Macadamian

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

My former company developed healthcare information technology software. That includes everything from electronic health records, practice management, health information exchange, patient portals, and a bunch of other ancillary type services all related to healthcare.

I was the vice president of research and development for a specific division that worked on a cloud-based EHR [electronic health record] and practice management platform.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Macadamian?

We needed some additional augmentation in terms of skills and resources. But more primarily, we were interested in bringing a different user-focused thinking to a particular initiative we had which was a patient portal. We were designing a patient portal to go on top of our practice management system. We wanted a group that not only had healthcare IT experience but also brought a good healthy dose of consumer design experience because that’s a different audience than working with a doctor or nurse; that’s clinical versus a patient. We looked to Macadamian for that.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

The scope was design and an initial prototype. There were more specifics in the statement of work, but it wasn’t the complete project. Our plan was to take it back over once we had the design work and the initial architecture was done. They worked from a design standpoint, including visiting the site where we had our team, spending time with actual patients. We had some hands-on design sessions where we brought patients in from the outside world and worked for them. Then we also had some architectural design sessions where our senior developers or architects would work with theirs to make sure the design matched our own technology stack and fit into the way that we had already developed our platform. They did the initial working prototype and then handed over to us all the design, the style guide, the code, and all the individual assets for us to take over.

How did you come to work with Macadamian?

We did a request for proposal process for this. We looked at three different organizations, ultimately narrowing it down to two. We did some in-person discussions with them and looked at references, and decided we wanted to work with Macadamian.

How much have you invested with Macadamian?

I think it was around $100,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

It lasted three to four months. It was designed to be that way. We had our own deadlines to meet, so we designed the project to be pretty aggressive. I think both of us would’ve wanted more time on the design, but those were the business requirements.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

I was pleased with what they designed. Honestly, given the constraints, they got a lot accomplished in the time they had. There was a very good collaboration with our team, and they also handled the recruiting in patients that could participate in the design and helped us understand what patients thought they wanted from various different demographics and whatnot. I think, in the end, if we had different business requirement, I would have preferred to have had them spend more time on the design, but they were very flexible in terms of accommodating the schedule that we had and very clear about where they felt they could be successful with that schedule and where they felt there would be rough edges where we need to follow up later with our design work.

What did you find most impressive about Macadamian?

Accommodating to the schedule and being willing to work with us were most impressive. I spent a lot more time with the design folks because I sat in on a number of the design collaboration meetings. They were great in terms of skills, ability manage the room, and ability to manage the individual egos. Not to say there were any incidents, but it can be challenging when you have outside design people coming in and are interacting with your own design people. We had no issues with that. They did a great job of coming in and forming a team between the two organizations.

Are there any areas Macadamian could improve?

We had one issue with one of their junior designers. Our vice president of design that worked outside of my division was a little bit involved, and she was challenging this particular resource to kind of think more about justifying their designs and redesign their designs, and ultimately was disappointed with that particular resource. Macadamian was great about just saying “we’ll approach that person, but we’ll also move them off the project and put someone else on.” The new person did better with our vice president of design. It went according to plan, even with an aggressive schedule. They delivered what we expected. If I had had more time, I would’ve spent more time with them.

How likely are you to recommend Macadamian to a friend or colleague?

The only caveat I would give a colleague and I think this is true of anyone. It depends on the team that is assigned to you. I had a great experience with the people we worked with . The outside groups you interview during the quoting process are the people that you want to make sure you end up working with on the project. We had that. I think as long as you ended up with great resources they would do a good job.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

NantHealth develops technologies and solutions for advanced healthcare. We aim to push healthcare forward, specifically around cancer treatment and the solutions needed for the delivery of better care.

I am the Vice President of Product Application Development Engineering.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Macadamian?

We wanted to advance our mobile application in the areas of both patient engagement and provided care.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We enlisted Macadamian to help us develop the mobile app and improve its access to healthcare information for both patients and care providers. Macadamian has an expertise in mobile software development, so we brought them on to augment our engineering staff. Our app is on iOS and Android platforms.

How did you come to work with Macadamian?

We came to work with Macadamian through an internal company reference. We liked that they had preexisting healthcare domain solution knowledge and an expertise in technology platforms.

How much have you invested with Macadamian?

The project was over $200,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We have had a partnership for three or four years.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

Through our partnership with Macadamian, we have developed a mobile patient and provider solution that is analogous to our web based solution in both the UK and US.

What did you find most impressive about Macadamian?

Their expertise in both the market domain and the technology platform is key. Macadamian does a very good job of working with our team because they’re very agreeable and responsive to our requests. The senior technical folks that work with us are flexible when we want to make changes. They do good quality work and have helped us advance our mobile capabilities.

Are there any areas Macadamian could improve?

Nothing comes to mind. They’ve been a really good partner and teammate. Any issues we come across are more process-centric, which makes sense when two companies and two cultures combine. Things are working well.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization. What is your position?

We're in the transportation business. Within the IT [information technology] department, I'm responsible for application design and development.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with Macadamian?

Our initial challenge was around a business process that was delivering information to users, and we were using a legacy system to do it. We wanted to deliver a new experience to our users and bring some efficiencies to the business process. We also wanted to provide a more modern user experience. We were considering a mobile experience because in this business environment we needed a technology that was at hand as opposed to using kiosks, which were located off the operational floor.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement in detail.

With Macadamian, it's not just getting a bunch of developers in a room and them starting to code right away. There actually is a science to developing a good user experience. They have a very well formed and mature methodology on developing user experiences. They have very specific skill sets they brought to the table – skill sets that we didn't have. It's not something that we do and for them UX [user experience] is their specialty.

How did you come to work with Macadamian?

When we developed our first mobile app, we considered several firms. We ended up with Macadamian primarily because of their depth of experience on user experience on a mobile platform and the quality of their methodology. We felt that their competencies were very good and very deep. They have a lot of subject matter expertise and experience doing user experience design, and that is a very distinct skill. The other advantage to partnering with Macadamian is that they were local. That was important for us because we were able to have face-to-face conversations. When talking about user experience design, it's very important to be able to get as many inputs as possible from the end users and being able to work very closely with Macadamian and their consultants was very good for us.

Could you provide a sense of the size of this initiative?

Our partnership is ongoing but, for the initial project, it was $80,000. That was for an end-to-end user experience design for two workloads, which included approximately three months of work and several consultants involved.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

I don't have quantitative data on hand. One thing in particular that is a result of this new system is that we have significantly reduced the amount of effort required to create and publish the information that is being consumed by our end users. It's been a dramatic improvement. The other qualitative notion is consistency. We have deployed the same system across our major centers, and it is being used in the same way across these centers. All of this with minimal training since the app is very intuitive to use. Those are some big metrics. 

What distinguishes Macadamian from other providers?

I mentioned their expertise. Macadamian has some very talented people. The other key attribute is their overall customer service and professionalism. They're still relatively small. They have nice people that work there that are very customer focused. It feels like a partnership. Things do not always align, and when you have someone on the other end that understands that and puts the customer first that makes the engagement a lot easier. Macadamian fits that profile, we can always call up our engagement partner and have a conversation, and they're more than happy to help. They have delivered for us. They are a good partner that we trust, and we enjoy working with them.

In hindsight, are there areas in which they could improve, or things you might do differently?

They really have done a good job for us. Most of our experience has been positive. We always appreciate face-to-face meetings and a lot of these boutique agencies like to work remotely. We have asked that Macadamian consultants work on site with us full time. That's the model that we prefer, and it has worked very well for us. It's not their standard model, but we appreciate it. It's hard to say it's something they need to improve because it's not really a deficiency. 

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

My company is named Worksoft. We have two primary things that we do. One is business process validation and the other thing that we do is business process discovery.

What is your position and responsibilities?

I am the VP of engineering, so I'm responsible for development.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with Macadamian?

Actually, it was part of building out our new product. We realized that we did not have the right user experience professionals in our organization. When you look at the kinds of software that we've built and delivered in the past, they're certainly functional, but they're maybe not as elegant as they should be. We knew that we needed a finer touch and a stronger representation for the user, to make sure that users could navigate this new product much more intuitively than our other clunkier applications that we have.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement in detail.

They've not built any product for us. We've engaged them two or three times now. Once to help us build the Analyze product as well as going back and looking at some of our existing products to redesign the user experience and some of the UI [user interface] layout.

How did you come to work with Macadamian?

As it turns out, we kind of luckily stumbled into Macadamian. Rather than doing a survey in the marketplace and trying to find a well-known brand, it turns out there was an email exchange that took place at some level between the CTO [chief technology officer] here at Worksoft and the CEO at Macadamian. With that exchange being the impetus, I took a closer look at Macadamian and arranged some follow-up calls. The methodology that they used for projects and how they engage their customers while showing incremental value along the way, all of those things sounded very appealing. They said we could step away at any time, and we've never wanted to step away from Macadamian.

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

Our project has been in the $50,000 to $200,000 range.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

I don't know that I have any quantitative metrics that I can share. Qualitatively, we've loved the experience that we've had with Macadamian, and I think that everyone who has seen the new product has understood its power and its simplicity at the same time. There's been anecdotal feedback, both within the company as well as prospects and customers who've looked at their work.

What distinguishes Macadamian from other providers?

In my role at Worksoft, I have a tendency to cultivate relationships with vendors. When I find one that I like, I stick with them. In my case, Macadamian has continued to deliver above exceptional service, as well as exceptional products, to me. I have every intention of remaining with them for a long duration.

In hindsight, are there areas in which they could improve, or things you might do differently?

I think that if there's been any issues along the way, we've had those frank and open exchanges in order to make sure that we're all on the same page. Everyone assumes positive intent in these constructive discussions. I don't think that there's anything in our case that has been a lingering issue.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

We're a large telecom company in Canada. In my division, we do health solutions. We have solutions that are installed in more than 2,000 pharmacies in Canada, and we have used Macadamian's services to work on a new solution that we are developing for those pharmacies.

What is your position?

I am director of development.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with Macadamian?

We had many challenges, but some of them are resolved while others aren't. This is a huge project; we have more than 50 people working full time on it now. We've used Macadamian at the beginning of the project for their help in user-centric design, and then we moved into a phase where we used Macadamian more like a resource augmentation, both on-shore and offshore.

SOLUTION

How did you come to work with Macadamian?

It's a big project so, in fact, we are using many agencies in the project, Macadamian is one of them. The reason we involved them is they've been involved in another project of ours so that's what pointed us to them in the first place. Because of the success we had with Macadamian in our other project and with their knowledge of our business, we decided to continue with them and, in particular, their offshore development.

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

It's been more than a million-dollar partnership with Macadamian.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

It's very hard because we've been using Macadamian as resource augmentation source. I see their people as team members of our own team. The success of our project shows in how many resources we have. Now, we're up to 50, which is good, but it's still an ongoing challenge; that's the biggest metric we have. I don't have anything specific for the people at Macadamian.

What distinguishes Macadamian from other providers?

One thing is certain – I really appreciate the way that Macadamian has been able to adapt to what we asked of them. We've used them differently during the last three years. There were varying degrees of involvement, and every time they adapted to what we needed. They were very much listening to our needs. That is something that is very valuable for us in outsourcing for software development.

Like every other agency, it all varies on the quality of the people they hire. In that sense, I think that they've done a good job, because most of the people that they've allocated us have been very good quality people. There have been cases where it wasn't as optimal, and Macadamian has been very quick to react and adjust their service to us accordingly. That was really appreciated.

In hindsight, are there areas in which they could improve, or things you might do differently?

Like outsourcing to any agency, everything that involves working remotely is always going to be a challenge. This is particular true for our company with our culture and this team. A lot of it is local, and there's language issues, because we mostly work in French. A key criterion to the success of an endeavor like this is to hire people who are willing to come to the local site on a regular basis because there is undeniable value in doing that, versus doing everything remotely.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

We're a medical device company. Our main product is a linear accelerator machine that treats cancer patients with radiation. We also provide software with that machine.

What is your position and responsibilities?

I am the product manager and the user experience design director, working on user interfaces, usability, ergonomics, and user research.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with Macadamian?

We had the intent to do something when the iPad first came to the market: we wanted to tie it into our information system. We had very limited resources, essentially no app development skill set, and very little know-how in this area of applications. A business case was made, and we started looking for an outside vendor who could help us jump-start the project.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement in detail.

The project we did with Macadamian was a mobile app. The intent was to get a company to help us with mobile application development in the beginning. Then, once it's done, we'd take over the technology, development, and design that goes with it – learn what Macadamian was doing, and then take it all in-house.

How did you come to work with Macadamian?

We looked at three or four other companies besides Macadamian. They were all very much engineering types, and we needed design. Our final decision came down their development processes. Macadamian really matched well with what we were trying to achieve, which was going more to a design approach, where you do fast, iterative, conceptual work first, use the check-ins and make sure the design works before any coding happens. This instead of our previous approach, where everything was pretty much waterfall.

Macadamian brought two aspects to the mix for us. They had a great design team, and they had user researchers and user testers as part of their team, in addition to the engineering portion: the coding, design, and testing. They brought a mix that nobody else had at the time, and it was exactly what we were trying to do with our projects.

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

It was around $700,000. We had development, user experience, and graphical design – all outsourced to Macadamian. It was roughly a yearlong project. At times, there were five, six, even seven people from Macadamian on our project, in addition to our three or four. In total, it ended up to be just short of a million dollars.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What distinguishes Macadamian from other providers?

We discovered that Macadamian was good at helping choose technology and presenting the options available to us. Back then, it wasn't clear if we should go with HTML apps or if we should go native. They helped us to choose the right technology that was available then.

In hindsight, are there areas in which they could improve, or things you might do differently?

As with any partner, there were some hiccups. We had issues on the graphical design initially, where it just didn't click. We had to put the brakes on at some point, and say, "This is not going anywhere. Do you have another designer?" They brought in a different guy, and that was perfect. It was great. He understood what we wanted. Other than that, no other major issues came up.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization. What is your position?

We're a software vendor. I do program management, along with corporate marketing. We're developing document process automation solutions. We have a solution that automates vendor invoices, customer invoices, order management, and procurement processes. We offer that service through a cloud solution.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with Macadamian?

The issue we had at the time of approaching Macadamian was the fact that R&D [research and development] was looking at the prospect of a solution from their perspective. They had very little capability of projecting themselves in the shoes of our users, and we had a split between the views of different departments within the organization. They were having trouble understanding what the difficulties of our customers were. We were assuming and deciding based on our own assumptions. It came to a point where we found ourselves not doing a good enough job in regard to what we wanted to achieve in order to give the best experience to our customers.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement in detail.

I ended up finding a white paper, written by Macadamian, going through what a software vendor should include in their solution development strategy. Talking with the Macadamian team, the idea was for us to get a state of the art user experience design. We knew by looking at what companies, such as Apple have done to the phone industry, and all the care they put into providing the best experience to their users, that it was a trend. Companies are putting a lot of effort into UX. It made us realize that this is the way things are going, and we need to react. This is why we hired Macadamian, to give us a clear understanding of where this world is going and to give us the foundation for us to reboot our approach on product development.

How did you come to work with Macadamian?

I've looked for other companies, but we had specific requirements. The first one was that we wanted a company that had real experience, not one that started a year or two ago. The Macadamian guys had real experience. To me, that was key. Second, they were a team that knew what the Agile methodology was, which was not very easy to find two years ago. Also, they're a Canadian-based company. It happened that I couldn't find anyone in France providing this type of service and, on top of that, these guys speak English well and had previous experience with software vendors in North America. Lastly, the other references that they had were compelling to me. It was all those criteria that really helped me make the decision.

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

It was in the $10,000 to $50,000 range.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

The reality is that there has been a clear before and after, for sure. The way we see it is that partnering with Macadamian gave us the tools, verbiage, and the methodology to put certain processes in place rapidly within each of our teams in order to change the way we were designing interfaces in software.

My firm is now doing things that we were not doing before like working on low-definition interfaces, challenging those interfaces with stakeholders before doing any specific development. Those are the things that we are extensively doing right now that we were not doing before. Since Macadamian came, we have released our new interface with a lot of praise from our customers, so the partnership has been a real success.

What distinguishes Macadamian from other providers?

I would say that this UX design topic can be approached in so many ways, and we were really fearing that we would just have something that was theoretical. It was completely opposite – it was always hands on and tangible with Macadamian. The people from Macadamian have an extensive understanding of what a software vendor is, so they were talking our language. They had worked with companies like ours, and they could relate to what they faced with other companies.

In hindsight, are there areas in which they could improve, or things you might do differently?

No, honestly. I mean, apart from the fact that they're far away. The only improvement I can think of is having someone in Europe. Apart from that, I think that they should stick with what they're doing, it works well. That's the proper methodology.