Zennovia

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Delivery Manager of Expassio

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Expassio is a company specialized in SAP consulting

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Zennovia to accomplish?

• Centralize the administration of access credentials for Expassio projects.
• Reduce by at least 50% the management time for unlocking and reactivating accounts blocked due to the use of incorrect credentials.
• Increase security in the treatment of sensitive company data.

SOLUTION

How did you find Zennovia?

Referral

Why did you select Zennovia over others?

• Good value for cost
• Referred to me
• Company values aligned

How many teammates from Zennovia were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

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

The scope agreed at the beginning of the project was the development of a web application for the management of access credentials to customer applications. The new platform should centralize the administration and control of all credentials. In addition, we needed to be able to organize and view the credentials by different attributes, and that these were configurable (client, system, type of access, etc.).

It was also required that the new system allow us to segregate access by different attributes, guaranteeing the confidentiality and privacy of the information. All of the above was completed satisfactorily by Zennovia, they have even made very interesting contributions to improve the flexibility, usability and scalability of the solution. The project deliverables were:

• Document with Solution Proposal: after the initial survey, Zennovia prepared a document detailing the proposed solution.
• MVP: first version of the application
• Final Solution: after 6 iterations on the MVP, we deployed the final solution to production.
• Technical documentation and user manual

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

• Time to obtain a credential was reduced by 60%
• Errors due to outdated or incorrect credentials were reduced by 80%
• Thanks to the segregation of authorizations, we were able to provide access to external consultants, giving them access only to the credentials that corresponded to the signed confidentiality agreement.
• In internal company surveys, negative comments regarding the password management application were reduced to zero. It currently stands out as a positive aspect.

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

The compliance with the times was very good, the initial planning was realistic and adapted to the needs of the company. The management was very receptive to our proposals regarding some functionality changes, the differences could be resolved in a reasonable manner and by mutual agreement.

What was your primary form of communication with Zennovia?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

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

Two points were very interesting and positive for the project.

• The culture and way of interacting with the Zennovia team is very similar to that of Expassio. They are customer focused and communication is very good.
• Most of the Zennovia team involved in the project had excellent technical knowledge.

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

We have reviewed this aspect in the closing meeting of the project, the points that we mentioned in that opportunity were:

• Certain delay in the analysis of scope changes when they arose.
• The vacation of one of your programmers affected the date of a deliverable, it could have been handled differently.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a project manager at City of London Investment Management. Our company owns another company called Karpus Investment Management. I’m also in charge of the projects in that company. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Zennovia?

We use Zennovia’s development services. 

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Zennovia helps us with software development projects. They’re helping us transition from using Excel-based models to using software apps and dashboards. They use many technologies and languages to implement our projects. These include PHP, Java, HTML, and MySQL. We’ve also used a framework called Symfony. At present, we’re creating a dashboard where we can manage money flows, new clients, and more. 

What is the team composition?

I work with three teammates from Zennovia, including Pablo (Director). The other teammates are a technical manager and a software developer. 

How did you come to work with Zennovia?

As a small company with only three in-house developers, we outsourced our projects to local companies. However, it was difficult to find companies that could work and stay with us because of the high demand. Being from Argentina, I knew that Argentinian companies had good attributes, such as English-speaking resources and matching time zones — getting support from them would be truly convenient. 

Given that, I did some research and asked people I knew about the Argentinian companies they were using. They recommended Zennovia. We got in touch with the team from there and started working with them on small projects. 

How much have you invested with them?

Our investment has been below $100,000. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Zennovia in January 2022, and the partnership is ongoing. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We’ve done four cycles with Zennovia for different projects, and everything has been on the dot. They’re highly versatile and can come up with solutions through their knowledge of various programming languages and technologies. 

How did Zennovia perform from a project management standpoint?

Zennovia has always delivered on time and within budget. Moreover, we check the quality of their support post-delivery. If something fails or needs a quick fix, the team is incredibly responsive. To communicate, we use many tools such as emails, phone calls, text messages, and others. However, we mainly use WhatsApp. 

I’ve been pleasantly surprised with the way they organize teams, monitor projects, and communicate with me. They have a flat structure where everyone is on top of the project. This works well for us because if we need something and one of them is not around, another teammate can pick up the baton and provide a solution.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Other companies take on jobs because they don’t want to miss opportunities for earning. As a result, they become overwhelmed and start delaying deliveries. Other times, they rotate developers; young developers often quit when they find another job. All of these things don’t happen with Zennovia — they’ve kept their team in good shape. They have resources that have been together for many years, and I don’t see that changing in the near future. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

This isn’t a weakness per se, but there’s room for improvement in terms of learning new technologies. If I ask them about a new technology, they can say that they don’t know much about it since it’s new, but they could learn about it quickly and do the job for me. To be fair, whenever one wants a development shop to be good at everything, the shop often ends up not being great at anything. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Don’t hesitate to work with Zennovia. The reality is that people doubt overseas companies, and there’s a lot of resistance to outsourcing work to them — even I had to convince people in my office to give the team a shot. However, Zennovia’s services are highly convenient and competitive. Any potential client will be surprised at how good the team is.