Wattanak, Inc

Introduce your business and what you do there.

My company is Brooksource, an IT staffing and consulting firm. We partner with enterprise-level organizations across the Chicagoland area. 

What challenge were you trying to address with Wattanak, Inc?

We needed Wattanak to work with our client, Beam Suntory, which at the time wanted to expand their Magento e-commerce platform. They’re in the beverage and spirits industry, with brands like Jim Beam under them. 

What was the scope of their involvement?

The owner and founder of Wattanak, Inc served as our consultant working on-site with our client. He worked on Beam Suntory’s e-commerce platform across their brands. He also helped scale Magento into the client’s e-commerce environment and supported the rollout of a strategy for selected brands within that portfolio.

They worked with Beam Suntory’s leadership to come up with plans to modernize their platform and create a roadmap for future work. He also leveraged his financial skills throughout the entire project. 

What is the team composition?

I only worked with the owner, who was a Magento architect.

How did you come to work with Wattanak, Inc?

I came across Wattanak’s profile on a job posting website, and their experience aligned well with what the manager was looking for so we hired them.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our work lasted from June 2020–January 2021.

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

Wattanak was able to enhance the client’s platform and drive it forward. They improved the overall customer experience on the e-commerce side of things when it came to purchasing products. They successfully did that in about six months. They also provided thought leadership when it came to putting forth best practices around the e-commerce site. 

How did Wattanak, Inc perform from a project management standpoint?

Wattanak provided technical leadership when it came to Magento and the e-commerce platform. We checked in with the manager that oversaw them on a bi-weekly basis, asking for feedback on how they were doing. Every single time, the feedback was positive. 

They performed well. The hiring manager and the team meshed with him very well. He was also able to get started and acclimated with the client’s environment and systems during the onboarding process.

He definitely helped fill the gap that Beam Suntory was experiencing at the time. He was a very high-level consultant for the Magento e-commerce platform, and I’d love to work with him again if the right opportunity came our way.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Wattanak’s skillset was impressive. We're in the IT industry, and Magento is a very niche skillset. Not a lot of people have that knowledge. A lot of times, it's hard to find those people. They had every skillset that Beam Suntory was looking for. 

Before meeting them, Beam Suntory hadn’t spoken to or come across anyone else that provided the level of expertise they needed. Wattanak was able to come in and provide the knowledge that the client didn’t have. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

During the onboarding process, Wattanak didn’t have proof of insurance. We require all consultants who have their own LLC to provide a document that shows they have insurance. At the time, Wattanak didn’t have that.

We were able to work through it, but it was a 2–3 day process. We went back and forth a little to ensure they had the proper documents. However, that was part of the onboarding process, which isn’t always seamless, to begin with. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Wattanak has strong Magento skills, and they're definitely capable of offering other services related to e-commerce development. They will be able to bring those skillsets to the table.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a senior manager of an auditing and consulting company.

What challenge were you trying to address with Wattanak, Inc?

We were looking for an experienced Node.js developer to help us develop some custom APIs for one of our accounts.

What was the scope of their involvement?

They developed custom APIs for a banking application. The APIs were customized to help our client gather the data and transfer the data to another subsystem. They did API development based on the requirements provided by our client, but it was part of a bigger project. 

What is the team composition?

There were three members on the API development team. One of them was offshore and two were on site.

How did you come to work with Wattanak, Inc?

We had done a few interviews with Node.js developers. We identified Wattanak, Inc. to be one of the better fits for their skillset in developing APIs.

How much have you invested with them?

We invested about $75,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from July–November 2020.

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

Every time we did our development, everything started off with the client giving us the requirements. We would demo the APIs to the customer every couple of weeks, get their feedback, and modify the APIs as required. We had to make sure the APIs were satisfying all the requirements of the client with both performance metrics, unit testing, and end-to-end. We worked hand-in-hand managing the requirements and documenting them as part of the code itself. The client is very happy.

How did Wattanak, Inc perform from a project management standpoint?

It was a self-managed project. Since this was a larger project and I was managing the project, I couldn’t spend a whole lot of time with the developers. It was up to the developer to manage their time. They made sure they touched base every day to make sure they were on the same page. It worked out pretty well for us. We used Skype to discuss with the client. Internally, we used Google Chat and Microsoft Teams.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They were really professional. It was a very fast-changing API. The client wasn’t sure about what they wanted. We’d take the requirements, jot it down, build up an API for them, and then try to satisfy the client’s requirements by giving them multiple demos. That’s the only way to do it when a client isn’t sure about what they want. Wattanak, Inc. was very accommodating to this approach. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

They could work a little more on requirements gathering. Clients aren’t always sure about themselves and are looking to developers to provide them more guidance. We could maybe work on how we gather the requirements. Overall, it’s been a good ride with them.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

If you can provide solid requirements, that would help deliver the product faster. With this particular client, nothing was available and we had to draw it from scratch and it was a real challenge. We didn’t know about their standards or how they wanted the APIs to be developed.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CTO of a tech services platform that allows a firm to find other consulting companies. It’s more for firms to show what their bench is in terms of on-staff resources. I was in charge of the development side.

What challenge were you trying to address with Wattanak, Inc?

We needed a company to handle the development of our platform.

What was the scope of their involvement?

They developed our tech services platform. I was more high-level in terms of the overall design and how the system would be done and the deployments would be run. They handled all the architecture in terms of development on AWS, setting everything up, creating all the instances, signing up all the services for Apache and Laravel, handling all the Beanstalk migrations, and integrating the natural language processing and Google services we’re using. They did the actual Laravel side but we did the design, which they then implemented.

We did some really big design changes in terms of deploying on Google Assistant, and they pivoted all of that. They were able to bring different resources on when we needed them. The work is from frontend to backend Node.js development, and they were able to quickly ramp up for it. When we needed to stop the Node.js side, they were able to provide resources for the Laravel side. They’re quite flexible in providing resources. We reached a point where we felt our system was stable enough and had enough of the features that we needed.

What is the team composition?

I worked with six people. We had a central point of contact, too.

How did you come to work with Wattanak, Inc?

My CEO found them in 2016. He got in touch with them and was hunting around for somebody who could do everything at that time because we were just an early startup.

What is the status of this engagement?

I came on board in January 2017. I believe they started working with them in July 2016. We stopped working with them in January/February 2020 but we do have occasional support tickets with them.

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

I find a lot of people say they can do various things or that they will adapt to what’s thrown at them and they really can’t follow through. This was not the case with Wattanak, Inc. They’re very well-rounded and were very flexible in terms of our work schedule. They have resources in California and in Cambodia. We were all in California. A really good thing is they that never over-promised and under-delivered. In four years, I’ve never had a situation where they said they’d do something in a month or two and it took four months. They’re always on time or ahead of time, never late.

How did Wattanak, Inc perform from a project management standpoint?

We had daily sprint calls, and I interacted with the whole team. Sometimes, we’d have one-on-one calls with some of the team members for certain areas. We planned our sprints to be 1-2 week releases, which really worked for the pace we were going. We had some larger asks that took a bit longer but we tried to break everything out into shorter 1-2 week cycles. We did everything on Jira.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They were never late.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I’ve worked with offshore companies in India, China, Japan, and then with Wattanak, Inc. I can’t think of anything they need to improve.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

If you have long-term plans to incorporate other things, let them know in advance and they’ll ramp up the resources and have them ready for you. If we have to make any changes, we’ll hire them back in a minute.