Kindly share your feedback on how Goodfirms has been doing so far in increasing your visibility among potential clients.
Everyone knows how tough the competition is among software development companies. That’s why it’s crucial not to miss any opportunity to tell potential customers about your services and achievements. Goodfirms is an excellent platform that provides the opportunity to learn about and compare similar companies in a meaningful way and to connect reliable vendors with potential clients looking for specific expertise. In that way, it’s been quite helpful in conveying our message globally.
Please introduce your company and give a brief about your role within the organization.
Cogniteq is a custom software development company that offers a wide range of mobile and web development services, with a special focus on IoT and Healthcare solutions. Our headquarters is in Lithuania and we have several offices in Eastern Europe. The company took its first steps into the market more than 15 years ago. We have demonstrated steady and continuous growth ever since. Our team now includes more than 100 talented developers, and we’re working with customers from all over the world.
As the CEO of Cogniteq, I’m happy to see the company moving forward and to be a part of its success.
What is the story behind starting this company?
I joined Cogniteq as Head of the Sales Department, at a time when the company had already developed strong expertise in developing mobile apps and the market for mobile solutions was skyrocketing. We were one of the first companies in the region to provide both iOS and Android app development services, and the boom in mobile solutions gave us the resources and opportunities to broaden our capabilities and expand into whole new fields.
I’m proud to say now, as CEO of the company, that we offer not only mobile app development but also full-fledged software solutions, including enterprise software, as well as consulting services.
What are your company’s business model–in house team or third party vendors/ outsourcing?
All the solutions we develop for our clients are built by in-house employees only. We think contracting freelancers on-demand basis makes it hard to guarantee the desired result. Furthermore, freelancers lack company mission and are more concentrated on earning here and now whereas our approach in building client relationships is different. We focus on creating a long-term partnership that is mutually beneficial to the growth and success of both parties.
Working with our own well-vetted developers means we are aware of every risk and accountable for every decision we make. We’re working hard every day to maintain our top-notch reputation, and that means building a relationship of trust, responsibility, and solid communication with every client.
How does your company differentiate itself from the competition?
One of our main priorities is clear and timely communication with our clients. Our business processes are fully transparent and flexible. Unlike a lot of offshore software companies, we’re not just selling our developers’ time; we’re offering our expertise. We do our best to deliver solutions with the highest possible value to our customers, and we help them adapt their business ideas to current trends in the IT world.
You could say we’re a one-stop-shop. We offer consulting services, build solutions from scratch, create unique UI/UX, and support and maintain apps after their release. Our clients can count on us to work with them through every stage of the software development cycle, and we take responsibility for the results.
What industries do you generally cater to? Are your customers repetitive? If yes, what ratio of clients has been repetitive to you?
We’ve already completed a lot of projects in the eLearning, Healthcare, Social networking, and Financial spheres. And we’re actively developing these directions on an ongoing basis.
I realize that the majority of our ongoing projects are with clients that we’ve been working with for a long time. As I said, we aim to build long-term and mutually beneficial cooperation with our customers, and today we’re happy to see that this strategy is really working for us. Some of our clients started with Cogniteq more than 7 years ago and still trust us with the future of their products.
Working closely with our sales team, we’ve taken a deeper dive into this question, and we figured out that 82% of our first-time clients have returned to us for a new project or to update software we’d previously built for them. And what’s more, many clients recommend Cogniteq to their business partners and friends.
Please share some of the services that you offer for which clients approach you the most for?
Cogniteq started its business journey by offering mobile development services. And today that’s still the field where we have the richest experience and the biggest number of clients. But we’ve also developed solid expertise in the burgeoning IoT industry, and we’re constantly building our knowledge of this quickly evolving part of the market, as well as expanding our already impressive portfolio of IoT solutions and customers. The other field where we’ve grown extensive experience is Healthcare development. As digitalization is one of the highest priorities in the healthcare sector these days, Cogniteq helps hospitals, laboratories, etc. develop software solutions that make their operations more efficient.
What is your customer satisfaction rate according to you? What steps do you take to cater to your customer’s needs and requirements?
The heart of our account management strategy is ensuring that we get timely and detailed feedback from our clients. From the beginning, we assign each client an Account Manager who stays in touch with them at all times, who knows the current status of the project, and who is always ready to answer questions or help to implement the client’s suggestions.
Of course, there’s always room for improvement, so when the project is over, we conduct an interview with each client to get their honest observations and opinions about how our collaboration went. That feedback from customers helps us to meet client expectations and deal with new challenges even more smoothly next time. I think our willingness to make changes demonstrates our openness to suggestions.
Based on the clients' feedback information and estimate that we have a customer satisfaction rate of 91%.
What kind of support system do you offer to your clients for catering to their queries and issues?
Everything depends on the peculiarities of the project and the client’s requirements and expectations. We’re capable of providing 24/7 support, and we have the resources to respond to all inquiries in a timely manner.
What kind of payment structure do you follow to bill your clients? Is it Pay per Feature, Fixed Cost, Pay per Milestone (could be in phases, months, versions etc.)
Once again, here everything also depends on the project. We always try to listen to the client’s needs and demands. The majority of companies that have large, long-term projects prefer the “per milestone” model. We prefer working Agile. Cogniteq team develops detailed backlogs for each sprint to showcase the results, and to help our clients understand what they get at each step of the development.
Do you take in projects which meet your basic budget requirement? If yes, what is the minimum requirement? If no, on what minimum budget you have worked for?
This is an interesting question. Actually, I can’t say that we set any sort of minimum budget requirement for clients if they want to work with us.
Having worked as Head of the Sales Department for many years, I noticed that clients with huge budgets for software development are typically really careful about choosing a new key vendor. Very often they want to test the company before starting full-scale cooperation. So they give the vendor a project with a small scope as a trial task. It helps them understand how the company conducts communication with clients, how it copes with challenges, what approaches to reach business goals it takes, etc. As a rule, these kinds of things are quite difficult to determine at the presale stage, but these assignments help them understand whether they’ll be comfortable working with us on bigger projects.
As I’ve already mentioned, our primary goal is not to make money on the client here and now, so we don’t implement requirements such as a minimum budget in our strategy.
What is the price range (min and max) of the projects that you catered to in 2020?
We worked with a variety of projects in a price range of $5000–$500,000. As we usually prefer the “per milestone” model, these amounts were paid not all at once but in increments over a year.
Where do you see your company in the next 10 years?
Today we’re seeing steady growth, and we hope to continue that positive trend, obviously. We expect that in the next 10 years, Cogniteq will strengthen its position as a niche and regional leader in Mobile and IoT development, as a company that the best talent on the local market aspires to join. We believe that our growth will continue and we will open new sales.
