R&D Solutions

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the managing partner of an IT company; we develop custom software with front- and backend cloud solutions.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with R&D Solutions?

We needed to hire an experienced third-party to develop a native Android solution. We were working with a retail client who needed a solution for ordering in-stock items from multiple store locations. The solution needed to have a complex backend, and it all needed to be cloud-hosted simultaneously.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Our team developed and provided all of the logic and wireframes needed. R&D Solutions executed the project based on those and also gave input throughout the process. The solution can initiate orders in multiple store locations, check stock of items, confirm orders, transfer payments, and send stock items to the final store location. In addition, the app sends customers an SMS notification for payment reminders. All of the tasks are hosted on the cloud. Their team developed the app using HTML, AngularJS, ReactJS, MySQL, .NET, and Amazon Web Services (AWS).

What is the team composition?

We had a dedicated project manager, and worked with their lead developers. We primarily communicated with the senior developers.

How did you come to work with R&D Solutions?

They came recommended by a friend, and they had the needed skill set for our project.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent between €40,000 – €60,000 euros ($47,000 – $71,000).

What is the status of this engagement?

We began working together in August 2017. The work is ongoing; we’re starting a third project with them.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Our client was always satisfied with the work we delivered from R&D Solutions. Their work has had a positive influence on the project as a whole.

How did R&D Solutions perform from a project management standpoint?

Their communication is their strongest point; their process is speedy. The R&D Solutions team can fix issues and answer questions smoothly.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The R&D Solutions team goes the extra mile; they truly want to deliver a successful project. They ask insightful questions and provide help throughout the process.

Are there any areas they could improve?

There were a few instances where we weren’t on the same page about certain features. They could improve their process by double checking both sides have the same expectations.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I'm director of product management at WorkWave. We provide field service management software and last mile delivery software to any company (e.g., pest control, landscapers, maid services) that provides services for homes or businesses.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with R&D Solutions?

We had a number in-house developers working on various products, but found ourselves needing to scale up our development. We needed help particularly on technical operations—what we call tech ops—and backend infrastructure.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

I worked with them on the product side, giving them requirements and leaving it up to them to research the technical solutions. The technologies that they ended up using were .NET, C Sharp, and SQL.

One system they developed for us is a single sign-on process. That allows users to log on once and be authenticated across multiple products. We also tasked with redeveloping our customer portal. We had an old portal but they started over from scratch. The customer portal is for end users (homeowners, business owners) to log in and access their account information. They can also interact with the service providers if they needed to schedule new service, pay invoices, or look at reports for past service.

R&D Solutions also led our AWS transition and implementation. They helped create a data migration utility to move customer data from legacy products and on-premise installations to a new platform hosted on the AWS environment. They supported QA and QE as well.

What is the team composition?

They had five people dedicated to building the customer portal. One person did most of the work on the single sign-on application. We also had one person supporting some of our legacy products. A team of 2–6 people worked on the data migration utility. The owner of R&D Solutions acted as the product manager, in lieu of a project manager.

How did you come to work with R&D Solutions?

Our VP of engineering knew the owner and had worked with R&D Solutions in the past. As we had conversations with them, it was clear that their strength was in the infrastructure and backend technology. We decided to use them to supplement our development efforts without adding to our internal headcount.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent about $1.5 million in total.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in February 2016, and the last project wound up at the end of July 2018.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We currently have about 200 users on the customer portal that they built. We've successfully migrated about 120 customer databases from legacy systems over to the new AWS platform. We have around 1600 customers using the single sign-on authentication product. We've gotten very good feedback on the customer portal, especially from the pest control companies who were using our old portal.

The biggest success is that they took on projects that we didn’t have internal resources to handle. They gave our internal support organization the ability to impersonate clients. They no longer have to screen share with users, but can actually log in and impersonate a user. That allows them to see what issues they’re having and troubleshoot a solution.

How did R&D Solutions perform from a project management standpoint?

Their team was very good. We accommodated the time zone difference in order for them to participate in our daily scrum meetings. There were several times during development and rollout that they were on call around the clock and over the weekend. They worked with us to staff a rotating schedule so that somebody was always available if we had issues or needed their assistance. They were incredibly accommodating.

If there was a miscommunication or lack of communication, we would jump on a call and figure out how to adjust. We tried to tightly tie them into our processes, and they really became members of our team.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They're really strong on the technical side, particularly on the infrastructure or architecture on the backend. Their expertise in the AWS environment was also really important as that was completely new to us. While they were skilled in frontend development (i.e., building responsive websites), that wasn’t their strength. The sweet spot of value that they were able to provide us was the technical backend expertise that we didn’t have in-house.

Are there any areas they could improve?

It would have been helpful to have a true project manager. They were a very new company when we first started working together, so the owner stepped up to play that role on our projects. I believe that they’ve decided to formally staff all of their projects going forward with a project manager.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I'm the studio manager of a mobile gaming studio. We make mid-core games for mobile devices.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with R&D Solutions?

We have a small team and were only taking care of the client side. We needed someone to help us create the server-side services that we were using for the game itself.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They helped us offload our game server with a lot of other external services. There were six services that they helped to integrate. One was a chat that was created with an auto-translation linked using Microsoft, as well as an authorization service and storage.

We have an AWS-based server structure, using .NET and Docker. It was a collaborative project in which a couple of people from my team worked with their team. They were heavily involved in integration.

What is the team composition?

We had a technical project manager, two .NET developers, one SysOps, and one DevOps person. We had a system administrator and three people that were writing the code.

How did you come to work with R&D Solutions?

When we started looking for an external partner, we decided we wanted to find a local company, based in Sofia, because we wanted to have direct contact. We knew that we would need to sometimes interact daily and have them work with our team in the office in order to meet tight deadlines.

We shortlisted about five companies and we liked the experience R&D had with AWS. They had good reference points and a good portfolio. On a personal level, we liked the way they communicated and the team that they introduced; we clicked.

How much have you invested in them?

We spent between €100,000–€200,000 (approximately $115,000–$230,000 USD).

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from September 2017 to May 2018.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We had a very tough job to do in a very short time, and R&D helped us achieve that. We've published one game that we worked with R&D on so far. There is a very strong server-side and everything is server authoritative. They helped us create and maintain the server structure.

Just pushing the project live and not having any critical issues is a success in itself The team leader/project manager we had on this project is someone that I would recommend to anyone. It was a great experience working with him and he helped us get through any communication bottlenecks. They were very reactive in terms of shifting priorities and shifting volumes as well. Without them, we wouldn’t have managed to put the end product live in the timeframe we wanted.

How did R&D Solutions perform from a project management standpoint?

Communication was a priority for us. It was one of our main points we were looking for when finding a partner and, from that side of things, they performed very well. They worked in our office some of the time, which meant the communication was as good as expected, but it was something that was designed to be good.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They proved to be flexible in terms of team size on their side, covering extra timing as well as overtime when we needed. Their response time was quick and we were able to be highly flexible with them. Their team leader proved to be quite a good asset—he was able to shift priorities and help us with communication because he knew all the details and what everyone’s job was.

Are there any areas they could improve?

We were on a tight budget and knew there would be some faults, mistakes, and problems98. Nothing out of the ordinary happened, and on the whole, we got what we paid for. There is always something to improve, but nothing that stands out.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Make sure you know what you want beforehand and discuss the technology you want to use. Make sure you set the goals and targets correctly so that everyone can do their prep work and begin promptly.