Innovating for Impact: Accelerating Growth and Efficiency Through Technical Partnership
Overview_
By integrating a comprehensive accounting solution, Euvic enabled Matium, a US-based software development firm, to save $432,000 and launch six months ahead of schedule. This collaboration accelerated project timelines, ensured seamless third-party integrations, and provided the flexibility to adapt to evolving engineering needs, empowering the client to focus on product innovation and customer satisfaction.
Client_
Matium is a transparent digital trading platform with four core value propositions for materials traders: minimize cost, minimize carbon footprint, minimize risk of failure from supply to demand, and minimize time lost between supply and demand. Matium members can post, inquire about, negotiate, and track the sale and movement of materials.
Industry
Software Development
Country
USA
Euvic isn’t just a company that will take a task and build it and move on - Euvic is trying to be a part of the Matium story and understand why we are doing the things we are doing. The Euvic team genuinely wants to make our industry better.
Alex Lambrides, CTO, Matium.
Background_
The dynamic raw materials trading industry plays a crucial role in the global economy by facilitating the exchange of primary commodities essential for manufacturing processes. These commodities include plastics, metal, energy resources, agricultural products and other natural resources.
The industry is massive in scale, with raw materials moving through extensive transportation networks, including shipping, pipelines, and logistics infrastructure to move materials from production areas to consumption centers.
Central figures in the industry, commodity traders buy and sell raw materials in the international marketplace, capitalizing on price differentials, supply and demand imbalances, and geopolitical factors.
Upon establishing himself as the top plastics broker in the United States, Matium Founder Bailey Robin recognized that the industry is prime for innovations with traders desperate for greater transparency, data insights, and speed. On top of it all, there is a growing demand for sustainable and responsible sourcing practices, so companies need suppliers to track environmental impact to meet ESG commitments. This inspired Robin to found Matium in 2021.
Challenge_
This multi-trillion dollar industry’s data is extremely fragmented. Insights are spread among post-its, emails, scratch pad notes, and personal recollections. Brokers and buyers must cobble together information to make even a simple deal.
All these frictions limit profitability, obscure insights, create waste and make it harder to have a big-picture understanding of a deal.
Matium is on a mission to address this outdated system by building a platform that enables trading and integrates seamlessly with third-party systems like accounting and CRM.
While Matium had the vision for the final custom solution, but could not design, build, and deploy platform features at the speed and scale needed by pilot customers to prove the concept. And further, crucial early customers had a low tolerance for the manual workarounds that Matium depended on while waiting for the platform to be ready.
Matium was growing its technical team to expand in-house engineering capabilities, but hiring was moving slow and the onboarding process didn’t match the pace demanded by customers. The CTO was working late nights producing the product’s code. One potential solution was to weave together off-the-shelf solutions for key integrations, but ready-made software wasn’t flexible enough to support the features the industry needed.
They needed a capacity building engineering partner.
If we can build a tool that is valuable enough that people want to use it and use it every day, we can get the data to make a real impact on the world.
Solution_
The relationship with Euvic started – Matium wanted to hand development features specific to third-party integration to someone who could move the project forward, including recommendations for the system architecture, then leading that development process and the architecting to ultimately deliver a frictionless experience for customers.
Euvic was chosen because the company quickly demonstrated that its team was up to the challenge of understanding this complex industry. Throughout early discussions, the team’s collaborative approach and transparency showed they were a partner that Matium could trust. Euvic’s communication set the firm apart and was leagues beyond other firms Matium had contracted with.
Euvic’s experience, management team, and ability to make and execute a coherent plan a was by far better than anyone else we interviewed.
Euvic was engaged to provide end-to-end software development, including project management, UX design, system architecture, engineering, and quality assurance, beginning with accounting platform integration.
The work kicked off with a two-hour workshop to document the specific needs of Matium’s industry and the accounting integration. Euvic’s methodology revealed how the business works and the issues that would help Euvic serve Matium as a long-term partner. The Matium executive team experienced revelations during the workshop as the intricacies of the workflow and client requirements were illuminated.
Euvic then designed a fully automated and integrated accounting solution that issues an invoice to the client’s accounting platform when a shipment or order is completed. The platform also supports bills and every other feature related to standard commodities transaction accounting. The accounting module is flexible and can integrate with any system with some practical data or field mapping.
I’m a strong believer that you find the right tool for the job at hand. That is Matium’s bread and butter – we are building the right tool for this problem.
The collaboration between Euvic and Matium started with this critical integration, and now Euvic continues the partnership by solving core growth and scale for Matium.
Technology Overview_
Euvic engineered the integration between Matium’s platform and accounting systems such as Quickbooks and Xero. Because each external accounting system differs, Euvic designed a special pattern that helps to distinguish and easily introduce additional integrations. Euvic defined the domain models of the accounting requirements generically and established a universal language for all integrations.
Tools & technologies
The Dream Team_
Euvic operates like a team within Matium with daily standups, regular meetings, and frequent communication. Rather than hiring and holding an extensive team in-house, Matium uses Euvic to operate the bulk of the development team, reporting into the CTO, and expanding or contracting as engineering needs change.
They are insanely smart.
Matium and Euvic have established a core team of project leaders who understand the business and industry. They are supported by engineers with specific competencies on a case-by-case basis. This flexibility means that Matium’s technology strategies are designed with the customer in mind, rather than constrained by a particular individual’s skills or approach.
For a startup like Matium, this flexibility is a critical advantage because there are extensive and diverse initiatives in the backlog, and Matium is able to progress them without relying on hiring to do it. Further, this nimble approach to the project pipeline means the Euvic team can quickly move to the next project once a project is completed, as was the case with the accounting integration project.
We have 7 full time people from Euvic on Matium and 12 different roles. We can bring in any sort of expert as needed for however long they are needed. Whether it’s QA or an analyst, or a data expert… as the need arises, we make it happen.
Euvic’s core team was led by:
- Agnieszka – Project lead and Head of Java Department
- Bartosz – Lead Java Developer/Software Architect
- Michal – Lead Frontend Developer
- Jakub – QA Engineer
- Justyna – Senior UX/UI Designer
- Lukasz – Senior Devops
Result_
After providing Euvic with key features and trusting this curated team to design the best approach, architecture, and then execute, Matium’s core team was able to focus on the product and customers.
Euvic’s technical perspective has shifted Matium’s approach to scaling the company while also upskilling Matium leaders in technical delivery.
My advice to anyone running and engineering a software startup, is to go find a team like Euvic that offers a perfect management team structure. As a founder and executor, your time is extremely tight and you have to move very quickly. I wholly trusted this team to deal with any issues or come to me with a clear path forward. Without that, you will spend a lot of money and build something you aren’t happy with.
Revenue:
Completing the accounting integration with engineering delivered out of Poland enabled Matium to launch six months ahead of schedule, which would have translated into six months of lost revenue, and, Matium saved $432,000 in development costs compared to onshore rates.
My only regret is that we didn’t hire Euvic sooner.
Having a reliable and successful integration approach allowed Matium to go to market with a viable v1 product. At launch, Matium was bringing on 10-20 brokers to the network each day, progressing toward a target of 5000 active members within the following 18 months. At launch, the Matium platform is helping to move 20 million pounds of plastic each month.
Speed:
Prior to engaging Euvic, Matium struggled with a backlog of projects and customer feature requests. With Euvic on the team, Matium has dramatically accelerated project timelines and is now ahead of the product development timeline.
Thanks to Euvic’s low turnover rates, Matium benefits from the institutional knowledge acquired over the course of the work together. This means that new features can be implemented successfully more quickly and efficiently.
Working with Euvic frees up my time to lead and develop my team and drive product, knowing that in the background there is important work being done and being done right.
Startup Maturity
When it was launched, Matium’s team was designing and developing software as quickly as possible to address the market opportunity. The speed came at the cost of proper documentation of systems and architecture, which would later become a hurdle during investment rounds. Euvic’s methodical approach meant that each system that Euvic engineered was properly documented.
What Comes Next
Matium is projected to solve a global problem. Product development and growth strategies are underway, with Euvic continuing to lead as a central partner. The scope of the relationship has expanded to include data analytics, underlying infrastructure development, continued system integration in other business areas, and automation.
