BairesDev

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO of Azlo, a startup that delivers core banking services for entrepreneurs and small businesses in the U.S.

What challenge were you trying to address with BairesDev?

We needed dev talent on a short timeframe to work on sophisticated financial service applications.

What was the scope of their involvement?

BairesDev worked on web and mobile apps that deliver core banking services through a cloud-based infrastructure. The apps deliver debit card and ACH functionalities in the U.S. for business banking account services. BairesDev provides resources for DevOps and architectural work, using JavaScript, Angular, and MongoDB as their primary stack. Most of their work involves our cloud, which is through Amazon.

What is the team composition?

We work with their CEO and a project manager.

How did you come to work with BairesDev?

They were a referral.

What is the status of this engagement?

We began working together in August 2017, and the work is ongoing.

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

Their resources are skilled, and the work is high quality.

How did BairesDev perform from a project management standpoint?

They have good project management. We use a spreadsheet to track assignments and have our own system for managing the project.

What did you find most impressive about them?

BairesDev effectively sources and filters talent, building a team that perfectly fits our needs. They all have experience in financial services, which is exactly what we wanted.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They could be more sensitive to the markets they’re working in, especially when going between onshore and nearshore models.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the COO [chief operating officer] of Howzbout, a startup company in Chicago. We are producing an application that has 2 aspects to it. A B2C consumer application is meant to take the indecision out of activity planning, with a social and communication twist. On the B2B side, it’s a performance marketing advertising platform where merchants can advertise performance models.

What challenge were you trying to address with BairesDev?

The initial challenge was to define a strategy for staff augmentation, primarily to find resources more quickly from a market perspective and also lower costs compared to what we get here local to Chicago.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We went through a couple of different plans and met it out to get the initial prototype built from a screen perspective. We’re in the midst right now of interviewing a developer and engineering candidates to actually build the prototype. It’s extremely early in the development. In addition to fundraising, we’re also in the process of building screens and the concept, which is where the UX [user experience] designer comes in. We’re not physically producing code yet.

From a design perspective, we’re using an app called Principle to display a lot of the screens. Much of the design and the development, we’ve used a product called Sketch App. We also leveraged several Google products like Drive.

For development, it will be an open source stack, mostly in languages like React on the frontend, NodeJS in the middle tier, and then MySQL on the backend and probably some Java. There’s going to be specific developer skillsets in Swift, which is the iOS development language, and Android for the Android mobile app.

What is the team dynamic?

We’ve interacted with 7–8 people all with different competencies. All the way from Ignacio [CEO, BairesDev] to a full-time UX designer, as well as a part-time project manager who handles some of the back office work. We spoke to a couple of them more frequently than the rest.

How did you come to work with BairesDev?

A former colleague of mine, who is the VP of engineering at a company in San Francisco, has a staff of 30–40 in BairesDev. He spoke very highly of Ignacio and the entire company and walked me through their value proposition and a number of reasons why they have such an investment with BairesDev. Several of his points were differentiators to me in terms of other shops I’ve worked with in the past. When the opportunity came to start this company, and start building an application, they were one of the first people I called.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent $60,000–$70,000 in 3–4 months. We have a budget going into the next 2 years somewhere around $500,000–$750,000 in development costs. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in September 2017 and the work is ongoing.

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

I’ve been very happy with the results. The speed to market on getting resources was as fast as I thought it would be. It exceeded my expectations. We had a very transparent process of getting resumes and were able to communicate directly and interview the candidates.

We had our UX designer participating in things even outside of what he typically does. He would take our screens and prototypes and do some user testing with them. We don’t have the results from a functioning product to know that quality, but from a UX designer perspective, we’re very happy with the work completed. Ultimately, we’re going to know if it was successful when and if we’re able to raise the money to build it. The kind of screens and the prototype that they built will be kind of front and center in that process; it could be a big part of the equation in terms of success or failure where we go.

How did BairesDev perform from a project management standpoint?

We ran the whole team on Atlassian products, which is the combination of JIRA and HipChat for communication. We gave them access to our email as well. I had some issues communicating with some candidates that we would interview in the process. We were able to identify those quickly and found candidates that were a better fit from a communication perspective. Once the project was up and running, we were very happy with the expertise and the fundamentals that the project manager and the UX designer brought to the table. They are very fluent in running projects and how to communicate back and forth to stakeholders on a recurring and iterative basis so that there’s no long periods of time without feedback and detail and questions. We’re always in the loop on the status of the project.

The timezone local to Chicago with English speaking resources was also a huge value-add. They don’t treat themselves as an offshore or outsource development shop. They really pitch themselves as augmentation that is part of the team, the product, and the culture.

What did you find most impressive about them?

One of the primary motivators and differentiators that I saw was their culture that they are team members of ours. I have not seen that in my career working with other offshore development shop models. That and the fact that we’re allowed to interview and screen the candidates, has been great.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They tend to get a lot of candidates from all over South America. A good chunk of the people that we interviewed and talked to seemed to be working from home. We don’t have any problems with that, but it caused a lot of requirements to communicate strictly over a voice over IP protocol. We were doing a lot of interviews over Skype, for which I needed to be on a hard-wired phone. Oftentimes, I don’t think that shop was set up to do that and they were potentially reluctant to let them use their mobile phones. At times, there was a little bit of breakdown in terms of the quality of those conversations because we were using things like Skype on older, different phones, and operating systems. That’s the only improvement I can point to.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the president and managing director for R/GA in Latam, a company that was founded 40 years ago and is part of a holding group with 20 offices and 2,000 employees at a global level. We provide marketing, communication, and technology consulting, among other services. We are the developers of Nike+, which is Nike’s running system.

What challenge were you trying to address with BairesDev?

For this particular engagement, developers from BairesDev worked on a platform we developed for a client. It was an internal management platform for the end client’s buyers, clients, and points of sale in Buenos Aires, and was deployed to the rest of Argentina thereafter.

What was the scope of their involvement?

They were flexible in providing resources that were at the same level of our own engineers. They integrated with the rest of the team quickly, and worked in our own offices.

They used JavaScript for the frontend, along with other typical web technology stacks for both iOS and Android development.

What is the team dynamic?

For one of the projects, they assigned 3–4 resources, but for others, they mostly provide staff augmentation.

How did you come to work with BairesDev?

We’ve used them for 5 years as an outsourcing company. They recruited candidates to have them hired as full-time employees. Afterwards, we started using them as vendors as an alternative for other projects that required more flexibility.

How much have you invested in them?

We’ve spent between $100,000–$200,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked on this particular project from 2014–2015, but our relationship is ongoing.

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

Their flexible structure allows us to use talent that would otherwise be very difficult or expensive to acquire. They’ve been able to fulfill our expectations, and if we don’t like 1 of the developers, we’re able to change them. Their resources are fast, and as a staff augmentation partner, they’ve responded really well without any issues or effects on our timeline.

How did BairesDev perform from a project management standpoint?

There are expectations on both sides of the relationship. They are able to meet all of our expectations while maintaining the flow of the relationship. Their resources are assigned, and then we have the final responsibility. They base their skills on our requirements, which are really good. They’re flexible in extending periods and looking for nontypical resources, which has made for an overall positive relationship.

Generally, they have a low rotation in terms of project managers, which saves us from having to start completely over.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their response times and ability to always have someone we can call are great. If there is a developer who doesn’t fit our mold, we’re able to change them out. They have a series of online exams used to have a standardized filter of developer profiles.

Are there any areas they could improve?

We have high standards. The initial phase in which they bring several candidates can be somewhat tiring, so they could benefit from tuning this area a bit. I would like for this process to be easier, but I’m not sure if that’s possible.

Introduce your business and what you do there

We're a boutique software provider in New Orleans, Louisiana that has been in business for over 10 years. We work primarily in the travel technology space, partnering with Fortune 500 companies.

I am the director of technology and I oversee all of our architecture and development efforts. That includes building the team and making sure they have what they need, establishing requirements, and basically everything it takes to run a development department.

What challenge were you trying to address with BairesDev?

We primarily work with BairesDev through a staff augmentation engagement. Some companies offer resources, developers, and whatever it takes to get a software product done. We actually had a lot of this in-house. We have our own QA apart. We've got our own business analysts. We are a boutique software development company.

We were struggling to find local developers in New Orleans. There's a shortage nationwide in the US, as everyone knows, and in New Orleans is actually a lot worse. We definitely have a core group of developers based in New Orleans, but at the pace and scale that we were growing, the available resource pool is not big enough for what we needed. We started looking into different companies that could help us augment our staff.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We found BairesDev and we like them because they weren't as big as the Globants or the Accentures of the world. They were more in line with the kind of company we are, which isn't a giant corporation but we're not a small startup either. Culturally, it was a nice fit. We knew we would get more of the attention we needed in terms of finding talent and evaluating them. We do work with some other partners in Central and South America, but BairesDev is one of the largest ones we work with.

The collaboration consists of a number of different projects. We have a platform and we offer services on top of that platform. We primarily were using Ruby, J-Ruby, Javascript's, some Java, some NodeJS. We're pretty language agnostic though. We always look at any new tech that might represent the right tool for the current job we're doing.

What is the team dynamic?

We've got up to 20 developers from BairesDev right now. We've been working with them for well over three years. The team dynamic is great. I'll have to emphasize, our relationship is staff augmentation.

We let them know we need a developer with a specific skill-set and they'll send us resumes. We're at a point now where they're just constantly sending us resumes. We told them to keep sending them and if anything catches our eye, we'll move forward with an interview. We put all the candidates through our own technical interview and also interview them on culture, and other aspects. By the time we bring them on to the team, we're treating them as if we had hired them directly in New Orleans. We wanted to work primarily with developers in South and Central America just to keep it in the same time zone. They're distributed on a team that could have people from our New Orleans office, from our Austin office, or even working with contractors and other providers.

They all report to managers or team leads that we have in-house. The team dynamic's great because BairesDev does a good job screening first and then we can narrow it down with our own screening. The hit rates are usually really good. Working with them over the years, they really got a sense of our DNA and what clicks and works in our environment, so now they do that job on pre-screening on their end.

How did you come to work with BairesDev?

They found us. It was the right time because we were searching around and we were trying to find some alternatives to augmenting our staff. I actually got an email from one of the account managers over there. They came at a nice time when we were vetting companies. We did a standard comparison grid and looked at everything from average rate to time zones, to how large is the company, to how deep is their bench. We talked to them about how they recruit, how they screen and more. Those were some of the major factors that came into play. I think that because of the size of the company they are, they were right the right fit for us. 

How much have you invested with BairesDev?

[Confidential]

What is the status of this engagement?

The collaboration started in 2014.

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

The quality of the work is really related to the quality of the people and team members that have them. The pre-screening that they do helps because if you can spend less time interviewing, usually the people that are doing the interviews are key resources that we need working on the product. Every hour I pull them out to go and do an interview is key and if it doesn't work out, that's a hit. That was very helpful. By the time we get a team member on board, retention is very high, especially for contractors and definitely just developers as a whole.

Our average tenure is 2.5 years, which for a company like us is incredibly helpful because our platform is large and it takes a while to get ramped up. If our retention rates are low where we've got a lot of churns, it actually really affects our bottom line. I think that this has been a big factor. Speaking back to the culture, usually people we've brought on board with their staff are more heads-up developers and they're going to communicate, which again is really helpful because it's common for developers sometimes to get caught in rabbit holes and not raise their hand for help, communicate, or update their managers and product managers.

We've had really good results from BairesDev's developers. They communicate up and are very proactive and creative thinkers. It really doesn't feel like you're dealing with a contractor. This has been our experience.

How did BairesDev perform from a project management standpoint?

We do most of our product management in-house. We do have an assigned project manager through BairesDev but they are primarily more of a human resource manager for us. If we are having any personnel issues, for whatever reason, they're there to help and they make sure that things get corrected and move smoothly. That's primarily how we work with them on a product manager basis. They'll also help with schedules. We have pretty stringent time logging requirements. Everybody in the company logs time down to the 15-minute increments on different tasks that are working on. As you can imagine that can be difficult to herd people into complying with that.

One of the other benefits that their staff brings is that their product managers will help us if there are any issues around time sheets, resolving them and the like. Really anything that we need to support the staff administratively.

What did you find most impressive about BairesDev?

They're extremely responsive in my experience and that was key for us. They're constantly talking to us, willing to set up meetings, even at the senior leadership level, to discuss ways in which we can partner with them in a better way and provide more services. They're trying to help us streamline and leverage their services better. I never really feel a lot of pressure from them from a sales perspective. They are there to help. They're very responsive, to the point that their CEO visited our offices. We were able to work out special arrangements with him that were unique to our situation. They even talk to us through all the methods that they use, technical practicals, down to the more culturally and soft-skill base. I think that the responsiveness and the level of organization they bring to recruiting and onboarding differentiates them.

Are there any areas BairesDev could improve?

Early on, we talked to them about a relationship in which they can take on more. Instead of providing straight staff, QA, devs that just distribute themselves in our organization. That we actually hire a cross-functional team from them, provide more specs and then they can execute on it. We weren't interested in that in the beginning. I think over time working with them, we became more interested in it and again, they're not hard up sellers with us. So I think that this is on us for just not following-up on it much. I didn't get the sense that they provided as much of that.

I think that's maybe something that could have been a little more proactive, that we discussed transitioning into that kind of relationship and that may come. But that's the only thing I can really think of for now. I think for us, one of the downsides to working with any contracting company or contractors, is that you're not in direct control of their compensation, even though you're trying to foster a more direct relationship, it makes it harder because there's just things on the administrative human resources side that to some extent is going to remain opaque to us. But I think that's the nature of the business.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the program manager of an EdTech company based out of Salt Lake City.

What challenge were you trying to address with BairesDev?

We’re developing a system that we’re looking to launch in the marketplace.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We’re working on an enterprise application that has a Java backend and uses React on the frontend.

We had 11–13 developers from BairesDev that supplemented our internal efforts, but I can’t go into further details since we’re a publicly traded company.

How did you come to work with BairesDev?

We had exhausted the Ruby on Rails local talent and decided to switch to Java in order to reduce hosting costs and expand our horizons. We needed to deliver something to market pretty quickly and we knew we couldn’t do that by hiring in the local market. We also knew there weren’t any other attractive options in the US.

Our company has recently focused on co-location and its benefits, so we’ve been trying to co-locate as many internal employees as possible in the same place. As we analyzed all the business objectives, we knew we were going to have to look into outsourcing.

We did a worldwide search including the US, Eastern Europe, India, South America, and Latin America. Based on the timeline, technical ability, and price, we were able to choose the top 3 companies and decided to try out a couple of those firms. After 4 or 5 months, we dropped one of the vendors because they clearly weren’t what we wanted. We found a good way to work with BairesDev and have been working with them ever since.

How much have you invested with BairesDev?

We’ve spent between $3 million–$5 million so far, including internal costs. We spend $100,000 per month with BairesDev.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working on some test projects in September 2016 and on the actual project in October 2016. The relationship is ongoing.

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

We trust them. We’ve gone after a lot of the best engineers in the Salt Lake and Utah Valleys, but the market is really unstable in the US right now. We have extremely smart engineers, and after 4 years of working with this company, we’ve never had to engage an external vendor before. We’ve explored a couple of options, but have never been happy with the results. This is the first time we’ve been able to make it work, which speaks to the adaptability of BairesDev’s engineers.

Their technical ability is solid. It’s not what we would demand of a senior engineer here; I would call them mid-level engineers. There are 2 or 3 of their developers that have been exceptional, and we would hire them full time if the circumstances were right.

How did BairesDev perform from a project management standpoint?

We use JIRA to assign tasks and Slack for communication. We do daily standups over video conferencing to get on the same page quicker.

What did you find most impressive about BairesDev?

They have strong technical abilities and are adaptable. Also, their personalities align better to the US culture. I’ve used Eastern European and Indian vendors before and have consistently had problems because of the cultural differences.

In India and Eastern Europe, the engineers were overly deferent and didn’t push back appropriately. They also weren’t up front about things. In South America, a lot of the developers are more independent and line up with our culture better; they push back and ask a lot more questions. BairesDev is really pleasant to work with, overall.

Are there any areas BairesDev could improve?

We’ve had to go through some process improvements. Them not being passive was a positive thing, but we also needed to help them find the right balance. We wanted them to push back but our internal team needed to own the future technical requirements and would need to provide the technical direction of the project in order to have the right amount of ownership.

We helped BairesDev understand that and let them know that we were going to own the technical direction but that they can ask questions and push back where appropriate. Once we lock down the technical direction, we need everyone to get in line with that. We had issues where people weren’t getting in line after we made decisions and that was painful, but we were able to knock off those rough edges quickly and have a good working relationship.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the vice president of engineering for a performance marketing/architecture company. 

What challenge were you trying to address with BairesDev?

I needed to scale my engineering group quickly. In San Francisco, there’s a lot of competition for good engineers. BairesDev provided me with good engineers in a brief amount of time. Because they were much cheaper than local engineers, I can actually hire more resources through their pipeline. 

What was the scope of their involvement?

We're using 20 engineers now, mainly for Python but also for some Urline work. Our frontend is JavaScript. We use React for the framework.

How did you come to work with BairesDev?

They were referred to me by an agency that matches companies with near-source developers. We interviewed a couple of our top choices and selected BairesDev.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in January 2016, and the relationship is ongoing. 

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

We used them as staff augmentation, so they’re embedded within our team. Their success is hard to separate from the internal team’s.

How did BairesDev perform from a project management standpoint?

They don’t do any independent project management because they’re part of our team. They perform to the same expectations as my full-time employees. We use JIRA for issue-tracking, Slack for online communications, and Google Hangouts for planning sessions and daily standups. We use screen-sharing tools as well.

What did you find most impressive about BairesDev?

When trying to find a partner, I talked to a number of vendors that all promised me the moon but didn’t deliver. BairesDev’s CEO promised me an engineer within 6 weeks. He said we’d worry about the paperwork later so we can get the project going more quickly. Other companies would have spent 2 months wading through the legal agreement before sending us a resume.

BairesDev has consistently produced excellent engineers. We’ve not had to let any of them go. Any performance issues involved people’s motivation and making sure they’re working on the right team. Each resource has been very steady. The CEO really wanted to build a partnership, and the quality of their engineers has impressed me. The tools they use to source these engineers are obviously working well for them.

Are there any areas BairesDev could improve?

We had some issues when they changed a few account managers, which impaired consistency, but we gave them feedback, and they addressed the issue. 

Briefly describe what your company does and your role there. 

Writer

What were your company's goals when you started looking for a partner?

We were looking to augment software development and refine an identity verification product.

Describe the scope of your partner's work with your company. Please include a summary of any key tasks or deliverables.

We had them work on software engineering and product development as a nearshore team. They were integrated into our operations with React

How many people does your company work with?

6 - 10 people

How did you find this provider?

Online search

Why did you choose to work with them?

• Close to my geographic location
• Pricing fits our budget

What are the results or deliverables of this partnership that demonstrate progress or success?

We've successfully updated our identity verification platform. Work is ongoing.

How does your team communicate with this service provider?

• Virtual Meetings
• Phone Calls
• Email or Messaging App
• Project Management Platform

Are there any areas for improvement or something this service provider could have done differently?

No

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am a chief technology officer for a medical device company

For what projects/services did your company hire BairesDev?

They work on cloud and mobile development

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

They had near shore resources that were good quality

Describe the project in detail and walk through the stages of the project.

There are multiple projects over multiple years.

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

We have approximately 30, and they are senior and junior engineers

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

The quality metrics and velocity metrics are good

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Workflow between our team and their team is very smooth

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

They have high-quality engineers. They are stable

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

none

Please describe your company and your position there.

Bounteous is a digital transformation agency and I occupy a position of Talent Specialist

For what projects/services did your company hire BairesDev?

We had a large scale web and mobile revamp project for a major client and BairesDev helped us stuff the development and QA teams for this project

What were your goals for this project?

Web and Mobile digital transformation project

How did you select BairesDev?

BairesDev have a great reputation in the industry, they were referred to us through mutual partners

Describe the project in detail.

Project involved digital strategy, software development, testing, and digital design stages

What was the team composition?

FE, BE, Mobile developers, Was, PMs

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

not yet, project is still in the process.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

The project manager we were assigned communicates in timely manner, and the account manager is always extremely helpful

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Everyone is passionate about the project and hardworking

Are there any areas for improvement?

none so far

Please describe your company and your position there.

CTO of a technology nonprofit

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

We utilized BairesDev to create custom coding and process flows to improve user experience and large scale collaboration between organizations.

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

We found them through a connection. Their expertise and talent pool was unrivaled.

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

They designed and developed a new logic based assessment and intake model, allowing clients to choose their own journey and select appropriate resources based on location, demographic information, and reviews.

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

One person served as a Salesforce architect for us

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

We are on track to launch the project ahead of schedule, and this will be revolutionary for our industry.

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

Their PM skills were fantastic and had great accountability. We communicated through JIRA, stand ups, and email

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

Their talent pool is really impressive.

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

No