Motivate Design NYC

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Our company manufactures a wide variety of hospital bed ranging from simple mechanical designs to high tech therapy beds for a global market. I am the US based Director of Product Management and Marketing.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Motivate Design NYC, and what were your goals?

Bed technology is going digital, they are outfitted with a variety of sensors and therapeutic process. As with any product this data has become valuable to both the end user and the manufacturer. The issue for hospital beds is that they were not traditionally "connected" devices. We had a simple software product that collected the data from our beds, but it lacked any additional features.

Our goal was to provide both a useful and easy to use interface to display the stream of data coming from the bed, as well as an ability to produce meaningful reports based on the data that had been accumulated about that specific bed and the groups of beds being monitored. In addition to simply producing software, we needed market analysis to decide on key features that would bring the most impact to our data.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

Software development and the accompanying market research are typically done in two stages and with two different companies. We run a very lean operation and what we were looking for was a single source for both the marketing support (Voice of Customer Research) and technical - the thought being that we could speed up the process and reduce the duplication of work. At first, we were genuinely frustrated with the search process, referrals, reviews and interviews just produced more questions and were lengthening our timeline.

Our internal team found Direct People and we began the interview process with them and quickly found that they were a very dynamic and broad ranging company. They provided a wealth of references and immediately helped us better define the scope of our project and even some of the technical development issues even prior to entering into a formal contract.

Their team was invested and engaged from the moment we started the review process and this high level of commitment stayed through the whole process and into the project. Ultimately it was the overall value that we found to be most compelling, a single project management structure that handled both the marketing side as well as the development side that helped us reduce the duplication of efforts and provided a tight timeline. And all thought we did not scope this in the beginning of the project, their team was able to provide ongoing long-term support for the product they developed.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and technologies used.

Due to the proprietary nature of the product, I will provide more general items for this review, but suffice to say they delivered a fully functional product that is currently deployed and the basis for ongoing development.

• Voice of customer / Market research
• personal interviews, data analysis
• Key feature development and refinement of display dashboard
• SQL database development
• Server development
• User manual development
• Sales tool development
• Remote access development
• Report structure development
• Pricing structure development
• Branding
• Long-Term product roadmap development

Their team provided us with constant updates via both regular video calls, as well as JIRA. The management process was very well executed.

How many people from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

Probably the most important aspect of both using this company and our satisfaction with the process was the management process. We were assigned a primary point of contact, a partner - who managed the whole process and each step of the process more team members were added, but the continuity was provided by our main contact.

Key team Members:

• Senior Software Engineer
• Project Managers - for each section (software, marketing, support tools, etc.)
• Marketing professionals (Graphics and Content)
• Very quickly their team became "our" team and the synergies allowed for rapid progression of the project

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

The project was launched on-time to the global team and has exceeded sales goals and stimulated a greater internal interest in digital product development

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timeliness.

Regular Teams/Zoom Calls JIRA/GITHUB for software Regular written updates Several in-person reviews. The overall management process was extremely thorough and interactive.

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

COLLABORATION Every company promises this level of collaboration, and few can actually deliver. They helped us refine our scope and feature set for the product and expand our market knowledge.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

There was a little "creep" in our scope and a little more push back from their team would have helped, though this was not a major issue.