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Case Study: SaaS Vendor leverages China talent
Client / Situation
Silicon Valley based startup – provides SaaS Customer Care Solution to service businesses
- Having started the business several years ago, client is looking to take their product to the next level on a limited engineering budget
- Client desires to expand development capabilities, but dissatisfaction with initial offshore efforts in India led client to choose China as a destination to leverage engineering talent
- VanceInfo selected as a vendor through a word-of-mouth recommendation for its strong R&D services and management team
Challenges
- Parallel development occurring both at the client site in the US and at VanceInfo in China requires extensive coordination and synchronization
- Engineers require strong ability to communicate using English via both email and phone
Solutions Provided
- Quickly set-up Offshore Development Center (ODC) core team with PM, developers, QA engineer, support engineer, and graphic designer/usability engineer
- Minimized cultural differences through steps to help new engineers feel a part of the client’s team through cultural training, photo sharing, remote "town halls", etc.
- Daily communication through email, IM, phone ensures solution meets client requirements and expectations
- Develop SaaS solutions for client including tie-in to Google Maps advertising (through XML-based protocol)
- Utilize low upfront costs and flexible salesforce.com system for document management, defect tracking, and customer support
Results
- The client's customer base has grown 50% in the past year through high customer satisfaction and increased value-added services such as a tie-in to Google Maps advertising and customer surveys
- I sat in 'Awe' for over 20 minutes just going through our own information [provided online]"… unsolicited testimonial from one of our client's customers after using the online service
- Successful delivery and business growth has led the client to double the size of their VanceInfo-managed offshore team over the past year
Technical Highlights
- Skills: J2EE/Java, CVS, Tomcat, MySQL, Spring, Struts, XML
- Communication tools available: Phone, IM, email, WebEx
- Scope: Started offshore team in mid-2007, ongoing
