Highlights

Expanding the customer experience development capability

The online betting industry is a highly competitive market, demanding continuous product innovation and improvement. A leading Australian online sports betting firm needed to rapidly develop and enhance its products to take advantage of betting trends and customer behaviours.

Demand for qualified developers in Australia is intense, and the company was finding the cost of quality talent was prohibitively high. The company’s Head of Product Delivery explains: “We needed to expand our front-end, customer experience development capability with a flexible team able to respond to the demands of the business and deliver high-quality outputs, and it was proving difficult to find the right people, at the right time and with the necessary skills.

A trusted multi-skilled front-end development team

The company looked within its global ecosystem for recommendations for a suitable partner and invited Xoomworks Technology to establish a dedicated development team based out of Cluj in Romania. Despite the nine-hour time difference, the solid referral from their global network meant they trusted the quality of the Xoomworks team and believed that their approach to delivering off-shore services would overcome the challenges. “The Xoomworks OneTeam delivery model was impressive and gave us confidence in their ability to create a skilled, cross-functional team, focused on the quality of the customer experience”.

In just two months, Xoomworks built a multi-skilled team of eight to expand the in-house front-end development teams based in Melbourne. The team consisted of developers with knowledge of the client’s technology stack, business analysts, a quality assurance manager, a project manager and a delivery manager.

Since 2018 the team has continued to grow. By the start of 2021, a 13-strong dedicated team will be in place to meet an expanding scope of work, from augmenting in-house teams to delivering major developments such as:

• Black Book application which allows users to store information on form and track conditions

• Product features to ensure compliance with industry regulations

• Tracking module providing essential business reporting for product managers

• Re-platforming products for IOS

“Our confidence in the Xoomworks team has grown with the relationship, and in 2020 we asked them to carry out the features and data migration needed for a merger which received much praise from stakeholders for its smooth delivery.”

Whilst the company is responsible for feasibility, business case development and product design, the Xoomworks team has full visibility. This means the offshore team can hit the ground running as soon as development gets the green light. Xoomworks provides a completion date for each piece of work, typically within 2 or 3 weeks of receiving the assignment. The team is also highly flexible, deploying resources efficiently if developments are paused. They closely manage a constant pipeline of work to ensure meeting timescales and quality.

Adherence to the client’s quality standards is essential. To meet these requirements, Xoomworks has created a sophisticated system of automated testing. A dedicated team maintains a list of client requirements and user journeys, which are used to rigorously test each new development, confirming the stability and performance of the software on a wide range of delivery platforms.

As part of the client’s CI/CD practice, they use a blue-green deployment approach to reduce upgrade deployment risk. In this model, two production environments are maintained, and user traffic is gradually directed from one to another when testing has been completed in one environment. This reduces or even eliminates the downtime usually associated with moving new functionality into production.

Working with Xoomworks

Xoomworks has implemented its OneTeam approach™, integrating the Romania-based team members with the client’s in-house development team. The Xoomworks developers quickly assimilated into the client’s structure and have become an integral part of the development process.

“We had been on a journey to make our development more agile, and when we spoke to Xoomworks in Romania, we were struck by the cultural fit with us,” explains their Head of Product. “The drive, passion and quality mindset, together with the domain knowledge, flexibility and technical skills were exactly what we needed.”

Meeting the challenges of the time difference between Romania and Melbourne was critical for the relationship. From the start, Xoomworks modified its working day to provide sufficient overlap between the two locations, starting work at 6am CET. As the relationship developed, remote collaboration became the norm. When the Covid pandemic arrived, there was little to no impact on working styles.

Based on the success of the partnership with Xoomworks, the company is planning to deploy the Xoomworks OneTeam Approach™ more widely within its own organisation and is looking to expand the Xoomworks team in 2021.

Contact us to discuss how a flexible partnership can support your technology requirements and business growth.