LD Studios

Introduce your business and what you do there.

It’s a non-profit, all-volunteer organization of therapists. It’s called the LGBTQ Therapist Resource. I’m the president of the board and one of the co-founders. Basically, we are a group of therapists who work with the LGBT community that wanted to be sure that people in Atlanta, and Georgia at large, who are looking for therapists, have a way to find a therapist that they know are safe.

What challenge were you trying to address with LD Studios?

We have a database which LD Studios helped us create. People can come to the site, search for therapists, and everyone who’s in our database is safe and well-trained to work with that population.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We’re all therapists, and so we have no idea about the technology side of things. We just contacted Daniel and Lauren and kind of described what we wanted, which was a database that would be searchable by multiple fields. It’s searchable by zip code, specialty, and type of insurance that the therapist accepts. Later, they came back and created for us an additional interface where our members could go in and update their profiles on their own. They’ve been able to figure out how to make the database do everything that we have wanted. I can’t really speak to what programs or types of technology were used.

How did you come to work with LD Studios?

When we approached them, we did not think that it would be pro bono work. I knew Daniel from a kickball team we were both on a couple of years ago. I knew that he had just opened his own business recently. I was hoping that since we are a non-profit, we might be able to get a really good deal. Then, they came back and offered to do it pro bono, so that was even better.

How much have you invested with LD Studios?

LD graciously offered to do it pro bono.

What is the status of this engagement?

It was probably January of last year that we started talking to them. We launched the database in January of this year, but a lot of that initial year was us figuring out what exactly we wanted. Once they started working on the database, it didn’t take long at all to get it launched. That happened in January. Then, we just recently decided that we needed the therapist to be able to log in and update their own stuff. Daniel was able to create that whole extra interface for us.

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

I’m not really sure about stats. Again, we’re a bunch of therapists. We probably don’t check up on the use of the database, like site views and all of that as much as we should. I don’t have any specific numbers or anything. Other organizations who work with LGBT populations, but not in a mental health capacity, have also been able to utilize the database to find resources for their clients.

How did LD Studios perform from a project management standpoint?

Daniel and I had a couple of sessions where we chatted on the phone. I don’t remember what program we used for him to talk me through the database, but we had several calls. It was really personable, so I always just talked to Daniel directly. He very easily understood what it was that I was looking for and suggested a couple things, especially as someone who has no idea what it was that I was even asking for. It was just a very easy and understandable process.

What did you find most impressive about LD Studios?

Obviously, we’re extremely grateful that they decided to do it pro bono. We thought going into this that we might end up with something that could do some of the things we wanted it to but maybe not all of the things that we needed it to. It’s ended up doing everything that we wanted, and then even things that we came up with later. It’s also really pretty from a design standpoint. It fit in well with the rest of our Weebly based website. We were just really pleased with how well it all turned out.

Are there any areas LD Studios could improve?

No.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Chrome Capital is the nation’s largest lessor of Harley Davidson's. I am the chief executive officer.

What challenge were you trying to address with LD Studios?

We required an end-to-end management system that begins at the dealer-specific portal level and runs all the way through the guts of the business.

What was the scope of their involvement?

There are three primary things we worked on with LD Studios. The first and largest project is the Chrome LOS [lease origination system]. This is the dealer portal which is backstopped by our value algorithms, our tax module, and a documentation module which includes a PDF creation feature that delivers to the desktop signature ready lease packages so a dealer can actually perfect a deal on the spot. The project migrated into a lease asset management system. We call that our LAS. The third piece is hooking in Salesforce as the facilitator for distributing the data that’s generated in those components, and then hanging various applications off of that to refine it further. The most important element to start this company was to be sure we had a single system into which data would flow. I didn’t want to have multiple systems where the same data was entered multiple times. We’ve accomplished that and it works extraordinarily well. It’s very efficient.

It’s built with Ruby on Rails. A thought or idea can be exploited in a very rapid fashion. They’ve taken the care to know our business intimately, and they’ve written an application that’s quite powerful for our business.

How did you come to work with LD Studios?

We met Daniel at one of the larger Ruby on Rails development firms. This was three years ago. We were making great progress with Daniel, but one day he called and said he got a job offer to go to a much larger firm to be a chief technology officer. So he left and we were left in the middle of this organization who knew nothing about us or our program. We weren’t making progress, but we had kept in touch with Daniel. We needed to fix the original code that was done by a one-man shop in California. If you change something somewhere, it was very likely that it was going to blow something up on the other side. The group that started working with us started to fix some of that, but they weren’t making great progress. When Daniel decided it wasn’t going to work for a great big company, he opened his own shop and we were his first client. He’s very careful about how he approaches a project and he’s been very helpful.

As we continued to grow, Daniel added other developers who are really excellent guys. They understand the business and how it needs to perform, and what it needs to deliver. We have PDFs that we use for contracts and powers of attorney. We do retitling projects. They set up a system for us to load a PDF and can get data at a rapid rate. It creates PDFs in perfect real time and it allows anybody to print the file off and utilize it. We’re able to execute on contracts and other types of data on a massive scale.

How much have you invested with LD Studios?

We have spent between $300,000 and $500,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started in 2014. It’s ongoing.

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

The time savings for Chrome Capital translates directly to the fact that we don’t have to hire more underwriters. Our underwriters are responsible for interfacing with dealers. They’ll help them structure a deal and the dealer will push a button that says request lease docs. Prior to the PDF project, the underwriting staff was tasked with constructing the PDF package, stitching it together and shipping it off to the dealer in an email. That process took 12 to 18 minutes per contract. With four underwriters, they were busy all day long. We’ve reduced that time to a minute. Our underwriters are now focused on structuring deals, not assembling PDF packages. It’s been an extraordinary cost savings for us.

How did LD Studios perform from a project management standpoint?

We use Pivotal Tracker, which we like. The Agile format that they use is accommodating. The weekly meetings are tight and focused. It’s quite good. Any project like this has software creep and we need to keep that organized. It’s a shared responsibility to manage the project in a budget that is acceptable.

What did you find most impressive about LD Studios?

I really appreciate the care with which they have written the code. It’s exceptionally clean code.

Are there any areas LD Studios could improve?

No. They’re a growing company. I think they’ve done a great job of attracting talent that works really well for our application. They’re very responsive.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We’re an institutional review board. It’s a panel primarily of physicians and others that review clinical research. The primary reason for their review is for subjects of those to participate and research their best interest. We’ve been around 25 years.

I am the Director of Quality Management, and I also oversee the software project.

What challenge were you trying to address with LD Studios?

They’ve done our annual audits for our IT company that we consult with. We’ve been with the IT company for ten years. They also audit our existing software system. Because we recently purchased new software, they also audited that for us for the first time last December.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We’re very regulated here. There are FDA regulations that guide us as far as software. We have forms and we ask them to go through them. If additional information is needed, they probe for that. When that’s done, they write a summary report making recommendations. This includes HIPAA compliance and 21CFR 11 compliance.

How did you come to work with LD Studios?

We worked with Dan Rice a long time. He was with Sterling before I was with Sterling. Back then, we were pretty simple as far as technology goes, and he built some programs to help a manual system work better. He was also instrumental in recommending DocuWare, which was an electronic file management system. He went on his own for a lot of years. When I knew we were going to do these audits, I called him to see if he would be interested in it. He was a known commodity to us. Normally, we have a vendor qualification process. In this case we just went with him.

How much have you invested with LD Studios?

This is confidential.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them a couple of years ago. Working with Dan would have been ten years ago. It’s ongoing.

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

We were such a manual institution. He came in and thought of some simplistic things that he could do to make life easier for us. We still use one of those things he created.

How did LD Studios perform from a project management standpoint?

We spoke with them about doing the audits, and they were very proactive in contacting the vendors and getting it done. It wasn’t a huge project. The feedback was thoughtful. There was follow-up correspondence with the vendors.

What did you find most impressive about LD Studios?

Our use with them was just limited.

Are there any areas LD Studios could improve?

Not really. For what we used them for, it was fine.