Onebridge

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I'm the director of academic affairs and talent credentialing at the Indiana Commission for Higher Education (ICHE), the coordinating body with the public institutions in Indiana. My department deals with program approvals and credentials. 

What challenge were you trying to address with Onebridge?

We had a basic tool on one of our commission websites to help students, learners, and families to find schools that offer college programs at the post-secondary level they're interested in. However, we were really limited with the data we were able to feed the product, and it was in an outdated spreadsheet format. Moreover, the tool was very hard to maintain and plug into. We needed a vendor who could come in and update this product. 

What was the scope of their involvement?

Onebridge has updated our tool. They've plugged in all of our data from the registry system and made changes focused on usability. Although we had a tool already in place, there was no way to revamp it, so the team built it again from scratch. They redesigned it and plugged everything in.

The design had to follow our branding guidelines. We have a few different websites, and there are other tools in the state with similar functions, so Onebridge worked with other state agencies and our branding teammates to ensure the tool was consistent across the board.

Currently, we're working on phase two to improve the tool. We're also looking into a maintenance contract with them after the second phase. We're doing a big presentation of the tool in August, and we predict there will be enhancements that we want to make and that we'll engage Onebridge to do them.

What is the team composition?

We've worked with Kent (VP of Government Solutions), a developer, a designer, and Johnathan (ADM Practice Director), who acts as our business project manager. 

How did you come to work with Onebridge?

Since we're a state agency, we must jump through many hoops to select a vendor. Therefore, we submitted an RFP to a state service, and then vendors submitted proposals to them. Onebridge was part of that service's network, and that's how we found them. 

How much have you invested with them?

So far, we've spent about $115,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in April 2022, and the engagement is ongoing.

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

Onebridge has made our tool more user-friendly and appealing. We have 3,000 programs displayed in the tool, whereas before, we didn't have any programs, just school names. Once this phase ends, we'll see the number of page views and where users requesting more information, and we'll have more quantitative data. 

This has turned into a larger project due to the great work Onebridge has done. They've been able to push our product to the next level and make it better than we thought it would be. I've been really happy with them, and we'll probably use them again since they're so familiar with the tool, and they've been great to work with. 

How did Onebridge perform from a project management standpoint?

They're fantastic at project management. I've been in contact with the project manager and developer every day, and I really appreciate that daily communication. Instead of waiting a couple of weeks for a meeting, they ask questions on the spot to take care of things right away instead of wasting time and money. 

They've put all the information in an Excel spreadsheet to keep us updated. We communicate with the project management through email, and he's very responsive. For the design and development, we've primarily worked through the Microsoft Teams chat. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

I'm most impressed with Onebridge's communication skills. We've worked with other vendors that don't respond, or we don't hear from them at all for days or weeks. Meanwhile, Onebridge gets back to us the very next day, if not within a couple of hours.

They really care about what they're doing. The team took the time to research the higher education world and program-specific information to be in the know about the project before they even started. I also appreciate that they're local to us, so they're familiar with what's happening across Indiana.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They could have done the design a little more quickly and asked a few more questions about that process; that's the only thing I would say they could improve. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

My advice is to ask a lot of questions. Additionally, don't be afraid to have big ideas because Onebridge is willing to work with you and make them happen. 

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the VP and chief program officer for the Center for Leadership Development, a nonprofit organization.

What challenge were you trying to address with Onebridge?

We needed a company that could help us update our documentation. Our primary goal was to find the right technology to streamline our data collection efforts.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Onebridge reached out to us because they knew the type of work that they do, which is providing character development for young students of color. They know that we impact thousands of students per year here in our organization and that we were having problems providing accurate data points and quantitative and qualitative information.

We wanted to be able to share the impact of our program with our funders and stakeholders, so we started a program called Oracle, but it wasn't able to give us what we needed. We then decided to transition to Apricot, but all of our information did not seamlessly transfer to the Apricot platform, so we were still having trouble identifying accurate data to share. Our numbers kept changing, and we weren't confident in how we were sharing information with the public and our stakeholders.

So Onebrifdge reached out and helped us not only register our students, but they also helped us with our pre- and post-surveys, weekly assessments, and all kinds of demographic data from our organization. We had decades of information that we wanted to make sure was correctly input in and updated, and they helped us with all of it. 

They spent more than a day helping us update our alumni records using Apricot and also talking with the people at Apricot to see how they could help us do our job better. Onebridge also assisted us with some of our marketing initiatives. And finally, they helped us with recruitment and put together a database delivery tool that they used in order to assist us with getting more people enrolled in our program.

How did you come to work with Onebridge?

One of their employees is an alumnus of the Center for Leadership Development.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in September 2020, and the engagement is ongoing.

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

Onebridge has been able to help us update 526 alumni records in one day. They’ve also helped us update 472 alumni accounts. Aside from that, they volunteered at one of our galas, where we had over 1,400 people that they helped us assist throughout the event.

How did Onebridge perform from a project management standpoint?

Onebridge has been exceptional in terms of project management. They’re very approachable and helpful. They’re also able to provide us with helpful information that we can actually understand and share with our stakeholders, funders, and board.

We primarily communicated through Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Monday.com.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We really appreciate how invested Onebridge is in our organization’s success. They go above and beyond to help us be successful — we’ve been working together for almost two years, and they’re still here to continue supporting us.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, I have no complaints.

Please describe your company and your position there.

SpendBridge is a SaaS procure to pay software application, I am the Chief Executive Officer.

For what projects/services did your company hire Onebridge, and what were your goals?

We have added several large clients and needed to rewrite part of our application to scale for this growth.

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

We needed to ramp up our development output and have used a few off shore and in shore providers, including OneBridge. We decided to work with them because of favorable work product in the past.

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

With users and associated demand doubling every year on our application, we saw a decline in responsiveness in several important pages and functions in the application. We created spikes, user stories and the use of micro services to aid In scalability of the application. We added automated testing. Most of our application is written in MVC and React.

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

We had primary 5 people from OneBridge help us, an architect, a developer who created automated testing, a Data Base administrator, and two developers.

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

During the beginning of our work with OneBridge, our Director of Development got Covid 19 and was admitted to hospital for nearly tree months. The Architect from OneBridge was very instrumental in keeping us moving forward without a key stakeholder. All of the OneBridge teammates did fabulous work.

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

We have a fractional Project Manager assigned to make sure communication was well executed. OneBridge teammates joined the SpendBridge team each day for standup.

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

They have good-natured, hard-working people who really cared about our firm and positive outcomes.

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

We had some turnover in staff at the beginning of the project, OneBridge worked hard to replace quickly and with solid performers.