Please introduce your company and your role within the company?
SayOne Technologies was founded in 2011 and within a span of five years we have delivered over 250+ projects for our clients. We have two wings, one wing is the web development and the other one is mobile app development. We call ourselves a technology company and we move forward with regard to technologies. We started with python and have been quick in adopting some emerging technologies. For example, we have expertise in Beacons and other IoT platforms. Analytics is another area that excites us. In mobile domain, we have iOS and Android specialities. Web, Android and iOS are our main areas of function.
I am the CEO of the company, setting the vision and mission of the company. I look into the scaling aspect of the organization.
Mention the objectives or the parameters critical in determining the time frame of developing a mobile app.
We work with a lot of start-ups and for them time is very critical. When we get a requirement, we will always search for some opensource libraries that can be used for the project. This will help us reduce the delivery time drastically. Along with that we have certain common/repeating modules already developed in house. Whenever possible we try re-using them and call it automation or re-usability. So if the product has already been developed and we save certain man-hours for that, we would take that into consideration and give the time frame accordingly but if the product needs to be developed from scratch, then the time estimation changes.
Third party integration is another area that affects our delivery time. When a project has some third party integration, we need to be very careful in our estimation as our work depends on their platform as well. While planning a project the major challenge has been reducing the assumptions. The client and our team should have a clear cut vision about the final objective of the application. We hold multiple meetings with the client to make sure that we both are on the same page.
How much effort in terms of time goes into developing the front end and back end of a mobile application?
It is difficult to genaralise here. Both front end and back end are important. From a thinking perspective, front end and back end should be given equal priority. In fact both are interrelated. From a development perspective we can say front end takes about 30% of the total effort to build a mobile application and the rest is back end. For us front end is a kind of continuous process. Based on the user feedback we need to think and tweak the front end on a regular basis. Attention to details is the key here.
What is your company’s business model?
We do not outsource and we do everything in-house.
How is your business model beneficial from a value addition perspective to the clients compared to other companies' models?
We count on our client’s success, we are driven by the fact that we want to change the world – that’s the core purpose. We have a system where we take the number of people who use the client application and we aim at increasing the number of app users because this adds value to our core purpose. So everybody from the client to the internal development team is excited about people using the application. This is one core value that we offer. We think from the end customer point of view and not the client view point, so that we can actually maximize the number of users, which is our primary aim.
Also, other thing that distinguishes us is our offerings in the form of Minimum Viable Product (MVP). When a customer comes in with a full-fledged application, we always ask them about the major hypothesis that they are going to test? What is the major value that they are planning to offer to customers? Based on the requirement and their hypothesis, we will decide the features for a MVP and then we will have a Go-To-Market strategy. Our strategy is to deliver MVP within 3 months from the moment client comes to us – i.e. within 3 months the app should hit the market, live in the app store and the client should be receiving feedback from the customers.
Android or iOS, Native or Hybrid — which platform is best to use to build an app? What are your recommendations?
We develop only native applications – iOS and Android. The client target market will decide which platform to choose first it’s always iOS for a US client and Android for an Indian Client. Though we do not have Indian clients but definitely, if we have such in future, Android would be the first choice for Indian market. Primary thing to decide between the platforms will be the predominant player in the market. We do not recommend cross platform technologies because of the platform limitations and performance issues.
What are the key factors that you consider before deciding the cost of a mobile application?
For considering the final price of app development, currently, the number of hours going in the development is the only accountable factor.
What kind of payment structure do you follow to bill your clients?
We bill our clients as “Pay per Milestone”. There is a fixed upfront amount and then the remaining payment is divided into milestones, preferably we split this into 4 or 5 batches. Also, we try to make product delivery on a monthly basis.
Do you take in projects which meet your basic budget requirement?
We generally get projects which cost 8,000 US$ and above.
