FortyAU

Please describe your company and your position there.

Advancing Practitioners is a healthcare services company providing Advanced Practice Providers to hospitals in the operating room.

For what projects/services did your company hire FortyAU?

We needed a custom software application to manage our scheduling and encounters for billing.

What were your goals for this project?

Build a Web-based application and a mobile app for our clinicians

How did you select this vendor?

Wanted a company that was local, could handle our development needs, had healthcare expertise and was priced right.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

Over several phases, we build a new system from the ground up. We automated all of our Excel spreadsheets into a cloud based data system. We built all company master data in the system. We also developed a mobile application for Android and iOS to support our remote mobile workforce.

What was the team composition?

FortyAU - 2 developers and 1 PM/Account manager (Andrew)

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

Our entire front-end revenue cycle process became paperless. We eliminate all of our Excel spreadsheets We became HIPAA compliant We integrated data from our customers EMRs and scheduling systems.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

I call it "Agile-light" project management. 2 week sprints. Very effective.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Their nimbleness and dedication impressed us.

Are there any areas for improvement?

Nothing is broken at FortyAU. Classy guys and "do the right thing" mentality.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the co-founder and CTO of a workplace social engagement platform. It’s a web-based platform, allowing employees to give time and money to their non-profit of choice through their work.

What challenge were you trying to address with FortyAU?

We were looking for developers who were strong in Python and JavaScript to help build a 2.0 version of the platform.

What was the scope of their involvement?

FortyAU developed the software service platform. The backend is in Python, the frontend in JavaScript and React. They also did the UI/UX.

What is the team composition?

We work with three software developers, a QA person, and a UI/UX person on an hourly basis.

How did you come to work with FortyAU?

After investigating several local firms, we chose them because their knowledge and expertise met our requirements.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in June 2019, and it is ongoing.

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

We work in agile, so our development cycles are quite tight — mainly two-week or one-week sprints. It’s hard to hide performance in the company, working closely together. Everyone is aware of how well everyone on the team is working. We had an impressive timeline with a lot of ground to cover, and we’ve fit it under the deadline so far.

How did FortyAU perform from a project management standpoint?

We handle that in-house. We hold stand-ups to point out what needs to be tackled, review the work, and start the next sprint.

What did you find most impressive about them?

FortyAU is very knowledgeable and flexible. They work intimately with the client.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They could convey their available resources and skill sets more clearly. I had to speak to some of the developers and their project managers to discover they were knowledgeable in specific areas that make them useful to the project. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Have your own in-house technical project manager or product owner. This makes it easier to distill project specifications and requirements to and examine what level of quality is satisfactory. This advice would apply to any outsourcing firm.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the president of a geo-positioning company.

What challenge were you trying to address with FortyAU?

We needed mobile app support as well as work with IoT infrastructure.

What was the scope of their involvement?

FortyAU has developed several user-facing mobile apps. For these, the developers work in iOS and Android using Raspberry Pi. 

They use Amazon Web service for the IoT component. It’s a sensor network which produces data for the user-facing apps. 

How did you come to work with FortyAU?

I knew of their company and was impressed with some of their work samples, especially in the computer vision space. I thought they’d be a great fit for the project. 

What is the status of this engagement?

The engagement began in Q1 of 2015 and is ongoing.

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

We’re extremely happy with what FortyAU has produced. The best testimony we have is that we’ve continued to work together with the team.

How did FortyAU perform from a project management standpoint?

The team has performed really well. They’re honest and realistic about timeframes and complexity. FortyAU also has a great ability to foresee problems down the road, and they can often identify a simpler or better way to go about tasks. They’re fantastic at analyzing a problem from multiple dimensions and coming up with a realistic assessment of how to solve it.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’re very heavy on software engineers and developers. There isn’t a huge layer of managers or other members who don’t contribute as significantly to the project. Instead, FortyAU offers exactly the team we need, made up of smart, fast developers. Everyone involved in the project brings value to it. It makes the engagement very efficient —we get extremely high-quality work at a competitive price.

Are there any areas they could improve?

There’s nothing that comes to mind. We’ve been really happy with what FortyAU has done.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Build a relationship of trust and give them as much information as you can upfront. Listen to FortyAU’s advice on technical decisions and future plans. Also, understand that if you want to make changes to the software, it can add significant overhead and complexity to the engagement.