Vinta Software

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the ICT Associate of United Nations Institute for Social Development

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

The United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD) is an autonomous research institute within the UN system that undertakes multidisciplinary research and policy analysis on the social dimensions of contemporary development issues.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Vinta Software to accomplish?

• Refine the business requirements for an AI-powered, knowledge management and academic research system suite.

SOLUTION

How did you find Vinta Software?

Clutch Site

Why did you select Vinta Software over others?

• High ratings
• Close to my geographic location
• Referred to me
• AI development expertise

How many teammates from Vinta Software were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

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

Project objective

The objective is to integrate AI solutions to create innovative learning experiences and facilitate knowledge exchange on the Socialprotection.org platform.

Vinta's contribution

Following a preliminary analysis of the project's terms of reference, Vinta identified several opportunities for project enhancement:

• Refine the scope of the foundational systems in the suite by exploring ideal functionalities to address user issues (optimizing resources).
• Conduct a technical feasibility study.
• Design UI wireframes.
• Prepare budget and development schedule (with an open scope).
• Implement transparency and risk mitigation strategies.

Deliverables

The deliverables include:

• Product roadmap
• User-centered goals
• Cohesive user journey
• Wireframes
• Technical feasibility study
• Schedule and estimated budget

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Vinta successfully delivered all planned products with exceptional quality, adhering to the agreed timeframe and budget.

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

We needed to refine the business requirements for a sophisticated suite of AI-powered knowledge management and research systems in a period no longer than three weeks. Vinta's effective planning and execution was indicative of a strong project management culture, guided by agility and efficiency. Their selected methods made it possible to accomplish our goals.

What was your primary form of communication with Vinta Software?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

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

I was impressed by how Vinta applied agile design and requirements engineering methods. Within less than three weeks, they extracted the necessary information to devise a body of cutting-edge, high-definition wireframes, a technical solution proposal, and their corresponding user stories. 

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

Vinta Software's performance was superb! I do not have improvement suggestions at this time. 

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the VP Engineering of Quilted Health

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Quilted Health provides maternal healthcare and delivery services.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Vinta Software to accomplish?

• Support for legacy Midwife EHR SaaS product
• Evaluation and MVP of new Midwife EHR product

SOLUTION

How did you find Vinta Software?

Referral

Why did you select Vinta Software over others?

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

How many teammates from Vinta Software were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

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

Quilted Health develops and maintains an industry-leading EHR software for the Midwife market in the US. Over the past ten years, Quilted Health has grown the product to be a feature-rich application that enables midwives to provide their care in various health settings.

Simultaneously, as the push to move health records from paper to digital formats within the United States, new standards for interoperability and data-modeling emerged. Increasingly, it became clear to Quilted Health that it was necessary to adopt these new standards if it was going to continue being the industry leader. Vinta Software was brought in to help with three key deliverables:

• Develop new domain-specific data models based on FHIR Spec R4
• Bootstrap new Care Provider Portal built atop latest web standards/best practices
• Relaunch Quilted Health EHR branding

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Vinta Delivered across these three areas:

• New domain models based on FHIR R4: We have an end-to-end Encounter flow working with working Encounter Notes, Vitals forms, Prenatal Flowsheets, and more.
• New Care Provider Portal (application): We now have a Vite/React Application built using fully customizable forms using Mantine UI. We are able to deploy multiple times per day safely.
• Relaunch Quilted Health EHR branding: A fully customizable design system was delivered so updating design language takes days instead of months.

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

One of the most responsive agencies I have ever worked with. Vinta has strong internal values that spill over into the work they deliver. For example, they have strong ownership and are proactive in finding ways to improve process and make work more efficient. 

Their model and approach is very effective. Although we were only looking for software augmentation, we were also provided with skilled project managers that made sure we stayed on track. With all of this, we delivered our very ambitious project on time and with very few bugs.

What was your primary form of communication with Vinta Software?

Virtual Meeting

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

They really live their values.

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

None that come to mind

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Founder of a booking application provider.

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Meeting room booking application for SMB

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Vinta Software to accomplish?

• Complete the web application and deploy

SOLUTION

How did you find Vinta Software?

Conference talks

Why did you select Vinta Software over others?

• High ratings
• Experts in Django/React

How many teammates from Vinta Software were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

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

Take a half built application with code that was below production standard and completely refactor it into a scalable, secure and highly performing, scaleable web application. While basic CRUD functionality was working for creating the main objects, the booking and canceling logic was not working andneeded to be completely rebuilt. 

The backend was also refactored during the job. It is now a great piece of software, of which I have full confidence, more than worthy of being the MVP that it currently. After it has proven it's place in the market, we can continue building on the solid foundation it now has.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The application worked. The booking and canceling logic that was never implemented by prior agency, was finally working as designed. All of the complex permissions - between Users and Object - worked. The fact that all this business logic finally worked, when previously it never did.

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

On time every time. They respond to my needs with genuine concern and attention to detail and never failed to deliver.

What was your primary form of communication with Vinta Software?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

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

Professionalism. They took responsibility for the project as if it was their own. Equal to that, was the first reason I approached Vinta, which is their technical skills.

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

There is no area of improvement that I can think of.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the CTO of Lastmile Retail

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Local pages and listings management.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Vinta Software to accomplish?

• Software development
• Process improvement

SOLUTION

How did you find Vinta Software?

Speaking events

Why did you select Vinta Software over others?

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

How many teammates from Vinta Software were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

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

Enhance digital advertising capabilities of an enterprise location management platform with a new UX and new content-driven features.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

• Delivered new set of forms and features on time. Improved performance by >50%

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

Their project management is first-rate. Vinta goes above and beyond to adapt to the culture and reporting cadences of their customers, and takes an active role in continuous improvement.

What was your primary form of communication with Vinta Software?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

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

Plug-and-play. Vinta hit the ground running and started delivering value very quickly. Relatively low oversight is required and they can be trusted to plan and execute difficult projects independently.

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

No project is perfect; Vinta is extremely responsive to feedback and will come to the table with their own recommendations for improvement as well. Even after a year of working together we continuously re-assess what's working well and what can be improved (both internally to Vinta and across our org), resulting in a very strong team.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Head of Product of PlusPlus, Inc.

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

PlusPlus provides an enterprise-wide learning platform that unlocks internal knowledge sharing at scale.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Vinta Software to accomplish?

• Launch our MVP
• Expand and iterate on our product offerings
• Operate/maintain our SaaS platform

SOLUTION

How did you find Vinta Software?

Other

Why did you select Vinta Software over others?

Great culture fit, Referred to me, Company values aligned

What was the size of Vinta Software’s team?

10-15

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

Vinta partnered with us to launch our very first MVP for an enterprise client. This was more than 6 years ago. Since then, the Vinta team provided full-stack enterprise SaaS application development services, including: user research, problem discovery, prototyping, application development, testing, launch, customer support, validation, constant iteration, and ongoing site maintenance.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

• Feature development velocity
• Site reliability
• Customer satisfaction

Thanks to our deep partnership with Vinta, we have been able to launch an operate an Enterprise-grade SaaS offering, that effectively competes with teams that are 100x our size.

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

The Vinta team managed our product development end-to-end. Most of the features have been delivered on time and within the scope of what was requested. The team has been able to respond to our ever-changing needs (as we are learning from the market) and adjust accordingly.

What was your primary form of communication with Vinta Software?

Virtual Meeting, Email or Messaging App

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

Partnership and ownership. The team showed up eager to build great software and ensure it operated well in production. Furthermore, the team is constantly challenging themselves to improve our tooling, processes, frameworks, and general methodology for software development. They actively attend conferences, learn from (and share with) the industry, and apply those learning to our product development.

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

It would be easy to say "more of everything" (e.g. faster development, more responsive/reliable site, more ownership, etc), but that can be said for any team anywhere. What I really appreciate about Vinta is their mindset of constant improvement. They look for what's not working well and then go after it, whether it's swapping people, bringing new tools, or improving our practices.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the product manager and customer success director for a legal software as a service company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Vinta Software, and what were your goals?

When we first created our software, we used a concept for our softwares deadlines that required users to understand abstract concepts. Each type of deadline had a specific use case, and some were required in order to use others. Overall the concept failed to scale, and users complained about how unintuitive it is when trying to keep track of their deadlines.

SOLUTION

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

We searched online and found Vinta (among others). They had the necessary full-stack experience we would need, in addition to having in-house designers.

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

We had a kickoff meeting late in December to determine the overall goal for the project. The project requirement was to take the entire timeline and overhaul it into a user-friendly, easily understood, and quick interface. However, we couldn't lose any of the necessary complexity that users had come to rely on.

We used a series of tools over the course of this project, from Asana, Whimsical, Figma, Sketchup. We started in the design and discovery phase and gradually came to a design that allowed for folding complexity. Users could use the interface simply, but when they needed complexity they could expand out to adjust the functionality.

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

A project manager was the main point of contact, but we had at least 2 designers, and 5 full-stack engineers at points.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Our users raved about the changes, and we were able to land several larger clients based solely on the ability to seem simple but allow complexity. The implementation also improved our processing times on a daily basis, so the software ran smoother overall.

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

We had weekly meetings to discuss progress, sometimes bi-weekly. We would often discuss async over Slack, Asana, Clickup. They were exceptionally easy to reach and work with over the course of the feature re-design.

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

They are willing to work with us when we were still getting our feet under us as a software, and provided top level designers and engineers to us. I appreciate how helpful, professional, and intelligent they are. They listen and adapt as we make adjustments.

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

There were bugs during the development that caused minor hiccups, but overall they were relatively minor, so there's not much I would change.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm Chief of Staff at a DTC home management startup. We were struggling to set up some of the back-end piping related to tracking customer acquisition, and engaged Flavio at Vinta to help.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Vinta Software, and what were your goals?

We asked Flavio to set up UTM tracking for our website, automate pushes of data captured through our website lead form to Hubspot and Django, set up a Google Maps autofill so people didn't have to manually enter their addresses on the lead form, and a few other items.

SOLUTION

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

Honestly, availability - Vinta came highly recommended and they had the time, so we jumped on it

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

We asked Flavio to set up UTM tracking for our website, automate pushes of data captured through our website lead form to Hubspot and Django, set up a Google Maps autofill so people didn't have to manually enter their addresses on the lead form, and a few other items. Flavio worked for 15 hours and was highly responsive by Slack and email, going out of his way to talk us through issues and working with our dev team.

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

1 person - not sure official position

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

All the tasks were completed correctly and on time

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

Flavio was proactive in his outreach, slacking me ahead of time to make sure he stayed unblocked. He used Slack, email, and google meet

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

They do good work, fast

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

N/A

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I'm the CEO of a legal tech company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Vinta Software?

We needed additional developers to help us rebuild our product faster than we were able to internally. 

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Vinta Software provided development services for an intellectual property software used to manage intellectual property filings, using Python, Django, and React. 

What is the team composition? 

We work with four developers from their team. 

How did you come to work with Vinta Software?

They came very highly recommended and had great references. They also seemed to have a good balance of both senior and junior-level developers. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We've been working with them for about two years and the relationship is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Vinta Software sped up our rate of development by over 50%. They're a great outsourced development shop option overall and we continue to work with them based on many intangible reasons like their high level of professionalism, responsiveness, and fluency in English. 

How did Vinta Software perform from a project management standpoint?

They're very communicative and organized, using Asana and Trello to track projects. They always provide a debrief of their work and are quick to address any issues that arise. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their high level of communication, project management, and quality of work make them great outsourced partners to work with. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

Just as with any developer, there are always some challenges in balancing the scope of projects when it comes to feature creeping and everything in between. Overall, however, they're good at addressing any issues as they come up.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I'm the co-founder and head of engineering at Tesorio, an enterprise financial platform that helps B2B and B2C companies with cash flow forecasting and their B2B collections process.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Vinta Software?

We had a very small team of engineers internally but wanted to augment that.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Vinta provided software development services to us by augmenting our team with their developers. They used our tech stack which is Python Django on the backend and modern React stack on the frontend.

What is the team composition?

We worked with a senior partner and a mid developer.

How did you come to work with Vinta Software?

I met one of their founders at a local Python conference in San Francisco. I was really impressed with his presentation and decided to chat with him more. When I learned he had a software company, I wanted to try to work with him and his team. I looked up more about them including their GitHub opensource reports. I was really impressed by the company as a whole.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from January to May 2018.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

They really helped us a lot. They were able to really contribute heavily to the overall architecture and development of the product. We have a quite complex product. We also set a high bar for engineering quality while maintaining speed to meet aggressive goals. Their team was able to meet and even exceed our expectations, even while working remotely. They become part of our team and, when the project ended, we were sad to see them go. They did a good job and it was a great experience.

How did Vinta Software perform from a project management standpoint?

Our arrangement was an augmentation of our existing team with their staff. They were part of our daily stand-up and everything like that. They have their project managers and typically work in their own teams. Because their developers worked within our team, we ensured most of the project management.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We appreciated that they weren’t just contractors to us. It’s our company philosophy that we don’t just want to give them the specs and expect them to execute. We want to get feedback to see what’s difficult and what can be improved. They brought that to the table. They didn’t just accept the spec sheet as is, they questioned it—and ultimately made the product better as a result of their input. They were careful and thoughtful about the engineering aspects but also about the product itself. Their feedback on the product development made a huge difference.

Are there any areas they could improve?

We didn't feel there was much to improve. They exceeded a lot of our expectations in terms of how they collaborated with us.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.
I was the founder of a coffee-trading startup platform. It unfortunately no longer exists, but this doesn’t lessen the relationship we’ve had with Vinta Software in working through much of it.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Vinta Software?
We hacked together a platform, which would be shown to investors to obtain funding. We were getting more business than we initially thought we would, so we needed someone to go in and test everything, write scripts, and make sure all features functioned as intended. We also needed to build many of the feature-sets that didn’t previously exist. I had worked with several other developers and was shocked at how quickly Vinta’s developer was able to start the initial process.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?
We worked directly with Flávio Juvenal, one of Vinta’s developers. I believe he also used other coders for writing scripts, but I don’t know how many. He was a value-add developer and walked us through why we should prioritize one thing over another and what should be done sooner rather than later. He not only identified issues, but also showed us why certain elements weren’t working.

Instead of just working on what we assigned them blindly, Vinta worked on the consulting side of things as well. They really were focused on understanding what we were trying to accomplish and providing alternate ways to develop. Our CTO was also impressed by his collaboration with Vinta’s team.

I have a limited knowledge of the development side, whereas our CTO had experience in this area. We were using a newer dynamic frontend platform based on JavaScript with NoSQL and MongoDB. We had a client-side database in place and were able to run and update certain things in real-time on the user end without going back to our main database.

How did you come to work with Vinta Software?
I looked through the top listings and reached out to Vinta Software based on their position. Their price and knowledge of our tech stack were good.

How much have you invested with Vinta Software?
The cost of their work was between $10,000­–$20,000.

What is the status of this engagement?
We initially reached out to Vinta Software in April 2015 and worked together for 5-6 months. We had a lot of ongoing work along the way, which Vinta tested for us.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?
The most important reflection on Vinta’s group is that we continued to use them after the initial work. We occupied the WeWork coworking space, and there were other dev shops there that engaged with Vinta Software based on the work they did for us.

Flávio Juvenal flew out to San Francisco to meet and work with our team, but we also introduced him to several other partners. My understanding is that Vinta got business from this.

How did Vinta Software perform from a project management standpoint?
What really stood out to me was Vinta’s flexibility and responsiveness. If something happened, even if it was during late hours at their location in Recife, Brazil, I could send them a message and get a reply immediately. Usually, I’d have to tell them that it could wait until the next day. Vinta was more responsive than we needed them to be. I don’t remember what was used as a bug-tracking platform.

What did you find most impressive about Vinta Software?
The most important aspect was that they didn’t jump into any work without understanding it first. Sometimes, things can be complicated between 2 different cultures and languages, but not only is Vinta’s team proficient in English, they also made sure they understood what we were trying to accomplish without a lot of direction. This made me a lot more comfortable working with them compared to some other developers I’ve used. We never had to recode anything Vinta did.

Are there any areas Vinta Software could improve?
They could have moved to San Francisco. Had we closed our funding, we were hoping to convince Vinta to open an office in our city since that’s how closely we wanted to work together, going forward.

I am working on another project on which I hoped I could use Vinta, but they’re pretty booked. I would like them to grow substantially so that we could continue collaborating. Even though they don’t have the availability to take on certain projects, they’re still advising us without even charging us.