OneTree

Love to create beautiful interactive solutions

4.7 3 Reviews
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We are a technology services and consulting company; we help clients, in more than 10 countries, through our experience in software development, UX design, Ecommerce, and Mobile systems across different industries.

We are passionate and committed to take on challenges that can make a difference in your business. We work with you as a team so as to build your capabilities at every level and opportunity.

Review our work:

https://dribbble.com/onetree

https://www.behance.net/onetree

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https://twitter.com/onetreeows

https://www.linkedin.com/company/onetree/

https://www.instagram.com/onetreeows/

$50 - $99/hr
50 - 249
2009
Locations
Uruguay
18 de Julio 1077 Of. 1002, Montevideo, MO, Montevideo, Montevideo 11600
3474740023
United States
5400 Carillon Point, B. 5000, 4th Floor,, Kirkland, Washington WA 9803
3474740023

Focus Areas

Service Focus

20%
20%
20%
20%
10%
5%
5%
  • Mobile App Development
  • Software Development
  • E-commerce Development
  • Digital Marketing
  • Web Development

Client Focus

80%
5%
15%
  • Small Business
  • Large Business
  • Medium Business

Industry Focus

40%
30%
30%
  • Healthcare & Medical
  • E-commerce
  • Education

OneTree Executive Interview

Carlos Acle
Carlos Acle
CEO
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Please introduce your company and give a brief about your role within the company?
In OneTree we provide technology and consulting solutions. We founded it in 2008 and have over 70 consultants across South America – in Uruguay, Argentina, and Bolivia. We specialize in mobile and web application design and development, e-commerce, and user experience design. Since our inception, we have been delivering state-of-the-art solutions to clients. We have a strong presence in health, financial, high-ed, and eCommerce.
 
On one hand, in healthcare, our involvement has been significant with educational institutions of the caliber of Stanford Health, University of Michigan, Temple University, among others, as well as startups  as Medable, Care Angel and ONGs such as Vitalant.org.
 
On the other hand, in ecommerce, we specialize in developing healthy, high performing storefront-solutions based on the Adobe Magento platform. Our experience ranges from implementations for successful startups such as Kuru Footwear – which  we helped scale online sales tenfold – to collaborating in enterprise level implementations as Steelcase.com.
 
In the financial sector, we have been designing and delivering solutions for the private sector banks such as Banco Popular de Puerto Rico, Banco General de Panamá and development banks as Interamerican Development Bank.
 
As CEO of Onetree, my responsibilities vary widely from working with the management team to developing the company's strategic plan. As well, they include being part of the sales team developing business opportunities and being the point of maximum escalation for problems that may occur in different areas such as operations, sales, human resources, finance, among others.

This degree of participation and involvement allows me to know most of our customers from the beginning of the business process and how their projects are working. This implication enables me to understand their needs and pains better, which means we can make quick decisions and design as well as execute services that adapt to these needs.

In addition to this, I am always working with the management team and closely monitoring how each of the team members are and looking for ways to improve their experience within the company.
What was the idea behind starting this organization?
We founded OneTree as a sister company of Takeoff Media. At that time, Takeoff Media was focused on delivering creative services to high-end clients in the US and was looking into addressing technology implementation services as well. I was brought in to create this new technology-focused business unit. From there, OneTree grew significantly in its four main areas of service – digital solutions, eCommerce, user experience design, and emerging technologies such as  AI, ML, Big Data, etc – from nothing to over 70 people in its 3 locations. This scale now allows us to deliver better quality services to our clients across the world.
What is your company’s business model–in house team or third party vendors/ outsourcing?
When we founded this company, we aimed to deliver top-quality technology services taking advantage of our location and the quality of our people, leveraged on the nearshore concept. Our operations are 100% in-house, which allows us to learn from our experience and grow, becoming a more specialized partner for our clients after every experience.
How is your business model beneficial from a value addition perspective to the clients compared to other companies' models?
Firstly, we aim to form long-term relationships with our customers. By itself, this means we are ready to commit to the success of our customers and collaborate. As well, it implies that we need to understand the ups and downs of our customers’ businesses and navigate them together with them. This makes us not only a technology provider but also part of the solution to core problems.

Secondly, we are always working on improving. This means making processes, knowledge, and technologies better, as well as anything else that needs to ameliorate. In order to do this, we need to learn from failures and successes and keep the learning in-house. Fortunately, our attrition rate is significantly lower than industry standards (plus over 10% of employees that leave, end up coming back within a year) and, even so, having the proper documentation and knowledge-transfer mechanisms can make an important difference.

Last but not least, we believe in team efforts. Our teams are really collaborative even across business units. Putting this together with a wide range of expertise between our people, there is rarely a problem we cannot overcome with ease.
What industries do you generally cater to? Are your customers repetitive?
An important part of our customers is part of healthcare as well as eCommerce industries. As well, we have a significant amount of clients in banking and higher education. I am happy to say that 80% of our clients decide to hire us again after having worked with us.
Mention the objectives or the parameters critical in determining the time frame of developing software.
Many factors come into play when determining the timeframe for a project. At a very high level, I would say that type of technology (web, mobile apps, etc), frontend complexity (UI/UX), and backend complexity (business rules, integrations, etc) are the key factors to consider.

When we estimate a project, one of two scenarios always comes into play: (1) the client understands and has clear documentation of the scope of the project; or (2) they have a clear idea of what they want and not enough documentation to communicate that idea to a developer. When the latter comes into play, we help our customers put the proper documentation together. One of the goals here is to reduce the uncertainty of the project and make sure the estimations are reliable.
How much effort in terms of time goes into developing the front end and back end of software?
I cannot say that there is a pattern here. The most important variable that defines this is the extent of the scope of work. In some cases, the client has an in-house talent that can take part in the project. If this is the case, it is possible that we need to focus 100% of our work on either back or front end development.
What are the key parameters to be considered before selecting the right framework for developing software?
The framework is the technological foundation of the project, thus, it plays a significant role and should be considered carefully. What we intend to evaluate is how much the framework aligns with the requirements in terms of function, security, and scalability. Choosing what to prioritize between these is something that we have to define based on the type of project. Health, E-commerce, and financial projects are usually heavier on the security side while an informational application will favor function.
Which languages & frameworks do you prefer to use in development of software?
For custom development software we usually choose to use .Net Core, C#, React, ReactNative, AngularJS, and NodeJS. For eCommerce projects, we use Adobe Magento technology stack. For Health projects, in which a critical factor, more than a development framework, is to design and develop HIPAA compliant solutions, we rely on platforms such as  Medable or Azure Services that comply with these standards out of the box.
What are the key factors that you consider before deciding the cost of software?
The baseline is always set based on effort – for instance, time estimation. Few variables come into play after that and usually do not have a significant impact when pricing a project.
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.)
This aspect depends primarily on how the project will be executed. Projects that follow an agile methodology are charged monthly based on the hourly investment. Every hour is logged in and billed at the end of the month. Projects that follow a traditional – for example, waterfall – approaches are broken down into milestones. Before the project starts we agree with the client on what percentage of the project each milestone is worth and charge that amount when the milestone is reached.
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?
Our minimum budget is $20.000. Exceptions can be made when we are intending to enter a space that is new for us. In these cases, we might make an agreement with the customer where we trim our margins in exchange for the learning opportunity. This is always discussed with the client upfront so that all the risks are clear.
What is the price range (min and max) of the projects that you catered to in 2019?
The price range of those projects varies from $20.000 to $500.000.

OneTree Clients & Portfolios

MEMR
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MEMR
  • MEMR screenshot 1
  • MEMR screenshot 2
Not Disclosed
9 weeks
Healthcare & Medical

The client

A team led by Stanford Medicine University aimed to mitigate the constant decrease of response rates in surveys used for medical research. As a possible solution, they evaluated the use of mobile applications to facilitate and motivate subjects to answer.

The challenges

Our responsibility was the design and development of mobile applications for data collection including the definition for paradata and data visualizations for researchers. Everything had to be easy to use and safe by HIPAA compliance standards. As well, they aimed to evaluate the amount of repeated responses motivated through push notifications mechanism. 

The solution

We built two mobile applications, for Android and iOS, and two monitoring dashboards to assess the amount of responses and subscriptions, as well as to evaluate the investment in advertising and the amount of app downloads.

The data for the dashboards was obtained from sources including Facebook API, Google Analytics API, Medable APIs (Backend), Google Maps API, among others. As well, we developed and ran machine learning algorithms to improve the data analysis such as identifying geolocation patterns, new clusters, etc.
The apps had gamification features to keep subjects motivated to complete the surveys.

The result

The project had really positive outcomes. The developed apps helped improve response rates on surveys, and one of the monitoring dashboards allowed to compare the costs involved in answering through social media compared to traditional methods.

In the numbers

  • The cost of downloading was reduced 4 times when using social networks versus using the traditional ABS method.

  • Participants recruitment’s rate through social media was 3 times the traditional ABS method.

  • The survey response rate was twofold in comparison with methods previously measured.

Kuru Footwear
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Kuru Footwear
  • Kuru Footwear screenshot 1
Not Disclosed
100 weeks
E-commerce

The client

Kuru is an online-only footwear retail store funded in 2008. In 2018 Kuru migrated their Magento 1 store into a new Magento 2 platform. The build was problematic and had Kuru struggling with the site for 2 years. Issues were found all around including the checkout having a direct impact in sales. Overall, the malfunctions were having a heavy toll on Kuru’s revenue that needed to be urgently fixed.  

The challenges

Working on a site developed by a different company always brings challenges. There is a learning curve to understand how the system was architected, with what purpose, and using which tools. Doing so on a site with issues that had a direct hit in revenue meant we had to deliver results faster than usual. The backlog of tasks that Kuru had lined-up was long and would take a significant workload to deliver completely. The client was also cautious about the investment since cash flow was not at its best. 

The solution

Kuru was given a small team of certified Magento developers that could deliver quick solutions to problems on a daily basis. With a part-time assignment, our team was able to tackle multiple items every day and deliver weekly progress with improvements. Really soon, Kuru started to see more stable traffic, conversions, and revenue. 

The result

Within little time, Kuru had reached a point in which the site could provide as it used to. By the 6 month mark of working with us, they noticed they were on their way to hit record revenue figures for the year. Additionally, costs of development had dropped enormously making our partnership extremely profitable. With such tangible results they started to gain trust on us and asked for more services including design, analytics services, and QA.  

In the numbers

  • Conversion rate improved 33% in 2020 versus 2019.

  • Site speed improved 13.44% in 2020 versus 2019.

OneTree Reviews

4.7 3 Reviews
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Bret Rasmussen

Excellent Resource. Strong Partner Mentality. Super Reliable.

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Review Summary

We've worked with four different outsourced development groups and OneTree is tops.

STRENGTHS:
Partner Mentality. OneTree has a very strong partner mentality. They are willing to take responsibility when they make mistakes, or don't meet expectations. They will regularly ask how they are doing, and seek feedback on how to improve. Then actually implement the feedback and loop back with us to report improvements or changes made.

Responsive to our Needs. They are responsive, talented, and willing to put forth the effort to achieve goals and priorities to meet deadlines. There are multiple times where their developers will work after hours to solve issues or meet deadlines. This is invaluable to getting things done.

Quality of Output. They have talented developers who do a thorough job. The key is to provide thorough user stories, which drives the quality of the output from developers. The more thorough the user story, the more efficient the output from developers. They really are a talented bunch of developers.

Time Zone. One benefit, as well, is their time zone aligns well with our time zone.

WEAKNESSES:
Strategy. OneTree is great as a developer partner, but the client needs to define and communicate a strong strategic direction about where they want to take their business and technology stack. Once OneTree understands this direction, they are a great making it happen. Think of OneTree as your execution partner.

Product Manager. We've found that we need to be the Product Manager and own the user experience of our website in-house while utilizing OneTree as our development team. This means we need to have a strong understanding of trends in our market, understanding the customer journey on our site, identifying points of frictions, and what we need to do to be on the cutting edge. We come up with the roadmap and then utilize OneTree to execute the roadmap.

QA. Generally OneTree QA does an excellent job finding issues. However, at times, issues or errors will slip through and we catch them on our end. This can be frustrating if a ticket is on a tight timeline.

What service was provided as part of the project?

Web Development, Software Development, E-commerce Development

Catalina Grillo

Very satisfied

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Review Summary

They worked diligently throught the duration of our contract and were reliable and easy to work with

What service was provided as part of the project?

Software Development