E-Sourcing

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am a program and partner relations manager for Trace One. The company specializes in a product lifecycle management software run as a SaaS for white-label, fast-moving consumer goods. We have offices in Paris, the UK, Germany, and the US, as well as colleagues in South America.

What challenge were you trying to address with Ready4S?

Our existing applications — what we call our core products — were 15 years old, and we started a program to completely redevelop them. It was a ground-up rebuild. One of the products in the portfolio was a new product, and we needed quite specific skills for that application, so we engaged Ready4S to supply additional developers to supplement our internal teams. Moving forward, we’ve engaged with them for additional resources and skillsets.

What was the scope of their involvement?

The application was written in PHP, which requires quite a specific skill set to develop with. A third party originally built the application, but we bought the intellectual property rights so we’re able to customize and extend it internally. Ready4S helped and continues to help us with that customization work. There’s a roadmap of work they’re helping to deliver. In addition to development, they provide us with testing and QA resources to validate that the application is fit for delivery. Our SaaS solution is a web-based application hosted on the Google Cloud. We’re going to look to host all of our applications on mobile devices in the future — probably tablets rather than smartphones, as they’re fairly complicated..

What is the team composition?

Currently, they provide us with three senior PHP developers and one QA resource. They’ve recently extended their resources to include 2 React developers that work on the front- and backend of our .NET applications.

How did you come to work with Ready4S?

I wasn’t involved in this decision, as they came on before I moved into my current role, but we continue using them because they are competitive in terms of price, and their support and skills are extremely good.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent just shy of €1,000,000 (approximately $1,200,000 USD) with them to date.

What is the status of this engagement?

We’ve been working together since January 2019.

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

We track different measures of success, including velocity. This ensures that our partners deliver at the expected pace. The teams that Ready4S operates on have a set number of features or changes to deliver at the end of every two-week sprint. Capacity is expected to at least maintain constant, if not improve. Our longest-tenured team from Ready4S excels at continuous improvement. We also track the quality of what our teams deliver We look on an application-by-application basis, and the support issue rates for the applications that Ready4S works on are very, very low. The quality of what they deliver is absolutely where it should be. Because we operate as a SaaS provider, our retailers are our customers. Other than minor code quality issues, there haven’t been any problems from a customer perspective. Ready4S provides extremely competent developers. We’ve only had one delay and two serious incidents in two-and-a-half years, and that’s pretty good going.

How did Ready4S perform from a project management standpoint?

We don’t use any third-party project management tools, as we manage their resources directly. Their output, workload, and everything is managed entirely by our internal product owners. That said, I have a very good working relationship with Ready4S; we’re prepared to deal with any issues, should they arise. We have regular calls, and they notify us of any holidays, sick leaves, or delays. All our communication happens on Microsoft Teams. Because they’re fully integrated into the team, they communicate on a very regular basis. We can’t tell the difference between the Ready4S developers and our internal people. They’re 100% a part of our team.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The dedication of Ready4S’ developers stands out. They care that they deliver a high-quality product.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I’m hard-pressed to say anything. The only area I believe that they could possibly improve in is their speed in providing resources with the additional skill sets that we request. I would prefer to use Ready4S to service all our suppliers, but they’re not always in a position to respond quickly to those requests. I don’t know if this stems from a size issue or is merely a consequence of supplying skills that are outside of their traditional core.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Go for it. You won’t regret it.