Introduce your business and what you do there.
I am the co-founder of a center of influence e-commerce platform where professionals like interior designers, wedding planners, and personal trainers can make personalized, monetizable recommendations of retail products to their clients. This is the first kind of vertical that we’re launching in the wedding industry.
What challenge were you trying to address with DRUM’N’CODE?
It's been a struggle for us to find good developers who can give consistent services and results. We needed technical expertise to be able to build out the front and backend of our platform, so we turned to DRUM’N’CODE.
What was the scope of their involvement?
The work involved debugging the platform itself, which is written in Laravel. The other half of the project entailed adding new features such as the Stripe payment gateway. We also asked DRUM’N’CODE to code the UI/UX of our platform. We threw a variety of things their way, which they were able to accommodate through their capacity for full-stack development. They reviewed our existing documents in Jira and our frontend design works in InVision and took over from there.
What is the team composition?
We work with 2–3 different developers from DRUM’N’CODE at any given time, but we’ve worked with around five different people over the course of the last year. Our most recent point of contact is Igor (Project Manager).
How did you come to work with DRUM’N’CODE?
Originally found them on Upwork and ultimately decided to hire them because of their good ratings and the effort that they put into their initial response. We had invited 15–20 agencies to put together a proposal and out of all of them, DRUM’N’CODE was the most committed to going above and beyond for the job.
How much have you invested with them?
We’ve invested at least $20,000.
What is the status of this engagement?
Started working together in January 2021 and the project is still ongoing.
What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?
We found it difficult to get to a point where our website could be monetizable, but DRUM’N’CODE has helped us effectively create a cash flow through the platform. It has been thanks to their debugging work that the final elements of our payment system were finally put into place, resulting in our customers being able to link their bank accounts and make on-site purchases.
How did DRUM’N’CODE perform from a project management standpoint?
The project manager far exceeded my expectations with his commitment. I work a full-time job outside of this project and I thought that it would just be a hand-off type of engagement. The DRUM’N’CODE team, however, regularly asks me to review their sprints. They have helped manage the story points which was something beyond what I thought their responsibilities were.
What did you find most impressive about them?
Each of the developers we've worked with has been proactive in finding bugs and making recommendations for the best way to improve the product. They really make the effort to find a solution, which is unique in the developer world where one would usually just does his tasks. DRUM’N’CODE going above and beyond their responsibilities has been absolutely beneficial for the platform.
Are there any areas they could improve?
The language barrier caused a few tasks to be misunderstood by the team, so it would do us good for them to make clarifications ahead of time. Other than that, however, there haven’t been any issues.
Do you have any advice for potential customers?
Don’t hesitate to talk to DRUM’N’CODE because they do excellent work. Make sure that there’s a full understanding when it comes to the project, even with some minor things, lest a 15-minute fix stretch to a couple of hours. Just make sure that everyone's on the same page for specific tasks.
