Ethervision

Please describe your organization.

I work for a large insurance company. 

What is your position?

I work in the communication area – a lot of HR consulting and benefit.

What business challenge were you trying to address with Ethervision?

One of the things we do is we try to help employers communicate with their employees. We're looking at how we connect better with the younger population. What is the next generation of communication? We are trying to make things more relevant.

Please describe the scope of their involvement in detail.

We connected with Ethervision to help us develop this app along with another partner. The thought was that we actually wanted to do something that would be on a mobile device as well as something that would show the younger population versus tell them. The app was all related around health. 

How did you come to work with Ethervision?

I have a colleague that I work with that did another app with Ethervision so they helped us with our "Spending Account" app, which is tied to our outsourcing business. As I was looking at different vendors and different options, I was reaching out to other people within my company that might have worked with outside vendors. In addition, I wanted a team that was close to Chicago. I received a good reference from a colleague internally, and that's how I first landed with Ethervision.

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

This project was a $200,000-plus project.

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

We're just starting to market our new app. It's been live for three months on the App Store. What we're trying to do is target some of the consultants that are working with other clients to have the app be part of their conversation. We're premature of measuring success yet. I think we're hopeful during the next couple of months that we're going to start seeing some good results from the app.

What distinguishes Ethervision from other providers?

Ethervision has been great to work with. I would say they're very accommodating. They provide a lot of direction.  They're willing to get feedback, but they've also been great about offering advice. If there are certain things that I wasn't sure about, they've been great partners at saying here's an approach that we think would work. Not only are they developing our app, but they're able to give me guidance and direction from a best practice perspective. The other part is we work with another vendor that actually manages the aging technology that's being used behind the scenes. Ethervision did a fantastic job working directly with them to connect the user interface with the back-end engine. That was fantastic. Based on the size of our company, there's a lot of legal challenges trying to get some of this stuff done here. We had to keep changing direction and Ethervision was great at being flexible and thinking about different alternatives that we can do to meet some of the challenges that we were putting on ourselves internally.

Is there anything Ethervision could have improved or done differently?

I don't think so. They were great. Some of the challenges that we faced were mostly internal. 

Please describe your organization.

At the time of partnering with Ethervision, I was with The Chicago Tribune, we were the source for Chicago's breaking news, sports, business, entertainment, weather and traffic..

What is your position?

I'm the director of user experience. I dealt with the actual production of the project.

What business challenge were you trying to address with Ethervision?

At the time, I was working with one of our properties that had a consumer presence and consumer website with a large audience. We were interested in producing a mobile application, and that's when we approached Ethervision with an RFP [request for proposal] for that project.

Please describe the scope of their involvement in detail.

Ethervision provided a combination of things. In terms of the RFP, they walked us through what they're typical process would be, and they showed us some sample code, sample designs, first touch information architectures, their project planning methodology, and the documentation associated with that. We ended up going with an internal effort because of low budget reasons. 

How did you come to work with Ethervision?

We were considering three companies at the time as well as an internal team to develop the application. We found Ethervision through a personal reference – somebody who had worked with them before and had nice things to say about them. While we wound up going with an internal team, I was very impressed with Ethervision – the portfolio and the knowledge they had. They stood out against the different vendors that we had interviewed for the project.

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

It was around $100,000 – that was the total project size. I'm not privy to the portion that went through to Ethervision. 

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

In terms of the lead up to the project, Ethervision was a very strong frontrunner because of the body of work that they had previously illustrated and because they were very on point with hitting schedules for when we wanted to see certain documentation. They're very responsive and the people who work for Ethervision were very well known in their field, and they were generally nice guys, too. Besides the professionalism, they were very nice to deal with, they're very communicative and friendly on all given points.

What distinguishes Ethervision from other providers?

Besides just being very professional, I was impressed with Ethervision's pedigree in particular. They're very well-known mobile developers. Outside of this project, I've actually used some of the applications that Ethervision has worked on. Their team was also very personable.

Is there anything Ethervision could have improved or done differently?

The only concern I had is they tend to scale on the more expensive side of the vendors that we dealt with. To their credit, I think it's because they produce high-quality work.

Please describe your organization.

We manufacture and distribute life insurance products for the affluent and the emerging affluent marketplace.

What is your position?

I'm the vice president in charge of marketing and innovations for the life insurance division.

What business challenge were you trying to address with Ethervision?

When we started working together, I was a sales director for our Great Lakes Regional office in the Chicago area. I had three states and three salespeople reported to me. At the time, we were using spreadsheets to help track and facilitate a consistent, professional, and repeatable follow-up process to stay in contact with potential leads and potential clients. 

Due to the inefficiencies of that process, I sought out and was referred to Ethervision. I told them after a couple of meetings an idea in collaboration sharing. They went to the drawing board to create a mobile app that would create a much better experience and journey for this follow-up process. They succeeded greatly. They were able to put something together that met my budget, that met my timeline, ease of use – overall, a very positive experience.

Please describe the scope of their involvement in detail.

Toward the end, they did some training for the internal support teams to help with onboarding people with the care and maintenance of the app and on the back-end web portal as well. That was great.

They were also able to, from a consulting standpoint, talk about enhancement and customization for a couple of our key accounts that they had. We had one of our national sales directors on the phone with them and they were able to consult and explain in simple terms how this would apply and lead to additional revenue generating opportunities. It was an iOS app. We didn't go Android because my sales force doesn't use it. We were very specific in what we needed to accomplish.

How did you come to work with Ethervision?

I found them via referral. My process started as research online. I knew I wanted to develop and app. I knew what I wanted it to accomplish – what would have been defined as a win for me. I went online and was told by many links and sites that I can do this myself for a small fee. I paid a couple of those small fees and found that there's no way I'm ever going to be able to do this myself. I went to some local colleges and thought there should be some graduate students or smart college students who could help me do this. I talked to two of them and, once again, I knew there was no way I was actually going to accomplish what I wanted in the timeframe I needed to get it done. 

I went to a couple of the advisors I work with that I know are tech savvy and asked them for referrals and that's where I got – one of the first referrals I got was to [founder] Randall [Cross] and Ethervision. I met him in person. It was very convenient. He was very accommodating. We immediately hit it off. He's got a great background. He's got a great demeanor about him, and he's very good at asking questions and identifying what's most important.

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

It was from $10,000 to $50,000

What is the status of this engagement?

We had the project ready for launch about 14 to 15 months ago [2014]. That was great. We're actually ready to take it to another level. We're about to launch version 2.0 and we've had a good test run. We are about to take the relationship to another level.

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

Once the product was ready to launch, we went through a small pilot. There were 10 salespeople identified and they ran it. We went through some initial training with them both for the salesperson and their internal support person. We said use this for 30 days and see what the results are. We gave them the instructions on what the intentions were. 

Feedback was very positive. All 10 of them had about the same –three to five things that they'd like to see in a future enhancement. That was going to be an additional cost item. A couple of the changes we were able to make quickly and easily and that's where it was very easy to work with Randall and Aaron [Basil, director of development] to facilitate the changes. The larger pilot we went beyond that where we rolled it out to an additional 20 people. We did get some more feedback and we ran it by a couple of our national accounts to get feedback from them. Once again, pretty much the same –three to five enhancements that needed to be made for version 2.0 which were very consistent.

How did Ethervision perform from a project management standpoint?

Randall and Aaron certainly understood the feedback, made changes that were included in the servicing agreement that we have which was easy and then the other enhancements are going to be cost and upgrade enhancements which I knew going in because I wanted to develop it that way but I had a limited budget. All very positive feedback that I got. It's a very workable app. It has increased effectiveness and productivity for those that are using it. That's the result.

What distinguishes Ethervision from other providers?

I think they're big enough to take on large projects but, in this case, I felt like I was dealing with the guy in charge and one of the other main tech gurus at the company, and they got an opportunity to learn about what I was looking for in my company and myself. The personal touch and the fact that they understood what I was going for and what was the biggest focus items for me – that was a win.

Is there anything Ethervision could have improved or done differently?

It was a very positive experience. I've referred them to a couple people. I know they weren't the cheapest and they weren't the most expensive but, overall, this project was a huge win for me – I thought Ethervision did a great job and I liked their approach. If I went back and did the same thing again, I would hope for the same experience with them.