Interview with Slava Khristich, CEO - Tateeda

Slava Khristich  

CEO, Tateeda

Give us a quick overview on Tateeda. When and how did you begin this journey and what were your motives to be successful?

I’m  the CEO and founder of TATEEDA. My career in California’s IT industry was rich and varied. I held roles as a Principal Engineer, Senior Software Architect, and even served as a VP in a tech company, not to mention taking on Senior Developer positions multiple times. In addition, I had other startups, which failed due for the technologies we were developing were ahead of time and market wasn’t ready for it. These experiences, especially my work on innovative health tech projects, shaped my decision to start my another venture. My goal was to create a company that would not only cater to our local clients in San Diego but also establish a presence across the U.S. and globally. Main goal was to create an organization what produce high quality results and seamless communications. Creating the developers without boarder environment.

Launching TATEEDA posed considerable challenges, requiring immense effort to set up a strong local base in California and then expand our reach internationally. This strategic expansion was aimed at managing costs without compromising the quality of our services. We’ve dedicated a lot of time to building robust HR processes in our offshore and nearshore locations, ensuring we can offer our clients some of the finest IT professionals in the industry. The journey with TATEEDA has been incredibly fulfilling thus far, and I look forward to the future with great enthusiasm. We understand that we are as strong as our weakest link. One of our objectives is to hire only the best senior developers and QA engineers.

What is your role in the management and development of Tateeda?

I oversee all technical aspects, from architecture to coding across cloud, web, mobile, and desktop platforms as well as keeping our current clients relations and building trust with new and potential clients.. We adhere to standards like HIPAA and CCPA to ensure our software is both compliant and secure. In recruiting, I pinpoint the hard skills we need and collaborate with HR to bring top senior developers into our team, ensuring we're packed with superior talent from offshore and nearshore locations.

Building a strong team is just the start. It’s crucial to keep everyone up-to-date with the latest technological trends. We’re continuously training, embracing new frameworks, updating our code libraries, and exploring emerging technologies. My role is to ensure TATEEDA becomes a name known for delivering exceptional results, with products that consistently exceed our clients' expectations. This involves precise coding practices, effective DevOps strategies, thorough security measures, and ongoing education, ensuring we stay at the forefront of technology. We narrowing down our specializations and concentrating on areas where we are the very strong.

Tell us about your biggest achievement in the industry.

Our most significant achievement has been forming a partnership with one of the largest health-tech companies in the U.S.A., which specializes in managing travel nurses. This partnership required us to develop a modern, scalable platform for managing travel nurse time and billing, a testament to our capability to deliver complex and critical solutions. Additionally, TATEEDA has been recognized among the Fastest Growing Private Companies by the San Diego Business Journal, five years in the raw and reaching #6 in 2022, and has appeared on the Inc. 5000 list twice, in 2022 and 2023.

How do you schedule the development phases of the app design and development projects to promise the timeline to your clients?

Our developer teams are strategically positioned around the globe to ensure we can cover the major time zones. This setup guarantees that we're available whenever our clients need us, ready to code, design, and tackle challenges at any hour. This setup lets us work on projects day and night, without having to worry about matching up our clocks with our clients’. Having distributed teams allow us to add several hours of productive for to help our clients deliver their products to market even faster.

We’re big on Agile methodologies around here, keeping our development sharp and seamless, ready to pivot or embrace new ideas at a moment's notice. This way, meeting deadlines becomes a breeze, and we ensure our projects grow and adapt right alongside our clients' evolving needs. Thanks to our around-the-clock workflow and the agility Agile gives us, we can deliver exactly what our clients need, exactly when they need it – no time zone juggling required.

What would you suggest for a successful and profitable business progression, when it comes to mobile app development? How do you define the factors influenced you to make this choice?

Outstaffing can be a smart way to cut down on both time and cost for companies diving into mobile app development. However, the real game-changer lies in the deep expertise of precisely knowing how to develop impactful applications. It's not merely about having expert developers on board; it's the strategic insight and direction from our tech leads that truly make a difference. This leadership ensures that every app is not just user-friendly and secure but also at the forefront of technology. We are not perfect and make mistakes. It is normal, the most important thing, that we realize those mistakes and continuously working on processes improvement and learning from our mistakes.

How do you scheme your pricing model? How do you fix your budget?

In how we approach pricing, it's really about what works best for the project. We've only one ways of doing this: Time & Material based approach. Time & Material it's flexible, so if the project's needs change, we can adjust on the fly. And to make things even easier, we've put an online calculator on our site. It's a great tool that lets you get a free estimate on what your project might cost, right from the get-go.

We moved away from Fixed prices, yes, it is great for clients, but in my opinion, it is not fair. If company wants to stay profitable, it is from the experience needs to 5-10X the fixed cost to address any unknowns, which are very common, based on my 25 years experience, and I don’t think it is fair to the client. We don’t want to sacrifice the quality just to meet Fixed Bid target, and if we done faster than planned, our clients will get a benefit of saving money.

How helpful are the designs and app development by Tateeda for your clients in enhancing their business?

Our designs and app development at TATEEDA give our clients' businesses a boost.

We are following best design patterns and  standard in the industry and put the user at the heart of every design. We build our apps to scale with clients growing needs. This way, we're not just making things look good—we're making them work better and opening up new ways for our clients to make money. It's all about getting users hooked, streamlining operations, and finding fresh growth opportunities. When application is designed it needs to consider functional and non functional aspects such as future maintenance, scalability, availability and security.

What according to you are the best practices to attain client satisfaction?

The keys to making our clients happy are pretty straightforward: keep the lines of communication open, be clear and honest about everything, and always put the client first. We keep our transparency between our and client’s teams, open to constructive criticism and eager to make any  changes to improve our performance. We also helping clients where we can to make their teams better by sharing our knowledge and experience.  We make sure our development work lines up perfectly with what our clients are aiming for, and we stay ready to shift gears if their needs change. This approach helps us hit the mark every time, ensuring our projects not only meet but exceed our clients' expectations and help them succeed.

How do you update your business system to be in pace with the technological advancements?

Keeping up with tech advancements? It’s all about embracing continuous learning and innovation. We foster a culture deeply invested in exploring new technologies. This means regular self education, engaging in tech forums, and connecting with industry leaders at events like the Inc. 5000 Conference & Gala, TechEx Digital Transformation Week, and through webinars we host. R&D is a big part of our approach, as we're constantly scouting for breakthroughs that can enhance our software solutions. This commitment to staying agile ensures we remain leaders in the tech space.

What’s the latest technology that you think can change your industry?

I believe the combination of IoT technologies and AI capabilities is the game-changer we're looking at for our industry, especially in healthcare tech. IoT opens up a world of connectivity and data collection possibilities, while AI enhances this with its automation and predictive analytics. Together, they have the power to significantly improve patient care, streamline data management, and foster the development of smarter systems. This powerful duo is poised to redefine efficiency, security, and personalization in healthcare solutions, ultimately transforming how we approach software development for data handling and patient services.