MS Dynamics in public and private sector

Challenge

In today’s world, people are more empowered and informed than ever before. If you don’t keep them satisfied, your competitor probably will. Seer delivers CRM solutions to help their clients not only survive but thrive in this challenging environment. Seer’s active development environment requires skilled MS Dynamics CRM developers, but until recently they faced difficulties finding qualified candidates. Seer had been focusing on internal hires exclusively for developing and managing their solutions, unaware of the affordability and exceptional quality of resources in Macedonia.

Solution

We approached Seer with a proposal for CRM development outsourcing and our flexible delivery model–an offer to form a dedicated Client Exclusive Team with Axeltra. At first, Seer had doubts, but they soon realized that forming a dedicated team in Macedonia was a great opportunity to get qualified people at a reasonable cost.
However, they hadn’t had any experience with sourcing people externally before and were uncertain about implementing this model in practice. The presentation of our service delivery model convinced them that this was the right model for them. The idea of forming a team that was an integral part of their company, a team that they would directly manage and invest in, convinced them to move forward with the start-up process. Initially, they decided to start with two part-time CRM developers and one part-time QA engineer (read more about peak resources below), with an option to expand their team in the near future.
A negotiated agreement was applied that covered:

• A contract proposal that provided clearly defined guidelines regarding communication flow, team ownership, prices, and administrative and legal issues.
• A team–highly educated, skilled and proficient in English–ready to start in two weeks.
• One intermediate CRM developer with two years of experience, under the supervision of a senior CRM developer.
• One senior CRM developer with three years’ experience.
• The senior developer was engaged only on a part-time basis for the first two months due to a contract agreement with a previous company. Once the contract finished, the developer worked solely for Seer.
• One QA was selected to validate and verify the code and to maintain quality assurance for the solutions.
• Initially, the hiring was performed by Axeltra, including interviewing potential candidates and testing their communication skills, competence and knowledge.
  The CRM developers were interviewed by Seer’s managers via Skype video conferencing.
• Direct interaction with clients was done by the onsite team–Seer’s project managers and business managers.
• Seer’s project managers delegated and managed the work in their dedicated team, while Axeltra took care of the infrastructure and the team’s wellbeing: motivation, satisfaction and productivity.
• The communication between the team and the project manager was conducted through Skype and Gmail
• Flexibility in the contract allowed a trial period for developers and the possibility of replacement.

Result

• After the first team launch, the team was increased by one more senior CRM developer.
• The team proved to have the right mix of experience, expertise and tools to solve all problems within the time frame of the project and ensure that all features requested by the client worked properly.
• The team was fast, easily adapted to the client’s changes, demonstrated a great work ethic, had excellent communication skills, and was dedicated to achieving successful outcomes.
• All the results listed above contributed to Seer’s satisfaction with the project and eliminated all problems and doubts about assigning additional projects.
• Whenever problems arose, the developers demonstrated that they were not only good at developing, but also excellent in supporting functional issues, bug fixing, and managing time effectively.
• The customer was satisfied with the stable and error-free solutions, delivered within the defined timeframe.
• Six months later, Seer expanded their capacity with a new team: qualified and experienced developers in the MS SharePoint platform.
• Seer’s entire development team is now in Macedonia.

Use of Peak Resources

A QA Engineer was involved in the project, ensuring and improving the quality of the project cycle releases. Including the QA as a resource guaranteed project quality and on-time delivery. This approach gives flexibility in handling increased work demands and faster delivery of functional solutions. For a bigger project, additional developers would be hired on a part-time basis for workload management and to support additional tasks.
Peak resources provide resources as needed, whether the need is for a QA or a junior CRM developer to assist the senior developers and ensure project efficiency and high-quality solutions.