Mobiuso

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the COO of a mobile health tech company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Mobiuso?

We initially hired them to help bring our MVP to market. Since our launch, we’ve continued to use their services for software development as well as implementation with customers.

What were your goals for this project?

Our initial goal was to launch our first version of the application quickly and in a cost-effective manner. Our ongoing goal is to meet our quarterly software release schedule.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

As a small company, we were looking for a vendor who specialized in working with startups. Additionally, it was important to us that our development partner be very familiar with the entire product development process. Mobiuso satisfied both of these criteria.

Describe the project in detail.

They worked with our software architect on the overall design of the solution. Once we’d settled on a design, they helped to build both the mobile app and AWS management portions of the solution. They continue to assist with the development and management of customer needs.

What was the team composition?

They have a program manager, software developers, and QA resources. We can adjust the team size based on the workload.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

We successfully launched our solution and implemented it with our initial customers.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Mobiuso is very easy to work with. They are organized and prepared to meet timelines.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

They understand how products are conceived and created. They brought as much passion to launching our app as our full-time team.

Are there any areas for improvement?

No, I’m completely satisfied.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I’m the co-founder and former Chief Medical Officer at Skyscape, the leading medical publisher in the US for handheld medical applications.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Mobiuso?

At the time, Skyscape was looking to leverage its content assets and create a novel approach to providing in-context clinical decision support to clinicians based on its top-shelf medical reference texts. To accomplish this, we needed to convert our content into a new format as well as leverage Health Level Seven (HL7) standard API calls to embed our content into the workflow of a clinician using an electronic health record (EHR). We tasked Mobiuso with this.

What were your goals for this project?

The goal was to prototype and demonstrate the CloudLink capability to one of the leading ambulatory care EHR companies in the US, and, subsequently, have them buy up the concept for inclusion into their software.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

Members of the Skyscape team had used Mobiuso in previous engagements, so they came recommended. After a spec discussion and a bid, we chose them for the work.

Can you go into detail about the services they provided and the scope of the project?

Mobiuso provided content transformation, web development, and multiplatform prototyping activities for the CloudLink project.

What was the team composition?

There were six resources in total, including a project manager, three programmers, one main web programmer, two content transformation/manipulation specialists, and a QA team of two. Not everyone on the team was engaged concurrently. For example, QA was only engaged towards the end of the project.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any information that demonstrates the impact that this project has had on your business?

We took this project from start to conclusion in about eight weeks—after it had languished on the shelf at Skyscape for the preceding 10 months. Mobiuso completed the work on time, to spec, and on budget.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

We used an agile approach to development. Stand up calls occurred twice a week with full sprint downloads about every two weeks.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Shefali (Project Manager, Mobiuso) did a great job helping to translate our business needs into specs for the rest of the team. She was a terrific interface and was easy to work with. Although I was on the East Coast of the US and she worked out of India, we didn’t have many issues with the time difference. Shefali would often take calls and work very late hours, India time, to make our project happen. I really appreciated her dedication to the project.

Are there any areas where they can improve?

There were a few times when the team took some liberties with the specs on the project. I did wish at the time that some of those things were not left as a "given," but rather explained in detail to Shefali and then to me. This occurred on one occasion, but it was a minor thing. Overall, having the programming team communicate some small bits like that would have been helpful.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO of a company that is focused on providing tablet technology to patients in hospitals.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Mobiuso?

We wanted to ensure that our solution, which includes a tablet app and backend for CMS, is highly available and stable. Our goal was to improve our UX and leverage the best possible technologies in tablet software, and, in particular, tablet security. We also wanted to make the experience as user-friendly as possible for patients and hospitals.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They assisted in providing a highly secure and very adaptable UX in the medical care environment. They worked on the stability of the overall solution and also implemented admin capabilities so that we can go in and do different things. The team ensured high availability and scalability by stateless and redundant deployment on a well-known cloud service. The technologies they leveraged include the database, as well as the front- and backend. They continue to enhance and maintain the solution.

What is the team composition?

We have had several developers on their team. We have a constant project manager, as well as a QA group who reviews the work, too. Their CTO is very hands on and is an amazing addition to the service they provide. He’s a really fantastic, knowledgeable individual who is always available.

How did you come to work with Mobiuso?

I had heard of other companies using them in the healthcare space. I thought it would be good for us to try them too.

What is the status of this engagement?

We began working together in July 2016 and have an ongoing partnership that’s expanding.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The amount of time it takes for deployment and their ability to roll out new features has gone up dramatically. Conversely, the amount of time we spend internally on reviewing new features has reduced significantly as they’ve taken on that function very well. From a qualitative standpoint, what we’re able to do now is far superior to our experience with other companies.

We’ve had external people—who are very experienced in different industries and technologies—look into their work to review it, and they were very impressed. We’re very happy with them.

How did Mobiuso perform from a project management standpoint?

They have a good group of people, which is great. We’re happy with their documentation and responsiveness. They document things correctly in the shared management software that we use. The team is always available. In fact, there hasn’t been a situation when they haven’t been available. We speak almost every morning.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their can-do attitude sets them apart. If there is a problem, they will find a solution and a way to get it done. They’re high-quality people, and they do the right thing. They don’t say something just to say it; they really mean what they say and stand behind it.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I’m really happy with them. We keep extending our spend with them and hope to continue working with them in other ways too.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Be sure to embrace the firm. They're very good and do the right thing. In the beginning, we started off too small because I wanted to make sure I understood what they were capable of. But, looking back, I wish I had spent more with them upfront. They’re good people.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I’m a co-founder and EVP of Mirum India, a WPP owned digital agency. We offer services across creative, media, tech, and production industries. Our key offering is consulting and implementing the Salesforce Marketing Cloud suite of marketing technology products.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Mobiuso?

We needed someone to integrate our end-client’s existing business systems into the Salesforce Marketing Cloud. We were looking for help both in developing and deploying this integration.

What were your goals for this project?

We wanted to ensure data sync between a data warehouse system and the Salesforce system, consolidate all outbound communication via the Salesforce system (which was earlier spread out over several other business systems), and accomplish both those tasks in a consistent, reliable fashion.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

We gave the brief to multiple vendors who we had worked with on other projects, and based on the architecture / timeline suggested, we chose to work with Mobiuso.

Describe the project in detail.

Mobiuso conducted discovery sessions over three weeks with several of our end-client’s stakeholders, and we were present throughout this process to fill in any blanks. A few days later, Mobiuso submitted an architecture document along with project timelines and commercials. Mobiuso’s bridging solution involved sales, CRM, data warehousing, ERP, and e-commerce capabilities, as well as Salesforce APIs.

What was the team composition?

We worked with an architect, a delivery lead, and a developer.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

The end-client’s data warehouse was completely integrated with the Salesforce cloud, and all relevant tables / data points are extracted, transformed, and loaded on a daily basis. This allows us to make decisions about what communications need to be sent to which customers. All transactional messages are also now being delivered via the Salesforce cloud, resulting in consolidation of all communications into one system, which is great for cost management.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Scheduling could have been tough in this project because there were three parties involved (Mobiuso, us, and our end-client), and at our clients end there were multiple stakeholders. Mobiuso was coordinated and flexible enough to manage this well though. The delivery lead and architect were also available to discuss any roadblocks.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

There were several legacy business systems which were new for Mobiuso. For example, one of the systems which had to be integrated was a home-grown inventory / booking. Mobiuso built a solution that accommodated these and other systems in a reliable manner, which was pretty amazing.

Are there any areas for improvement?

There should have been a daily / weekly / fortnightly cadence call system to ensure progress was tracked and roadblocks are cleared in time. This mainly happened over email, but we would have preferred a call / Skype. We’ll specifically ask for this for our next collaboration.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the CTO of Angulus and we are a biomedical engineering startup.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Mobiuso?

Since we didn’t have the background with iOS applications, we needed developers for an app that would function as a stand–in for the typical vital sign monitor seen in clinical settings and that would interact with the device we had created, providing data collection and feedback.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We came to them with a prototype of our device and our ideas of how the user interface should work—the functionality and workflow. We wanted them to develop an app that used Bluetooth to interface with our off–the–shelf multi–sensor device. Mobiuso primarily works with iOS development, so they hadn’t had much experience with peripheral devices, but they saw the similarities and were eager to begin and gain experience working with this kind of technology.

We provided them with manual support for the hardware like a developer kit and information on the Bluetooth device, and from there they built an iOS app from scratch. The app queries our device for data, acquires the data, performs physical calculations, and then displays the results, as well as records the raw data and logs interactions.

What is the team composition?

There may have been more people behind the scenes, but I primarily interacted with two developers and one person that took care of the managerial aspects of the project like invoices. At the beginning of the project, we had a project manager but he was replaced by one of the developers.

I preferred being able to work directly with the developers because we could be sure there was no misinterpretation when discussing issues or questions. It reassured me that we were all speaking the same language and understood the project.

How did you come to work with Mobiuso?

Our CEO was in business school with one of Mobiuso’s VPs and through their discussions, we found that they would be a good fit.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent in the range of $10,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We began working with Mobiuso January 2015 and while initial app development is complete, we still have an ongoing relationship for updates.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

There have been multiple times where we have had to work together to fix connectivity or reliability issues due to changes in the hardware or iOS. As the iOS or hardware has been updated, they have been incredibly responsive about going back and debugging issues. Bluetooth is very sensitive to iOS updates. With each update, the Bluetooth protocol changes and our application is very sensitive to that because we need it to have high integrity in terms of connection.

We’re also very concerned about battery life. As a wireless device, it’s supposed to function for a week or more at a time. However, the first time we updated the hardware, the battery life dropped from an excess of 10 days to 24–36 hours. We worked with Mobiuso and were able to develop solutions to have the battery life exceed 10 days.

How did Mobiuso perform from a project management standpoint?

From the beginning, we found Mobiuso very prompt and able to succinctly delineate the goals of the project. I was initially hesitant because we are based on the East Coast and Mobiuso is based in India, but they were able to follow through on all timelines they provided.

While we primarily communicated through Google Hangouts and email, they were very accommodating when it came to setting up calls. They would frequently get on calls that were at 7:00 in the morning for me, but because of the time difference were 9:00 at night for them. I even found shipping devices back and forth far less difficult than I anticipated.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The most impressive thing about working with them is their willingness to continue on the project even after it officially closed. A few months after we had confirmed the first version of the app was working, there was an iOS update and we started having issues with the Bluetooth. We were able to come back to them with the problems and they were very accommodating in reopening the project, debugging issues, and making necessary updates.

I appreciate the continuity of being able to come back to a project and work with the same team. By having people familiar with the project return, we were able to begin immediately without having to re-familiarize developers to the project.

They were also always available and fit within what seemed to me to be a very tight timeline.

Are there any areas they could improve?

We’ve been happy with what they’ve been able to do. The only additional benefit I could imagine would be the ability to work with and interact with the developers face–to–face. That would present an even easier line of communication. However, establishing a person or team in the U.S. may be unrealistic since they’re not based here.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I think the most important thing in all business interactions is to come with a very specific set of goals in mind. Mobiuso will help flesh anything out, but having that ahead of time will result in the most efficient process and with you getting the most gain.

I would also recommend having an internal technically–inclined person to interact with their developers. That’s much more effective than going through a secondary channel like a manager, which opens the project up to miscommunication.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm co-founder and CEO of Zikto and Insureum. We have manufactured a wearable device and developed several applications that provide healthcare data to financial agencies. I oversee the entire engineering team.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Mobiuso?

Although our original Zikto Walk application and server client require maintenance, it is not a daily task that demands additional engineers. However, because there were a few bugs that needed to be fixed, we decided to engage Mobiuso. 

What were your goals for this project?

Our goal was to remove dirty, complicated legacy code from the backend—which consisted of Node.js, MySQL, and Elasticsearch—and refactor it. Many of the code sections needed to be rewritten in order to preserve data integrity and system performance. 

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

A member of a Korean startup accelerating organization recommended Mobiuso to me as an alternative to hiring new engineers. My initial meeting with Santhosh (President, Mobiuso) went well, so we decided to use them.

Describe the project in detail.

There was a bug that prevented the wearable device’s data from matching the server; we asked Mobiuso to find it and fix it. There was also a live service for which we needed a test site. 

What was the team composition?

We were assigned a project manager, engineers, and QA specialists. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

Within a week, they had a good grasp on the backend and data structures, which was critical, and we were able to start discussing potential causes of the problem. We tested multiple ways of reproducing the bug and refactored the code, which improved the framework’s readability and efficiency. The outcome was great, because they found out what was causing the problem.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

I directly communicated with their engineers via messengers and video conference calls. I really like how they dig into a problem and come back with thoughtful ideas to resolve it.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

They work and think with integrity. A lot of outsourcing companies try to finish the job based solely on the initial scope, but Mobiuso continued to ask questions and make suggestions for requirements and design. This allowed them better insight into the overall intent. 

Are there any areas for improvement?

Because English wasn’t their primary language, communication during conference calls could be difficult. However, all of the engineers and the project manager spoke excellent English, and using the messenger worked out well.