The Refinery Haus

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am a technical advisor at Occord, a small business that assists health care companies with Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) compliance.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with The Refinery Haus?

My mother, the primary business owner of Occord, has been performing tasks manually for the past 15 years; she frequently travels to meet with clients, and she prints out all of her training material on paper. When I joined the company, I noticed that a lot of the work that she was doing could be automated. We agreed to build an online platform to help us optimize our time and resources.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

The Refinery Haus is building a web app, which will consist of two prominent pieces. The first will be a public-facing website that lists information about our business. It will also have a firewall-backed sign-in page, which will direct registered users to the actual app. With the app, there are two unique user paths for administrators and general employees. Developing the user experience is a collaborative effort between both of our teams, but The Refinery Haus has creative control over the design style.

Per OSHA requirements, all users have a unique username, and all practices must maintain records. To support this, we will have to continuously work with The Refinery Haus team to modify the backend. They are also developing an algorithm that prepares a custom OSHA manual based on survey responses. Training videos will also be hosted on the site, along with software that tracks how users engage with the media. An automated email system will send out reminder emails to users.

What is the team composition?

We interact with their CEO a lot due to our prior relationship, but we also work with their lead developer.

How did you come to work with The Refinery Haus?

I have known their owner for many years, so they were the first companies that I reached out to for this project. We talked to a few other development firms but ultimately decided to go with The Refinery Haus.

How much have you invested with them?

It costs us a little less than $200,000 to build the platform.

What is the status of this engagement?

We officially kicked off the project in November 2018, and we plan to wrap things up in June 2019.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We have conducted a few beta tests, and all the audience feedback mentions the user-friendly navigation. They did find a few issues with text readability, but The Refinery Haus was able to resolve the problems immediately.

How did The Refinery Haus perform from a project management standpoint?

Whenever I have questions, I send them a quick email or text; they always respond within a reasonable time frame.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The Refinery Haus is great at translating our language into digestible content for the average consumer.

Are there any areas they could improve?

The Refinery Haus is excelling in every area, so we have no complaints.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

In our experience, it is better to give The Refinery Haus creative control than to micromanage their design process. We didn’t give them a specific path too early in the project, which allowed them to develop ideas that we would never have considered.