Kindly share your feedback on how Goodfirms has been doing so far in increasing your visibility among potential clients.
Goodfirms has helped us increase our visibility toward clients in North America and Europe. Thanks to our listing on Goodfirms, many clients have reached out to us, which was not the case during 2020.
Please introduce your company and give a brief about your role within the organization.
ICTS Custom Software is a software development company based in Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam. It’s founded in 2016 and since then, our size has increased by 500%.
My role within the company is business development, which means I have to work closely with partners like Goodfirms to generate new business opportunities and navigate the strategic direction of the sales team, to achieve the sales target every year. In the meantime, I am also responsible for talent acquisition to ensure that ICTS is powered by the right people to fuel its growth.
What is the story behind starting this company?
This company started merely by the dream of its founder - Mr. Trung who wanted to build a company that could create beautiful and efficient applications. Along the time, the company has developed thanks to two pillars of services: dedicated staffing services and custom software development.
What are your company’s business model–in house team or third party vendors/ outsourcing?
As our company’s founders graduated as engineers at the top universities in Vietnam, and are born with an engineering mindset, we focus on developing products from the ground up, while updating our technology stack to cope with the fast development pace of the tech world. Our business model is tailored to meet the high requirements of quality from overseas clients, from recruiting the best talents to implementing a quality assurance process that ensures the delivery of our work on time and on budget.
How does your company differentiate itself from the competition?
We differentiate ourselves thanks to our high integrity from the consulting phase to the development phase. We make sure that our clients always receive accurate information on the project and are consulted on the best solution for their blockage, not only from a technical perspective but also on a business ground.
What industries do you generally cater to? Are your customers repetitive? If yes, what ratio of clients has been repetitive to you?
Our clients are mostly software houses based in English-speaking countries like the US, France, Germany, Eastern Europe, Australia, Singapore, and Japan. We are also approached by many startups who would like to develop an MVP (minimum viable product) fast and on a budget so they can test the market demand or raise funds.
Our client retention rate is quite high. About 70% of clients stay with us for more than 1 year or recommend other contacts to work with us.
Please share some of the services that you offer for which clients approach you the most for?
We provide 2 services:
- Dedicated staffing services: we provide remote dedicated developers to join the client’s development team so they can expand their in-house development capabilities in a short period of time, without hassles in recruitment and administration. This service is quite preferred by software houses, consulting firms, digital agencies, and tech companies in general.
- Custom software/application development: we provide fixed-price development packages to startups, SMEs, digital agencies when they need to build a software/application in a short period of time. This service frees them from the hassles of building a tech team, especially when it’s not easy to get a CTO on board. At the market-testing phase, our service also helps them get an MVP (minimum viable product) ready to test the product-market-fit hypotheses. For some startups, our product can help them showcase their idea under a prototype form, so they can raise funds much faster.
What is your customer satisfaction rate according to you? What steps do you take to cater to your customer’s needs and requirements?
Our customer satisfaction rate is about 80%. We always allocate an account manager to accompany the customer before, during, and after the project so we can understand their needs and expectations. Therefore, we can make sure that everyone is on the same page before any development and implementation.
What kind of support system do you offer to your clients for catering to their queries and issues?
We often use Jira, Slack… and some other kinds of project management tools to keep track of their queries, issues, and our responsiveness to their questions.
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.)
For dedicated staffing services, the payment is charged monthly. For custom software development services, the payment may be charged per feature or per milestone. The cost is fixed beforehand so the client doesn’t have to worry about any unexpected fees.
Do you take in projects which meet your basic budget requirement? If yes, what is the minimum requirement? If not, on what minimum budget you have worked for?
We have no basic budget requirements but we tend to prioritize projects with strategic partners or with a long-termed vision to optimize our resources.
What is the price range (min and max) of the projects that you catered to in 2020?
The range is preferred between 4000 USD (for pilot projects) to 200,000 USD.
Where do you see your company in the next 10 years?
We set a target for our company to grow to hundreds of staff, build user-friendly tech products, and position as a cutting-edge tech company. We are engineers, we love to build things after all.
