CEO and Director of Business Development at Mobilunity: “Dedicated team model is limitless”

  • 2017-08-30
  • Lucis Linus Moscowitch

The need for qualified technical specialists emerges in almost every company now, and according to the research conducted by Inavero, 65% of companies worldwide plan to increase their total headcount in 2017. One of the popular options is hiring remote workers: 63% of departments currently have remote team members, and developers are among them. 

Team Extension or Dedicated Team Model is a business model, which keeps gaining popularity in locations limited with workforce, and allows companies of any scale to get software engineers they lack locally. Mobilunity is a rapidly growing IT company, which offers the opportunity for businesses worldwide to extend their development teams with qualified engineers from Ukraine, who work remotely. Within the last year, Mobilunity managed to reformat their recruiting processes, allowing to shrink the interview period to as short as two weeks, while the average duration of the interview process for software developer positions is 21 days.

Cyril Samovskiy, CEO of Mobilunity and Alfonsine Williams, Director of Business Development, answer our questions about their business model and what problems they help their customers with.

In short, could you explain to us what “Dedicated Team Model” means and how it works for your clients?

Alfonsine Williams: In short, a Dedicated Team Model refers to a team that we source for our clients, whereas the team itself works solely on the projects of our client. They are not split between tasks, they are not switched from project to project. Our clients are able to work directly with their team, manage their progress remotely, and benefit from having consistency and building a knowledge base within the team.

What type of companies would this model be especially effective for?

Alfonsine Williams: This type of model is limitless in regards to its reach and impact. From Startups, to large enterprises, this model allows for cost effective, results driven development. As long as a client has the vision to understand their needs, and the ability to set tasks and manage, this model will work wonders for them.

Cyril Samovskiy: Indeed, Alfie is right. There are very diverse stories. Like, a large Canadian company doing ecommerce platforms support and maintenance and having offices worldwide, was in need for a dedicated team here in Ukraine to cover European hours by that team - DONE! A Swiss startup on the initial funding stage, and they were initially making the product with a local Swiss development partner whose developers were still in Eastern Europe, and now has a Ukrainian development firm working for the startup needs directly. We work with any size company and with any size team, understanding anything small may and will lead to something bigger in time, if we do well. And we do!

Do you cooperate with clients in the Baltic region as well?

Alfonsine Williams: As an international company, we have worked with many regions including the Baltics. Our close proximity to the Baltic region allows us to commit even more resources and time to our neighbours and helps us ensure that we provide the very best for our clients there.

Cyril Samovskiy: We worked with Estonian and Lithuanian companies before on a project basis. We have good connections there and we know how well demand for developers overreach the proposal. We have a few good clients in Sweden too, and we keep getting requests daily.

Many companies are now considering hiring remote developers in European countries such as Poland and Romania. What makes Ukraine so unique in this regard?

Cyril Samovskiy: Of course, the market is giving its options. We compete not with Poland and Romania alone, but with dozens of other nearshore European and offshore worldwide destinations - from India to Mexico. However, there are undoubtful benefits of Ukraine.

First of all, it is labor market size. We are now talking approximately about 100,000 IT professionals on the market that hardly needs more than 10,000 locally. What it means to us is that majority of professionals are engaged into the projects oriented to external customers. Which leads to another advantage - people we are choosing from are already experienced working for international projects. They know the language, they are taught communicating remotely, understand their customer, and are understood as well. Finally, the cost of course. Lower cost of living in Ukraine together with costs of running facilities and operations make the final cost to the customer way more attractive than our neighbors can offer. So, there are many IT professionals in Ukraine, they speak English, and they would cost less. What other reasons may you need to consider a team from Ukraine?

How fast do you usually source the team for your new customers?

Alfonsine Williams: Typically, the process can take between 2-4 weeks. Often, we can source a team sooner, but that depends on the technology stacks needed and the availability of the client to conduct interviews and review CV’s. If there is an immediate need, we have enough resources, whereas we can allocate additional time to build the team quicker.

One of the common problems in working with remote employees is communication. How do you solve this issue?

Alfonsine Williams: Our processes are built around - not disturbing or disrupting our clients’ processes. A part of that is making sure that communication is clear on multiple levels. We make sure that the language requirements are met by the candidates so that nothing is lost in translation, we have that team adjust to our clients’ needs in regards to management and communication tools, and we supply resource management that makes the flow of communication easier and smoother.