Please introduce your company and give a brief about your role within the company?
We at Prometteur Solutions Pvt. Ltd. are a team of IT experts, who believe in delivering technology-empowered business solutions. We offer world-class Mobile and Web Development services that focus on playing a supportive role to business, globally, and help them in their holistic growth. Our highly-skilled associates and global delivery capabilities afford accessibility and scalability, helping us align our technology solutions with the client’s business needs. Our offerings span the entire IT lifecycle: from Consulting to Packaged, from Custom to Cloud Applications, not to mention variety of Infrastructure Services.
What was the idea behind starting this organization?
It actually started off while we were pursuing our final year engineering project. As part of the project, we had developed an app for drivers with an alarm facility. The app was designed to wake the drivers up in case they fell asleep while driving. We presented the idea internationally and received an extraordinary response. We sold our project as a fully functional product to a Germany based client. However, the development part of the project rested on our shoulders. This is how our journey in IT services started.
What are your company’s business model–in house team or third party vendors/ outsourcing?
We have an in-house team of 50+ employees, and this includes Marketing people, Business Analyst, Designers, Developers, Testers, Project Managers. We also handle the post-delivery process of maintenance, in addition to Digital marketing, SEO and other related stuff.
How is your business model beneficial from a value addition perspective to the clients compared to other company models?
Most of the service companies target clients with big pockets and who readily invest in products. However, we also help clients who are startups by suggesting them cost-effective ways; thereby helping them launch their MVPs and performing minimal market checks, which helps them understand their users and also gets them investors.
What industries do you generally cater to? Are your customers repetitive? If yes, what ratio of clients has been repetitive to you?
We work with all sorts of industries, but in the past, we particularly worked for sectors such as Education, e-commerce, hospitality, healthcare, agriculture, and real estate. And, most of our customers are repetitive and most of them sign a contract with us for maintenance of their products. So we can say 80% of them are coming back with new requirements or referring new clients to us.
Mention the objectives or the parameters critical in determining the time frame of developing a mobile app.
There are no such fixed terms that I feel should be noted here, but below are the few which may affect the timeline of any project
• when the scope is not clear.
• when the target audience is not kept in mind.
• functionality is not clearly mentioned in the scope documentations leading to rework.
How much effort in terms of time goes into developing the front end and back end of a mobile app?
It completely depends on the features that are being developed in the app. Usually, simple apps independent of any API and backed by static content can be developed in one month’s time. But complex apps with a database connectivity and user interaction, that require complex algorithm, may take up to 6 -7 months just for beta testing. And factoring in both the front-end and backend of the app we can say front end may take up to 30% of the time, while backend consumes major time, almost 70%.
What are the key parameters to be considered before selecting the right platform for a mobile application?
I would say the following 5 factors would play a key role in defining your app platform:
• User experience and UI
The first thing that a user notices is the UI of your app. So, having a good UI is crucial. Sure, you can achieve a good UI on hybrid platforms, but then, the user experience is not guaranteed. On the other good user experience can be guaranteed with good native UI.
• Access to hardware
If your app is dependent a lot on hardware, then we will suggest making a note of all the hardware interactions before starting the development of your app and check for all the support available for the platform you are choosing. Although Xamarin has achieved a good result, native will be plus according to me.
• App Budget
This is a very important aspect for any app development if your budget is low. So, if you want to test your app in the market opt for hybrid development. Get feedback from users. Try to find different factors which can help in monetization of your app and then go for native development as user base increases.
• Target users
Try to understand the users of your app. Try to target one geographical area to launch your app, and, more importantly, try to get the demographics of the user. For example, if you are going to launch the app in Asia, try to develop a first Android app, based on user percentage but if you going to target European or the U.S. market goes for IOS app first. This will help you keep control of your spending and get results soon.
• Database
Nowadays users expect the result to appear in the blink of their eyes, and if your app is slow it will result in immediate uninstallation. So, consider different factors like data structure, type of data, size of data, safety, and even accessibility of data to save a lot of money and time in the future.
Which platform do you suggest to your clients to begin with when they approach you with an idea (Android or iOS) and why?
As described above, one of the important factors in selecting the platform depends on target users. If client users from Asia it is very good to start with Android as Android users are more in Asia. But, if they are targeting European or US market go for iOS, as user base for iOS is more. One more factor worth consideration is the number of devices: If the client is looking to target a large number of devices, it will be wise to launch Android first as a number of different Android devices available in the market is in 1000’s while for iOS it’s just 10 to 20. One more factor is development cost. The cost of iOS is more as compared to the Android developer. The app store fees for Android is 25$ for a lifetime whereas for iOS is 99$/yr for a developer account and 299$ for the enterprise. So based on the above different factors we help clients decide on their app platform choice.
Android or iOS, Native or Hybrid — which platform is best to use to build your app? What are your recommendations?
Few questions that help you determine the best platform to build your app:
Do you want native features in the Mobile App?
Do you have a separate budget for different platforms?
Do you want to offer the best user experience?
These are the few basic questions that will help you define what to use, native or hybrid and also if you want to read more here is my blog, I mentioned it in brief
https://prometteursolutions.com/blog/native-app-development-vs-hybrid-app
What are the key factors that you consider before deciding the cost of a mobile application?
Key factors to consider can be as follows
● Native app or hybrid app.
● Is the design provided by the client.
● Which are the most complex features that require RnD.
● Will the app work offline.
● What is a dependency of the app on 3rd party API.
● Payment gateway integrations.
● 3rd party SDK integrations.
● Are all features documented properly.
● What type of backend will be required.
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.)
We usually follow a fixed cost structure with defined milestone payments. We usually charge 30-40% in advance and after that, it’s based on the completion of, at least, 3 milestones.
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?
We mostly don't follow the basic budget requirement policy. If the project cost the client offers is reasonable enough we are happy to work with the client. In fact, we have developed apps for as low as 500$.
What is the price range (min and max) of the projects that you catered to in 2018?
The minimum price for an app that we developed was 1800$
and the max that we are still working on is more than 75000$.
Which business model do you suggest to your clients enable them to generate revenue from mobile applications? Why?
If the client is a startup then we always suggest developing an MVP or starting with minimum features and then test it in the market instead of developing a fully featured app. This helps them to analyze the user expectations and also the drawbacks in their business model. We also suggest well- settled brands to go with one OS at a time and check if there is a real need of their App in the market because clients either go with IOS or Android to check user base. If users really like it, then they go for other OS. If the user is looking for monetization of the app, we suggest them to build user base first instead of putting adwords and paid features in the first release. Let the word of mouth spread first. Also, we do suggest users instead of launching paid apps launch free apps with in-app purchase this helps in user engagement and even conversion is good.
Kindly share your feedback on how Goodfirms has been doing so far in increasing your visibility among potential clients.
It has been a great experience working with Goodfirms, we do get more visits from Goodfirms website. Also, we do share website links for reference to our clients.
