The BusyMachines team is very helpful, they truly take the time to understand our business and what we’re trying to achieve. That’s very beneficial. They’re not just typing code, but they actually manage to understand our business.”
The customer
AgileXS is a Dutch technology company, active on the energy monitoring, vending, and eHealth markets since 2006. The company’s vision is to build and deliver services that can connect to any kind of device and collect relevant information: “We believe technology should help people reach their business objectives“, says André Schiretz, CTO & Co-Owner of AgileXS.
The AgileXS IoT Platform for devices and data is named DeviceXS. The platform helps data-oriented companies to innovate without developing their own IoT solutions: “Our target audience is primarily represented by business owners, so we’re rather into the B2B market and we target what we call “operators & providers”. If we look at the vending industry, our clients offer services related to coffee machines or vending machines or deliver services around those machines – maintenance, refilling ingredients, restocking or collecting cash.” In the end, the solution helps clients reduce costs and increase the availability of their machines.
The old situation
When AgileXS started working with BusyMachines, the DeviceXS 1.0 was already in the market providing services to existing customers. BusyMachines had to work together with AgileXS to rewrite the platform and launch DeviceXS 2.0. “Basically, we needed a new version of our platform based on a new technology stack. Using cutting-edge technology is vital in order to stay competitive.” One of the challenges was to keep things simple for the clients. It’s a fine line between offering leading-technology and making sure that non-technical clients understand it and that it lives up to their expectations.
The solution
The DeviceXS product owners jointly decided on a “step-by-step” strategy: ”We started off with a couple of developers and we built the team around them. Then we scaled up and we got another team on board for a different project of ours. In essence, in terms of how we work, we wanted to be agile and use the Agile approach, as the name of the company strongly suggests. Our desired way of working matches BusyMachines’ way of working, so this really helped us come together.” BusyMachines worked together with the DeviceXS product owners to define the solution objectives and the software architecture. They were in daily contact, released often and kept all stakeholders involved in product demos every two weeks.
Benefits of working with BusyMachines
Flexibility
Good working relations
Expertise & experience
Dedication & involvement