Altoros

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the head of systems development and data management at a healthcare organization. 

What challenge were you trying to address with Altoros?

We needed help in custom software development. 

What was the scope of their involvement?

We contacted Altoros to scope the project — we wanted to simplify the code of an existing solution that held sharing agreements of organizations within our jurisdiction. From there, Altoros proceeded with the development. They’ve already delivered the app, and they’re currently providing maintenance services. 

What is the team composition?

I’ve worked with about 4–5 people, including a project manager, a business relationship manager, and some developers. 

How did you come to work with Altoros?

I found them through a Google search. 

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent about £35,000 (approximately $48,000 USD). 

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in January 2021, and it’s ongoing. 

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

I’m 100% satisfied with Altoros’ work, and they’ve exceeded my expectations. 

How did Altoros perform from a project management standpoint?

Altoros is excellent at project management. They’ve delivered the project under budget, ahead of schedule, and with a smile. We have a great relationship with their team. We communicate through Microsoft Teams. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

Altoros’ pricing is impressive.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They should ensure that there’s always an English-speaking teammate that we can deal with. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Be clear on what you want before engaging with Altoros. 

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am a Director of Developer Experience at a company that develops software for health, fitness and wellness.

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

Our company has experienced rapid growth and we have had trouble finding qualified employees to work on our platform. We hired Altoros to help us augment our staff on our back end and mobile teams. Our goal was to increase our team size so we could deliver on multiple, business critical initiatives very quickly. For our back end projects, Altoros provided an entire team of developers that we have been able to give complete projects to own. This team has worked independently and implemented many projects that our full time staff did not have resources to complete. Our staff augmentation plan for our mobile team relied on placing individual developers from Altoros on different teams to add expertise and increase throughput for those teams.

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

The major factor for selecting Altoros was their ability to provide good developers quickly. We have been very satisfied with the mobile developers and back end developers Altoros has provided. The developers that we hired from Altoros definitely accelerated our development schedules and allowed us to complete some projects that would have otherwise sat in our backlog.

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

For the back end team, the team provided by Altoros has taken on a few different projects. We typically hand off to them a product requirements document and they have been able to quickly implement the features we needed. We have also had them working on refactoring projects to make our back end projects easier to maintain and more performant. The refactoring projects taken on by Altoros have allowed us to keep developers with a lot of domain knowledge on newer projects that are critical to our business growth.

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

For our back end projects, Altoros provided a team with four developers, a project manager, and a dedicated QA engineer. Having PM and QA resources included helps us a lot because it removes a lot of management overhead. On mobile, we currently have 6 developers that we have distributed through a few different teams. These developers work side by side with our full time developers and help us keep up our rapid development pace. We also have a dedicated account manager that has been extremely helpful finding talented developers and has managed our relationship with Altoros very well.

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

On the back end, the Altoros team has enabled us to release many new features. The Altoros team has taken on things like technical debt and performance improvement projects that are extremely important and historically have taken time away from developers working on new features. Altoros' work has made our platform more stable and easier to maintain while also allowing the rest of our team to move very quickly on other new user facing features. On the mobile side, the developers have given our teams a boost in knowledge and throughput. The mobile developers have brought some very specific knowledge about video streaming and hardware integration that allowed our teams to move much quicker than they would have otherwise.

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

For our back end team, Altoros provided PM resources so we do not have to deal with that. We just provide requirements and the team is able to work very independently. We have regular communication to see how the team is progressing. We interact through Slack a lot, but also have regular video calls when it makes sense. Timelines are very good and the biggest "problem" we have is keeping the backlog of tasks full because the team completes their work with very good pace. We integrated the mobile engineers directly with our teams so we use our own management resources to provide them with work and priorities. Our mobile teams use Slack extensively and this has worked well with the Altoros developers because many of them are in different time zones. Even with time differences, the developers have been very responsive and all our teams feel like communication has been great.

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

There are two things I like about Altoros. First is the quality of the candidates they have been able to source for us. The developers have been very good and all came up to speed very quickly on our code and were able to contribute without a long "ramp up" period. The candidates have also been good at sharing knowledge and making our other developers better. The second thing about Altoros that I like is that their account managers are very good. We have a good relationship with our contacts at Altoros and they are very easy to work with. The communication is great and I never feel like anything "falls through the cracks." Our account manager is very responsive and detail oriented. He makes life easier because I am confident everything is being done correctly on his end.

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

I really have no complaints. I have been very satisfied with the Altoros as a company and the people they have placed with us have helped us a lot. They have been very good to work with over the last year.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the development manager for a decision-maker collaboration platform.

What challenge were you trying to address with Altoros?

We needed help with native iOS app development. 

What was the scope of their involvement?

They’ve been assisting with getting the functionality related to the iOS application out into the market. It’s based on a preexisting web application. Our portal allows our board members to book into the annual board meetings so they can conduct meetings in a paperless environment. Users can also set up agendas, take meeting minutes, and sign documents electronically.

What is the team composition?

We work with one iOS developer and one account manager.

How did you come to work with Altoros?

One of our previous employees used to work at Altoros.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in 2012, and our work is ongoing.

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

Altoros is really skilled, and it’s really easy to communicate with them. They successfully helped to implement electronic signing into our iOS application. It was a complex project because there are different signing methods for all the Nordic countries. Altoros helped improve the information flow from our users working in conjunction with our API developers.

How did Altoros perform from a project management standpoint?

They’ve been really good at meeting all of our expected deadlines. We haven’t had any problems with any deliveries. We use Microsoft Teams to communicate. They’re also involved in Sprint planning.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their developers are really self-driven. They’re also good at identifying potential pitfalls before they occur.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, not that I can think of.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

It’s important to understand your own needs and get in contact with one of the key account managers to make sure they understand what your business needs are as well.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a principal product manager at a US telematics company. We develop insurance telematics products to improve driver safety.

What challenge were you trying to address with Altoros?

We hired them as a contractor to help in our software development projects, mainly around building mobile apps for Android and iOS.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Altoros helps us put together teams for projects. For example, when we begin building a new app, they bring in engineers and QA testers to work on specific areas.

For each project, we provide onboarding documentation that outlines the specific technologies we plan to use and how the mobile app needs to be developed for Android and iOS. 

We also provide user stories and our business team’s requirements. If needed, they do their own research to solve specific problems. In addition to development, they also support testing.

What is the team composition?

The size of the team fluctuates depending on what we need. We are currently working with one iOS developer, one Android developer, and one tester from Altoros.

How did you come to work with Altoros?

I don’t have a lot of background on how the partnership started. It was ongoing when I joined the company. They’re good at what they do, so we’ve continued the partnership.

What is the status of this engagement?

We’ve been working with them for a few years and currently we are working with them.

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

Altoros’s team is knowledgeable and professional. They produce quality development and testing work that adhere to our requirements. 

The apps they’ve worked on can be downloaded from the App Store and Google Play. We’re happy with the work Altoros is doing.

How did Altoros perform from a project management standpoint?

We handle project management, but Altoros is quite good at estimating the amount of time needed to complete a particular task. Based on user stories, they’re able to estimate how much time it will take to develop and try to deliver on time.

We use Slack for most day-to-day communication, along with email. Requirements and tasks are shared through Jira, and we have conference calls through Google Meet.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Altoros developers and testers are good at what they do. They’re knowledgeable about app development and are very skilled. They are also good at communication and good to work with.

Are there any areas they could improve?

There’s always room for improvement and we need to always keep abreast of latest technologies and find better ways of doing things.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

In any engagement with a third-party provider, you must provide detail requirements so they can execute effectively. Clients should communicate frequently and clarify any questions Altoros may have.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CTO of a software development company. We’re an agency that focuses on development and marketing for e-commerce and other sales-oriented, marketplace-style vendors.

What challenge were you trying to address with Altoros?

They’re helping us with our development and software engineering needs for the creation and maintenance of applications and e-commerce properties in the marketing sphere.

What was the scope of their involvement?

The key deliverables are their expertise and finished applications. Altoros’ ongoing development is based on our designs and specifications, and these projects are largely for our clients. Occasionally, they build tools for internal use.

What is the team composition?

It ranges from 2–5 people depending on the number of projects we have going.

How did you come to work with Altoros?

They were a reference from a friend about 10 years ago. I’ve worked with them while at a number of companies.

How much have you invested with them?

I’ve spent around $600,000–$700,000 with them on this engagement.

What is the status of this engagement?

We’ve been working together at my current company since January 2019.

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

Altoros provides very high-level engineers. We haven’t had to switch any out. We’ve always appreciated their work. They’re as good as I can want, and I’m happy to continue working with them.

Our clients’ feedback has been very positive as well. They say Altoros’ offers excellent service and quality that they haven’t received from other providers.

How did Altoros perform from a project management standpoint?

They’re excellent. They don’t force us to use any specific tools, as they’re happy to go with whatever we want. We go with whatever fits our client’s needs. Altoros is extremely flexible and performs well with whatever tools we give them.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The quality of Altoros’ engineering work, their speed, and their ability to learn new technologies as needed stand out. Additionally, they work well independently, requiring less management than is traditionally needed. They’re easily comparable to any excellent domestic engineer.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I wish they had more staff so I could fully scale with them. Their engineers are very in-demand so they can only provide us with so many.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Even outsourced engineers cost a six-figure salary, so make sure you have your requirements together. Make sure you’re organized and have your designs in shape so you’re using Altoros in a focused manner like you would use a domestic engineer. You’re going to get domestic engineering quality, and it can have a high cost if you expect them to design the whole product for you.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CTO of an HR and staffing technology company. We focus on employment compliance for the entire employee lifecycle in multiple countries.

What challenge were you trying to address with Altoros?

They’re helping us with staff augmentation, particularly for backend development.

What was the scope of their involvement?

They work with our internal product managers and external frontend developers to deliver within an ongoing two-week sprint framework.

What is the team composition?

They’ve provided us with three developers, with one of these three serving as the team leader and our main point of contact.

How did you come to work with Altoros?

We were looking for someone operating in their region and time zone who focused on the technology stack that they do. In our review process, they impressed us with their skill set, knowledge, and experience.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent about $25,000 per month with them.

What is the status of this engagement?

We’ve been working together since February 2020.

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

Our internal QA team reviews their deliverables, and we also assess their completion of the sprints. Based on these assessments, we’ve been satisfied. Their code is quite good and their team is up-front about areas that may need to be altered or improved. They’ve got a strong understanding of how to best apply current technology stacks and approaches.

How did Altoros perform from a project management standpoint?

They’ve been effective. We have a project manager on our side who keeps everyone accountable. We get all the teams together as we plan each sprint and hold a retrospective meeting afterward. These meetings have helped everyone communicate well. We communicate via Slack and use Jira and Confluence for project management purposes.

What did you find most impressive about them?

There’s a clear drive on their end to keep everyone knowledgeable about new technologies. We’ve all learned a lot during this project, but they’re always able to effectively apply anything we’ve asked them to apply.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I’m pretty happy overall, and I’d have to be picky or unreasonable to criticize anything.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

When you’re looking for outside resources to support your team, you have to consider how they’ll fit with your team. It’s much like making internal hiring decisions.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the head of architecture and innovation for Tokentrust. We are aiming to facilitate the digitization and tokenization of commodities, enabling them to be traded in a simple and secure way, as well as provide accessibility to illiquid markets.

To achieve this target we based our platform on permissioned blockchain technology.

What challenge were you trying to address with Altoros?

We were looking for specialists and experts to help us with deployment.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We are working with Altoros with a staffing model. They provide us with needed specialists on request and we integrate them into our team. They focus on infrastructure architecture and deployment.

At the moment, they are working on enterprise-grade platform deployment. They are responsible for ensuring that the deployment has all the necessary qualities from the perspective of regulators and auditors.

What is the team composition?

Currently, we have four engineers from the Altoros team.

How did you come to work with Altoros?

Altoros was recommended by one of our partner companies. Before that, we were in contact with many companies but none of them were able to provide us with adequate specialists in the area we were looking for, except for Altoros.

This made them very valuable to us. The price that they proposed was quite fair taking in account qualification of proposed specialists, so we decided to work with them.

How much have you invested in them?

We invested about $30,000 on average per month, and so far, it is about $200,000 total.

What is the status of this engagement?

In September 2020, we started active development with them on phase one, which was successfully completed three months ago. Now we are working with them on phase two. I assume our relationship with Altoros will go further after ending phase two.

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

Altoros seem to be very good at providing specialists who really meet our requirements. This is rather rare vendor's quality based on my experience. If you ask them for certain specialists, they understand what qualities the specialist needs to have. They don’t just try to find someone who fits from any perspective.

How did Altoros perform from a project management standpoint?

We use an agile approach. 

In general, they react very quickly. As a startup, we have often some changes, and they are very flexible in this regard.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The quality of their specialists and the price that we are paying for that quality is fair. Altoros is very client-oriented. There is nothing that I could complain about.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, they continuously ask us for feedback. There is nothing that would cause me to complain.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Consider Altoros because they are qualified specialists, they are experts, and the price is fair especially in the context of their qualities.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the founder of a technology company. We're essentially a cleaning facilitator for delivery drivers. 

What challenge were you trying to address with Altoros?

We started the company from scratch, so we had all the challenges of a startup, which included visualization, pipelining, and technology.

What was the scope of their involvement?

I recognized that when delivery drivers needed to use the bathroom, they didn’t have many options, especially during COVID-19. I wanted to connect drivers with crowdsourced bathrooms during delivery trips. Altoros took that idea and built it into a product from scratch. They did all of the code — about 600 hours of code to create the proof of concept and MVP. Their team also created the API for drivers and then integrated it into their platform. Their work also involved cloud consulting.

What is the team composition?

Our main point of contact was on the business development side, but we also worked with software engineers. In total, we worked with 5-6 people, including frontend and backend developers, and QA analysts.

How did you come to work with Altoros?

I searched Google and liked their reviews. I did a little more research and chose them based on their size and specializations.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent close to $30,000 on this project.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started the project with Altoros in September 2020, and they completed what we needed in January 2021. However, we’ll likely use them again in the next phase.

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

We measured success based on the project's timeframe and the quality of their work. Our CFO said that Altoros created great technology and their code was excellent. The timing of the project was great too. To complete this project within four months was excellent.

How did Altoros perform from a project management standpoint?

Overall, their team was great. We communicated via Zoom and had weekly meetings with their project manager in the beginning. Once everyone was on the same page, we cut back to meeting every two weeks. Although there was a hiccup with communication, it was quickly resolved. However, that happens when working on big projects.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Altoros’ communication was excellent. It was hard to illustrate my idea because it was complicated. Their team was able to create a physical product based on my idea, which was crucial. They also owned the project. Instead of blindly executing our requests, their team gave us suggestions to improve the product.   

Are there any areas they could improve?

This was a difficult project. Altoros hit it out of the park, so I don’t know how they could improve.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Stay on top of your communication with them. Don’t assume their team understands your idea because you do. That's just general advice.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the founder of a ratings and reviews SaaS company. We offer retail management software in the public marketplace.

What challenge were you trying to address with Altoros?

Our internal development team needed support in developing additional features and functionalities for our software product. We hired Altoros to increase our software development capacities.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Altoros provides staff augmentation services. This is a long-term engagement, as opposed to project-based.  We work with a developer who does front- and backend development. They also do API development. We work in Node.js, Angular, React, and MongoDB.

The assigned developer is part of our planning process and daily scrum projects. He is also involved in QA and code reviews. Although he is remote, he works like a fully-integrated member of our software development team. 

What is the team composition?

We work with one full-stack developer who does both front- and backend work. Last year, we had a part-time resource who worked on a specific redesign project for three months.

How did you come to work with Altoros?

I researched different nearshore companies and looked at their portfolios of past clients and projects. We chose Altoros because they provided a better developer profile than others.

How much have you invested with them?

My company has spent more than $200,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in May 2018, and it’s ongoing.

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

We do continuous development of our product with Altoros. We can’t really speak to a project that had a clear beginning and end — rather, we’re continuously checking our software’s code, and that’s how we measure the success. Since we continue to work with the same developer, it’s obvious we’re happy with the deliverables.

How did Altoros perform from a project management standpoint?

This engagement is very small. Although Altoros offered project management, we declined; we just have to manage a single developer. We have calls and check-ins to make sure everything is working out and to see if there are issues.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Altoros offers really impressive developer profiles to their clients. They’re very responsive to any type of questions, whether they’re related to the work or something administrative, such as invoicing. Any queries are usually answered within one working day, which shows a good level of service.

Are there any areas they could improve?

We’re happy with the developer we have. In the past, we have needed DevOps resources, and they’re hard to find. If they had part-time DevOps resources we could draw upon to help with our servers and cloud management, that would be good. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

The main effort is in the initial recruiting process. The return is always based on the quality of the developer, so the bidding and interview process should be very detailed and thorough. Make sure to check out the developers’ capabilities.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We’re a small software company in the Atlanta area with about 10–12 active engineers working on our product. I’m the engineering team lead. 

What challenge were you trying to address with Altoros?

We had a new product idea but didn’t have the resources to devote to it. Because of COVID uncertainty, we wanted to experiment with outsourcing this work. We didn’t want to go through the recruitment and interviewing process to hire in-house resources either.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Our product functions as a video portal, or learning library, for customers. Our main product is a massive, complicated software package. We found that we were spending a lot of time and resources training customers how to use our software. That tech support and onboarding was costing us. The global pandemic exacerbated the problem because we couldn’t travel or hold in-person meetings with our customers.

As a solution, we decided to create a series of instructional videos. That way, customers could help themselves whenever they needed through the portal rather than contacting someone on our staff. To start the project off with Altoros, our design department determined what we needed and provided them with a 120-page document detailing how the product should look and behave. That jumpstarted the collaboration between their team and ours to implement the design plan. Team members on our team and theirs worked on the project together using Angular. 

What is the team composition?

I’m the overall project manager for this effort, but they have a project manager who coordinates the work on their side. However, I speak directly with their three developers, their project manager, and two developers from my team. 

How did you come to work with Altoros?

I did a lot of research to find the right fit for this project, keeping a spreadsheet of companies that were ranked highly on top outsourced companies lists. We’d tried outsourcing to other companies but found issues with time zones as well and language and cultural barriers. To address each of those past issues, we decided to look for a partner in South America.

There would be less of a time zone difference and easier communication, especially because I speak Spanish. They were one of the few finalists in our search, and we chose to hire them after interviewing them and the other finalists.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent about $60,000–$70,000 so far. Our contract for the year amounts to $220,000. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We’ve been working together since October 2020. This project is complete, but we’re now looking for more work to do with them.

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

Our team expected this project to be complete several months later than it actually was. We’ve finished the work and are preparing to deploy the solution to customers. Each of their team members is very strong in their skills, which is why we were able to finish the project 2–3 months early.  

How did Altoros perform from a project management standpoint?

I meet with them every morning to discuss yesterday’s progress and today’s plans. We communicate if there are any questions or problems at that point as well. If issues come up throughout the day, we have open communication through Slack channels. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

I chose to give this review based on how pleasantly surprised we’ve been with their work. The candidates they found and provided to our team were great. We appreciated being involved in the interviewing and onboarding process for those teammates. They gave us fantastic people to work with. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

There were slight hiccups with setting up the initial billing, but those issues could’ve been on our side. I can’t think of anything for them to improve upon. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Try to plan out your project, breaking it up into stages. Once they get working, they power through tasks and tickets very quickly. They worked more quickly than I was expecting them to, which was a great problem to have.