we do it smart, fast, within budget and deadlines

Understanding of enterprise architecture, having strong skills in software development, we build for our clients solutions that empower their business to achieve stable competitive advantages

SERVICES

Strangely enough, we develop software

This trite expression includes the diversity of what we do for our customers and in general what we do. But seriously this variety is too large to list the services we provide here "point by point". It will be more obvious to distinguish two groups of services and formats for their provision in accordance with two main kinds of our clients:

End-users
any companies (mostly non IT) who use for themselves solutions that we develop.
Integrators
IT-companies who develop solutions for their own clients ("end-users").
With "end-users" we work as IT-experts who can figure out, design, develop and implement solution that meet the business requirements, company's goals, business-architecture and existing IT-landscape.

With "integrators" we work as experienced out-source team who can deliver solutions in flexible manner regarding the provided specifications fast, within committed budget and with the best quality.

WORKFLOWS

There are two extremes in organization of software development:

Waterfall - the process consists of successive stages that do not overlap in time: analysis of the subject area, collection and structuring of requirements, conceptual (logical) design, physical design, development, testing, ... At each stage, a solid package of documents is developed and agreed. Development (coding) begins somewhere in the middle of the project.

Agile - development (coding) begins almost immediately. The package of drawn up documentation is minimal. The developed program is regularly shown to the client. Based on its feedback, requested changes are made at the next iteration. And so on until the desired result is achieved.

All the existing software development methodologies (RUP, SCRUM, XP, MSF, etc.) are somewhere between these two extremes.

We understand the pros and cons of both approaches and offer a unique business development process for each client in accordance with its own specifics and needs.
WE CAN VARY THE NEXT OPTIONS FOR EACH CLIENT AND PROJECT:
  • Composition and depth of detail of technical and design documentation
  • Inclusion or exclusion (withdrawal to the client or third parties) of certain types of work (analysis, testing, support, etc.)
  • Duration of development of one version
  • Change requirements management procedure
  • Version acceptance procedure
  • Issue management procedure
  • Other...

TOOLS

We have got complete technology infrastructure required for software development including:

  • Hardware servers (both on premise and in clouds)
  • Virtualization system
  • Dev, test and prod environments (both on Windows and Linux platforms)
  • Distributed virtual private network
  • CVS repository
  • Team collaboration portal
  • Project management tool
  • Bug tracker and client support portal
  • Accounting and billing system
To make contract management and payments easy, safe and transparent for our clients we have the next options:

Contracting with our Russia based company (payments in USD, EUR and RUR are possible)

Contracting with our EU (Hungary) based company (payments in EUR and HUF are possible)

Dealing via Upwork – the first-rate freelancers portal (we have top-rated profile with 100% success score)

PORTFOLIO

My name is Anton Kholodkov

I am a business analyst, system analyst, software architect and lead of this team.

I was graduated by Moscow State University (2004) and High School of Economy, Moscow (2009) in Business Information.

I have rich experience (20+ years and 50+ projects) in IT-consulting (business processes optimization, enterprise architecture, IT-strategy) and software development.

I started to work with my own team in 2012.

Since that time, we provide high quality software development services and have implemented many projects for companies from the following industries:

  • Production

  • Telecommunications

  • Finance

  • Insurance

  • E-commerce

  • Public administrations

  • Realty estate management

  • Travel

  • System integration

  • Software development

  • Retail

  • Food

Just a few last projects:

2020

Smart workflow management system for Dutch company that engineers, delivers and services waste management solutions

Industry:
Production
Platform:
Bizagi
Request details
2019

Enterprise level system for monitoring technological equipment of engineering infrastructure on remote objects

Industry:
Engineering
Platform:
Java EE
Request details
2018

Workflow management system for a world-class agriculture supply chain company, anchored in China and competing globally

Industry:
Sales and Logistics
Platform:
Bizagi
Request details
2017

Business process management system that supports space monitoring of various natural and infrastructure objects

Industry:
Space technologies
Platform:
Java EE, Activiti
Request details
2016

Marketing workflows automation (promotional activities) for one of the largest Russian retail companies

Industry:
Retail
Platform:
Bizagi
Request details

PEOPLE

WE ARE REALLY EXPERIENCED GUYS AND LADIES AND WE LIKE OUR JOB...

Many of us started professional way with PCs based on Intel 8086

Therefore, we have seen and know a lot – the whole evolution of modern IT: operations systems, software development technologies, enterprise applications and others

But in the same time we understand that we must to track, analyze and adopt of modern trends to be on the top of technological competition

We are geographically distributed team that works within a single collaboration system

For each project we organize its own project team that includes the next roles:

  • Project Manager / Senior Analyst
  • Analyst
  • Designer
  • Developer
  • Tester
OUR TEAM LEADS:

Anton Kholodkov

Team leader, head of analytics

Alexander Mamchur

Head of BPM / ECM direction

Igor Petrov

Head of development

Marina Orlova

Heag of testing

BUSINESS PROCESS MANAGEMENT

BPM systems is a class of business applications

These systems allow to setup business processes (in view of visual diagrams) and all the related aspects (data model, user forms, business rules, assignation rules, reports, integration with external systems etc.)

Afterwards these processes can be “executed” by end-users (employees involved in the processes) within the system with its “governance”

At the same time the system can automate some operations (like moving data from/to external systems, data processing etc.) to reduce of manual work, human factor, count of mistakes and increase of speed and general efficiency

Also the system automatically controls sequence of the operations, their inputs and outputs, assigns performers and manage their loading

On the top of the system can be set visual dashboards for various levels of management (cockpits)

We build these solutions from 2012 year on both open-source and proprietary BPM platforms

ENTERPRISE CONTENT MANAGEMENT

ECM is other class of business applications

These systems allow to setup model of information that company operate with

From this point of view information is any data in digital form

It includes files in various formats, web-sites, forums, blogs, official records, wiki libraries etc.

ECM system provides us with many features to work with information in the most effective, safe and convenient way including:

  • Access to all data from anywhere via web-portal, mobile applications, office applications etc.
  • Flexible user access control by using role models
  • Version control to keep history of documents and support simultaneous work of many users with one document
  • Working with metadata (e.g. with business attributes for files)
  • Search within the whole data storage including full-text search in files
  • Data transformation (e.g. extraction data from scanned images by OCR engines)
We build ECM and integrated ECM+BPM solutions to improve your business efficiency!

ROBOTICS PROCESS AUTOMATION

RPA is a relatively new class of business applications

It is built on the fresh concept – emulation of human work on computer by software (robot)

For instance, robot like a human can open some web portal by using browser (e.g. Chrome), enter credentials from its config, take some info (store in its “memory”), then create new file by using MS Word, put this info in that file and store it in some folder with some name. If this info meets to some requirements (that are set in its config) it can also send this file via e-mail.

So some part of work that is done by people now can be done by robot much cheaper

We build both apparent RPA solutions for simple tasks and integrated BPM+RPA solutions for more complex workflows

RPA with BPMS and ECM are parts of modern business paradigm which was called by marketers “digital transformation”

JAVA APPLICATIONS

Java stack of technologies is staying one of the most popular tool to build applications already 20 years

It is used for development of various kinds of solutions: enterprise applications, cross-platform desktop software, mobile apps

We like Java for:

  • Maturity and focus on building of scalable enterprise-level applications
  • Rich environment that includes components, frameworks, servers, development GUIs and even programming languages like Kotlin
  • Code clarity
  • Orientation on open source
  • Perfect documentation and knowledge base
  • Huge community of developers

Most often we propose to our clients Java as a tool to build back-ends of solutions including their REST APIs

But in some cases we also use Java for building of front-ends by using VAADIN or JavaFX

The products like Alfresco, Activiti, Bonita are based on Java too, so we use it also for creation, customization and extending of solutions on these platforms

WEB SOLUTIONS

This term can be used for any application with which the user works in the browser

But really the browser is just the surface part of the iceberg. Browser that is executed on the client side cannot make complex calculations and data operations. So it has to connect to the server that will do this work. Any modern Internet service like Gmail or Facebook is built on this paradigm.

We use the next technologies to build powerful and convenient user interfaces (web front-ends):

  • HTML5
  • CSS and its extensions
  • JavaScript and its extension components and frameworks
  • Vue.js or AngularJS as MVC frameworks
  • Bootstrap and other web control libraries
  • Node.js to build both front-ends and back-ends

We create these front-ends as adaptive layouts to be viewed fine on the various devices (desktops, smartphones, pads)

Usually these front-ends work with back-ends (e.g. built on Java EE) via REST API with all the required security

In the beginning of the works we can suggest to the client optimal architecture based on its requirements

BIZAGI

Bizagi is powerful platform to build BPM solutions that can be hosted both on premise and in the Cloud

It is really easy to start building of BPMS with Bizagi as:

  • It has free fully-featured version to develop, evaluate and execute solutions in environments with users count till 20
  • It has visual designer (Bizagi Studio) that allows to create executable business processes very fast and with minimal efforts even for non-programmers

We have certifications and very good experience in Bizagi (10+ years)

We work on Bizagi projects with various companies around the world (EU, USA, South Korea, Russia and other regions)

Also many years we have worked like development team (subcontractors) with other Bizagi’s partners to help them in building solutions for their own customers

We can make really cool things and tricks with Bizagi which extend its common (out-of-the-box) features:
  • Custom web-based dashboards integrated with Bizagi by using REST API or Secured SOAP API
  • Extensions components that realize complex business logic
  • Custom connectors to public external services or private client’s systems
  • Custom widgets for Bizagi Work Portal
  • Custom integration with ECMs in complex ECM/BPM solutions
  • A lot of other…

ALFRESCO

Alfresco is one of the most popular ECM platform that also includes BPM-engine Activiti

It has Community version (free, open-source) that really can be enough for many companies and Enterprise version

We like Alfresco for:

  • It is really cool-designed and realized ECM (by former employees of EMC Corporation)
  • It is based on Java stack of technologies
  • It is fully customized on various levels (as open-source)
  • Community version can be used absolutely free
  • Pretty mobile application to work with Alfresco document repository

We provide our customers with building complex ECM/BPM solutions and technical support for Community version that includes maintenance, upgrading, bug fixing etc.

We propose Alfresco to our customer for:

  • Storing any kinds of content in one repository (files, meta data, data-lists, blogs etc.)
  • Organizing convenient access to this content via web-portal (Alfresco Share) for internal and external users
  • Execution of workflows with this content within Alfresco (by using integrated Activiti BPM) or in external BPM systems (like Bizagi that includes out-of-the box connector to Alfresco)

ACTIVITI

Activiti is powerful open-source BPM engine developed by Alfresco Corporation

It can be used as:

  • Apparent BPM system – it also has free open-source Community version and fully featured Enterprise version
  • Part of Alfresco ECM
  • BPM-engine components (without GUI) that can be included as a part in your own applications in accordance with Apache License 2.0

The last use case is the most interesting and important option for us

It allows to empower by workflow features any other (not just BPM) applications which we develop for our customers

We have good experience in working with Activiti BPM-engine via both Java API and REST API

We can develop custom GUI for Activiti that exactly meets to the customer’s requirements

Executable BPM processes firstly developed for Activiti can be easily integrated into Alfresco later

BONITA

Bonita is one more very interesting BPM platform that we work with

In our opinion it stays somewhere between proprietary Bizagi and free open-source Activiti Community Edition

It has advanced designer that allows to build process models, data models, forms and other parts of executable business processes

This designer not so “visual” like in Bizagi but very powerful comparing with any other free tool

Also Bonita includes very convenient web portal (Bonita Portal) for end-users and administrators to work with developed business processes

This makes Bonita for many cases a compromise between speed (cost) of development and the level of compliance with business requirements and user experience

We help our customers to select preferred platform for building solution that will optimally meets to their requirements and existing budget and time frames

UiPath

UiPath is one of the most popular environment for building, running and governance software robots

It allows to create scenarios that emulate user’s activities and then execute them automatically

UiPath contains activities packages that include support for execution a lot of kinds of interaction between user, operations system and installed applications

Here are just a number of examples of these activities:

  • System’s activities like creation, reading and deletion files, copy/paste etc.
  • Working with data like creation tables, manipulation with rows etc.
  • Working with WEB like sending SOAP or HTTP requests, manipulations with XML and JSON files etc.
  • Working with Office applications like Word, Excel etc.
  • Working with business applications like SAP, Salesforce etc.
  • Execution of custom existing programming modules written on languages like Java, Python etc.

We develop for our customers both apparent RPA scenarios on UiPath and integrated BPM+ECM+RPA solutions

Both Bizagi and Bonita include out-of-the-box connector features to UiPath

CONTACTS

For

Clients & Partners:

  • Do you want to forward your competitors and earn more money?
  • Do you have too much software development work and look somebody who can help you to complete it fast, in existing budget and with the best quality?
  • Do you need qualified IT-consulting services to develop or improve your IT-architecture and strategy?
  • Do you need some IT-solution?
  • Do you have a good idea how we can be useful to each other?

If answer on at least one of the questions above is "Yes" – please, contact us in a way convenient for you

For

Job:

  • Do you want to work from anywhere and don’t be wired with your “chair” in the employer’s office?
  • Do you have strength skills in IT or/and huge ambitions?
  • Are you an honest and decent person?

If answers on all of the questions above is "Yes" – please, send us your CV on e-mail: job@a-kh.io

Send message here
E-mail: me@a-kh.io
Skype: a_kholodkov
Upwork Profile