Rapson Technologies

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

We have a mission is to globally support and empower patients with allergies, airways and atopic diseases by protecting their rights and insisting on the duties of governments, healthcare professionals and the general public. I serve as the Executive Director.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

We are an NGO with limited resources and staff. To achieve our goals to amplify our messages, we needed a partner to focus on our social media efforts. We have also used Rapson for content and design services periodically since beginning our relationship

SOLUTION

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

Rapson was recommended by member organizations that utilized its services. The understanding of our space and community and recommendations were all deciding factors.

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

Our team meets weekly to discuss our social media timelines and projects.

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

We have two steady team members at this time.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Our social media reach has increased steadily since onboarding Rapson.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Communication is consistent, but does require more internal management and oversight than anticipated.

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

We're impressed with the breadth of the services they offer and their accessibility across time zones.

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

Developing a toolkit for organizations to best utilize their services would be a value added service to help the process run smoothly and identify rules of engagement. This would be appealing to the smaller organizations that do not have a formal vendor management process.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the founder of a digital cinema company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Rapson Technologies?

I needed work done with web development. I had a shortage of IT staff, and I hired Rapson Technologies to help me solve my IT problems.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Our business specifics are constantly changing. We had a training period for them to understand what we were doing and why we were doing it. They participated in coding and best practices training, which is still ongoing for some of our applications' codebase.

Since then, they have helped with the development of my existing application and the optimization of it, taking part in new projects as well.

What is the team composition?

There’s one person.

How did you come to work with Rapson Technologies?

I received an overwhelming number of requests on LinkedIn. I ignored this queue until the day I needed help, then I checked who had sent me information in the past and checked their references.

Rapson Technologies was available quickly, and they had a profile that fit my requirements. I decided to give them a try.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve invested €20,000 (approximately $21,500 USD).

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in July 2019, and the work is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Their availability and flexibility have been very helpful. They understand my business needs and are able to answer them. They make quick updates, and our clients are happy.

How did Rapson Technologies perform from a project management standpoint?

We communicate through Slack and Jira on a daily basis. Once or twice a day, we do sprint and video sharing with the developer in India.

Also, their communication is very good. They have a spirit of talking, rather than a spirit of arguing. If we have issues, we come together and find agreement openly.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The team at Rapson Technologies always been able to meet my needs. They have a pool of talent and people that are available and flexible to expand the development if needed.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They need to make sure the budget is controlled because sometimes they work a lot of hours without asking us, and then they bill us for them. We need to control the time they work.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

With any offshoring, you need to have your specifications very clear. They need to have most of the details on paper, otherwise, project drift may occur.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We’re a nonprofit foundation for patients and healthcare professionals focused on chronic respiratory diseases. We focus on digital health in Europe, Latin America, and Asian countries. I’m a human resources and project coordinator.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Rapson Technologies?

We’d been working with another company in the same field to develop our monitoring system for chronic patients. It’s a digital health tool to monitor the progress, lifestyle, and medication of patients.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Rapson developed an online platform for us. It’s GDPR-compliant, meaning that it complies with European privacy and clinical data protection rules. That’s the most difficult level to reach, even higher than the American HIPAA. It’s important to mention because it’s difficult to achieve compliance in Europe.

In terms of features, healthcare professionals can monitor groups of patients, and patients can authorize different healthcare professionals to monitor them. This includes not only primary care doctors, but also pneumologists, psychologists, physiotherapists, and whichever other professionals they need to interact with to monitor their progress.

There’s also a chatbot, monitoring algorithms, and AI components to predict people’s behavior.

What is the team composition?

We’re only in contact with two of them, but they have more people working under them. We’re in contact with Ravi (Global Head of Sales and Marketing, Rapson Technologies) and a project manager. I visited their India office two years ago.

How did you come to work with Rapson Technologies?

We were looking online for IT companies in India that had worked in the healthcare sector before. We’re a European foundation, but I live in Singapore, which made it easy to go to India and check out the provider before hiring them. We first made a Google search for companies that had pharma or healthcare associations. These are more difficult fields to work in, given all the compliances.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent €20,000–€25,000 (around $22,100–$27,650 USD) with them so far.

What is the status of this engagement?

Rapson is new, but they come from the previous company we were working with. We started with them in 2016 or 2017, but they’ve only been Rapson for this last year because they changed their name.

Our current project with them is building an AI chat tool inside the platform, and I believe we started it with Rapson in July 2019.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Rapson has proposed new listening and social behavior prediction tools and technologies to us. These have helped us know what’s out there in the market and improve things we were doing manually.

Every software has bugs, but the platform is pretty reliable, and it’s compliant, which is the most important thing. They’ve delivered within time and budget, and they’re very pushy for the deadlines.

How did Rapson Technologies perform from a project management standpoint?

I’d give them five stars for everything except project management. They’re not used to dealing with European clients, and there are a lot of laws and a lot of bureaucracy in Europe. They’re used to working in a fast manner but there are lots of middle steps in Europe. They haven’t learned the complexities around European and health-related clients yet. In that sense, they can be impatient about they’ve had a learning curve around that.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The quality of their team and their knowledge stands out. They have a lot of knowledgeable and prepared people that can work in a multitude of languages and environments. They work really hard.

Are there any areas they could improve?

In terms of handling non-Asian clients, they need to learn how to be less pushy. A project deadline can be delayed because of government issues, and they need to be more patient with their clients.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

Clients should define the scope of work in a very detailed manner, make sure that the deadlines are agreed on, and contemplate flexibility on those deadlines. That’s important for bigger solutions.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the CEO of my company. We are a technology solutions company

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

We hired Rapson Technology to build a native android and IOS application for one of our platforms

SOLUTION

How did you select Rapson Technologies and what were the deciding factors?

They contacted us via email and after an interview process we decided to hire them

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

They were tonuse our UI/UX design to build the app and also integrate it with two third party applications. They were to submit functioning codes and full documentation after the project.

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

1 person from the venfor team worked with us and he was the project manager

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The project was a disaster. It ran over schedule and the company kept pressuring us to pay even without reaching the agreed milestones. They eventually submitted extremely buggy codes with very poor documentation.

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

They were not very customer focused and the project manager was not a pleasure to work with at all. All they cared about was the money.

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

Nothing

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

They should really care about the quality of work they deliver