What was the scope of their involvement?
One of our obstacles was that the product had to be simple. Initially, the plan was to have some of the people in our firm maintain the data for the clients, but we saw the potential for the program to be either moved or accessed by the client down the road. For this reason, we had to design it in a way that would make it easy for the attorneys and the client to use, so we wanted a simple product that could be handled by anyone regardless of their technical skill level. It was simple data, but it was important for the client.
We also wanted an easy way for the attorneys to access the information and maintain it on a regular basis. The database also involved lookup tables and information with many-to-many relationships.
We gave New Peak Solutions’ developers a layout and showed them how everything was related. They came up with a database structure and handled the CRM integration. Overall, they worked on two separate projects for us for the same client, one which was a web project and the other a mobile app.
What is the team composition?
We worked with two people from their team, Eugene (Partner, New Peak Solutions) and Adam (Director of Custom Development, New Peak Solutions). Another member was involved in database design. We had meetings with Eugene and Adam, provided a preliminary structure for the data to be maintained, and showed them how the attorneys were initially maintaining the information, namely through Word documents.
How did you come to work with New Peak Solutions?
I know Eugene from a collaboration at a previous firm, which we both left to do other things. While I stayed in the legal industry, he went on to start his current company, which I found out about from a colleague. Two weeks later, my manager approached me about this project, and even though we were working with another company at the time, I saw it as a good opportunity to onboard a local partner that actually did have a legal background.
How much have you invested with them?
I don’t remember the exact amount but the two projects combined had a cost of around $16,000–$22,000.
What is the status of this engagement?
We started speaking with them around February 2015. The web application project is complete for now, and we’ve been using it for close to two years. It’s working well, but we need to add new fields, so I’m sure we’ll do more work with New Peak Solutions for that. The original development took around a year, much of that consisting of waiting for feedback from attorneys. That was record time, considering the complexity of the project and that the source data was quite scattered.
The mobile project app only took us three months to develop and it just had an update done. Its structure is basically complete, but we may need new additions in the future.
While both solutions are complete and are being put to use, they will require future updates which will be handled by New Peak Solutions. The project team excelled at creating the exact solution that was desired from the start thanks to their industry experience and nearly perfect deliverables.