Arbisoft

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO and co-founder of PayPerks. We’re a financial education and rewards platform that seeks to drive positive change for financially underserved consumers and create value for the institutions which serve them. We sell solutions and services to financial institutions, government agencies, and other organizations that serve the financially underserved that are then marketed to cardholders and customers.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Arbisoft?

We wanted to find a development firm to be a long-term partner. 

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We consider Arbisoft a part of our team. We utilize multiple resources from them in different quantities and configurations. This includes agile project management, frontend and backend development, and QA testing. We have to support a wide range of older desktop and mobile browsers, so we have them do both automatic and manual QA tests. They work with Python, Django, React, and JavaScript.

They’ve worked with us since the very beginning when my co-founder and I were just starting out and grown with us since then. Initially, our Arbisoft team worked with me to build our beta product and then after a pause, and we signed our first revenue deal and raised more money, we resumed our work with Arbisoft while also growing our team in New York. We work on the same code base and the same story ticket system together. There’s no strict division of work between our companies, other than we don’t allow access to our production environment and customer PII outside of a smaller group of full time employees and our DevOps team.

What is the team composition?

There’s a project lead developer and a number of backend developers, frontend developers, and QA engineers.

How did you come to work with Arbisoft?

We asked around our network for a reputable development firm. My co-founder knew someone who worked with them. Arbisoft then provided references to other clients and I spoke directly with the technical decision maker at those clients. Everyone was very pleased with their Arbisoft experience, and the existing clients were growing their relationship with Arbisoft.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent over $1 million at this point.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in September 2010 and the engagement is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Arbisoft is an integral part of our team and we probably wouldn’t be here today without them. Some of their team has worked with us for 5–8 years and we’ve built a trusted business relationship. We share successes together.

How did Arbisoft perform from a project management standpoint?

We use online collaboration tools to participate in daily stand-ups and sprint retrospectives with the entire development and QA team. Our approach has evolved and changed over time, some sort of mix of agile and Kanban. We write engineering requirements using Jira or Pivotal Tracker and the engineering team as a whole tracks their work in these tools. We now document more detailed requirements, like API specs in Confuence. Their executive-level staff is attentive and available to resolve issues if they arise, although as Arbisoft as grown we need to make sure we empower our team there to reach out internally as needed. We don't find the time difference to be an insurmountable problem, although sometimes it would be easier if we could all be in the same room. So to that end, have visited our team at Arbiosft multiple times and find that even an infrequent face-to-face connection improves the overall working relationship and team communication.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’re committed to being part of our team and really care about not just the success of the project or the delivery of ticket, but the success of our business goals. Thinking about our work on that level allows everyone to be better aligned and more effective. I don’t think that level of dedication and care is all that common across development partners, even if sales people tell you it is. Additionally, they have a low turnover rate and cultivated a healthy internal company culture that translates into their work.

Are there any areas they could improve?

There’s nothing I’d have our team improve on independently as a team, but we have things which we are continuously working on improving together as PayPerks (e.g. our entire team, including me), such as communications, architecting, requirements and story writing, and so on. These are things we will always be working on improving, especially as the nature of the specific projects we are working on at the moment changes and we need to adapt together. It’s a bit hard to do that remotely, but we are getting better. In addition, everyone has individual areas for improvement, and now that we recently grew our team at the end of 2017, we will do a better job setting expectations and providing feedback more consistently and regularly. In the grand scheme of things, we do a lot with a very lean team, and that’s impressive.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

 I am the CEO of a software company 

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

We produce AI software for sales and support teams in the Fortune 500.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

• Build manager facing applications
• QA and test production systems

SOLUTION

How did you find Arbisoft?

Referral

Why did you select Arbisoft over others?

• High ratings
• Pricing fit our budget
• Great culture fit
• Good value for cost
• Company values aligned

How many teammates from Arbisoft were assigned to this project?

6-10 Employees

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

Build and maintained multiple production level systems leveraged by the Fortune 500.These are systems that support high scale and throughput.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Successful product that has generated 8 figure million USD in ARR

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

Diligent, respectful and extremely customer focused

What was your primary form of communication with Arbisoft?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

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

The team has dedicated and extremely professional engineers.

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

Not really. Great partners.