Steamclock Software

I am the Product Manager of a financial services company

We are an online wealth management firm providing managed investment portfolios as well as personalized financial advice and planning for Canadians.

Referral

6-10 Employees

Steamclock is responsible for designing, building, and maintaining the mobile app for our online portfolio management platform on Android and iOS. They design and develop the UI/UX of the app, ensuring that it aligns with our web platform and is easy for clients to navigate. Additional services include:

The Steamclock team is always a pleasure to work with. They are friendly, professional, and extremely knowledgeable about mobile app development. Work is always completed in a timely manner. They come to every meeting prepared to review not only our requirements for the app, but with a list of their own suggestions to make it better. This demonstrates they have deep understanding of our needs and will work tirelessly to ensure that the app meets our standard of care for clients.

Steamclock team is so effective at maintaining our mobile app, that our own product team occasionally forgets we have one because they are so proactive when it comes to fixing bugs and optimizing the client experience.

Honestly, nothing comes to mind. In all our years working together, Steamclock has yet to let us down.

I am the Director of Business Development of CI Direct Trading

CI Direct Trading is a self-directed investing platform for Canadians to buy and sell stocks, options, mutual funds, GICs, and bonds.

Referral

2-5 Employees

Scope of work: design, develop, test, deploy, and maintain a mobile application for CI Direct Trading. Steamclock manages the sprints and planning for the project, including developing the totality of the application's code on IOS and Android, with the exception of the APIs which are provided by us.

Project management appears very agile and focused on delivering results. Work was always completed within established deadlines. Business and technical requirements were always met. Communication is clear and constant. Requirements are gathered precisely, efficiently and with lots of feedback to help us define them better. Testing is also thorough and accountable. The communication style and habits are conducive to a fun experience where the project never gets off track.

I am very impressed by their culture, at least the side that I can see. Their employees are engaged, passionate, and creative. It is obvious that they have combined great problem solvers in a fun environment where everyone gets to be themselves. Producing a stock trading app is not easy, especially for developers that are not necessarily familiar with finance to begin with.

The team at Steamclock Software is exceptionally talented, creative, and effective. I cannot imagine a better technology partner for our mobile app.

I am the operations manager for an online booking software for tourist rentals and accommodations.

Our goal was to allow our customers to use our booking software for their business on a mobile device through a mobile application. Having an app like this would allow our clients to stay mobile, take their bookings without having to interrupt their daily flow, and minimize the amount of staff required to take new customers. We had initially built an app that we did ourselves. But by that point, it had been outdated, it was not working properly, and we could not keep the app up to speed on both Android and iOS.

Steamclock Software redid our app in a native environment and made an initial MVP [minimum viable product] version of the app within 2 ½ months. As feedback came in about the basic version of the app, we installed more features. From this, we were able to adjust our expectations and see that some avenues that we wanted to go down were not necessary, so it was good for us to streamline that.

When we started looking for companies, we began on a global scale looking at different companies before deciding that we wanted somebody close to us to establish a long-term relationship with. After three months of vetting different companies, we had a short list of about 10 and then decided on Steamclock. Allen and Nigel put forth a good presentation. They put together a package that allowed us to have a good idea of what their proposed plan was for our mobile app. They took the time to ask us questions and make sure that what they were making was along the lines of what we were looking for. They were willing to come travel and meet with us, and they were good people that we really got along with. So in the end, we decided to give them a shot.

We have invested $200,000.

We initially established contact with them March 2015 and then had our decision made by April 2015. The project started off in May 2015.

The app we had before we started working with them was essentially broken and yet we still had a usage rate of 5-10% of our client base. Since then, our customer base has not only grown by almost double but the usage rate moved up 60%, so we have many people using the app now. We have lots of people that use the app solely for their business as opposed to using the web client that we get people to use. We have had a lot of great feedback for the app not only just in Canada and the United States but worldwide, and we are quite happy about that.

They have been excellent about constantly communicating with us and letting us know when things need to be done. We have phone conferences with them once a month, and sometimes they come over from Vancouver to Victoria to chat and plan. We always enjoy seeing each other, so we are more than open to that.

The main thing that is always outstanding for us is that they are good people. We have great conversations that do not always involve work. We have talked personally, as friends. They are very easy to talk to. They would be someone that I would be fine going to dinner with, which you do not always find, and we are very appreciative that they see us similarly. We appreciate our relationship with them.

Once the majority of work was done, they go into maintenance mode and communication would not be as proactive as before. We used to do weekly checks, and that dropped off because we were not sure that they were needed, and then they completely dropped off unless we started talking with them. But once we had a conversation about it, they changed that right away.

I’m the CEO of a company called &yet. We do software development and we also have some of our own products and services in the security space.

We have a product called Talky, which is an in-browser video chat. Because of the technology that exists in iOS, we needed some additional assistance in building an iOS-specific application for our app.

We reached out to Steamclock and hired them to build the application, interface, UX, etc., for the iOS side. We have some messaging experts on our team, but Steamclock has some fantastic, smart iOS developers who are capable of getting into that side of things. So, we collaborated with them mostly on the iOS side. They were the ones who encountered and worked through the bugs in the Google-provided WebRTC toolkit for iOS. I think we were one of the first production applications to use the toolkit, and Steamclock ended up identifying and fixing a number of bugs there. The expertise they brought in solving those gaps was huge. They also provided advice and made significant UX decisions for the iOS app. They did provide designs, but because we’re also a software development company, most everything was a collaborative process.

I was familiar with them from the technical talks they’ve given and I’ve gotten to know members of their team. I really respected their work and saw them as basically the most well-rounded and thorough experts in the iOS field. They’re able to tackle tough technology challenges and work through a great final product, as far as UX is concerned. It was that blend that made them our only choice, really. We didn't even think of anybody else.

We’ve paid between $50,000 and $100,000 for their services.

We worked with them in the spring of 2014. That project has been completed. We continue to reach out to them for various consulting, small engagements, and collaborative opportunities. We get in touch with them anytime we have a need in that ballpark.

The product that they contributed to does over a million calls a month; I assume having the iOS app is a critical component to the success of that product. That would probably be the most significant one I'd point to. People love the application, which is a sentiment I’ve heard from users and from members of our team. I certainly feel that way.

They worked in a collaborative and open way. I was really impressed with the transparency they had in approaching me. They did a good job asking a lot of questions and they kept focused on the right goals. As far as project management tech goes, we used GitHub and regular stand-up meetings as we went through the project. We also used our product a lot as a video chat tool.

Steamclock Software has outstanding technical knowledge combined with first-rate UX. A lot of teams can do iOS and UX but not many also have the ability to get to the point where they’re pointing out flaws in a library that was written by Google. That combination is killer. In my mind, it makes them extremely unique. They have qualities I would not find easily in another company.

None.

Ridwell helps people reduce their waste with doorstep pickups of hard-to-recycle and reusable stuff.

We want our members to have a simple way to engage with our pickup service, understand their categories, and manage their account.

Build a iOS app for our members.

RW – product lead

Referral from the design firm we worked with

In maintenance mode

Well! They were very organized and helpful with keeping our team on track.

Partnership and engagement — I’ve worked with a ton of outside firms, and none have been so engaged and involved in Ridwell’s success.

Not, really. I’m very happy with their work and partnership