Please introduce your company and give a brief about your role within the company?
UNL Solutions is a Dedicated Software Development Center with the management office in Loughborough, UK. Having access to 100+ high caliber IT professionals, we serve organizations of all sizes across all domains offering dedicated teams that align with clients' internal processes to create software and mobile solutions tailored to their business.
As for me, I'm Head of Marketing and Business Development in UNL Solutions LTD. More than 13 years in Digital Marketing, 2 international Master's Degrees in Marketing and Communications. I work with clients and increase their loyalty to the company. This task is made through analyzing the demand for software development services on the market and adjusting companies' plans for rapid, qualitative growth.
What was the idea behind starting this organization?
We established UNL Solutions with a mission to bolster the reputation of Eastern Europe as a trustful sourcing destination. The one that offers a favorable environment for implementing innovative software solutions. I know first-hand how rich and truly talented its tech pool is. For decades it has been one of the country's most valuable though non-official assets. We aim to make it recognized globally.
What is your company’s business model–in house team or third party vendors/ outsourcing?
Our development pool is distributed across Belarus, the UK, and the USA, which means we conform to the client's time zone and budget, delivering consistent professionalism across the board. Working either as a remote extension to a client's in-house team or a fully staffed standalone team, we aim to become a long-term strategic partner for software development initiatives.
How is your business model beneficial from a value addition perspective to the clients compared to other companies' models?
Due to the UNL’s flexible approach toward each customer, we deeply analyze the client's requirements, inspect the internal processes of the company and the business sphere as a whole. As a result, it allows us to provide the most beneficial model of service for the client's needs. Doing business our company sticks to win-win strategy - developing quality products for the customer we guarantee both his and our growth.
What industries do you generally cater to? Are your customers repetitive?
Our main projects are developed in the following niches:
- Healthcare
- Financial services
- Food delivery app development
Our aim, as I've mentioned before, is to be a long-term strategic partner for the client. That's why most of our customers are repetitive.
Mention the objectives or the parameters critical in determining the time frame of developing software.
Speaking on time frame, the following features influence this point the most:
- The chosen development technology and project's architecture
- The client's requirements, because the development often demands more close integration with the internal processes of the company
- Team size, as another critical component is always considered in the estimation of a probable time for development
How much effort in terms of time goes into developing the front end and back end of software?
It's rather difficult to point out the average amount of time needed for a project. Usually, it depends on the complexity of a particular project. Sometimes it happens that the development process of backend and frontend spreads for years, the same as for one of our fin-tech projects.
What are the key parameters to be considered before selecting the right framework for developing software?
To my mind, the key parameters you need to know before selecting the right framework for developing software are the following:
- The target audience of your project
- The ability to make changes in the future
- The budget that a client has and also the cost of development
Which languages & frameworks do you prefer to use in development of software?
UNL Solutions has succeeded in developing on Java, JS, .NET and Ruby on Rails languages. You can see our latest projects on our website portfolio.
What are the key factors that you consider before deciding the cost of software?
We have wide experience in the project estimation prepared for a range of clients of different business spheres. Hence we can effectively estimate and be almost exact, calculate the budget for different project stages: analysis, development, testing, and project launch. As with any other project work, the estimation claims attention to risk calculation. The project's budget is variable depending on the client's individual requirements, such as time-urgent performance or the existence of complex maintenance.
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.)
Generally speaking, for long-term cooperation, we propose a time-and-material model, as far as the benefits of this type of contract are revealed in the long run. If we speak about short and mid-time contracts, the most efficient model of cooperation is pay per milestone for particular parts of the development.
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 work on the projects with the budget from $ 7,000.
What is the price range (min and max) of the projects that you catered to in 2018?
The most inexpensive project in 2018 cost $ 5,000, while the budget for the сostly one was more than $ 1,500 000.