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Situational Summary

Academic Partnerships is an e-learning company based out of Dallas, TX. Founded in 2007, this 800+ person company deploys technologies and tools that help their higher education customers expand their online degree programs.

They do this through their integrated product AP HigherEdge, where clients enjoy 1) High-quality, low-tuition online programs 2) Optimal faculty-forward program design 3) Accelerated speed-to-market launch 4) Vertically integrated, data-driven marketing performance 5) Seamless dedication to student retention and success

The numbers are impressive: 50+ colleges and universities, 5,200+ faculty members, bringing online 5,400+ courses, spanning 650+ undergraduate/graduate degree programs, engaging 270,000+ students.

Academic Partnerships need to expand their engineering capacity to meet growing demand. Most urgent is to grow the engineering team for a pending acquisition: a SaaS company (Coursetune) that relies on a distributed team of six engineers located in Europe and North Africa. The idea is to add 12 engineers to this new acquisition over the next six months, with the initial group starting in October if at all possible.

The tech stack will be focused around Haxe, Node.js, PostgreSQL, manual QA (moving to Selenium), and DevOps. Academic Partnerships will be hiring a PM and Scrum Master soon to lead the team. The vision is to have this new, external teamwork as an extension of the in-house group. It would be nice if the Service Provider had previous education experience but it is not critical. No specific certifications are required but it is worth discussing if CSMs were available. It is expected that all team members will speak English fluently.

There is only interest in considering Service Providers located in either Latin America or Eastern Europe. Academic Partnerships does have experience outsourcing, working with two groups in India (Genpact,  Happiest Minds) to various degrees of success.

Academic Partnerships has talked to 4 groups so far: Globant, Arion Koder, Full Stack Labs, Global Logic. While each has individual strengths, there is a need to understand if better-aligned groups are out there: ones that will more assuredly meet the needs of this immediate opportunity and that of Academic Partnerships, generally.

 

 

Our Recommendations

Accelerance has considered your objectives and partner selection criteria in the context of all members in the Accelerance Global Partner Network. Given your declared needs and objectives, Accelerance is delighted to introduce the below Certified Partners as our top aligned choices to work as a dedicated Partner.

These accomplished groups are excellent representatives of the 60+ Members of our Global Service Provider Network.

 

View the Partner Matrix

View the Partner Matrix

Partner Matrix

 

Partner Information and Other Relevant Materials

Accelerance gathers and compiles relevant due diligence information on our Partners to share with you. This includes presentations, Assessments, blogs, and Accelerance Video Interviews of Partner leaders discussing topics of outsourcing interest. To review information and other relevant material for your top aligned Accelerance Partners, click on the links below.
Intertec International

What Intertec International has to say about your project

Hi Ryan,

Intertec International is pleased to be considered by your client to support its internal development needs. Our focus on transparency, structured development process, and quality will provide the smooth transition required for project success.

Intertec has over 19 years of experience developing and supporting existing applications or from scratch. We have gained a wealth of knowledge in multiple industries with all types of complexities. Our process will engage early conversations about how to best transition the business requirements to technology that will provide your client's customers the optimal experience.

Intertec will incorporate an experienced team that will drive success throughout the project. Our reporting and metrics will demonstrate transparency in the process to all stakeholders. We combine industry best practices to develop an Agile environment with the structure required to provide milestones and predictability in our delivery.

Please see attached additional information regarding Intertec International and links to our nearshore locations, delivery models, and business case studies.

Case Study for Educational Platform

Managed Services

QA Abilities

Best Regards,

Mark McLoud

EVP, Partner - Intertec International                       

Office: 602-452-6405

Mobile: 732-693-0227 

 

Learn More →

Jalasoft

What Jalasoft has to say about your project

Mike and Ryan,

Thanks for taking the time to discuss your client's project with us. This sounds like a phenomenal opportunity for Jala that is well aligned with our core business model.  We try to team with clients that are looking to build long-term partnerships.  Many of our existing clients have been working with us for 20 years, since the launch of Jalasoft.  I look forward to meeting with them to show them what we have to offer, but here are a few highlights that we can review further in the coming weeks.

  • We excel at providing world-class engineers that are an extension to our client’s teams, from the low-level‘ click tester’ to software architects.  
    • Our engineers are your engineers, they just happen to be in a different locale.
  • We embrace long term partnerships 
    • Many of our senior engineers and architects started their engineering careers with the very clients that now depend on them to lead their teams and define product architecture.
  • We have experience with clients large and small, from Fortune 500 public enterprises, private equity-backed companies to newly formed startups.  
  • We have extensive experience with SaaS platforms, working with many of our clients to help define their strategy for cloud operations.
  • We have significant Node.JS knowledge
  • We focus on providing full-stack, blended teams that have the expertise to deliver high-quality results at a reasonable price.
  • We provide career growth for our people to maintain job satisfaction and minimize turnover.
    • We build and train many of our people through our various programs in Bolivia to ensure a steady pipeline of quality engineers.
    • Every customer has a core manager assigned to the team, at our cost, to ensure both employee and client are happy with the partnership. 
  • We have more than 1,000 employees working in our Engineering Services division in South America, focused exclusively on US client and their worldwide divisions and subsidiaries.  
    • We work in your time zone and focus on your needs.  There is no need to schedule meetings before breakfast or after dinner, or constantly worry about what time it is halfway around the world!

Let me know when we can have a call to learn more about your client's needs and discuss how we can start a new partnership for the next 20 years!

Regards,

Greg Holbrow

Vice President, Engineering Services

Learn More →

Intetics

What Intetics has to say about your project

Mike, 

Thank you for bringing this opportunity to Intetics. Yes, we are very well positioned to take on any and all educational/e-learning projects. We have executed several successful projects over the years. Please see our E-Learning section on our website to review. Below is a little bit about Intetics you can share with your client. We look forward to meeting with them and learning more. 

E-Learning and Education

At Intetics we specialize in full-cycle software product development and building efficient, highly-skilled distributed IT engineering teams in our development centers in Eastern Europe for our customers worldwide saving up to 50% of their local costs.

Intetics is the pioneer of Offshore Dedicated Teams and the inventor of Remote In-Sourcing. Our Predictive Software Engineering framework helps greatly improve the collaboration and the results of remote software development teams (here our CEO Boris Kontsevoi outlines its concepts). As a company that cares about the quality of delivered, supported and re-designed products, Intetics has created a Technical debt reduction platform (TETRA), which helps to cover tech debts and release a healthy product to the market.

Intetics has broad industry experience, deep software engineering expertise, an outstanding quality management platform and an unparalleled methodology for talent recruitment, team building and talent retention that guarantee that clients receive exceptional results for their software development projects.

Intetics is ISO 9001 (quality) and ISO 27001 (security) certified and a Microsoft Gold and Amazon Partner. The company’s innovation and growth achievements are reflected in winning prestigious titles and awards, including Inc 5000, Software 500, CRN 100, American Business, Deloitte Technology Fast 50, European IT Excellence, Best European BPO, Clutch, and ACQ5 Awards, and inclusion into IAOP’s Best Global Outsourcing 100 list.”

Serge Stepantsov, CTO for Intetics

 

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Q agency

What Q agency has to say about your project

Hi Ryan,

What a great 

Here’s the list of eLearning projects which might be relevant for Academic Partnership:

  • MaxBrain - Switzerland 
    • Uni St. Gallen spinoff similar to Blackboard 
    • This is our oldest client - we’re working with them for 5+ years and designed and developed everything from Prototype, MVP to the full product they have now
    • The whole know-how is in Q since we cover Design, Project Management, Development, DevOps, QA, etc
    • I’ve attached their Factsheet so AP can check their offering and what we’ve developed
    • https://www.maxbrain.com/en
    • link to portfolio: https://q.agency/projects/maxbrain 
  • ManpowerGroup - US
    • We’ve developed a robust Assessment platform that is used by ManpowerGroup recruiters globally to assess candidates, match the best candidates with the best opportunities and track their progress throughout time
    • https://www.manpowergroup.com/ 
  • The Mind Gym - US/UK
    • Behavioral science organization which helps organizations improve on their performance and engagement
    • https://uk.themindgym.com/
  • DeeperSignals - US
  • UAT - Austria
    • Currently in a process of building an eLearning solution for the pilots - similar to Coursera
    • https://www.e-uat.com/ 
  • Smart Pension - UK
    • one of the fastest-growing Fin-Tech companies from London - we’re building an investment platform + eLearning component for their client's employees
    • https://www.autoenrolment.co.uk/
  • Onboarding platforms for Facebook, Coca-Cola, Visa, and Wallmart
    • are internal tools we built for these companies so we are not allowed to share much more than already disclosed on the call
 

I’m also sending our Company Profile, Dedicated team Brochure, and One-pager which contains the most important info about us.

Aside from what’s mentioned there, we also got an award as the best employer in Croatia and have vast experience in eLearning & HR + our only product is an HR app/internal social app - https://jenz.app/.

Let us know if there’s anything else you might need.

Best

Vedran Tolic
Founder & Chief Business Officer for Q Agency

 

Learn More →

Recommended Reading

Conclusion

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After you review this proposal please respond with feedback and questions so that we can clarify your needs and preferences.

The next recommended step is to have a brief 1 hour video call with two or more recommended partners using a simple agenda below. You will use the calls to validate shared information while exploring other related topics like how they work with clients and how they would create and ramp up your team, what software development methods they use with clients, case studies, metrics, etc... You can choose to keep the call at the business level or you can make it more technical.

Partner Intro Video Call - Recommended Agenda

  • 15 min: Overview of your company background and project goals and objectives.  
  • 15 min: Partner overview and review of their ability to support your software development needs
  • 25 min: Q & A 
  • 5 min: Next Steps
Ryan Schauer
Partner Success Manager
Accelerance Inc.