WEBSENSA

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a project manager for an IT integrations company for the banking industry. We provide web network integration solutions and custom development projects.

What challenge were you trying to address with WEBSENSA?

We engaged WEBSENSA to help us with a custom development project for our banking customers.

What was the scope of their involvement?

WEBSENSA has used JavaScript and Oracle Database to create a module that categorizes users’ spending habits. First, we provided them with documentation, data, mock-ups, and the engine. Then, they used customer transaction data to create rules that categorize spending into different groups, such as food, alcohol, loans, mortgages, and household expenses.

Customers can view their categories via their online banking system and analyze their finances and spending across the categories. Customers can also view their transaction data month-over-month or year-over-year to track how their spending has changed over time. WEBSENSA has delivered the final product, but they’ve continued supporting us by providing maintenance, revisions, and building new features.

What is the team composition?

We’ve worked with 3–4 team members from WEBSENSA, but we've mainly interfaced with our project manager.

How did you come to work with WEBSENSA?

We’d worked with some of the team members from WEBSENSA while at another company. They managed to deliver a successful software solution, so we engaged them for our project. 

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve invested upwards of $150,000 in the partnership with WEBSENSA.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with WEBSENSA in May 2017, and they delivered the system in May 2018. Since then, they’ve continued to provide maintenance support and helped build new features, so the partnership is ongoing.

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

We’ve measured the accuracy of the rules WEBSENSA produced to categorize customer transactions, and we’ve been satisfied with the results. They’ve created rules that have correctly classified 90% of the transactions, and the other 10% are unique transactions. We’ve also measured the faults in the software to determine success. 

How did WEBSENSA perform from a project management standpoint?

WEBSENSA has been professional, and we haven’t encountered any obstacles while working together. We’ve kept in touch via phone and email, and they’ve been very communicative and collaborative. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

We’ve been most impressed with WEBSENSA’s expertise in personal finance management. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

I have nothing WEBSENSA could improve on. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Since personal finance management software is complex, I advise you to focus on addressing the main transactions rather than getting caught up in the unusual outliers.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a deputy chief procurement officer at Wirtualna Polska, one of the largest internet publishing companies in Poland, providing services to over 5 million users. We have a lot of thematic portals like technology and lifestyle.

What challenge were you trying to address with WEBSENSA?

WEBSENSA has helped us with various development projects for many years.

What was the scope of their involvement?

On our first engagement, WEBSENSA helped us with an advertising-related project. Since then, we’ve kept working with them because we got to know them very well. Their scope varies depending on the project, so we have a large-scale collaboration with them. For example, one of our current projects is related to advertising, while another is related to machine-learning development.

WEBSENSA usually provides us with various resources like developers and UI/UX designers, who incorporate into our teams and cooperate with other developers within our team. Still, we occasionally provide them with whole projects, and they execute them and deliver the product on their own. These resources work remotely, but they’ve also come to our offices when required. We’ve used a wide variety of technologies for these projects, including Golang, ClickHouse, and SQL.

What is the team composition?

We work directly with the resources that WEBSENSA provides us with; we don’t cooperate with administrators or managers.

How did you come to work with WEBSENSA?

My boss has had a personal relationship with WEBSENSA’s founder for many years. Given that they had known each other for a long time, they decided to start a collaboration. 

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent a few million dollars, and our cooperation keeps growing.

What is the status of this engagement?

I started working with WEBSENSA on our different projects around 2017, and our engagement is ongoing.

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

WEBSENSA’s developers have been able to write high-quality code every day. They’ve received tons of requests, which is incredibly competitive for them because not many developers have the knowledge of how to write high-scale software. Additionally, they focus on delivering projects and have no problem collaborating with other developers.

How did WEBSENSA perform from a project management standpoint?

WEBSENSA is very flexible, and their offer a good delivery time. However, project management, in general, is our responsibility. We’ve had some budget overages, but it is hard to say if those have been caused by internal issues or by WEBSENSA’s work. Still, those haven’t been important overages. We use Jira and Confluence for project management, and we communicate via Microsoft Teams and email.

What did you find most impressive about them?

WEBSENSA has very talented Golang developers. In particular, two developers from their team are really great; they are very knowledgeable and have a deep understanding of how everything works.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No. I can only advise them to keep doing the best they can.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Go to WEBSENSA, ask them questions, and tell them what you need; they’ll help you do it.

Please describe your company and your position there.

iCompass is a Fintech solutions and consulting provider specializing in retail banking, payments, and e-commerce solutions. At that time iCompass was a solution provider for Getin Bank.

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

All web-based banking platforms look similar and have a predefined set of functions and screens - rarely aligned with end-customer needs. The filters on transaction history are limited and the user finds it hard to navigate through the platform. The goal was to categorize and "label" all transactions performed by the user, automate the process, and deliver data for the graphical presentation in Personal Finance Module.

This allowed to build custom reports based on categories, subcategories or merchants, and analyze aggregations of spendings per week, month or year. The Bank was able to introduce budgeting and allow customers to define rules, limits and notifications on spending categories.

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

We searched for a partner with good technical capabilities, and experience with the Bank's technological stack. But the most important was the ability to build AI engines, and classifiers on the data that was not classified before. There were no good benchmarks in the banking industry, and Websensa showed experience in other sectors and could adapt it to the financial sector.

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

1. Definition of the architecture and integration with the new internet banking module.
2. Implementation of the PFM Classification Module,
3. "Teaching" and configuration of the Classification Module, fine-tuning of the rules
4. Installation on the testing and production environment

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

The team consisted of several specialists:

• solution architect
• front-end and back-end developers
• AI/ Data analysts
• testers

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

Some platform statistics are:

• 95% transaction labeled correctly
• 150 transaction per second per core

Getin Bank new internet banking platform was one of the first solutions including the PFM module, which was later adopted as a market standard by followers. On the business side, the Bank received valuable marketing information on the spending and activity patterns of the customers. This data was gathered and later used in up-sell/ cross-sell campaigns.

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

The most important characteristic of the management was open communication and motivation to introduce a truly new market standard.

As with any pioneer project - the PFM team had to perform a lot of presentations for the team, tests, and often explain the basics of the solution. Websensa prepared the Bank employees to understand the steps of "teaching" and "fine tuning" the AI engine. The project by definition needed to be run in agile regime, and the management was prepared to accept modifications and pivot the plans.

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

The unique competence of WEBSENSA team was their ability to explore an unknown ground and create a common team with Bank specialists to understand the logic and constraints within the customers' data.

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

I am confident, that what we had achieved speaks for the quality of the team. With the technology evolving every day I believe that companies like Websensa are on the forefront of changes.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I run the digital program at Santander's Polish office, overseeing product development. 

What challenge were you trying to address with WEBSENSA?

We hired WEBSENSA to develop personal financial management software that would take data from customers' transactions and present useful information to them based on that data. 

What was the scope of their involvement?

This project with WEBSENSA was in two parts. Our in-house team handled the first part — we integrated the data banking systems with the software and completed frontend development. 

WEBSENSA handled the second part of the project, using their technical expertise to build the backend in Python with an Oracle database. They developed a professional risk management engine that categorized transactions. After the categorization, the software sends the data to the customer. The engine had to be trained to ensure it categorized transactions correctly — we ran live data through the engine for four months to ensure it learned how to categorize transactions properly. 

What is the team composition?

We worked with five developers and a project manager. 

How did you come to work with WEBSENSA?

We carried out an RFP process, but we primarily focused on companies we'd worked with before. One of those companies found WEBSENSA and made them a subcontractor on this project. They had experience in developing categorization engines, their team was flexible, and they were reasonably priced. 

How much have you invested with them?

I don't have a specific amount, but I'd estimate we invested $1–$2 million with WEBSENSA. 

What is the status of this engagement?

This project was from December 2019–July 2020, but our engagement with WEBSENSA is ongoing. 

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

WEBSENSA delivered on time and within budget. One of the main success measurements was focused on the quality of the categorization engine, specifically the percentage of transactions that were categorized correctly. We determined it was about 90% accurate when we tested the engine, which is a great result compared to other categorization tools. 

We've been using the tool for six years, and we haven't had any significant complaints about incorrect data presentation. Customers can manually alter categorizations, but they don't do it very often, which is a good sign. Clearly, customers are happy to have properly cataloged data to consume. 

How did WEBSENSA perform from a project management standpoint?

We use Jira to manage the project and exchange development tasks. Now that everyone is working remotely, we only communicate virtually. Typically, we use Skype, Microsoft Teams, Jira, and phone calls. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

WEBSENSA's small team is very flexible and experienced. They do their best to understand what clients are trying to achieve and customize a solution that fits their needs. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

WEBSENSA could be more proactive and come to us with solutions that meet our needs. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I'd advise customers to critically understand their project, work allocation, budget, and timeline. Of course, customers should continuously track the quality of work WEBSENSA produces. 

I am the Executive, LTLEGAL of

We provide legal services.

• Preparing and providing an update of our website (www.ltlegal.pl)

Referral

High ratings, Pricing first our budget, Great culture fit, Good value for cost, Referred to me

6-10 Employees

In-Person Meeting, Email or Messaging App

Websensa drafted the website, designed its layout, suggested elements, and prepared the logo. The website received one of the first places in the "Rzeczpospolita" ranking in the category of law firm websites.

• Recognizability
• Recognition in the ranking of law offices websites

They were very open and flexible about both the scope of the site preparation and the logo. Similarly, they changed the logo when necessary. Time-wise they were optimal.

Time-optimized, creative, professionally well-prepared, and open to change. At the same time, the budget conditions were great. They have an excellent team organization.

No.