X1 Group

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CTO of a company that is developing an advertising technology platform specifically for the publisher side. I’m in charge of defining and overseeing the overall product and software development. 

What challenge were you trying to address with X1 Group?

We were looking to hire a handful of new developers for our back- and frontend system, but we were having difficulties finding people locally in Germany. We reached out to X1 Group to find some developers in Ukraine.

What was the scope of their involvement?

X1 Group’s job was HR talent acquisition. They screen candidates before we interviewed them, and they take care of all the necessary paperwork to hire them.

They provide an office where the developers can work from, along with infrastructure like office equipment, computers, coffee machines, and so on. The team also organizes events within the remote office, and they take all the necessary steps to pay the developers.

What is the team composition?

I work closely with Valeriy (Founder and CEO) and with 3–4 people from their HR department.

How did you come to work with X1 Group?

We researched companies in Eastern Europe that could help us find developers and host them. X1 Group was a recommendation from someone in a CTO forum. We chose them because of their pricing and the overall package.

They also have a good office with good equipment for the developers. We’re not a huge company, so we wanted to have a good and friendly working relationship with a developer team. X1 Group was a good fit for that.

How much have you invested with them?

Including the developers’ salaries, the cost is around €350,000 (approximately $415,000 USD).

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with X1 Group in January 2019. The collaboration remains ongoing.

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

We initially hired X1 Group to help us recruit new developers, so their success here was the key measurement for us. We got several profiles in just a few weeks, and we made hires very quickly. I’d say that we hired one in three candidates out of a total of fifteen that we looked at so far. That was our primary challenge, and X1 Group helped us solve it. In the end, we had five qualified developers on board.

How did X1 Group perform from a project management standpoint?

We didn’t ask for project management services, but simply for staffing services. X1 Group is responsible for finding candidates and maintaining the office and necessary regulations. The developers are included in our project management process.

We’ve used email, phone calls, and Skype calls for communication, and we’ve also met in-person in Berlin and Kharkiv.

What did you find most impressive about them?

It’s a very personal collaboration. X1 Group isn’t a huge company where we have to talk to two sales executives before getting to the technicalities. It’s pretty much as straightforward as meeting with their founder and telling him what our problems are, and then he’ll tell us how he can help.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I don’t have much to complain about. Whenever we’ve had an issue, I could address it easily. We’re not a huge company ourselves, so we don’t have a need for various pools of specific processes.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

It’s fine if the client knows what they want, but if there’s brainstorming required, X1 Group has experience running different types of projects. I’d openly address ideal scenarios, and if the client doesn’t have those, they should just ask X1 Group what they think the best approach is. This is something to do in general.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the IT manager at Nutsgroep. We sell energy and telecom in the Netherlands and Belgium. We want to provide our customers with efficient help via our website, so our customers don't have to call, and their costs are as low as possible.

What challenge were you trying to address with X1 Group?

Highly-trained developers aren’t widely available in the Netherlands and the salaries are relatively high. We wanted to add developers to our team, so looked to see what other options there were.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Their developers joined our team to work on .NET software environment. We believe in organic growth—if it works, we want to make it bigger. For that reason, with X1, we started small and eventually decided to take on a larger team. We’re constantly building on the previous successes, and they’re growing with us.

What is the team composition?

We started with one developer and grew that to eight developers over the course of a year. Six months later, we ramped up to two teams—one in Ukraine and one in the Netherlands. There are an agile coach and a product owner on my side who interact with the developers daily.

How did you come to work with X1 Group?

We came in contact with them through a former colleague of mine. It quickly became clear that they could give us highly trained developers.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent over $1 million.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in April 2014 and the work is ongoing.

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

We have three development teams in the Netherlands and two teams at X1 Group. Our statistics show that the Ukraine team constantly delivers high-quality software and has for four years.

How did X1 Group perform from a project management standpoint?

It feels like they’re our own employees. We have stand-ups every morning, while the product owner and scrum master on our side talk to their teams. I interact once a week with their team lead of development and all the communication is very natural.

The project management on their side is high quality, so much so that we don’t need it on our side. We work in an agile methodology, and they’re very sensitive to changes and constantly keep us up to date on variations in the team if something happens. It’s very nice working with them—they have the skills to acquire very good people.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their people are highly talented and speak English well, effectively translating our specifications into working packages for the development teams. X1 Group’s teams pick up the requirements quickly and give us high-quality software in a timely fashion.

The company itself provides a stable work environment that is safe and where people can relax. Even so, if I ask them a question, they come up with a comprehensive answer.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No. They’re very adaptive and intuitive to our needs. If we want something different, we explain why and there’s never a problem. They think of everything.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

If I needed to begin from scratch, I’d choose them again. I recommend them to other people if they want to outsource their development too.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I'm the founder and CEO of Kreditech. We're active in the field of consumer lending.

What challenge were you trying to address with X1 Group?

We wanted to very quickly hire an experienced engineering team. Germany is very competitive, so it can be difficult to recruit talent in the field of software engineering.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We wanted a team of backend and frontend engineers who were experienced in certain technologies. X1 selected the candidates, recruited that team on our behalf, and then hosted the team. We had to clearly define profiles before they recruited for us.

It took a couple of weeks from the initial kick-off to having people in place. It was a little difficult to find people due to them not having the biggest span of technologies, and I wanted to participate in some of the final interview processes.

We built a complete software stack for our consumer lending business, which operates in multiple countries and consists of the frontend, backend, and a whole range of microservices.

What is the team composition?

We started with a small team of three people, which then very quickly grew because the model was working successfully and we were very happy with the results. We mostly communicate with the founder and CEO who has been the key lead for managing the relationship. We interact with him for all matters of our general partnership and business-related terms. In the day-to-day business, we interact directly with the engineers, which includes the leads and almost all the engineers. They interface very closely with our technology.

How did you come to work with X1 Group?

We were referred by one of our investors who worked with them before and highly recommended them. We were in the process of speaking to various other software outsourcing and nearshore companies, but X1 really convinced us because their services were adjusted to the specific needs of our company. We were able to establish our relationship very quickly.

How much have you invested in them?

We have a fixed rate per engineer per month, which depends on the seniority and skillset.

What is the status of this engagement?

We began working with them in February 2012 and have an ongoing relationship.

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

The entire infrastructure that our company runs on has, to a very large extent, been built by X1. We're happy with the overall quality of engineering, as well as the fact that it's scalable for us so we can source additional capacity to our team. We have a certain amount of flexibility during the time when we need additional engineering capacities.

How did X1 Group perform from a project management standpoint?

We don't have a classical outsourcing model and the actual management of the team happens on our side. The responsibility for the project management and management of the delivery directly sits with us.

We've built a very good relationship with the team. We feel that the team identifies with our company and very quickly scaled all the way up to 40 people after three years.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We're still working with them today because we're very happy with the quality of people and the amount of support we receive. It's been unique, compared to the model that many other outsourcing companies provide.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

If you set up a team with X1, make sure it's a fully functional team and that they have all the roles you need them to work on. We found a fully functional team consists of a product owner, a technical lead, a couple of engineers, and QA who form a comprehensive scrum team and are able to take up their work independently. That works well and was a key lesson learned.

Another important part is to closely integrate people and make sure that they get a sense of what is happening in your company, what is important, and what the priorities are. Over time, we treated our team from X1 like a business unit, involving them in our own meetings and engaging them with our company. You have to be in a position to manage an engineering team, with a good understanding of the type of workflow you want to establish.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the head of engineering for a fintech startup based in Germany. We provide services to freelancers and small-to-medium-sized businesses. At the moment, we primarily provide factoring, short-term invoice financing.

What challenge were you trying to address with X1 Group?

Our challenge was to scale our remote team as fast as possible. This was not possible in just Berlin, so we needed an outsourced hiring team.

What was the scope of their involvement?

X1 Group seamlessly integrates as a remote hiring team in Ukraine. Their team interviews and hires professionals for our remote development team. They conduct calls daily and throughout the day to update us on our new developers. They’re providing office spaces and all the technical equipment for our employees located in Ukraine. We also work with their HR team approve vacations and other low maintenance management issues.

What is the team composition?

We work with their CEO and HR team.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started in December 2017 and the work is ongoing.

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

Their hires speed up our development significantly and are experienced senior developers that always produce quality software.

How did X1 Group perform from a project management standpoint?

They're always responsive and contact back within seconds on Slack. Even on weekends, they communicate with us on upcoming deadlines, which we really appreciate. We also use Google Hangout and Zoom video conferences. Their English is great, and our remote collaboration works well.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their focus on quality is amazing. They get our hires up to speed really fast, and the developers they hire are ready to work on the same day. They're really focused on excellent delivery, meeting business goals, and improving our development.

Are there any areas they could improve?

It’s sometimes tough to deal with an outsourced company. It would be nice if they were located in Berlin, but they’ve actually been pretty good thus far. We’re absolutely happy.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Actually use them, as they are great providers. Be prepared to answer a lot of business-related questions. Because this will help them figure out how to bring your business success.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I prefer to remain anonymous.

For what projects/services did your company hire X1 Group?

We hired X1 Group to augment our in-house IT staff on a long-term basis.

What were your goals for this project?

The goal was to quickly increase our IT teams in order to optimize implementation time. Learning to work with international colleagues was an added benefit. 

How did you select this vendor?

Our former CTO personally recommended X1.  

Describe the project in detail.

X1 is responsible for hiring, developing, and evaluating highly skilled employees.

What was the team composition?

Over the years we have hired one UX/UI developer, several frontend developers, and multiple backend developers, all divided into various teams. The team has grown to 16 people.

Can you share any information that demonstrates the impact that this project has had on your business?

Since the X1 employees joined our team, completion and delivery times have greatly improved. Although we don’t have specific metrics or statistics, we have gained invaluable experience with working across borders and incorporating new team members.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

Because we hired them to integrate with our IT department on a daily and ongoing basis, project management is not especially relevant.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

X1 excels at scaling quickly and establishing new teams. They offer fresh ideas and fully, broad-spectrum support.

Are there any areas for improvement?

They could communicate internal regulations better.