Please introduce your company and give a brief about your role within the company?
At EL Passion, we build digital products for startups, scale-ups, and enterprises across the globe. We deliver top-notch web and mobile applications, fueled by the best UX & UI design. We are responsible for 300+ software and design projects for fast-moving companies worldwide (and counting!). As EL Passion CEO, I’m passionate about digital products and how you can use IT to improve all aspects of people’s lives. It’s all about making an impact on people. I’m also fascinated by the digital product creation process; iterative, experimental, trial-and-error, data-driven. I use these tools when thinking up new ways to solve problems at work and in my personal life.
What was the idea behind starting this organization?
Our main objective is to create something that has an impact. Be it an app, a website or just a design, we strive to deliver the best work possible. The creation, however, applies not only to the final outcome, but also to the way we work: we pride ourselves on our internal processes and taking the courage to constantly learn from our experiences and, hence, improve them as we go.
What are your company’s business model – in house team or third party vendors/outsourcing?
Steve Jobs once said that the one Apple product he’s most proud of is the team he built at Apple. Behind every great product, there is a group of great people. At EL Passion we very well know it; and we are crazy about both: the tech and the people.
We are a fully in-house team that you can think of as your product team: we want you to address your users’ pain points and to meet your business goals together.
How is your business model beneficial from a value addition perspective to the clients compared to other companies' models?
We are very user-focused. We’ve invested a lot in our UX capabilities and this kind of mindset. In the end, the product’s success depends on user satisfaction. We’re working on an hourly basis, we do not take the fixed approach, where you have to set everything beforehand. We want to make sure that the product will bring maximum value, and this is reflected in our model, which gives us flexibility. The client pays precisely for what is delivered. Over the past 9 years, we have accumulated unique know-how that we want to share with our clients, directly contributing to the success of their projects.
What industries do you generally cater to? Are your customers repetitive? If yes, what ratio of clients has been repetitive to you?
HealthTech, FinTech, Business services, no ratio. We want to gather experience in different fields - be it industry of project type. We then use this knowledge cross-project and cross-industry wise to bring in new perspectives and to make better products. We do have repetitive customers: 60 percent of them are new, 40 percent are clients that come back to us.
Mention the objectives or the parameters critical in determining the time frame of developing a mobile app.
It depends on the scope of work – if it’s an MVP or a fully-featured product. Usually, we have two ways of determining the time frame. During an Estimation or a Scoping Session, we analyze parameters like if this product has to be built from scratch or whether the client has legacy code. The important factor is how much the client has done work.
How much effort in terms of time goes into developing the front end and back end of a mobile app?
It’s really difficult to give an average, because as a Custom Software Development House we always focus on meeting our client's goals, and choosing the technology setup based on them. We had apps that had no back-end and apps that had 20:80 FE:BE in terms of time.
What are the key parameters to be considered before selecting the right platform for a mobile application?
We always focus on the functionalities of the end product and meeting both, the client’s business goals and the budget. There’s no fixed answer.
Which platform do you suggest your clients to begin with when they approach you with an idea (Android or iOS) and why?
It shouldn’t be much of a surprise if I say: it really depends. As a Custom Software Development House, we understand that every client is different and a lot of factors should be taken into account before making a decision. To give you an example: it may depend on the target group and the coverage of Android vs iOS users in the target country.
Android or iOS, Native or Hybrid — which platform is best to use to build your app? What are your recommendations?
There is no such thing as ‘the best platform’. All of us, work with platforms that we have faith in. A lot depends on the industry and the client. Our main goal is always to build products to last. That’s why we recommend going for a native, but, of course, it depends on the budget and goals of our clients. In case the client is short on budget or needs to leverage the benefits of the hybrid options, we go for hybrid solutions.
What are the key factors that you consider before deciding the cost of a mobile application?
It depends on the scope of work. We estimate factors like time frame, the number of people in the team, how much work has been done by the client before coming to us and what kind of product we plan to create.
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.)
Time and material based – clients pay per hour worked, nothing more and nothing less. This way we’re optimizing for client value. Thanks to that we make sure we don’t cut corners at the expense of the client. There are no hidden costs and our Agile approach gives us flexibility, which is more than welcome during work when requirements might change multiple times. We want to focus on what needs to be done rather than to look over at points from the contract written at the beginning.
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?
For projects, the minimum requirement is ~5000 EUR. We are capable of handling big and complex development projects that can last many months, but we also do MVP and smaller UX & UI design work. Additionally, we offer stand-alone workshops, which are of course at a lower price point and can be a valuable insight before actual development. It is a place to refine your idea with us or transfer it into a tangible product roadmap.
What is the price range (min and max) of the projects that you catered to in 2018?
2018 - 4000 - 350 000 EUR
2019 – 4000 - 500 000 EUR
Which business model do you suggest to your clients enabling them to generate revenue from mobile applications? Why?
Our suggestions are based on user research and our team’s experience. There is no one right way, each and every customer’s needs are different. This is why we conduct UX strategy workshops and scoping sessions. It’s proven for us to be the best way to start off the product development journey and deliver the best end product for your users.