XDuce

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a VP for a financial services company. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with XDuce?

We’ve engaged XDuce to provide us with database services.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

XDuce has identified subject matter experts with solid data recovery, migration, and performance skill sets. They’re responsible for sourcing candidates, filtering resumes, and organizing interviews. The resources provide database support for Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, and Sybase. They work on various projects, including migrating our legacy OS to Oracle Cloud. 

What is the team composition?

We’ve worked with 50–60 resources; the team size fluctuates according to the project requirements.

How did you come to work with XDuce?

We engaged XDuce before I joined, but my manager found them through a referral from their network. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in 2013, and the partnership is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We don’t have precise metrics, but XDuce has provided us with qualified resources throughout our longstanding partnership. They’ve saved us time because we don’t need to worry about identifying candidates ourselves. 

How did XDuce perform from a project management standpoint?

XDuce communicates well and provides timely progress updates. The team is approachable and reachable, and they effectively support us through each aspect of our projects. We meet via Skype and Microsoft Teams. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

XDuce has delivered highly skilled resources to us for nearly a decade. I appreciate how supportive and honest they are. They make practical suggestions; for example, they tell us when our budget doesn’t align with our requirements. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

I have nothing they could improve on. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Give it some time, and share honest feedback, so they can provide you with good quality resources. 

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a director at a healthcare company in the dialysis industry that deals with over 200,000 patients daily and provides them with dialysis treatment. We’re focused on being patient-centric; our patients are our customers, and our goal is to do everything for them.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with XDuce?

We have multiple integration technologies and services, and we needed to find many resources to help us with them. We were looking for qualified, reliable, and trustworthy resources that could deliver the projects to the extent we were looking for.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

XDuce provides us with staff augmentation. They've provided design and development resources to validate and deploy our software into production. The team provides both onsite and offsite services. We've continuously expanded and grown our engagement according to our needs. 

For each project, we explain our requirements, the scope, the duration, and the kind of resources we're looking for. Based on those requirements, they shortlist candidates and source the appropriate ones that best fit our needs. XDuce then works with us throughout the development cycle to ensure the resources they've provided deliver.  

What is the team composition?

We've worked with around 30–40 resources over the years. These resources have been designers, architects, developers, and software administrators.

How did you come to work with XDuce?

We found them through a recommendation. 

How much have you invested in them?

We've spent over $5 million. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them around 2017, and our engagement is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Although it's hard to define quantitative metrics, XDuce's resources have been key participants in several initiatives for our company's growth and partner engagement. They offer a great depth of expertise. We've kept reaching out to them, and they constantly provide us with superior support.

How did XDuce perform from a project management standpoint?

They've been mostly on time, and they've been on budget. The team is very responsive and timely with their follow-ups. They have checkpoints with us and check the progress at several stages of each initiative. We mostly communicate through email and one other tool, and our communication has been high-quality. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

XDuce is always on top of our needs. They've filtered out resources based on our requirements and provided us with qualified teammates who've helped us save time. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, we're overall satisfied with what they've done.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

My advice is to define your requirements clearly and document them. Additionally, I'd recommend communicating clearly with XDuce and clarifying they must pre-qualify candidates before submitting them to you. Be open with your budget and rate limit, and they'll be able to find the right resources for your needs.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I manage data and analytics for an insurance company. We’re primarily a specialty insurer; while we do personal lines, we focus on aviation, marina, office insurance, workers’ compensation, etc.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with XDuce?

We hired them for web development projects.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

XDuce provides us with web development and UI design services. They’ve helped us with multiple projects, including reference data creation and the UI design of a data-extraction tool. The latest software project they’ve helped us with is a web-based security control assessment tool. 

We’ve introduced new processes within our security team wherein every new project, application, or offering gets vetted based on the risk and exposure to the organization. We run internal assessments and decide whether to proceed with each program. The web app XDuce developed enables users to open a request where they’re presented with a set of questions. The questionnaire helps our security team rate the risk and exposure of every request. Since multiple factors are involved, XDuce set up the functionality so that questions change depending on the type of activity and whether the project requires proof of concept (POC) or a large implementation. Artifacts are updated or uploaded.

XDuce also implemented a workflow that allows back and forth between the person initiating the assessment and our security team. This workflow goes through the security hierarchy, which means authentication and authorization are involved. The tool can also produce reports, including a comprehensive report of risk and exposure for our company’s management team. Users who open the program for an assessment can also see ratings for their project across multiple factors.

The team used Azure as a base for development, and since it was our first time working in the cloud, we also involved other providers. XDuce built the frontend using Angular and .NET and used SQL Server for the database. We’re using APIs for picking, retrieving, and storing information. The tool also uses cloud storage on Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2. There have been a lot of documents or artifacts required at different stages of the project.

We had historical data captured in Excel, so XDuce provided users with the capability of importing and exporting questionnaires using Excel.  Additionally, XDuce designed the tool’s UI. They presented many UI options based on the security and business teams’ requirements.

We’ve had multiple product iterations, and the team has just started the third phase of development, which involves enhancements. XDuce will also be providing maintenance for this tool. In a separate project, I’m running an initiative for creating an enterprise warehouse on the Azure cloud, and we have resources from XDuce contributing.

What is the team composition?

We work with a project manager from XDuce, and there’s also a combination of offshore developers and an on-site team. Team leads and full stack developers are involved, and we also have test engineers from their side and ours, plus data engineering developers.

How did you come to work with XDuce?

My company has been with XDuce for the past 10 years. When I joined the company, they were already one of our vendors, so I didn’t find them. Although another vendor is our primary outsourcing partner, their rates are pretty high, and we have a global contract, which makes it challenging to initiate smaller projects. Meanwhile, XDuce offered us a lot of flexibility. We chose XDuce for this project because they’re already vetted, and they understand our ecosystem, tools, and technologies, so it was much easier to work with them than to find a new vendor.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together around June 2012. Our current project began in June 2021, and our engagement is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

XDuce has exceeded our expectations. The first two releases of the product have been without defects from a technical standpoint, which is a good measure of success. I’ve worked with them personally for five years, and the team is always available — they’re very customer-oriented.

How did XDuce perform from a project management standpoint?

They’re flexible, and they stick to the timelines. We communicate through a combination of phone calls and emails. The team uses the agile methodology, and we have scrum calls with them 3–4 times a week, if not daily. They update me on their progress during biweekly management calls.

XDuce has gone above and beyond with project management. For example, the reference data project had a lot of additional changes, and XDuce was accommodating enough to absorb that workload, even though it wasn’t their issue. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

XDuce’s quality is their strong point. Beyond that, they’re customer-friendly and very accommodating. We appreciate their flexibility because things change, and the team is willing to stretch themselves beyond the core task. Moreover, they have excellent technical knowledge, differentiating themselves with their customer-centric approach.

Are there any areas they could improve?

XDuce could expand their reach toward the latest cloud technologies from a security standpoint. Although they have a presence in the web and cloud-data engineering piece, most companies are moving toward more transformational tech, so building expertise and a center of excellence would be nice. I’m assuming that they work with many clients like us, so those are good expansion opportunities.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

I can comfortably recommend XDuce for their skills in UI design and cloud-based development. They also have strength in development on Azure, app modernization and migration, and testing.