Neoteric

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Jamer is a consulting company I'm running with a business associate. I'm one of the owners and part of the board.

What challenge were you trying to address with Neoteric?

We ordered Neoteric to create a custom solution for automating B2B processes that measured how they impacted our company and to get rid of all paper documentation that we produced. We also wanted to build custom documents that could be put through the workflows with our customers and employees.

What was the scope of their involvement?

The project took around one-and-a-half years and was something we'd been planning for a long time. We divided it into a few steps in two contracts, the bigger one being implementation for the whole system, divided by module. The first step was our engineering requirements: the problem discovery, the documentation of how our business works, and the main challenges that custom software could solve for us.

Our modules started from a digital document repository, the workflow module, and the specific integration with a default standard for digital accounting documents. There's a big module that helps us with billing between different companies and people working on a project for a customer. It does all the bidding among everyone involved and provides us with analytics to see how much we make on each customer and project.

The system includes electronic invoices, electronic signatures, work flow, and management so we can set up a list of tasks to be performed and what we should input at each stage. It's more than just a project management tool because we have all the maintenance and knowledge base that we create.

It's designed on a strategic level, going across every operation in our company because we want to make sure our customers' documents are safe in an online repository, where we can define how our customers and partners are interacting with parts of the documentation.

It also has a configurable notification and reporting system. We can bring alerts to different situations and get notified when there's a problem and we need to engage on a higher management level to solve it.

We have a task manager that can build different tasks with different templates, so we don't have to repeatedly put in the same tasks. We can put them in specific stages and manage projects for different customers. There's even a software-as-a-service part for working with sub-contractors, where we invite our business partners and customers to use our system for their benefit.

What is the team dynamic?

We were given a project manager and had direct communication with the whole team. The programmers would present some of the new modules they were building. This was good because when someone from my team had ideas, they could speak directly to the person creating the part they were interested in.

How did you come to work with Neoteric?

We were doing our review on the local market about who would be good for this kind of project, and we were directed to Neoteric by multiple sources. We met and were convinced that they'd be a reliable business partner.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent around $300,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked with them from July 2014 to December 2015.

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

The engagement has impacted our whole company by helping us move our operations much better. We can do bigger business because we don't have blockades from different systems.

Everyone stresses the flexibility of the solutions. We can just click to see what the document looks like, and it's automated to validate if the fields are right and what the flow should be. This is something everyone is very happy about, as well as Neoteric's approach to supporting the business, not just making the functions we thought we needed.

How did Neoteric perform from a project management standpoint?

It was a good experience for us. They guided us on how to engage in producing the system, and we had real impact on what the project outcome would look like. We could get feedback any time and could see with every sprint that the project was going well. It was open and transparent for us. Plus, we spoke in Polish, so communication was easy for us.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They deeply understood the core of our business and built the right technology to improve it. We were guided step by step to have success with the product they built for us.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I was happy with the whole process, and the outcome was very good.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Bellion Clofe is predominantly a software development and consultancy company. I’m the CEO and founder, along with a team of 5 other people.

What challenge were you trying to address with Neoteric?

We are working on the development of a game engine for one of our products that has yet to go to market. The biggest challenge was finding a development company that could handle the complexity of our game play format and the restricted environment that we’re building for the game itself. We needed expertise not only in software, but also in the actual field.

What was the scope of their involvement?

The product is a sports gaming platform. We spent 2–3 months going through the documentation and requirements of the system. Development didn’t start until everything was pretty clear.

They’re taking our product from start to finish. They are doing the entire platform with frontend and backend development. A branding company we use is doing our UX/UI.

Most gaming applications are fairly simple. Fantasy sports, for example, is a point and location kind of system. Ours is a novel product requiring a far more complex algorithm. The hardest part for us was conveying that patented algorithm and technology to them.

Due to the particular library that we use, the frontend is going to be very complicated to create. The product is actually made for thousands of people to play at the same time.

How did you come to work with Neoteric?

We were searching for an offshore software development company. My CTO did the shortlisting process, and we spoke to about 5 vendors. I was only part of the interview process.

We knew our platform needed to be coded in a particular language, so we predominantly looked for vendors who were competent in that area. We also looked for vendors who had relevant past projects or ones that gave them useful experience for our project.

Most of the companies said they were able to handle the project and there would be no issues. After speaking with each individually a second time, we realized they really didn’t understand the context of the engine.

It was almost the opposite with Neoteric. We decided to go with them, because they understood our needs at the initial conception stages and even suggested ways to streamline the engine and boost the efficiency of its performance. They were responsive and communicated what they could and couldn’t do. We felt they were the most competent and knew what they were talking about. The price point was just about right too.

How much have you invested with them?

We have invested between $80,000 and $100,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in April 2017, and the work is ongoing. As the product and development has evolved, along with edits and functionalities, we’ve pushed the timeline back, but it’s not anyone’s fault. The estimated completion date is next June. We intend to retain them for maintenance after the site goes live.

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

We’ve done some internal testing, but none externally. The project hasn’t actually gone to market. We are waiting for the patent filing to clear before we release it to the public or any external parties.

The backend is well-developed. There are a few kinks to work through. It’s really a pre-alpha version, but even at this stage, we definitely got what we needed in terms of the complexity of the engine. I attribute a lot of that to their backend team, who has put in a quite a bit of work. Their sheer ability to understand its complexity has really helped.

They’ve done a very good job so far on the frontend as well. At most it’s been tested by 10 people and 1 goal. Based on this small focus group, on a scale of 1 to 10, we are at around 8–9.

It’s been very encouraging to me and my team. We look back on the vendors we looked at and can only imagine how the product would’ve turned out with someone who didn’t understand our needs or have the necessary capabilities. We would end up with a bigger issue at the end of the day.

How did Neoteric perform from a project management standpoint?

The project management has been very good. It’s our first time working with Neoteric, so it took a few months to find our preferred working relationship style. It’s been much better since. Helping them understand the project from our point of view and translating that into an actual product was the biggest challenge for us. We’ve overcome that, but of course not with 100% fluidity. There are hiccups along the way. Even at these challenge points, both parties worked through the issues fairly smoothly due to our close collaboration.

The project manager plays a supervisory role for their team and attends a weekly sprint meeting with us. We also request meetings with him for budgeting or forward planning. We don’t get him involved on a daily basis, and we deal with the other team members on a more informal basis. That’s done purposely, because we prefer to speak directly with whoever is in charge of a particular area. We know the team members very well. Some people might not like such an informal working relationship, but for us it’s built on trust. 

They’ve been flexible and fairly adaptive to our needs. Those are plus points. We used to do a 2-week sprint, but we currently are doing a weekly sprint, as well as a daily standup. The communication and collaboration has increased over time. We’re in contact with them on a daily basis via Slack. We also use formal channels like Taiga.

It’s easy to talk to a software development company and a team that speaks the same language. The fact that there’s no language barrier eases the workflow process.

What did you find most impressive about them?

If I needed a corporate website to be coded, I could go with anyone else. It isn’t hard to convey a simple project to most development companies. It’s harder to find a vendor that will take the time to understand the complexity of your project and that also has the development capability and expertise to tackle it.

Neoteric is positioned to serve customers with high-level projects with higher demands. They are able to produce the kind of quality needed. When it comes to complex projects, Neoteric is one of the few we’ve found that can live up to our expectations.

My CTO works closely with them, and he says he’s been very impressed with the speed at which the team has managed to produce the components of our project. Within Singapore, we’re familiar with major development companies. I’m not putting them down, but it’s really hard to find developers who can go above average. It’s hard to find someone who’s as invested in your project as you are. Neoteric has that slight edge. They get people who care about the project.

Are there any areas they could improve?

The workflow itself as well as forward planning could be better. With certain components, future issues aren’t immediately clear. One piece might not be the best fit for the puzzle. It would be helpful for them to anticipate what could go wrong with an approach we’ve chosen. Part of that has to do with the client, so it’s not all on them. We know they can’t read our minds.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO of an early venture-funded startup. We are within the API and microservices enterprise cloud software space. Our headquarters are in the Bay Area.

What challenge were you trying to address with Neoteric?

At that time, we were trying to build a prototype with a UX [user experience] consultant. We wanted to demo and bring it to market so that we could have user feedback sessions around the prototype. We needed specialized frontend developers, but I was on a tight budget.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Neoteric was engaged to do the frontend portion of this prototype. We had one project manager running Scrum and two developers, with whom we held weekly sprints. The developers used React, took the mockups we had, and built the interaction. Once that looked good, they built the prototype itself. They worked with our developers to partner on the backend services, but there was a clear line of division in terms of work.

How did you come to work with Neoteric?

I was looking at a specialized SVG library developed by a firm called Client.io. I originally used them and they subcontracted the work to Neoteric. Once we delved into the requirements, they told me we don’t need to use the specialized library—we could use a more generalized technology like React and get it done a lot faster. I asked Client.io if we could have a release and work directly with Neoteric. Fortunately, they allowed that. Neoteric’s rates were a lot more reasonable than trying to do it in the Bay Area. The alternative would’ve been working directly with Polish developers. If I did that, I would save a lot more. However, I had no such visibility into the market at the time.

How much have you invested with Neoteric?

We spent between $50,000 and $100,000 on their services.

What is the status of this engagement?

We began working with them in March 2016 and the work was completed in June 2016.

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

All the metrics were kept in our project management system. They completed everything to the full expectation of requirements. The prototype was done in such a thoughtful manner that we could use it as the first iteration of the production code.

How did Neoteric perform from a project management standpoint?

We realized two full-time equivalents and throughout that weekly sprint, we got a lot done. The project was very well organized. They were able to import my user stories from Excel to Taiga, which we used for project management. I tried to be specific on the user stories. Anytime there were questions from the developers, they were good about asking for further clarification. The project manager was very thorough and detailed. If there were any issues, he was very accessible. We all communicated on Slack, which was great, especially with the time difference. They were on time and within budget. We also had daily meetings over Hangout.

What did you find most impressive about Neoteric?

Neoteric had value-based efficiency, making them a good match for us. They also had reasonable rates for a very specialized service. They have a keen sense of deadlines and scope creep, which manage that pretty well. There’s a lot on the line when it comes to time and money, especially for a startup.

Are there any areas Neoteric could improve?

The level of quality and delivery is dependent on the assigned resource. Our two mainstay developers were fantastic. One, in particular, carried the weight of the team and he exceeded my expectations. We brought in a third person that was more junior to do more web design work, but he didn’t quite meet our expectations. He eventually got the job done, but it wasn’t at the level of what the other two developers provided.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m one of the delivering managers for a provider of IT solutions for aviation. Currently, I’m also working as the research manager.

What challenge were you trying to address with Neoteric?

We are launching a new product that reads data sources and tries to provide insight about them. We needed assistance with creating an architecture based on microservices.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Neoteric has experience in backend applications and products like ours, so we combined our expertise for this project. They helped with the architecture for the backend and frontend, working together with my team on development. They also helped with designing the solution on different levels. At the beginning, we had four resources assigned to us, then we scaled up to eight. Now, we have six resources working with us from Neoteric.

How did you come to work with Neoteric?

I was looking for a company who had the same size and culture as our team. After Neoteric did a small research project with us, we found we could collaborate on something that was bigger. We looked at five other companies but decided to use Neoteric because of the skill they had in-house.

How much have you invested with Neoteric?

We have spent between $50,000 and $200,000 on this project so far.

What is the status of this engagement?

We began working together in February 2016, and the work is ongoing.

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

Neoteric has been an essential partner for us and we are happy with the quality they have provided. We trust each other and they have the right expertise to help us. We don’t have any metrics, but the feedback has been positive.

How did Neoteric perform from a project management standpoint?

They are always on time and I’m happy about the content they’ve delivered. We usually communicate by phone, although sometimes we send messages online. They are honest about issues, so we could talk about things and agree on a solution that benefited both parties. Neoteric kept their word. Whatever they promised, they delivered. They gave feedback when they thought something wouldn’t work and found a solution that would be best for us.

What did you find most impressive about Neoteric?

I’m impressed by their knowledge and the flexibility of their team. They’re a great company to work with since they understand how to help their customers. That’s why we get along quite nicely with them.

Are there any areas Neoteric could improve?

None. For my type of problem, they are the right weapon.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Client.IO is a software development company. We have our products that we license. We also provide development services for our clients. Our products are mostly focused on building web-based workflow and flow chart diagraming products. We have two products right now. One of them is HTML 5 framework called Rappid which companies buy to use as a face for their workflow systems. The other product is called AppMixer which is an API orchestration tool where people can connect their cloud applications together to create workflows, business logic, and automation. We started three years ago and have 15 employees. I’m the CEO.

What challenge were you trying to address with Neoteric?

Neoteric is our engineering partner by augmenting our team. We also use Neoteric for our products.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Neoteric provided engineers to speed up the development of our AppMixer product. We use Scrum methodologies to develop software on our team and, Neoteric joined our workflow. They integrated into our team.

How did you come to work with Neoteric?

Neoteric is in Poland, and we are in the Czech Republic. They initiated discussions with us around helping our team on the HTML 5 diagraming framework. Neoteric asked if we needed additional developers and we were in a position at the time where we did need more resources. We saw this as an opportunity to scale up and be able to complete work faster.

How much have you invested with Neoteric?

We’ve spent between $50,000 and $200,000 with Neoteric so far.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Neoteric in December 2015, and the work is ongoing.

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

The project is ongoing, so I don’t have any metrics, but overall, our collaboration has been successful. Another project we did with Neoteric for Skoda called Let’s Reconnect.com was a successful marketing campaign for their new car. It was a 3D presentation of a 3D city where the user could fly over the city and click on hot spots and get more information.

How did Neoteric perform from a project management standpoint?

With some projects, we are doing the project management and other times; they have their internal PM. We use JIRA and GitHub for project management and Slack and email to communicate. If we want to talk face-to-face, we use Skype. Neoteric has been able to complete the work on time. Neoteric is always able to report exactly what they’ve been working and on what times which shows they are organized.

What did you find most impressive about Neoteric?

Communication is really important, and Neoteric is responsive and open to using many channels. Neoteric has a very capable team in web development. Neoteric is honest about the seniority levels of their resources. We always know what we’re getting ahead of time.

Are there any areas Neoteric could improve?

Neoteric should improve on the influx of new people. Sometimes they don’t have enough resources which is normal in this part of Europe.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am CEO of PortalYogi. We are the largest online yoga platform in Poland.

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

When Portal Yogi was launched, it was based on a freely available platform. It had many limitations that stopped our business activities. We hired Neoteric to build our own model to meets our expectations and expectations of our clients.

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

We chose this vendor based on their last projects and experiences.

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

We trusted what vendor recommended

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

5 people or more, depending on the stage of the project

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

New platform is easier to use and meets our functional expectations

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

We had a weekly or biweekly scrum, we used slack and we had a retrospective every month

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

The team is very friendly, and they always try to find the best solution for us.

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

Our communication has always been very good, and all problems could be solved and activities improved.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the founder of the company

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

We needed a custom build for our MVP

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

Experience in AI and communication

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

the design and build of a complex application with multiple 3rd party integrations + AI service.

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

5+

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

The team is incredibly results driven and hard working.

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

They use Jira and Slack and work agile. Very flexible, but goal oriented.

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

They are a group of young professionals, but they have a good portfolio. They strive to deliver good software.

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

Sometimes they get bogged down in calls.. I prefer async comms ... but its not that bad

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the COO and co-founder of a software company.

For what projects/services did your company hire Neoteric?

We hired Neoteric to augment our staff with a developer. We needed extra help in building a data visualization tool for one of our clients.

What were your goals for this project?

To create easily in use visualization map that shows different dependencies. Our goal was to create an easy-to-use visualization map that shows different categories of data.

How did you select this vendor?

We’ve worked with Neoteric before, and they are our preferred vendor.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

We built a web platform on AWS using Angular and the D3.js framework. The product takes CSV files as input.

What was the team composition?

We had a frontend developer from Neoteric, a delivery manager from our end, and a product owner from our client.

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

The product has helped our client better understand the bottlenecks that occur between departments.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

We handled project management.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

The developer’s consulting skills were impressive. He guided our client and us through different options and created a proposal for the final versions. He also took a holistic approach to development.

Are there any areas for improvement?

There aren’t any. We’re very satisfied with everything.