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With the purpose to help start-ups and enterprises get a better understanding of what EGO cms is, as a provider of mobile app software development, GoodFirms asked us for an interview.
In conversation with the GoodFirms representatives our CEO, Eugene Polyansky, told about company’s business model, our approach to working with clients, used technologies, payment structure and the key factors that we consider while making project estimates.
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Please introduce your company and give a brief about your role within the company?
EGO has been established as a Company in 2008. Initially, it was a RnD office of the USA based digital agency. Moving forward EGO was shaped into an individual service provider. Since foundation, EGO has grown from 2 to 35 highly experienced developers, designers, QAs, and Managers. My main role as Founder and CEO is strategic planning, processes shaping, and visioning. We build sophisticated web and mobile products from scratch, caring about our Client’s business growth. In order to get the right solutions, we focus on Client’s specific needs and products goals. We bid on product design to shape it the most optimal way, so it has unique value on the market and stands out. Our company is relatively small, thus we can give our Clients maximum attention and find an individual approach in communication.
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What was the idea behind starting this organization?
We have never had a wish to build a huge Company but rather create a highly experienced development boutique agency. I believe such approach gives us more possibilities to build strong, personal and most important human relations with our Clients. The idea was to make the new way in delivering applications by thinking bigger and having the best team involved. We praise the personal development in our organizations, taking challenges and generating ideas. We believe in human to human approach and respect as core values in everything we do.
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We have never had a wish to build a huge Company but rather create a highly experienced development boutique agency. I believe such approach gives us more possibilities to build strong, personal and most important human relations with our Clients.
Eugene Polyansky, CEO & Founder EGO CI
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What is your company’s business model–in house team or third party vendors/ outsourcing?
We use only in-house team, being very selective on who to add to the team, having strong company culture, goals and shared values. Our offices are located in Krasnodar (Russia) and Kiev (Ukraine).
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How is your business model beneficial from a value addition perspective to the clients compared to other companies’ models?
We intend to solve issues, find solutions, create products for business growth opposed to just providing *development hands and bodies*. We believe in human to human approach and that each business is unique and should be treated with respect and passion. We set totally transparent process, applying only best fitting approaches, technologies and skills. We have unique expertise with cutting time and effort for mobile cross platform development, being proficient with Xamarin. Our company became a Xamarin authorized partner since May 2014. We’re actively partnering with Microsoft and has been mentoring at Xamathon Russia and Ukraine in 2016-2017.
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What industries do you generally cater to? Are your customers repetitive? What ratio of clients has been repetitive to you?
Our core approach in Customer relations is building the partnership. We treat every Client as our strategic partner and thus care about their projects as our own. For the years we’ve been in the market and we have built strong relations with dozens of Partners worldwide. The longest relations we have at this moment last 7 years already. That’s true, we’ve lost few Clients but the number is really small (about 3-5) and the main reason usually was a mismatch of our vision and culture.
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Mention the objectives or the parameters critical in determining the time frame of developing a web and the mobile app.
The key parameters that determine time frame for web or mobile application development are: clear defined requirements / client’s preferences, team’s communication and tasks setting approach. That’s great when the client has all that in place, set and ready to use. Otherwise, we help to get there on initial stages, working on the product strategy and development roadmap.
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How much effort in terms of time goes into developing the front end and back end of a web app & mobile app?
It’s hard to answer in general, it’s actually different for each project, several years ago, jquery was enough to build a frontend for any website, but today in complex media solutions front end has the same complexity as backend. I think the time for front and back can be separate as 30/70 for business apps and 50/50 for media apps. The same situation is in mobile development; business apps usually have pure UI, based on out of the box controls, and complex back end, but the complexity of media apps front end is usually limited only by the designer.
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What are the key parameters to be considered before selecting the right platform for a web application & the mobile app?
The choice is usually based on technical requirement and money. People want to have the best solution at the lowest price it’s in our nature, but the final decision seems to be a compromise between tech stack, financial opportunity and a list of features essential for the product.
There are key questions that will help us to make a decision such as how an application will be used and is it high loaded, how scalable application should be, how complex functionality would be there & which devices it should be compatible with.
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Which platform and technologies do you prefer to use in development of your web apps & mobile app?
We prefer to implement Xamarin for cross platforms mobile development. There are several reasons to choose Xamarin such as mobile apps development compatibility with all the major mobile devices available on the market, sharing approximately 80% of the code base depending on the UI required without quality loss, stable performance at native level, support for the latest APIs, including Android Wear, Google Glass, Amazon TV and more, reduction of time and costs spent on a cross-platform mobile app development.
We were originally set up as a .Net shop and have been massively implementing MS based technologies in a majority of the projects over the years. Web applications based on .NET technologies allow us to provide our customers highly maintainable, testable and scalable solutions that can cover all their needs with respect to latest industry standards and requirements.
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Do you offer website design templates or customised website design, and do you have a responsive website design?
We propose both options. It really depends on Client’s goals and project objectives. In a majority of the products we have developed till now, there was a need for individual design and branding solution, as well as responsive design structure, which was delivered by our UI/UX Specialists.
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Which Content Management System do you prefer to use (WordPress, Jumla, Drupal etc)?
We mainly provide services such as API development, the web and mobile app development, service integrations, etc. In most cases, these are custom made solutions. And only in really rare cases, we could use WordPress as a blog platform if a client requires it.
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Do you provide website maintenance services?
Yes, we provide maintenance services not only for websites but also for mobile applications. So we stay tightly connected with the client after the application has been released or added to markets. We also have SLA agreement for some type of products, covering resolving basic requests for free for 2 months after the project completion. However, we provide maintenance services only for projects that we’ve been developing ourselves. We do not provide maintenance for existing project except if you want to upgrade it to the next level, i.e. – rebuild from scratch.
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What are the key factors that you consider before deciding the cost of a web and mobile application?
The complexity and amount of the features and interface structure should be the key factors that define the effort required from a development and design team. We usually advise on how to shape the product the most efficient way and what tech stack to use to optimize development time and cost. Also, the timing is critical here, because, with the strictly defined delivery dates, that client may have, there could be a necessity to assign larger development team which will result in higher cost.
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What kind of payment structure do you follow to bill your clients?
The payment structure is always negotiable. It can be done with all the approaches; it could be in phases, months or versions. We’re finding the best fitting and reasonable approach, not sticking to predefined one.
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Do you take in projects which meet your basic budget requirement?
In the beginning, we can go with the small approach to get to product proof of the concept or provide first results faster so there is a proven cooperation model and our capabilities that ensure client that we can proceed and get to the larger product parts. For example budget for design concept can be as low as 300$.
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What is the price range (min and max) of the projects that you catered to in 2016?
For design projects, minimum is 2000$ and maximum is 7000$ and for development projects, minimum is 20000$ and maximum is 100000$.
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