Droxic

Please describe your company and your position there.

Mirum Budapest provides wide range of product development services for curious brands and high-profile companies. I have been in touch with Droxic as responsible for partner relationships within the company.

For what projects/services did your company hire Droxic?

One of our high-profile clients' continuous development stream peaked with multiple standalone spin-off projects, thus we have've reached out to Droxic to help us with staff augmentation.

What were your goals for this project?

Maintain and scale our PHP and Drupal development delivery capabilities, both from backend and frontend POV. The main goal was to be able to cover mid-term resourcing from engineering standpoint and maintain rock-solid technical delivery across the whole project portfolio.

Droxic contibuted with its Drupal and PHP engineering talent - matched with our internal development and project governance teams.

How did you select Droxic?

We have had positive experiences on former projects with other technology stacks therefore we have engaged Droxic directly.

Describe the project in detail.

The scope of the project was to prioritize, scope, plan and develop diverse feature requirements defined by B2B and B2C focused client stakeholders.

What was the team composition?

The team composition has included frontend, backend and full stack Drupal Developer roles and has been mostly stead throughout the engagement. The team size has changed a few times slightly, based upon requirements - Droxic has been supportive and felxible to accomodate requirements.

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

As the project streams we have worked on were mostly staff augmentations, we can say that we have scaled up and cemented our bandwith of technical delivery across the project portfolio. We have successfully delivered 2 additional short lifecycle projects without jeoperdazing our CD/CI streams - for the satisfaction of our client.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

We have created a fully blended project team with Droxic - and from week one there was only 'one team'. The workflow was pleasantly effective after the 'first ramp up sprint'.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

The engineers we worked with were highly professional and performed well. They were flexible, effective, and made no trade-off on code quality. Their attitude has been extremely rewarding to work with.

Are there any areas for improvement?

Our team has been pleased working with Droxic's engineers and happy to work again in the future.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Viessmann is a large corporation in the energy and fleeting sector. The company is building oilers and energy-production plants from small-scale, single-family households to industry-grade systems. I am responsible for digital products—namely the apps and services provided by our company to end-customers and businesses. 

What challenge were you trying to address with Droxic?

While at my current position, I needed UX design help for prototyping an app for heating monitoring and remote maintenance. I wanted quick and high-quality support, without having internal resources to do so. 

What was the scope of their involvement?

Droxic acted as a full member of the team and provided 2 design resources. I had a designer who briefed them [Droxic] and steered their activity, but they actually handled the execution of the creative work. We defined a requisite framework of communication tools for the design—Zeplin and Sketch. Droxic came up with the full prototype design in the end.  

Previously, Droxic provided app development resources for a number of organizations that I’d worked with, including Delivery Hero, a unicorn startup in Berlin providing food-delivery services. For that engagement, they provided app and web development resources.

I also worked with them for Door2Door, a small startup providing mobility services like aggregated public-transport data and directions. We also worked for Allygator, a crowd-based delivery service.  

How did you come to work with Droxic?

I believe that they gave us a cold call and offered to work on a test project. This occurred several years ago.

How much have you invested with Droxic?

The cost of this project was $10,000 or slightly less.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started this project with Droxic in June 2016. The project ended in September. The initial project I worked on with Droxic occurred in 2011, and that involved native app and web development. 

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

Their work was highly appreciated by the company. I only received positive comments.

How did Droxic perform from a project management standpoint?

They were reliable and pragmatic. The feedback from our end came slowly and sporadically, but this defect was compensated by Droxic’s team, who worked on weekends and holidays, which was beyond the initial agreement. We mainly communicated through Skype and Google Hangouts.

What did you find most impressive about Droxic?

I appreciated having access to a multitude of competencies under 1 roof. Droxic was able to help across multiple projects. The last project had tough timelines, but they kept to our schedule and delivered a good result, under the circumstances.

Are there any areas Droxic could improve?

Nothing is perfect, but Droxic always embraced and executed our feedback. For this relatively short project, I can’t point out any possible improvements on their end. 

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am a partner at Mediaman, a digital agency working out of Germany, Shanghai and Boston, with automotive and financial clients.

I am also the founder and managing director of MassUp, a child company of Mediaman. MassUp is an insurance product for mobile devices, pets and travel. It is available on every digital channel, from a white-label version on a bank’s website, to online shop plug-ins. Our technology is based on the Magento platform’s APIs. We have worked with Droxic for both companies.

What challenge were you trying to address with Droxic?

The scalability of our teams’ resources. We have internal IT, but clients scale up from one day to another, and we had to cover demand. We are working with high-quality clients in the financial, insurance and automotive spaces, which requires a higher level of development. Scaling at this level is difficult, and we’re always looking for partners with whom we can work.  

What was the scope of their involvement?

We have worked with Droxic on website development, but, more significantly, on frontend, middleware and backend programming of digital applications, which can be online shops and card configurators. They have supplied Java developers, as well as ones for certain platforms, like Magento.

We may simply need a single coder and a team lead, but we may also hire a full team with special skill sets. MassUp is focused on the Magento e-commerce system, so we need 4 dedicated developers who can work on certain parts for us.

Droxic came in as part of the team and worked on our frameworks. With MassUp, we had a new build and framework, and Droxic started from scratch. We have been responsible for concepts and IT architectures internally, while Droxic provides development and maintenance on a continuous basis. This has been the most significant project with them, using a full team. Droxic’s HR has also hired some developers specifically for it.

How did you come to work with Droxic?

They called us 5 years ago, and we started a test job together. It worked out, and we continued to work together.

How much have you invested with Droxic?

The cost of their services has been between $250,000 and $300,000 overall. Their work on the MassUp project has had a cost of $50,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Droxic in October 2013. The MassUp collaboration started at the beginning of 2017, in January. The relationship is ongoing.

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

We are a B2B company. Although we have our own clients, we don’t have any end-user feedback.

MassUp has been working fine. It passed all tests and audits from Société Générale and has received certificates from other external IT audits. This was an important part for us, given that the bank had some very high-security standards. Passing all the tests is the best feedback we have. The second part is that it’s functional and making money.

How did Droxic perform from a project management standpoint?

They maintain a good standard. We can discuss what is and isn’t working with their team, and we can rework certain parts. The collaboration is at the same level as with the people in our own agency. The communication is good, and project management is done mainly from our side, with the managers on their team serving more as in-betweens.

We have regular meetings once a month, with the next one being set for 2 weeks from now. The rest of the communication is done via Skype. There is direct contact between our teams, and this works quite well. Droxic’s members speak English well.

What did you find most impressive about Droxic?

Their quality is the main point. We’ve tried different freelancers, both nearshore and offshore. With our second project, we had some problems with people leaving, and so on. Droxic has a very stable team which can deliver good quality. The fact that we selected the members together may have helped.

Are there any areas Droxic could improve?

Something we’re discussing at the moment is having a contact in Germany, who could communicate directly with Droxic’s team in Sofia, Bulgaria.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the founder and owner of CrewPlanner BV

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

We hired Droxic do develop an activitylog for our system. We supplied them with a product manager and a function sheet, the goal was to have a working code in 3 months.

How did you select Droxic and what were the deciding factors?

We knew one of their sales representive in person and therefor wanted to outsource it to them.

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

We supplied them with a technical specification and gave them a direct line to our lead developer and product manager. They were to follow to specifications, code was to be written in PHP.

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

1 sales rep 1 project mananger 1 developer

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

Major failure, code never worked and was full of bugs. Decided to pull the project from them.

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

We communicated through Slack. They have no management style, they have no idea what they are doing.

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

I have no idea where to start, in my opinion hire a better HR person and more qualified Managers.