You hit $5 million in revenue. The product works. Customers are paying. Now every tech decision feels like it could make or break the next phase of growth — and the question everyone eventually asks is: do I build an in-house dev team, or do I bring in an AI consulting firm?

This isn’t a small call. Get it wrong, and you’re either burning $800K a year on payroll that doesn’t move fast enough, or you’re stuck with a consulting firm that can’t understand your business well enough to actually help. Get it right, and you unlock real scale.

Here’s an honest breakdown of both options — and a framework for making the call.

The Case for Hiring an In-House Dev Team

There’s a reason most CEOs default toward hiring. You want people in the building. You want ownership, loyalty, and a team that lives and breathes your product.

Pros

• Deep product knowledge. In-house engineers learn your codebase, your users, and your edge cases over time. That context is genuinely valuable.
• Full control. You set the roadmap. You set the pace. No contract negotiations, no scope creep disputes.
• Culture alignment. Your team becomes embedded in how you work, what you value, and where you’re going.
• Speed on repetitive tasks. Once onboarded, internal teams can execute routine features quickly without handoffs.

Cons

• The real cost is brutal. A mid-level software engineer runs $120K–$160K in base salary. Add benefits, equity, recruiting fees (typically 15–20% of first-year salary), onboarding time, and management overhead — you’re at $180K–$220K per engineer, annually.
• You need more than one. A solo engineer is a single point of failure. A functional team means at least 3–4 people: frontend, backend, DevOps, and either a tech lead or an architect. That’s $600K–$900K per year before bonuses.
• Hiring takes forever. Average time-to-fill for a senior engineer is 45–90 days. In a fast-moving market, that’s quarters lost.
• Ramp-up is real. Even a great engineer needs 60–90 days to become fully productive in a new codebase.
• Attrition risk. Tech talent turns over. When a key engineer leaves, they take context with them.

The Case for AI Consulting / Outsourcing

AI consulting and tech outsourcing have both matured dramatically over the past few years. The stereotype of offshore chop shops grinding out bad code is outdated. Modern tech consulting — especially AI-augmented consulting — looks very different.

Pros

• Speed to capability. A good consulting firm brings a team that’s already functional on day one. No recruiting. No ramp-up. No 90-day probation period.
• Access to senior talent at fractional cost. You get architect-level thinking without architect-level full-time salary. Most engagements run $15K–$40K/month depending on scope — which, for a full team, is a fraction of equivalent headcount.
• Flexibility. You can scale engagement up or down as your needs change. Launching a new product? Ramp up. Slow quarter? Scale back.
• AI leverage. Firms that use AI tooling effectively can deliver 2–3x the output of a traditional team at comparable cost. This is the game-changer most CEOs aren’t factoring in yet.
• No dead weight. No performance management, no severance, no HR headaches.

Cons

• Context takes time. Any external team needs an onboarding period to understand your business logic. Plan for 2–4 weeks of knowledge transfer.
• You need a point of contact. Outsourcing doesn’t mean zero internal involvement. You need someone who can represent the business, provide feedback, and make calls. Without that, projects drift.
• Not all firms are equal. The quality spectrum is wide. You need to vet deeply — ask for case studies, talk to past clients, understand how they handle technical debt and architecture decisions, not just feature delivery.
• Long-term dependency risk. If you’re not building internal knowledge in parallel, you can become overly dependent on the external firm. Manage this with documentation standards and periodic knowledge transfer.

The $5M Tipping Point — What the Numbers Actually Say

At $5M annual revenue, most companies are generating enough cash to hire — but not enough to hire well. Here’s what that math actually looks like:

A minimum viable in-house dev team (3 engineers + 1 tech lead) costs roughly $700K–$900K per year fully loaded. That’s 14–18% of revenue at $5M. For most companies, that’s untenable without already having a very clear product roadmap and strong revenue growth trajectory.

Compare that to a mid-tier AI consulting engagement: $20K–$35K per month, or $240K–$420K annually. For that spend, you can access a team with a broader skill set, faster ramp, and AI-augmented throughput that often outpaces what a small internal team can deliver.

The math usually shifts around $15M–$20M revenue — when you have enough product complexity, enough team coordination overhead, and enough cash that hiring internally starts to make more financial sense. Below that threshold, for most companies, consulting outperforms hiring on every metric except one: the emotional satisfaction of having a team on your payroll.

How to Decide: 3 Questions to Ask Yourself

Before you post a job listing or sign a consulting contract, answer these honestly:

1. Do you have a clear, stable product roadmap?

In-house teams thrive with stability. If your product vision is still evolving — if you’re still figuring out what to build and who for — a consulting firm will adapt faster and waste less. Internal teams hired during a pivoting phase often end up building the wrong thing for 6 months.

2. Can you afford 18 months of runway at full team cost?

Hiring and then laying off is expensive and damaging to culture. If you can’t commit to at least 18 months of payroll regardless of what happens in your revenue, don’t hire yet. Consulting gives you the ability to scale down without the baggage.

3. Is your bottleneck knowledge or execution?

If you know exactly what to build and just need execution bandwidth, and you’re past $15M with a stable product — you’re probably ready to hire. If your bottleneck is strategy, architecture, or figuring out what tech investments will actually move the needle, an experienced consulting firm will deliver more value than a team of executors.

The Bottom Line

At $5M revenue, the numbers almost always favor consulting over hiring — especially if you’re looking at AI-augmented firms that can deliver more with less overhead. The exception is if you have deep product-market fit, a stable roadmap, and are on a fast growth curve to $15M+.

The biggest mistake we see: CEOs hiring because it feels more serious, more committed, more real — not because the math supports it. Headcount isn’t a sign of success. Results are.

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At PLECCO Technologies, we work with companies in exactly this inflection point — helping CEOs make the right tech investment decision, then executing against it. Whether that means building alongside your team, replacing broken systems, or architecting your next phase of growth, we’ve done it.

If you’re in the $3M–$25M range and wrestling with this decision, let’s talk. No pitch, just a real conversation about what makes sense for your situation.

👉 Talk to PLECCO about your situation

If your business is generating $5M to $25M in annual revenue and your team is still manually handling invoices, onboarding clients in spreadsheets, or building reports by hand — you’re leaving serious money on the table.

At this stage, the difference between companies that scale efficiently and those that plateau is often not headcount or market conditions. It’s automation. Here are the five workflows that every $10M business should already have automated — and the real cost of not doing it.

1. Invoice and Billing Automation

Manual invoicing is one of the most persistent operational drains in mid-market businesses. Finance teams spend hours generating invoices, chasing payments, applying credits, and reconciling accounts. Every step is a potential error — and every error is a potential delay.

What automation looks like:

• Auto-generated invoices triggered by contract milestones or subscription cycles
• Automated payment reminders at 7, 14, and 30 days overdue
• Real-time reconciliation with your accounting platform (QuickBooks, NetSuite, Xero)
• Automated dunning sequences for failed payments

Real cost savings: Companies that automate billing typically reduce their Days Sales Outstanding (DSO) by 15–25 days. For a $10M ARR business, that can free up $300K–$500K in cash flow annually — while cutting finance team overhead by 20–30 hours per month.

2. Customer Onboarding

Your sales team closed the deal. Now the clock is ticking. A slow, manual onboarding process directly impacts time-to-value — and time-to-value directly impacts churn.

Manual onboarding typically means:

• Scattered welcome emails sent inconsistently
• Setup tasks falling through the cracks
• No visibility into where each client stands
• Account managers context-switching constantly

What automation looks like:

• Triggered onboarding sequences the moment a deal closes in your CRM
• Automated task assignments to the right team members
• Client-facing portals with self-service setup steps
• Milestone-based check-in emails without manual effort

Real cost savings: Businesses that automate onboarding see 30–50% faster time-to-value and measurably lower 90-day churn. For a $10M business, reducing churn by even 2% annually can mean $200K in retained revenue.

3. Reporting and Dashboards

If your leadership team is waiting for a weekly report that someone spent four hours building in Excel, your business is flying blind for most of the week. Worse, those reports are often outdated by the time they’re distributed.

The cost of manual reporting isn’t just time — it’s decision lag. Decisions made on last week’s data in a fast-moving business can be significantly more expensive than the hours spent building the report.

What automation looks like:

• Live dashboards connected directly to your CRM, ERP, and financial systems
• Automated weekly/monthly reports delivered on a schedule to stakeholders
• Anomaly detection alerts when KPIs deviate from expected ranges
• Drill-down visibility without requiring analyst involvement

Real cost savings: Eliminating manual reporting typically saves 10–20 hours per week across the leadership team and their assistants. At a fully-loaded cost of $75–$150/hour, that’s $39K–$156K per year — not counting the value of faster decisions.

4. Lead Routing and CRM Updates

Sales velocity lives and dies by how quickly leads are followed up with. Research consistently shows that the odds of qualifying a lead drop by 80% after the first five minutes. If your leads are sitting in a shared inbox waiting for someone to manually assign them — you’re burning pipeline.

Common manual process failures:

• Leads assigned based on who’s in the office, not who should own them
• CRM records updated hours or days after conversations happen
• No automated follow-up for leads that don’t respond
• Sales managers spending time on routing instead of coaching

What automation looks like:

• Rule-based lead routing by territory, industry, or deal size — instantly on form submission
• Automatic CRM record creation and enrichment from lead sources
• Drip sequences triggered by lead behavior (email opens, page visits)
• Automated task creation for follow-up calls

Real cost savings: Automated lead routing can increase conversion rates by 15–25% simply through speed-to-lead improvements. For a $10M business closing $2M in new business annually, that’s an additional $300K–$500K in pipeline converted — without adding headcount.

5. Employee Onboarding and Offboarding

HR and operations teams at $10M businesses frequently cite onboarding as one of their biggest time sinks — and offboarding as one of their biggest security risks. Both are almost entirely automatable.

Manual onboarding problems:

• IT provisioning tickets submitted late, delaying new hire productivity
• Incomplete onboarding checklists leading to compliance gaps
• Welcome workflows dependent on specific people being available

Manual offboarding risks:

• Delayed account deprovisioning leaving security exposure
• Missed equipment retrieval steps
• Inconsistent exit interview and documentation processes

What automation looks like:

• Offer acceptance triggers automated provisioning requests to IT
• Role-based onboarding task sequences for HR, IT, and the hiring manager
• Day-1 through Day-90 check-in sequences handled automatically
• Offboarding checklists triggered by termination events in your HRIS

Real cost savings: Automated onboarding reduces time-to-productivity for new hires by an average of 2–3 weeks. At $80K average salary, that’s $3K–$5K per hire in productivity recovered. Automated offboarding eliminates a class of security incidents that cost an average of $4.5M per breach.

The Common Thread

These five workflows share something important (and if your current workflows are breaking down, read our deep-dive on the hidden cost of broken workflows): they’re all high-frequency, rule-based, and currently costing your business in one of three ways — wasted hours, delayed decisions, or preventable errors.

Automation doesn’t replace your team. It redirects them. When billing runs itself, when reporting is live, when leads route instantly — your people stop being administrative throughput and start being strategic assets.

Where to Start

For most $10M businesses, the highest-ROI first automation is either billing reconciliation or lead routing — both deliver measurable returns within 90 days.

The second question is tooling. Your existing stack (CRM, ERP, HRIS) likely supports automation you haven’t turned on yet. The gap is usually integration and configuration, not new software purchases.

Let PLECCO Build It For You

PLECCO Technologies’ custom application development team works with CEOs and COOs at $5M–$25M businesses to identify, design, and implement automation workflows that deliver real ROI — fast. We don’t sell software. We fix operations.

Contact PLECCO today for a free workflow audit. In one conversation, we’ll identify which of these five workflows will have the biggest impact on your business — and give you a clear path to getting there.

Scaling a fintech startup is one of the most exhilarating journeys in tech — until your payment infrastructure starts holding you back. What worked when you had 500 users can become a serious liability at 50,000. The signs are often subtle at first, then suddenly critical.

If you’re a fintech founder or CTO, here are the key warning signs that your payment infrastructure has hit its ceiling — and what to do about it.

1. KYC Bottlenecks Are Slowing Customer Acquisition

Know Your Customer (KYC) compliance is non-negotiable in fintech. But when your onboarding process takes days instead of minutes, you’re losing customers to competitors who’ve invested in automated, scalable KYC pipelines.

Signs of a KYC bottleneck:

• Manual document review queues growing faster than your team
• Customers dropping off during identity verification
• Compliance officers spending hours on repetitive reviews
• No real-time identity verification integration

Modern payment infrastructure supports automated KYC with AI-driven document verification, risk scoring, and real-time decision-making. If yours doesn’t, you’re already behind.

2. Transaction Failures Spike Under Load

Nothing erodes customer trust faster than failed transactions — especially at scale. A payment infrastructure that performs fine at low volume often begins failing under the pressure of growth: timeouts, gateway errors, and partial transaction states become regular occurrences.

Red flags to watch for:

• Increased transaction failure rates during peak hours
• Timeout errors from your payment gateway
• Customers reporting duplicate charges or missing refunds
• Error rates above 0.5% — a common industry threshold

Scalable infrastructure uses load balancing, queue-based processing, and redundant gateway failover to maintain reliability regardless of volume.

3. Compliance Gaps Are Becoming a Legal Risk

Fintech operates in one of the most heavily regulated industries in the world. PCI-DSS, AML, GDPR, CCPA, and regional regulations like MiCA in Europe require your infrastructure to evolve constantly. If your team is manually tracking compliance checklists or your platform lacks automated audit trails, you’re exposed.

Common compliance gaps in outdated infrastructure:

• No automated AML transaction monitoring
• PCI-DSS scope creep due to improper data tokenization
• Missing audit logs for regulatory reporting
• Inability to adapt quickly to new regulatory requirements

Every compliance gap is a liability. The right infrastructure automates compliance workflows, generates audit-ready reports, and adapts to new regulations without requiring a full rebuild.

4. API Rate Limits Are Throttling Your Growth

Your payment infrastructure likely connects to multiple third-party services — card networks, bank APIs, fraud detection engines, and identity verification providers. When your transaction volume outpaces the API limits of these integrations, you hit a hidden ceiling.

Signs you’ve hit API rate limits:

• Intermittent errors that only occur at high transaction volumes
• Delays in webhook processing
• Third-party provider throttle notifications
• Developer time consumed managing retry logic

Mature payment infrastructure includes intelligent rate-limit management, request queuing, caching layers, and partnerships with providers that offer enterprise-grade API access. If you’re still on starter-tier API agreements, now is the time to upgrade.

5. Manual Reconciliation Is Eating Your Finance Team Alive

If your finance team is manually matching transactions, chasing down discrepancies, or exporting CSVs to reconcile payment data — your infrastructure is broken. Manual reconciliation is not just inefficient; it’s error-prone and scales terribly.

Signs of a reconciliation problem:

• Month-end close takes more than a few days
• Discrepancies between payment gateway records and your ledger
• Finance team spending 30%+ of their time on reconciliation
• No automated settlement reporting

Automated reconciliation engines should handle multi-currency settlements, fee calculations, refund tracking, and exception flagging without human intervention. If yours doesn’t, you’re hemorrhaging operational costs.

6. Adding New Payment Methods Requires Months of Engineering

Your customers want Apple Pay, BNPL options, crypto settlements, or local payment methods in new markets. If adding a single new payment method takes months of engineering work, your infrastructure is a product liability.

Modern payment infrastructure is designed for composability. It should enable new payment method integrations in days, not months, through standardized APIs, pre-built connectors, and modular architecture.

If your roadmap is bottlenecked by payment infrastructure work rather than product innovation, that’s a fundamental architectural problem — not just a technical inconvenience.

What to Do When You’ve Outgrown Your Infrastructure

Recognizing the signs is the first step. The second is moving quickly, because these problems compound. Transaction failures compound into churn. Compliance gaps compound into fines. Manual reconciliation compounds into financial reporting errors.

The path forward usually involves:

1. Auditing your current stack to identify the highest-risk failure points (see also: 5 workflows every $10M fintech business should have automated)
2. Benchmarking against modern platforms like Stripe, Adyen, or Marqeta — and understanding which fits your use case
3. Planning a phased migration that minimizes disruption while modernizing your core
4. Building or buying compliance automation suited to your regulatory environment

This is complex work, but it’s not a solo job. Our technology consultants have guided fintech teams through exactly this process.

Ready to Fix Your Payment Infrastructure?

PLECCO Technologies specializes in helping fintech startups and scaleups diagnose, architect, and modernize their payment infrastructure through custom application development built for scale. Whether you’re dealing with KYC bottlenecks, scaling failures, or compliance gaps, we’ve seen it — and we know how to fix it.

Contact PLECCO today for a free infrastructure assessment. Let’s build payment systems that scale with your ambition.

If your business is generating $5M–$25M in revenue, chances are your technology is holding you back. Not because you didn’t build it right — but because what worked at $1M rarely scales to $10M without serious cracks forming.

At PLECCO Technologies, we work with founders and operations leaders every day who are dealing with the same frustrations: systems that used to work now fail under load, developers patching old code instead of building new features, and manual workflows that eat hours nobody has.

What Tech Debt Actually Costs You

Tech debt isn’t just a developer problem — it’s a business problem. Here’s what we see most often:

• Slow product cycles — Engineers spend 60%+ of their time maintaining old code instead of shipping new features
• Integration failures — Systems that don’t talk to each other create manual data entry, errors, and blind spots
• Hiring bottlenecks — New developers take months to onboard because the codebase is undocumented and fragile
• Compliance risk — Especially in fintech and payments, outdated systems create real regulatory exposure (see: signs your payment infrastructure has hit its limit)

The cost isn’t just in developer hours — it’s in deals lost because your product is slower than competitors, and in operational overhead that should have been automated years ago.

Why Growing Companies Don’t Fix It

The fix is obvious — clean up the debt, automate the workflows, upgrade the infrastructure. So why don’t more companies do it?

The answer is almost always the same: hiring takes too long and costs too much.

A senior full-stack developer in Charlotte runs $120K–$160K per year before benefits and overhead. Recruiting takes 3–6 months. Onboarding takes another 60–90 days. By the time they’re productive, you’ve spent $50K+ and 6 months just to start.

For most $5M–$25M businesses, that’s not a viable path.

A Faster Way to Fix It

PLECCO’s model is different. Our technology consultants embed into your operations — fast. No 6-month hiring process, no onboarding drag. We scope the work, execute it, and hand it off cleanly.

Typical engagements include:

• Tech debt audits — We map your codebase, identify the highest-risk areas, and give you a prioritized remediation plan
• Workflow automation — Replace manual processes with automated pipelines (billing, reporting, onboarding, compliance)
• API and integration work — Connect your systems so data flows automatically instead of getting copy-pasted between spreadsheets
• Fintech and payments infrastructure — KYC, payment processing, compliance workflows — built to scale

We’ve done this for fintech platforms, rental operations, and complex multi-system businesses. We understand how to move fast without breaking things — because we’ve seen what happens when you do.

Is This the Right Fit?

We work best with companies that:

• Are doing $3M–$25M in revenue and feeling the friction of growth
• Have technology problems they know need fixing but don’t have the internal bandwidth
• Need experienced execution, not just advice
• Want results in weeks, not quarters

If that sounds like your business, let’s talk. A single scoping conversation is enough to tell you what it would take to fix — and whether we’re the right team to do it.

Get in touch with the PLECCO team →

Peer-to-peer (P2P) apps have become an increasingly popular way to rent and share everything from homes to cars. A P2P application lets you list your place, service, or event and get paid. They are easy to build and require little technical knowledge. Most of them allow users to create their listing pages where they can post pictures, videos, and text descriptions. If you’re considering building your P2P app, this guide will walk you through some key considerations that go into creating one.

 

 1. Write Down Key Features Your Peer-to-Peer Reservation App Should Have

 

Create a user-friendly interface

Create an attractive user interface backed up by a seamless user experience. This simplifies things for users on your app. Use a simple design. Keep everything as simple as possible while still having it look good on all platforms and devices, including desktops, laptops, and phones of different sizes. Ensure the user can easily find what they are looking for by displaying only relevant information and removing all unnecessary clutter.

Build an easy-to-use and secure payment system

You’ve built a reservation application, which is awesome! But now you need to find a way to collect the payment for reservations. You’ll need to build an easy, secure payment system that you can integrate into your reservation application. The payment system should accept multiple types of payments and currencies and have a return policy in case something goes wrong with the transaction (e.g., if someone pays but never shows up).

Offer customer support functionality

One of the most important features of a peer-to-peer platform is customer support, and you should build it into your app. A good reservation app will provide various channels for users to interact with the company, whether that’s via email, phone, or live chat. You may also want to create a dedicated FAQ page where customers can read answers to common questions before they contact the support staff. Another valuable feature is an ‘About’ page that explains who you are and what you do as a company to build trust with potential customers.

Identity verification protocol

One of the key requirements for a reservation app is identity verification. You can do this in several ways, but you must choose a protocol that is easy to implement and maintain. It will also need to be secure and scalable, which means using the right technology for your specific use case. I recommend using a two-factor verification which sends notifications to a user’s phone or email in case a new login device is used.

Designed for mobile devices and browsers

With over 52% of internet traffic coming from mobile phones (set to rise to 72% by 2025), your peer-to-peer reservation application must work on all devices. Developing android and iOS versions will increase its marketability and improve your business. Your application must be compatible with phones, tablets, and even PCs.

Reviews

Adding reviews to your booking page is a great way to help potential customers decide. Reviews can also help you improve your service, increasing the likelihood of repeat customers. I would recommend a feature where users can write reviews directly from their phones on the go.

Booking management and availability calendars

Integrate with e-calendars to allow users to book travel directly from their calendars. This is an excellent way for people who don’t use a booking app to book their trip. It also gives you an easy way to import all their existing reservations into your platform. Users can also use this feature to check the availability of rooms or houses in the future and make travel arrangements based on this.

Listing pages with pictures, videos, pricing, and text description

For people to easily find and reserve listings, you’ll want to ensure hosts have listing pages with pictures, videos, pricing, and text descriptions. Listing pages are the most important part of the application. They should be easy to read and understand. They should also be easy to navigate so that users can efficiently find what they’re looking for.

Available anywhere in the world

While building your reservation system, ensure it works anywhere in your targeted market area. While at it, ensure your application works in areas with degraded networks like 3G.

User Profiles Section

The User Profiles section is a great way to build community and trust. You can use it to learn more about your users and understand their needs to improve your product or service. It is also a non-invasive way to collect user data that will help you fine-tune your app and streamline your marketing strategies.

 2. Make design mockups of your app

After listing the functionalities your reservation app needs, it’s time to get down to work. You should mock up your app before you build it. Mockups are low-fidelity prototypes of the final product. They’re often hand-drawn, but some designers use computer software to create them. Mockups are great tools for communicating to others what the app will look like and how it will work and making their expectations clear before development begins.

The design process can sometimes seem overwhelming, especially when learning new skills and techniques. Using mockups will help get you started faster by allowing you to focus on one thing at a time rather than having everything come together all at once right away.

    3. Build Your App

From the mockup, you came up with, research the tech stack you can use. When developing your P2P app, it is important to note that it will be the cornerstone of your business. A functional app could see your reservation business kick on fast, and a dysfunctional one could kill it. The key consideration in your choice of tech stack should be the business needs. Your app should serve its purpose while remaining simple and light enough for all phones.

I would recommend using the open-source MERN technologies:

• React – A library for building user interfaces. Use React.js to build your application front-end.
• js – An open-source JavaScript runtime environment for executing server-side scripts on the back end of the web application.
• MongoDB – A NoSQL database compatible with Big Data and will allow scalability.
• Javascript as the programming language

If building your P2P reservation app from scratch is too hectic, our team at plecco.net can do it for you!

    4. Create your app’s graphic design

Design your app’s graphic elements, including its images and text. Make sure to keep the app’s look consistent across all devices so that users won’t be confused by what they see on their phone versus another device. Designing an icon for your application is important because users who have downloaded your app from an online store such as Google Play or Apple’s App Store will often be seen.

    5. Put together an app marketing plan

The most important thing you can do as an app developer is to get your app noticed by users. Your marketing plan will help you promote your product and get people talking about it. This can be done on social media, with ads and banners, or even through giveaways or contests requiring participants to enter their email addresses.

    6. Submit your app to the App Store.

After you’ve completed all of the above, it’s time to submit your app. create accounts on Apple Store and Google Playstore. Submit your app details, including pricing, and then wait for approval.

    7.  Market your app for maximum exposure.

Build a website for your app: It’s important to have a home base that can help you promote your app. You could also use social media for marketing your app. When setting up your website blog, you must consider Search engine optimization (SEO). This refers to writing content in such a way that search engines will rank it highly when someone searches for keywords related to the topic of your article or video blog post.

There you go, all you need to know before building your P2P reservation app. This can be daunting, but it doesn’t have to be. Talk to us at plecco.net, and we’ll get your app online in no time!

 

The Opportunity

BatteryXchange is a leading smartphone battery exchange platform in the country, offering clients access to a network of battery charging kiosks nationwide, enabling them to quickly recharge on-the-go and save valuable time and resources. The Charlotte-based company approached PLECCO to develop a comprehensive website and mobile application to support its battery exchange services.

The Solution

We developed a Battery Rental Application with the aim of providing a seamless online platform for renting rechargeable phone batteries. The objective was to simplify the process of renting a battery from a kiosk and returning it within 24 hours to the nearest location. The project entailed thorough planning, design, and implementation of multiple modifications to an existing system, including the creation of custom user interfaces for web and mobile devices, integration of third-party payment services, and integration of a mapping solution to facilitate the identification of the closest BatteryXchange kiosk.

Tech Stack

• Android- Java
• iOS – Swift, Objective-C
• Website – WordPress, PHP

 

 

How We Built the BatteryXchange App and Website

In the first phase of the project, we conducted a comprehensive requirements analysis, engaging with potential customers to understand their specific needs and expectations for the battery exchange service, as well as holding discussions with the client regarding their business requirements. Additionally, we analyzed usage patterns to inform refinement of the user experience and user interface.

Our initial efforts focused on the development of the BatteryXchange website, which was built on the WordPress Content Management System. To enhance user-friendliness, we updated the homepage with improved graphics and created an ‘About Us’ page that outlines the client’s mission. To facilitate engagement with potential partners, we also developed a ‘Talk with Sales’ page linked with SavvyCal.

The primary goal of the website is to drive app downloads, and thus we integrated links to the Apple and Google Playstore pages for easy access to the BatteryXchange app. To expand the product’s market reach, we advised the development of both iOS and Android versions of the app. Our technical team finalized development of the iOS version, which was initiated by previous developers in Objective-C, and deployed it to the Apple Store. The Android application was developed using Java.

Our focus was on creating a user-friendly interface for the app, keeping in mind that it would be used on a need-to basis. The app’s ‘Home Page’ features a map that displays the nearest kiosks for battery exchange and a button that activates an inbuilt QR Code scanner for convenient access to batteries. The app is also linked to an e-wallet, which allows users to safely recharge using various payment service providers and provides access to the user board through a swipe to the right, featuring the wallet.

Notable Details

• New Functionalities– The implementation of a notification system, providing real-time updates on battery exchange status to users. As well as the introduction of a ‘Pay-Per-Use’ model, offering greater pricing flexibility for users.”
• Fining System– Introduced a loss recovery system, allowing for efficient management of lost battery charges.
• Backend Changes– A metrics system has been implemented to aid administrators in evaluating the performance of BatteryXchange kiosks.
• We also provide comprehensive management of the client’s cloud infrastructure to ensure the security and privacy of user data.

The Result

The Challenge

In recent years, there has been a substantial increase in the popularity of online shopping. Madame Dope, a premier provider of fashion accessories for women in the US, was established in 2018 and has achieved significant growth. The company approached plecco.net to develop an online presence and expand its reach by creating an e-commerce platform.

Project Objectives

Tech Stack Used

WordPress Content Management System

How We Built  Madame Dope E-Commerce Site

Since its launch, madamedope.com has established itself as a thriving e-commerce platform, attracting a steady stream of orders daily. Throughout its growth, the store has expanded its offerings to include a diverse array of over 100 items. PLECCO played a vital role in the inception of madamedope.com, providing the original website launch. The site has since undergone modifications by another web design agency.

PowerTribe was founded as a mentorship program for women of color in the corporate world to address the issue of the lack of black female representation in senior leadership positions within corporate America. The founder approached us to create a web-based platform that would provide a supportive community for black women seeking to grow and advance professionally while fostering personal growth and financial stability.

The client’s objective was to establish a digital platform that would facilitate connections between women of color across the United States and offer various membership options, including different levels of access and an events calendar page. Additionally, the client sought to create a space where women and mentors could connect and interact.

Product Description

The Power Tribe website is a membership-based platform with two tiers. Members can register as mentors or mentees with varying benefits and patent structures. The registration format allows the site to collect relevant information on its members, which is then stored securely. Members can create accounts where they will get notifications about upcoming events planned by Power Tribe. The site also serves as a platform for women of color in corporate America to share their experiences through the blog.

Technologies Used

The website is fully developed on WordPress CMS with responsive layouts, so it looks great on all devices. Additionally, we integrated WooCommerce plugins to set up the membership functionality.

How we built the Power Tribe Website

The first stage in creating the website was creating a brand for Power Tribe. We held several meetings with our clients to understand their inspiration behind creating this community. Our design team came up with several brand colors and a logo, with the client approving one.

The next step was developing the website. We used WordPress to build the site, which allowed us to create a custom theme for our client’s needs. The software also allowed us to seamlessly integrate many different parts of the site to create a robust platform that could handle all of these features in an easy-to-use way. It is also simple enough for users with zero tech skills to manage.

The client wanted to create a tiered membership system with different price points and access levels that would allow their users to sign up as community members or advisors. To make this possible, we needed to develop an intuitive way for users to manage their subscriptions. We set up this functionality with WooCommerce, which allowed us to create membership levels and access rules.

Using an event calendar page would be a great way to manage memberships. It also provided an opportunity for users who were yet to be members but were interested in becoming one later on down the line to see what was coming up without signing up or paying any upfront. This would help boost community numbers.

We designed the event calendar page to make it easy for members and non-members alike to find out what events are happening on any given day. The design is clean and minimalist and is a straightforward functionality for members to plan their involvement in community events. Only users with admin access can alter this page.

Next up was the ‘Who We Are’ page. Finally, we created a page that captures the essence of what the Power Tribe Community is all about. We knew that this part of the website would be a central component for our customers, so we took extra care to ensure everything was right. We started with research on similar websites and noted what made them so appealing. We then used this information as inspiration while creating a unique ‘About’ page.

Finally, our dev team developed the Power Tribe blog page. This was the cornerstone of the entire project, as our clients wanted to share their experiences and those of other women of color.

Using an API, our tech team integrated the site with stripe, simplifying the membership payment process. The client can now receive funds automatically via credit cards and other digital formats while focusing on unleashing the potential of women of color.

Results

Our client has gone on to register dozens of members from the website. Since 2020, they have also organized several meetups across the states. In addition, the site has enabled them to have an online presence and made inroads on social media using the site-social media linkage.

 

LifeTagger is a proximity platform app that serves different sectors of business with customized solutions. They pride themselves on offering business solutions that streamline the delivery of the right experiences to your guests and clients. It helps you engage with customers, employees and guests better by hyper-localizing engagement.

Our client wanted a tech team that would build them a website and iOS and Android applications for LifeTaggger.

Tech Stack

Platform – custom, Mobile (Android, iOS)

Worked with Javascript, React, Redux, and Swift

 

How we built LifeTagger

LifeTagger had a few specific goals: they wanted to have a more mobile-friendly site, and they wanted it to be easy for their customers to find the information they were looking for quickly. They also wanted us to ensure their content was as accessible as possible and that loading on any device didn’t take too long.

We started by researching what kinds of websites our client’s competitors use. Based on this research, we created a paper wireframe of the user experience and then developed it into a mockup. Then we worked with the client to create an overall design direction for their site. For this, we used colors and fonts from their current branding, which helped us choose which elements needed to be included in each section of the site. We also ensured that all of our code was structured so that it would be easy for anyone on our team to work on this project in the future.

When we started developing this website, we knew it needed to be simple and easy. We wanted to ensure it could work on all devices, no matter what screen size or operating system the user was using. We also wanted to ensure that it worked for people with disabilities and those who are visually impaired.

We built the site using JavaScript, which allows us to easily add new features as they become available. It also keeps our code clean and readable while ensuring no bloat. We don’t want our codebase to get so big that it slows down LifeTagger.Using technology like JavaScript allows us to create flexible sites for any device or operating system.

One of the critical things we did in this project was to ensure we had the right tools for the job. For example, we used JavaScript to build the entire site, which made it easy to navigate.

We also wanted to make sure that our client would be happy with how their new website turned out, so we ensured that they had access to all of their content throughout the design process and could make any changes they needed as soon as possible.

We used React to build the front end of the LifeTagger site. The main reason we chose React was that we wanted to make use of its quick rendering times. React also allowed us to maintain our codebase better by separating the front and backend. This meant we could change one area without affecting the other, which helped us avoid any potential conflicts or bugs. It also provides a componentized design that breaks up your UI into smaller pieces called components, which are reusable and easy to maintain over time.

Android App Development Stage

When our developers at plecco.com began working on an Android app that different commerce sectors would use to improve service delivery, we knew it would be a challenge. We had to ensure that we could provide the functionality and ease of use that everyone expects from their devices, but also keep in mind that this software was going to be used in hotels, and events and that meant it couldn’t have any bugs or security vulnerabilities.

But with our knowledge of Java and Redux, we were able to make sure that our app could handle all of those demands. We started by building an application on Android Studio, which allowed us to create a user interface designed specifically for mobile devices while retaining all the functionality users would expect from an application like this one.

We used Redux as an architectural pattern for managing all state changes within our application. Redux helps us keep track of all information related to the application state and allows us to modify it as needed quickly. Redux is a predictable state container for JavaScript apps. We used it as we wanted the Life Tagger app to behave consistently and run in different environments.

iOS App Development Stage

When we set out to build the LifeTagger iOS application for our client, we knew we had to make it unique. Our client’s goal was to create a proximity app that the hospitality business, cities, and event managers could get people to use. They wanted something easy to use but also had a sleek design and was full of useful functionalities such as notifications, geotagging, etc.

Since the client was happy with the initial design of the android version of the app, we skipped the mockup phase and moved straight to the development.

We then worked with our designers and developers to develop a functional prototype using Swift. This prototype allowed us to test different ideas and ensure everything ran smoothly before moving into full production mode.

Once we were happy with how everything worked in the prototype stage, we began working on developing the actual app itself. This involved creating an icon for the app and designing its user interface to match our original mockup. Then we moved into development mode, where our developers built out all of the functionality needed for users to use the app without any issues.

Finally, we tested both apps and ensured they performed to the client’s satisfaction.

Things to Note

• We worked with our client to build a dashboard for users. We had to look at their challenges and how they needed to manage their accounts and get real-time alerts based on their location. The result was a dashboard that allowed them to manage their account, send alerts based on specific areas, and monitor metrics from various sources. The dashboard also provides a great user experience that makes it easy for merchants to see what’s happening in real-time.
• We worked closely with our client to develop library features so merchants could access their real-time data.
• We also provided two full-time developers versed in Java, Swift, and React to our client to allow them constantly improve LifeTagger and create custom-made solutions for their partners.

Results

Since launching on the play store and Apple Store, LifeTagger has become the premier proximity app. The app also has a perfect 5-star rating on the play store.

We have progressively made the app a better place for users with the latest update allowing you to receive LifeTags from Bluetooth beacons. This is perfect for events.

The firm has received recognition from Google for Startups, Conscious Venture Lab, SCRA and Chairman Partners.

 

 

 

ISACA is a non-profit organization dedicated to advancing and promoting the profession of information security management through education, professional certification, and community outreach. They work with industry leaders, government agencies, and educational institutions to provide the resources needed to succeed in this exciting field. They approached plecco.net to provide technical support for the organization and build an online platform.

Tech Stack

Platform – Custom made

Python

React

Rails

How we built ISACA.org

Our team at plecco.net is passionate about helping business owners create custom websites uniquely tailored to their needs. The following case study will outline how we approached the development of a new website for ISACA, a professional organization that provides a networking and learning platform for IT players.

We started by working with our client to understand what they wanted to achieve with their website. We then created a list of priorities for the new site, which included the following:

• A simple design that would be easy for clients to navigate on their own
• A mobile-friendly interface
• A simple way for clients to create accounts and log in securely
• An efficient way for clients to learn online
• An online resource for professionals and students in the cybersecurity field

From there, we created a wireframe prototype using Ruby and React to test out different layouts and designs before committing any resources to actual development work. We aimed to ensure all these features were possible within the framework before moving forward with actual coding. After the client approved the prototype, we proceeded to develop the site.

Our goal was to create a platform that would allow us to quickly update the site as new content is added without needing a dev team. We also wanted it to be easy for our client to access important information independently. We wanted to make the site simple and easy to navigate, emphasizing information delivery to ISACA members. We also wanted to ensure it would work well across all major devices and browsers, including mobile phones, tablets, and desktop computers.

The website we developed is multifunctional. We’ve created a custom membership tier system for Isaca.org that allows the company to create a tiered pricing structure based on the membership’s value. You can sign up as a professional, a recent graduate, or a student. These tiers come with varying functionalities.

The system also allows for online training, which is accessible by all members at any time. From the backend, our client can create classes and courses for members and provide them with immediate access to their new course materials. They can also monitor which tutorials are popular among their users and focus on relevant fields.

We have also developed a credentialling resources system that allows our clients to easily track their progress in completing courses. We can also use this as another way to track member activity.

Finally, we created an events calendar so our clients can see all upcoming events and register directly through our website. This makes it easier for them to keep up-to-date with what’s going on in their industry.

To enable our client to scale their services quickly and efficiently as they grow, we set up AWS Lambda functions using python. as part of their serverless architecture. Using Python and the AWS Serverless Application Model, we were able to build a simple API service with some pre-built libraries that would allow them to serve their users without worrying about data storage.

Results

ISACA has gone on to become a home for over 165,000 professionals in the cybersecurity field. They’re present in 188 countries, with the most common point of reference being the website built by plecco.net. This site receives over three million visits annually and ranks among the top 25,000 websites globally.