Can you please provide a brief description of your company?

We are a systems integrator based in Austin, Texas. We are Microsoft’s largest cloud partner in the SMB space in the central region of the US. We also work with midmarket clients and with local government clients via the delivery of software related services as well as training. We have a training center in Austin, and we are also a training partner for Microsoft.

What is your role and responsibilities?

I am one of the managing partners and I lead the service delivery team as well as our cloud practice.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What were your company’s business goals when working with UruIT?

We’ve been working with them for a while. When we started working with UruIT, we were looking for an offshore or near shore partner that could deliver the same level of quality service that our own staff or local contractors deliver. My company also wanted to get some level of operational savings through lower costs. That was the initial objective and we have continued to use UruIT because there work has been very good.

SOLUTION

Why did your company decide to focus on Microsoft SharePoint projects?

We have been a Microsoft partner for years and like our relationship with them. There is a large market for Microsoft projects in Texas and many companies require training, which is one of our areas of expertise.

We not only use SharePoint internally, we also offer consulting and delivery services and training services around SharePoint. We leverage UruIT’s team of business analysts, developers, graphic artists and project managers in some of our own customer engagements in the US.

What was your process for selecting UruIT?

We looked at their track record, which is very strong. They’re not only award winners but they also work with the Microsoft team down in South America. They’re kind of Microsoft’s go-to-market for large projects, large deployments. In many cases, they will so with a lot of soft contract work under Microsoft in several countries.

I am very familiar with Microsoft standards for that type of work. That was a big deal for me. If they’re good enough for Microsoft, they’re good enough for us. Also we had our technical lead screen them. He gave them a couple of small projects in the beginning to see how their staff worked with that. And we progressively gave them more work and more high profile work. Currently, we’re at a point where they are part of our team for some projects.

What parts of projects are they involved in?

They help with many SharePoint related projects including custom development around SharePoint. It’s all SharePoint related.

Can you give us a sense of the dollar amount or the personnel work hours that UruIT has done for the various projects?

I’m sure it is more than $100,000 total. The type of work includes everything from basic, define design engagements, proof of conflict engagement, to integration work like project server and SharePoint server. UruIT has done migration work for applications from SharePoint on premise to SharePoint Online on Office 365.

We’re doing custom development work right now, creating a document management portal for an engineering firm in Texas. It involves custom development. It involves hosting of the application in Microsoft Azure cloud and also interaction with SharePoint Online. I know they have done some mobile device software development or app development. They have helped graphically design brand new intranets for clients in Texas.

When did they start working with your team?

In 2011.

Do you expect the projects to be completed soon or will the partnership continue?

The work will only increase and looks to be long-term.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Do you have any stats or metrics to track improvement after UruIT completed some work?

The best way for us to measure success is repeat business and/or the client’s asking by name for the engineer in question. From that measure, every project done with UruIT has been a success.

How did UruIT perform?

Excellent. Perfect. More than satisfactory.

When working with UruIT, what is unique or special about them compared to other companies you may have worked with?

They have a lot of resources. They follow strict processes in terms of structured development processes and documentation. UruIT works with global clients, including one of the largest corporations in South America. They display discipline and protocol for each project. Even the small projects get the same amount of attention and detailed documentation.

Looking back on the work, is there any area that you think UruIT could improve upon or you would do differently?

Not really. They always accept my feedback and implement requested changes. I work directly with the owners and we have great communication.

BACKGROUND

Can you please provide some brief background information about your company?

We are a market research company. Our business is simple on the surface. Basically, we conduct surveys on behalf of our clients, a lot of them are Fortune 500 companies. We run statistical models and simulation models on this data to advise the Product Manager or the executive teams of those clients. We advise them on potential issues, customer satisfaction, product rankings and other similar topics.

What is your role and responsibilities?

I’m the head of technology and IT.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For this project, what were your company’s business goals?

Our company’s business goal was to build an online reporting tool that sits on top of our survey technology to give more real-time reporting in a very user-friendly format to our clients.

SOLUTION

Why did you choose to build a customized tool?

We didn’t find anything in the marketplace that has exactly what we wanted. That’s where UruIT came in. They were actually hired before I joined the company. When I joined the company, I completed an evaluation of many different outsourcing vendors and I selected them.

Can you tell me about the scope of the project in terms of what UruIT was involved in?

UruIT did the entire development and database build out. The platform was based on Microsoft’s .NET technology and SQL server and SQL Analytic server. They took care of all of that.

They also support a few legacy applications that we built using .NET and SQL space. UruIT does an awesome job with that.They have very good experience with development, databases and building multidimensional cubes for data processing. These are their strengths in my opinion.

Can you provide a sense of the size of the initiative in either dollar terms or personnel hours?

It was about 5,000 development hours. Cost-wise, the project was probably around $250,000.

When was the project completed?

It was finished in February, 2013. My company has worked with UruIT on many projects overall. We have work with UruIT on specific projects as well as ongoing support since 2011.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the results of the project?

We built two tools. They are both functioning well and people like them. The project was successful and we have positive employee feedback.

How has UruIT performed?

They did very well. They understand the requirements. They tried to help us avoid common mistakes, provide ideas and they developed the software.

When working with UruIT, was there anything unique or special about them compared to some other companies you may have worked with?

UruIT is very interested in doing the right thing. They’re very interested in understanding the business problem and providing a good solution.

Looking back on the project, is there any area that you think  UruIT could improve upon or maybe you would do differently?

I think they could improve upon the architecture side of the solution. They’ve been improving in that area, their development capabilities are stronger than their architecture capabilities.