Aguai Solutions Pvt Ltd

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Ateb is a privately held software development firm for healthcare software, specifically focused on the US retail pharmacy market for providing solutions. I head up the R&D [research and development] organization here at Ateb.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Aguai Solutions?

We were looking to try and expand our frontiers on a couple of different fronts. One such front was expanding capacity to keep up with the rapid growth of our development needs. We were looking to add some elasticity with technical resources and those especially experienced with interface development and healthcare. Additionally, we were also looking to explore some newer technologies, technology stacks, and different architectural innovations. Most specifically, we wanted to know how we could use and leverage some of the new Angular technology and Bootstrap and some of those front-end tools that we had not used before in our existing core products. For all of those reasons, we started to work with Aguai and worked on a couple of small products together.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We started with assigning projects to them that they managed themselves. They owned the project and would deliver to a development manager here that had oversight so that he could complete a review, including the architectural sign off and code submission into the subversion branch. As we’ve evolved over the years, we’ve done more joint project work where they are working on dashboards or other front-end development activities in conjunction with our development team.

How did you come to work with Aguai Solutions?

I had a previous relationship with one of the founders of the company, Bimlesh Gundurao. He and I had worked together at Misys Healthcare Systems, and we had stayed in contact. I was very well aware of his skill set, both technical and leadership, as well as some of the resources that he had as part of Aguai.

How much have you invested with Aguai Solutions?

We probably spend between $100,000 and $150,000 annually.

What is the status of this engagement?

I believe we started working with them in 2013.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Two primary projects that we’ve worked on have been successful because we’ve delivered them. One was actually an internal project that has been a tremendous benefit for internal operational efficiency and client visibility to what’s in place, what they have, and easy access to client information. That was a big win, and that was using the new Angular framework. From that, we have leveraged that framework and design into other features within our core products. While they didn’t do all of the additional development, it was a big win for us for exactly what we were hoping to do, which was on how we can incorporate that architecture.

The second area is that they did a lot of work with our business level dashboard design. Dashboards are a key component within our pharmacy application that allows the pharmacy to see metrics for the various programs that they are running and have good visualizations of that information, as well as triggered actions to do something about the information that they see in those dashboards. Implementing dashboards was a key component of our core product, and that’s been well received in the market in the last six months.

How did Aguai Solutions perform from a project management standpoint?

I have a higher level communication with Bimlesh Gundurao on an every other week basis. We talk just in generalities to make sure the projects are still on track, as well as forward-looking for any resource and/or project planning, making sure that we have the right skills, the right assignments, any of the paperwork, billing, and financial business relationship items up to date.

The individual team members work with my development manager here, and they have regular stand-up calls. They touch base on a regular basis either through Skype calls or IM [instant messanger] communication. They have regular deliverables that they track and follow up with. Depending on the project, they are constantly communicating back and forth with my manager, as well as the lead developer that we have here, and it all runs completely agile. They’re structured into two-week sprints, and all the items are tracked and followed through that way.

What did you find most impressive about Aguai Solutions?

Their resources are very technically solid. They are very well experienced with healthcare and interfaces as I had indicated, which were critical. Probably the most important thing, especially in working with an India offshore facility or organization, is that they are very open and communicative down to the developer level, which makes our jobs a lot easier. They feel very much part of the team and communicate as such as opposed to having filtered information continually. They’re confident and capable of standing on their own, they communicate, and work well in that type of a manner without a lot of additional project managers or management oversight if you will.

Are there any areas Aguai Solutions could improve?

I think just maintaining the resources. I know some of their resources are still quite young and new so it would help to make sure that they have stable senior-level developer talent. That will certainly open up and broaden their horizons, and some of the different project work that they could do.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We are, essentially, a data analytics start-up that collects data for our customers who tend to be quick service restaurants; they have data that comes in regarding their stores from various sources. We make a collection of that data. We put it in our database. We enhance the data in terms of analytics and then we present those analytics on online dashboards for our customers. I am the Co-founder.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Aguai Solutions?

We engaged them to write a lot of the automated scripts. We would automate the process of going to various different data sources on behalf of our clients, which involves logging on, writing script that collects the data, and importing it into our database. We had them create several scripts like that and have been running it for about a year or so. They used C+ and Selenium, especially to do web scraping.

SOLUTION

How did you come to work with Aguai Solutions?

I'd worked with them on a previous project. One of our other founders in our other projects knew them from working together before, so there was a personal connection there and we transitioned that business. I needed help on this company, hence we came over to them and tried to get them to help us.

It wasn't a full project in a sense; it was more trying to engage one of their contractors on an hourly basis. It wasn't really a full-on project where we did something from scratch; it was an agile programming engagement. We would just keep saying what we needed and they would create it for us.

How much have you invested with Aguai Solutions?

About $50,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

It started about a year ago but we're going to transition away from them, partly because we engaged a new CTO [Chief Technology Officer] with our company and we're trying to create, from data analytics development, more machine-learning knowledge and intelligence systems. The new CTO came with another team that he's already been working with and they're attuned to deal with the machine-learning AI [artificial intelligence] kind of stuff. We're transitioning some of this work, once the script that Aguai has already created for us has been written.

It took a while for it to become robust but now there are fairly robust scripts where data is coming in fairly accurately. Aguai Solutions does have another person doing QA [quality assurance] work with us on a daily basis, to make sure the data is correct. But we've got good data and things are running relatively smoothly, and now we need to go to the next level with expertise into a slightly different area. That's why we're transitioning away.

The engagement hasn't completed yet. There's still some knowledge transfer going on, so maybe another week or two.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

I think the engagement was very odd in the sense that it wasn't a full-on project given to them from scratch, with a quote on how to build out the whole thing, which is what most people would do. Our project was very: "Let's do this one script; let's do this other script. This script is not working because of this; let's fix it".

We worked with other companies in India; I don't think they were the cheapest, but I don't think they were the most expensive. They did get a reliable job completed, I would say.

How did Aguai Solutions perform from a project management standpoint?

I did most of the project management myself because I really just worked with one person on the team. They didn't have an internal project manager. I would be calling up the contractor that they hired in India for us and she was working a few hours a day on our behalf. I would deal directly with her and tell her what I needed.

What did you find the most impressive about Aguai Solutions?

Their principal was very professional in his demeanor and how he treats customers. There'd be times where employees would come and go, and he's handled all of that very well. One of the issues we had with other vendors was that when a person working on our project defected to another company, it was a massive headache to get the next guy educated and brought up to speed on it. With Aguai, they handled that process much better than I had seen elsewhere.

Are there any areas Aguai Solutions could improve?

One of the other reasons we're taking off is we're looking for a contractor in India, and again this is more specific to what our needs are as opposed to what most people will need. I didn't really need a whole project management team to work for us on a specific project; I just needed someone like we had, a contractor working to specific directions on a daily basis and they would perform. That meant that sometimes I had more work, sometimes I had less work.

One of the reasons to hire someone like that in India was: "Okay, I've got work to do today, can you get it done quickly?" or "I don't have work today and don't bill me for it". That became somewhat unworkable in the sense that they obviously need to man their employees at an appropriate level, too. That's one of the reasons we decided to transition, where the new team was able to be much more flexible in terms of how we are able to get work out and what work needs to be done. In that sense, it was somewhat inflexible but I think that's also pretty unique to what my company needs and it's not necessarily a bad reflection on them.