Improving

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the IT director of applications at an executive search and leadership advisory firm specializing in building leadership teams for healthcare, science, and education organizations that improve the quality of life.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Improving?

We needed help with our digital transformation. 

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Improving has been our partner in so many projects but the two most recent were our multi-year Salesforce and MS Fabric implementations. The first core area Improving assisted with was requirements gathering and analysis. Like many professional services organization, it can be difficult to navigate requirements and reconcile differing viewpoints. This is an area in which Improving excels. Excellent communication and facilitation. In addition, Improving assisted us with setting up and managing 3rd party integrations to Salesforce. This in itself was a significant challenge as the integration proved extremely time consuming and required patience and dedication. Improving has helped us implement MS Fabric and our Salesforce data warehouse as a true implementation partner. They worked alongside my team to build out the data pipelines to get the data to our gold layer and out into reports. A big part of the engagement was ensuring my team has the skills necessary to support and continue to enhance.

What is the team composition?

We’ve worked with a project manager, multiple business analysts, and a SharePoint developer.

How did you come to work with Improving?

I worked with Tahoe in a previous role, and they became Improving through an acquisition. I already knew the quality of their work based on my previous experience.

What is the status of this engagement?

I began working with Improving when I joined the organization in 2022, and we're still going strong!

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Improving has helped us move from outdated legacy systems to Salesforce and a modern data warehouse. We’ve received both positive and negative feedback from users since this is a large change, but generally, adoption has been good.

How did Improving perform from a project management standpoint?

Improving has delivered work in a timely manner. When delays have been necessary, they’ve been understandable and well-communicated. We communicate through virtual meetings, emails, and messaging apps.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Improving’s work ethic, communication, enthusiasm, pride for the projects, and ability to take and act on feedback have been impressive.

Are there any areas they could improve?

There have been times when a particular resource hasn’t worked out, but these things have been addressed appropriately.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

 I am the Principal IT Architect for DSCSA Serialization Systems of a life sciences wholesale distributor.

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Life sciences wholesale distributor

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Improving to accomplish?

• Create a micro service architected application
• CI/CD Pipeline optimization
• Application Supprt

SOLUTION

How did you find Improving?

Referral

Why did you select Improving over others?

• High ratings
• Great culture fit
• Referred to me

How many teammates from Improving were assigned to this project?

6-10 Employees

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

We partnered with Improving to design and deliver a customer-facing application capable of supporting over 350,000 customers and handling large volumes of regulatory data at scale. The solution was architected to meet stringent performance requirements, including processing up to 100,000 requests per hour while maintaining response times under three seconds for recent (90-day) data queries. 

A key component of the solution was its seamless integration with six existing customer-facing portals, enabling consistent access to regulatory data across multiple channels and enhancing the overall user experience. The platform was also designed to manage and provide access to six years of historical data, while delivering a lightweight and intuitive user interface to support adoption.

In addition, the solution supports the ingestion of approximately 50,000–60,000 EPCIS data files daily and includes robust reprocessing capabilities, enabling improved data accuracy, reliability, and regulatory compliance.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

Improving demonstrated measurable progress through an iterative development approach, with regular incremental demonstrations that provided transparency into the solution’s evolution and enabled early validation of functionality. This approach helped ensure alignment with business requirements and reduced downstream rework.

In addition, the vendor consistently provided ongoing support and maintenance, including timely upgrades of platform components and proactive completion of security remediation activities. These efforts contributed to improved system stability, strengthened security posture, and sustained operational performance.

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

Improving demonstrated strong project management discipline through a structured and transparent delivery model, including regular weekly delivery reviews complemented by daily stand-up meetings. This cadence ensured consistent communication, early identification of risks, and continuous alignment with business priorities.

Deliverables were completed on schedule, reflecting effective planning, coordination, and execution. The team was highly responsive to evolving needs and feedback, and they consistently took the time to fully understand both the underlying data and system expectations. This level of engagement enabled them to design and deliver a solution that aligned well with business requirements.

What was your primary form of communication with Improving?

In-Person Meeting

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

The overall quality of the application was exceptional, reflecting a strong focus on engineering excellence and attention to detail. What stood out most was the vendor’s sense of ownership—they approached the solution not just from a technical perspective, but with a deep understanding of the business context and outcomes, demonstrating a true partnership mindset.

The team brought high-quality resources to the engagement, supported by strong technical leadership with deep IT expertise. This was evident in both the architecture and execution of the solution.

From a delivery and operations standpoint, the results were equally impressive. The platform experienced zero Severity 1 incidents and no outages attributable to application code or deployment activities. Additionally, the vendor implemented fully automated deployment pipelines and regression testing processes, which contributed to consistent, reliable releases and overall system stability.

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

While the overall delivery was strong, one opportunity for improvement would be increased visibility and tracking of the program budget alongside the functional and technical build. Enhancing financial tracking and alignment with delivery progress could further strengthen overall program governance and provide additional transparency into cost management.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CTO of Skier. We provide pool service management software that streamlines scheduling, billing, reporting, and route optimization for pool businesses, enabling digital operations, real-time technician tracking, and much more.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Improving?

We needed staff augmentation via nearshore contractors.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We have added QA engineers and developers across our dev teams that are sourced from Improving. They have worked on many projects like Stripe payment integration, field services operations, and automating QA. The team is involved in all parts of the software.

What is the team composition?

We work with 6–10 teammates from Improving.

How did you come to work with Improving?

Someone referred Improving to me. I chose them over other options because they were close to my geographic location, their pricing fit our budget, and their company values aligned with ours.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in March 2025, and the engagement is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Improving has increased the depth of coverage for automated QA — not only full coverage of code paths but also deeper coverage covering more branches and more negative cases using AI tools. Additionally, they’ve helped us move faster with feature development across the whole platform. We track progress against the roadmap for development and have seen a 50% increase in delivery across the team. We’re also adding automated QA tests 200% faster.

How did Improving perform from a project management standpoint?

We haven’t outsourced specific projects, but Improving has always been timely in our communications. We mainly communicate via virtual meetings, emails, and messaging apps.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Improving has a very wide scope. They offer AI training, staff augmentation, and project work in the US and Latin America. It’s nice to have a vendor that can do it all.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, there aren’t any.