Pronto Software Solutions Private Limited

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a partner of a pharmaceutical services company. We have about 10 employees, and we primarily fit in the long-term care industry. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Pronto Software Solutions?

We’ve worked with Pronto to develop some web-based applications around data manipulation, reporting analysis, and items along those lines. The original project was basically a web presence, some design criteria, and our outline and implementation. This was a brand-new endeavor from scratch.

The role of the website is twofold. It’s an information portal for prospective clients and prospects to find us and the launching point for our web-based application for our customers. Pronto also developed our web-based customer app. 

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

For the first website, we put together the content and a high-level vision of what we wanted for our product. We had another design firm develop our logo, which we gave to Pronto. After we gave them the content, we showed them some styles we liked, which they implemented and executed. They worked with us on multiple iterations to make sure it was what we wanted and launched it on our domain and server.

They did some work on search engine optimization (SEO) initially. We have an ongoing maintenance contract with them as well. We’re not a real commodity-type website, so from a resource standpoint, I’m not putting much into SEO implementation. In the past, I have requested some numbers from them on the types of traffic we’re getting. For the most part, they just did that on the initial run. In most cases, we’re pushing prospects to our website.

Probably 5% of the work they’ve done is for the website, and about 95% has been on the web application that was bolted onto our existing domain. We basically are doing adjudication services for long-term care pharmacies to fill prescriptions for skilled nursing facilities, long-term care facilities, and nursing homes.

We started with a long design document of what we wanted through different data flows. They have to interact with adjudication endings, pull data, develop our own databases, and use different GUIs [graphical user interfaces] for customers and users in our system. They also had to adhere to HIPAA compliance in building the product, which was sitting on top. So, for pure feature and functionality, the data management, data warehousing, reporting, and invoice generation are the main features of the product.

They primarily used PHP and an SQL open-source database. I had 5 or 6 team members, plus management and executive management for a total of 10 people. There may have been others, but those are the team members who were part of this throughout the development cycle.

How did you come to work with Pronto Software Solutions?

I’d worked with a key sales management person doing some other consulting in Bangalore, India, who began working with Pronto. That’s how we connected.

How much have you invested with Pronto Software Solutions?

We’ve invested $75,000 so far.

What is the status of this engagement?

We first started working together in February of 2015, and our relationship is ongoing. In addition to the retainer for maintenance, we have a revenue-sharing agreement that we’re working towards contractually right now. We have a letter of intent or a contract of intent in place, and they’re going to do ongoing development, feature support, and maintenance for a revenue share of the claims that we process. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The met the timelines that we discussed as we developed the product, and we had different deliverables and milestones during the development process and testing. We actually had a full development server, so everything was running parallel as we made changes. I think the biggest thing with the Pronto team is the speed at which they can make bug fixes and modifications.

We’re a quasi-startup, so we’ve got a lot of new customer requirements that pop up, or we have new prospects who want something to close the deal. Pronto is very good at reacting to our requests to make changes in real time. Since their development team is in Bangalore, they work while we sleep, and then we work while they sleep.

They provided a reliable and stable solution. We’re dealing with real-time, sensitive data for invoicing of pharmaceuticals, so the accuracy and the integrity of the data are paramount. We’ve had great success working with Pronto.

How did Pronto Software Solutions perform from a project management standpoint?

We were given a dedicated project manager for everything that we needed, and we had a great relationship with her. She responded to anything we sent during the day or into the evening. They used a few different online collaborative tools, but I can’t remember which. We tracked all communications—email, text, design docs, updates, and questions—on the online project management portal. We also had escalation points.

What did you find most impressive about Pronto Software Solutions?

They’re very nimble and can make changes, and they’re also good people to work with. They understand that the customer should always come first. They will work through the night to get a problem fixed for us by the morning. That’s difficult to find these days.

Are there any areas Pronto Software Solutions could improve?

If I had to say anything negative, there are things they put in place that we try to circumvent as a customer, but that’s on us rather than Pronto. They have good testing facilities, and they set up test servers to replicate before they go live. Often, due to time constraints, we’ve requested things to be shortened a little, and it’s hurt us.