The BHW Group

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

We develop software for assisting business processes within the health insurance industry.

What is your position?

I am one of the partners in the company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with The BHW Group?

We wanted to streamline our data entry process and make the output of our quotes more user-friendly. The ultimate goal was to save time and get to the sales conversation faster.

SOLUTION

How did you come to work with The BHW Group?

We're located in Austin, Texas. They were also a local company.

Could you provide a sense of the size of this initiative in financial terms?

This is confidential.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in 2011. Our relationship is ongoing. We work on updates for our software every year. Currently, we've reached its 5th version.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

The software has been successful from our standpoint. It saves us at least 50% of the time spent running quotes, if not more. This means that our staff can devote themselves to other outlets instead of data entry. From the point of view of the people who use our output, like brokers and agents, the software has made their jobs easier. They receive clear and easy to understand outputs from us, which saves them time.

How did The BHW Group perform from a project management standpoint?

We had an agile approach to our development process, instead of taking months to build a scope. As we worked on development, we decided on what directions to take and made changes on-the-fly. The BHW Group was flexible in this regard, and worked hard in order to meet our goals and to ensure that we were successful. We've never had any issues as long as we clearly defined what we were looking for and set accurate targets. They've always made us aware if any demand was not realistic in terms of deadline and budget, while also keeping our main priorities in mind. As far as helping us meet our main project dates, The BHW Group has always been by our side.

What distinguishes The BHW Group from other providers?

They're a local company which means that we can easily meet. They're nice people generally, and have been dependable to us. In our industry, there are a lot of unforeseen changes that can occur. Once they'd built a system for us, The BHW Group continued to help servicing it and have been available to us even though they had other projects. Whenever we came to them with a change requirement that was caused by our industry, they found the time to fit us in. We didn't have to wait six months or more to be fit into their schedule.

Is there anything The BHW Group could have improved or done differently?

I don't have any cons. Our experience has been overall positive. Their level of service and quality, as well as their speed, have been excellent. The BHW Group has done their best to work within their estimated budget. Whenever we went over budget, it was due to extra features requested by us.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

The name of the company is CareCycle Solutions. It's a health care company. Parts of the company deal with home health, where they're actually dealing with patients face to face. We have a tele-help division that actually does tele-monitoring devices in patient's homes, where they monitor patients in our offices, but keep verbal contact with them on the phone. We also have a development side, where we're developing our own software applications.

What is your position and responsibilities?

My job title currently is software developer I. It's kind of changing. We've gotten away from doing our own development, and we're actually using firms like the BHW Group for our actual coding development.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with BHW Group?

We needed to get something up and going quick, just to stay ahead of the market. We had some people that could do development work, just not enough to move at the pace that we wanted to move at.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement in detail.

The biggest part of the stuff that we worked on is a web application, so they've used many of the current web technologies, like Angular and WebSockets to give us some live data. Most of what we're doing is web apps, but they've also been working with us on some other things. There are some things coming in the future that they're going to be working with us on – some mobile apps and things like that.

How did you come to work with BHW Group?

Somebody in the office introduced us to BHW.

What is the status of this engagement?

We began working with them maybe a year ago or a little less, and it is still ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

We developed this application in-house at first and, honestly, it looked like it was an in-house development. Once we brought them onboard, they looked at it as, "This whole thing needs to be revamped and modernized," and they did exactly that. We were using technologies that were outdated and shouldn't have been used, and they came in and rebuilt everything with current technologies. The visual of it is a lot more appealing.

They also were looking at it from a consumer perspective. We had different models that we were trying to fit this application into. We had one that we knew we were going to be using here, and they knew ahead of time that we were also going to be looking at a possible consumer model. While they're building this application, they have these things in mind, and they're making recommendations based on those. They're building the application based on possible future needs as well.

How did BHW Group perform from a project management standpoint?

They were absolutely great in terms of sticking to the budget. They've done a great job of letting us know, "Hey, we're getting close to budget. We're going to put some of them simpler task on lower paid individuals, so we can keep the budget down." They've actually worked very well with us, making sure we stay within budget and timeframes as well. They're on the ball pretty much any time we need them to be.

What distinguishes BHW Group from other providers?

Working with them, it feels like they're completely vested in the application itself. It feels like they're a part of our company, working on the application with us; not like we hired out, and we're just contracting somebody to write up some code. Everybody I've talked to at The BHW Group and everybody I deal with feels like they are truly vested in this application. They want it to work best for our company as much as for them.

Is there anything BHW Group could have improved or done differently?

Not really. Honestly, this is my first experience dealing with a company like this. I was actually relatively new in software development when we first started, so I don't have a whole lot of experience looking back on it. I feel that the whole process has been just very simple. I couldn't say I would want to change something because I don't know if a change would actually even make it worse. They have a lot of experience with this. I have a hard time finding any kind of fault with what they've done so far.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the COO of a mobile app company located in Dallas.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire The BHW Group, and what were your goals?

We hired BHW to develop and manage our app for iOS and Android, as well as build an online administrative system for API support and customer data backup.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

We selected BHW after an interview process with several companies throughout the US. The deciding factors were location and personalities.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and technologies used.

We took a native iOS app to BHW and had them rebuild it in ReactNative for iOS and Android deployment. The app has grown into a management platform for hardware within the industry, and BHW has integrated existing SDKs as well codevelop SDKs for ongoing projects.

How many resources from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

We currently work with a project manager and 2 developers.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

Our company is recognized as a standard within our industry.

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timeliness.

We manage projects with weekly calls, Trello, and email.

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

BHW has true full stack capabilities along with the agility to assume roles in co-development with our other partners.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

Nothing comes to mind. BHW is the only company we've ever worked with that had all of the resources we need in one shop.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CTO at a company called Docket Navigator. We’re a software analytics company that gathers data on all the decisions in all the courts and then presents that information to our clients.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with The BHW Group?

At first, we hired them to do some mobile apps for us. We’ve since expanded their role with our team and now they do all of our frontend web development work.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

I’m most familiar with the web development aspect of their work for us. I’ve worked with a lot outside contractors and I really like BHW because they are very professional, managed well, and they have the expertise needed for complex projects. We treat them as a development partner instead of an outside contractor and we rely on their expertise to help us make decisions.

What is the team composition?

One of the firm’s owners manages the contract and another is the technical expert who does code reviews and makes sure the development team is on track. We work with two developers, one on a full-time basis and the other about half of the time. The full-time developer is our main contact and she’s been incorporated right into our team, including joining us for our daily stand-ups.

How did you come to work with The BHW Group?

I believe it was a local connection because both BHW and our development team are based in Austin.

How much have you invested with them?

We’re right near $600,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We’ve worked with them since August 2015.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

On a day-to-day basis, they typically conclude projects ahead of the timelines I had estimated. Based on my experience, I can tell they are efficiently handling the tougher challenges as they arise. They deliver top-notch services. If they have good specs, they produce software that’s reliable and maintainable. They quite frequently focus on updating outdated components and building the base and we appreciate that type of input.

How did The BHW Group perform from a project management standpoint?

Because we’ve integrated them right into our scrum teams, we do our project management in-house. They work like other engineers within our team. We use Slack as our primary means of communication, OpenProject for ticket-tracking, and Zoom for meetings.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I’m new at this company, so I am unbiased as to whether our UI looks great or not. So, when I arrived and saw the work BHW was doing, I was very impressed. We have a great in-house designer who comes up with all kinds of new and interesting stuff and they’re pretty adept at producing the things she’s asked for.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Not that I can think of. I’ve worked with about a dozen outside contractors and BHW has their act together and makes things easy.

Any advice for potential customers?

Generally speaking, know what you’d like to do before you start calling around for work estimates. If you don’t know what you want to create up-front, it makes it difficult.