Late 2019, LinxHQ was interviewed by US-based research & review company GoodFirms. This is a copy of that interview. The original article may be found here.
What was the idea behind starting this organization?
Joseph: I desire to bless Vietnam through this business. It starts with doing the small things: providing meaningful jobs and growing opportunities first to our employees, and also to people and organizations we serve.
What are your company’s business model–in house team or third party vendors/ outsourcing?
We have a core team of in-house personnel ranging between 20-30+ depending on cycle. We also maintain a network of 80+ individuals and teams as third-party vendors.
How is your business model beneficial from a value addition perspective to the clients compared to other companies’ models?
Our core team at the office helps us stay customer-oriented, dig deeper into required domain knowledge and focus on good UI/UX as well as architectural designs, before bringing it down to technical execution. Having a network of vendors in software as well as infrastructure development allows us to expand our capacity rapidly, to meet sudden heavy workload and competitive deadlines. We keep a manageable growth of in-house team to keep our cost reasonable, while keeping our business sustainable. Sustainability also means we can be in business for a long run to support our customers.
What industries do you generally cater to? Are your customers repetitive? If yes, what ratio of clients has been repetitive to you?
We often cater to business solutions and e-learning providers for the service and retail industries. Repetitive customers often look for development and maintenance services for their Marketing platform, POS, HRM, CRM and ERP.
Having said that, we also have start-up customers who develop their MVP with us. Some of them are in the area of media editing, event management, dating, robotic and warehouse integration, and finance.
Mention the objectives or the parameters critical in determining the time frame of developing a mobile app.
- A clear user requirements. This could be in the form of user stories initially provided by the customer.
- A good visual reference. Many times, customers provide us with wireframes of core flows. Wireframes are very helpful.A reference/similar app may also be handy. From here, we design the full UI/UX and detailed software requirement specifications. This allows our team to progress quickly in understanding the final product before the technical development starts.
- Customer constant engagement and feedback.
How much effort in terms of time goes into developing the front end and back end of a mobile app?
Well, that really depends on the feature and architectural requirements. However, we are advocates of early MVP. The sooner our customers can put their products in the hand of the users, the sooner we all know how to make it better.
What are the key parameters to be considered before selecting the right platform for a mobile application?
- Type of product: for some apps a cross-platform framework will not work (e.g. animation and memory intensive apps), and customers will have to develop 2 completely different sets of code if they choose to go with both platforms. At the same time, some products target high-spending users. In this case, iPhone may make more sense as iPhone users are generally more willing to pay for their app usage.
- Market (geo location)/target audience: e.g. some regions favour Android over iPhone. Or perhaps it’s for their corporate users who carry only Android phones provided by their employers.
- Cost of development.
Which platform do you suggest your clients to begin with when they approach you with an idea (Android or iOS) and why?
This really depends on their type of product and target audience.
Android or iOS, Native or Hybrid — which platform is best to use to build your app? What are your recommendations?
Again, it depends
- Long-term plan (future features).
- Current technology stack that customers are already using for the platform.
- Budget & timeline.
- Nature of the app: will it involve CPU and memory-intensive activities like animation, 3D rendering, AI, heavy live reports…
- Available resources on the Internet: such as is there a big supporting community for the selected framework.
What are the key factors that you consider before deciding the cost of a mobile application?
- Platform (iOS, Android)
- Framework (native, or hybrid)
- Third-party integration and license.
- Back-end API
- Required features
What kind of payment structure do you follow to bill your clients? Is it Pay per Feature, Fixed Cost, Pay per Milestone (could be in phases, months, versions etc.)
We are flexible in this. If it’s a project contract, we choose milestone payments. If it’s a head-count contract, we choose monthly or bimonthly payment.
Which business model do you suggest to your clients enabling them to generate revenue from mobile applications? Why?
Depending on the target audience, I think you should seek both subscription and customized payment packages.
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