Challenges
Sinch MessageMedia is a global messaging provider that helps businesses of all sizes – from SMBs to enterprise–level – better connect with customers. Boasting a clientele exceeding 70,000 across 185+ countries, Sinch MessageMedia is Australia’s largest specialist messaging provider and drives business success by creating engaging mobile experiences that customers love. With offices across Australia, the United States, the United Kingdom, and New Zealand, plus a development center in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, Sinch MessageMedia enables businesses to engage their customers in a connected, mobile world in a personal yet scalable way.
Sinch MessageMedia faced the challenge of rapidly expanding its engineering capabilities to keep pace with its growing business demands. While establishing an overseas development center seemed like an ideal solution, it posed significant logistical and operational obstacles. These challenges included navigating cultural differences, coordinating teams scattered across various geographic regions, and ensuring seamless integration with current processes and methodologies.
Approach
In collaboration with CBTW APAC, Sinch MessageMedia devised a strategic solution to address its expansion needs, establishing a dedicated development center in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam through a Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) Partnership.
Embracing the best practices of Scrum and DevOps, the Vietnam development center adopted an autonomous team structure. Each team, comprising Technical Leads, Fullstack Developers, QA Engineers, and Product Owners, assumed full ownership of their respective segments within the messaging platform.
This approach empowered teams to efficiently design, implement, deploy, and support new features, ensuring agility and responsiveness in product development.
Benefits
The partnership with CBTW APAC yielded substantial benefits for Sinch MessageMedia. The collaboration facilitated rapid scalability, doubling the size of its development team within the first year while maintaining quality and confidence in its operations.
This accelerated growth enabled Sinch MessageMedia to expedite its product roadmap, delivering high-quality features such as appointment reminders to customers worldwide promptly.
Client’s Quote
“Our partnership with CBTW APAC has helped us to scale very quickly and achieve faster growth as a company. It enabled us to double the size of our development team in a year – successfully, safely, and confidently. We’ve accelerated our roadmap across different products, developed them to a high standard in a short amount of time, and delivered them into our customers’ hands as quickly as possible.
We have autonomous teams in Vietnam that take product development from end to end. They’ve built and maintained one of our flagship products – a web portal used by our global clients to engage and communicate with their customers. The teams have also been responsible for stand-out achievements that offer great benefits to our customers worldwide. For example, they developed a real-time conversational inbox that allows our business clients to have conversations with their customers rather than just sending messages. I was really impressed by the speed of the delivery and the quality of their work.
One of the unexpected outcomes and joys of our partnership has been the two-way learning that has eventuated from it. Originally, I thought it might be a one-way path, but we’ve been introduced to tools and strategies to help track the metrics of delivery, engagement and performance – things that are done well at CBTW APAC. In turn, we’ve taken these learnings from our Ho Chi Minh City office and used them to build up our Melbourne team with successful results. We’re open to how things are done overseas, how they change and develop, and what we can learn.
I’d highly recommend a Build-Operate-Transfer partnership with CBTW APAC. It’s a great way to scale up your development team while maintaining the quality of your work and building a team that’s fully compatible with your own internal tech culture.”
Ben Mostafa, Former CTO @ Sinch MessageMedia
BOT Overview
- Duration: 7 years
- Team Size: 60+
- Client Location: Australia
- Team Location: Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
- Working Model: BOT
- Status: Ongoing