1. What services does SaM Solutions provide?
2. How many IT professionals does the company employ? How many additional professionals do you have access to?
3. What references do you have?
4. How do I submit the initial information on a project to SaM Solutions?
5. What stages does a project include and what responsibilities do you take?
6. How do you communicate with the customers throughout the project lifecycle?
7. Can a customer control and/or steer the progress of the project?
8. How do you calculate the future project cost?
9. What does the project cost depend on and how is the payment arranged?
10. Do your project managers and team members have a good command of the English language?
11. What warranty does SaM Solutions provide for its products?
12. Who owns the copyright for the product and the source code upon the project completion?
13. Is it possible to make a personal appointment?

1. What services does SaM Solutions provide?

SaM Solutions provides offshore software development services. The scope of our services is rather wide - from providing profiled offshore programmer teams up to implementing custom turn-key software solutions.

Get more info at the Services page.

2. How many IT professionals does the company employ? How many additional professionals do you have access to?

Overall our company employs over 500 IT professionals directly involved in the software development process (PMs and QA-staff inclusive).
Besides, we maintain an ever-growing HR-database that currently holds resumes of over 200 IT specialists as SaM Solutions potential employees. The database is constantly replenished with new applicants.

3. What references do you have?

We have been in business for more than fourteen years and now work with over 15 international clients, including SIEMENS AG, CSC SoftwareConsult GmbH, European Patent Office, ApplianceWare, Adigida Solutions, and others.

Please visit our Customers page to find out more.

4. How do I submit the initial information on a project to SaM Solutions?

You can submit the initial information on a project in a form most suitable to you. If you already have a technical specification of the software product, we will consider it and send you a fixed-price offer. If you would prefer SaM to prepare the technical documentation corresponding to your needs and requirements, we will gladly do it for you. Our project manager can meet you to clarify and discuss all the details at any time.

Submit your request here.

5. What stages does a project include and what responsibilities do you take?

Typically, a software project goes through the following phases:

1. Start-up (getting to know each other, presenting main expectations, mutual assessment);
2. Elaboration (detailing system concept, deliverables, project plan);
3. Development (programming, testing);
4. Deployment (transition of source code or installation of product, user documentation, training);
5. Technical maintenance/support or further enhancement of the software system (optional).

Responsibilities:
The scope of responsibilities SaM assumes depends on the customer's needs:

1. Research/Analysis of business needs and suggesting technical solution;
2. Preparation of a complete technical specification;
3. Offshore Development of the product;
4. Quality Assurance;
5. User documentation, on-site training;

6. How do you communicate with the customers throughout the project lifecycle?

• email;
• telephone;
• instant-messaging text conferences (ICQ, MSN messenger with plug-ins to ensure security, etc);
• video-conferencing;
• personal visits to a customer's country or receiving customers in Minsk.

7. Can a customer control and/or steer the progress of the project?

SaM has proprietary systems (web-based and client-server) for software project management and progress reporting. We also have experience in using third-party products for this purpose, e.g. Rational Suite, TestTrackPro, etc.

8. How do you calculate the future project cost?

It depends on the information that is already available on the project. If you have some documentation describing your project, we can review it and provide our comments and preliminary estimations. If you have no documentation so far, we can prepare a brief questionnaire for us to understand the scope of work, suggest the main technological approaches, and provide rough estimations.

9. What does the project cost depend on and how is the payment arranged?

It depends on the contractual model used. Generally, there're two main models: fixed-price and time&material-based contracts.

For projects with a detailed technical specification available, we provide a fixed-price offer, which is invoiced and paid in parts according to the payment schedule specified under the contract.

For long-term projects, where the total effort cannot be estimated in advance, we sign a contract stipulating the team roles and their rates, and invoice you monthly or bi-weekly according to the effort reports.

10. Do your project managers and team members have a good command of the English language?

Our project managers are fluent in English and/or German languages. We make sure that every project member can understand and read/write in English/German sufficiently well for successful project communication.

11. What warranty does SaM Solutions provide for its products?

Any errors discovered within the guarantee period (6-12 months depending on a project complexity) will be fixed promptly and free of charge.

12. Who owns the copyright for the product and the source code upon the project completion?

Our work on your project is defined by the contract as work for hire. The contract will explicitly state that the customer possesses and retains all the rights for the product and the corresponding source code. Upon customer's request, we will delete all the project-related data upon the project completion.

13. Is it possible to make a personal appointment?

Yes, we consider personal meetings to be most effective for developing mutual trust at the beginning and for a quick project start-up. We are always happy to meet you in Minsk. A flight from Germany to Minsk takes about 2 hours, to visit us you'll need an invitation from our company to get the Belarusian visa at the airport. As an option, you can also visit our German office in Gilching, by Munich, and discuss these questions with the founders of SaM.