What is essential when it comes to remote cooperation with a software house?

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Daily communication is really easy.

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We have a daily stand up on a video chat.

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There was a Slack channel for us to communicate directly with

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not just the project managers, just with business development,

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but also the people who are really churning out the work itself.

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We always have concerns when it comes to using

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agencies, whether it's near shore, offshore, even on-site.

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Yeah, there were some concerns.

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I'd had not great experiences with an organisation in

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Sri Lanka before, so I was already nervous.

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But I knew from the first call that we had over video

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that it was very

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effective and communication was easy.

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The language barrier was almost non existent and it was really easy.

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What we found with Merixstudio is actually from the very

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beginning they were constantly going above and beyond

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and telling us about the work they can do,

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looking at our application,

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looking at our business and sending us messages about our

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business and it really matched up with what our vision was.

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So it made sense to us that this was an external agency and

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we were worried, well, is it the right chemistry?

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Will we get on with them?

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What will we do about communication and transparency?

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Seeing all of these messages and communications about, well,

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this is what your business is doing.

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Here's similar businesses. Have you considered looking at this?

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Here's some interesting notes for you.

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Here's some interesting content.

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And it was all relevant and it proved that not only

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were they great communicators and very transparent,

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but they actually understood our business before we even

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really started engaging with them.

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Daily communication is really easy.

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We have a daily stand up on a video chat every morning.

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The whole team's involved in that, so we know all the faces.

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And then we have a Slack channel where we can

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talk over instant messenger or hop

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on a video call whenever.

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I do that maybe a few times a day.

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And then combined with visits here, it's really easy.

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The approach Marex took with us really helped because it

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was very easy for us to leave feedback,

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leave comments and to generally have that communication

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where we could see what they were doing,

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they could ask us questions,

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it was very easy for them to clarify any points or any

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miscommunications.

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It meant we could share documents very easily,

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could give them updated specifications and say this is

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how our thinking has changed but also it gave us the

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flexibility to do tests and say we want to see what the

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design looks like if we take this approach or what does it

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look like if we don't do this and we consider the data in a

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very new and very fresh way?

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By having that clear communication and that kind of

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ongoing milestones and that ongoing working

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relationship, we could keep iterating on different parts of

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the application as we were

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going