Resolve Digital

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the manager of information services for a company that makes software for the medical community. I handle bridging the gap between the non-technical aspects of our company’s needs with the technical capabilities that Resolve Digital brings to the table. I organize high-level technical needs, functioning as a translator between the corporate and technical worlds.

We’ve made testing and learning tools for medical licensing tests for physicians’ assistants or medical schools in general. They allow for staff to see how the students are doing, administer exams for students, keep track of their grades, and other things of that nature.

What challenge were you trying to address with Resolve Digital?

We were having issues maintaining in-house development. We’re a small business, and having a full-time staff wasn't tenable at the time. At the time, we started looking at moving our application from on-site servers to the cloud. We decided that that would be a good time to work with an outsourced company.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We were on a Ruby on Rails app, and we’re moving it to Heroku. At the moment, we’re running two major projects at the same time. Resolve Digital brought in a couple of additional coders to accommodate that. Much like Heroku allows us to scale back our server needs, Resolve Digital is letting us scale our developer needs. 

We started with some legacy code, and we expected there to be a lot of issues because of the older infrastructure. We needed to move quickly because of security and compliance needs, and we just weren’t getting it done by ourselves. They had a developer with experience migrating old Ruby on Rails environments to new ones. We were going to allocate a year to the work, but he was able to do it in about two months because of his past experience.

We don’t need a full staff of 5–6 developers, but we may need it for a single project. We can bring back people we’ve worked with in the past through Resolve Digital. It alleviates all the management aspects from our end, so that we don’t have to manage the logistics of a development team. It’s nice for us to have a little buffer. 

Also, they reach out to us when they bring in new development talent suitable for our needs. We can bring those developers in temporarily to solve the needs much faster than the other developers. It’s really nice to have that flexibility. We have a team working with us, and, for all intents and purposes, they handle the bulk of our development needs.

What is the team composition?

I’m currently working with four people from their team. Throughout our relationship, I’d say we’ve worked with 9–10 different developers.

How did you come to work with Resolve Digital?

We’d worked with David (Partner and Director of Development, Resolve Digital) in the past, and reached out to him and his company.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent between $100,000–$250,000. This included our spent for the emergency integration with a third-party application, which required extra hours from them.

What is the status of this engagement?

We went with them as a full-time solution in June 2018. Our true relationship started at the start of 2018. It’s been ongoing for two years, and we plan to scale up their resources and double the allocated time with them.

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

I adopted a position with 8–9 years of legacy software. We had unpatched servers, everything was a nightmare, and the code wasn’t documented. It’s been less than two years, and we’re already moving on to new development. I didn’t think we’d clear the legacy debt this fast.

The legacy migration is still ongoing and that’s our fault. We had a relationship with a marketing company, and we don’t have a large marketing department. In order for that company to integrate with our system, Resolve Digital had to build a custom app. We have a legacy app that’s probably 20 years old. In order to properly integrate them into our system while protecting our data, we had to build a sub-application, or a new set of models and controllers in the code. Resolve Digital was able to knock that out in less than two months.

We have customers across the US and are starting to branch out to some international customers. We’ve flown Resolve Digital out a couple of times and met some of their developers in person. They’re great people.

How did Resolve Digital perform from a project management standpoint?

They get things done. After asking how many hours worth of resources the project would take, it was done. They hit the deadlines.

What did you find most impressive about them?

It’s their professionalism that stands out the most. In the US, in-house development resources tend to only stick around for a year or two. I know what it feels like to be a number on the payroll. 

They’ve been able to give us team that feels like a part of the family. We’ve had emergencies after-hours, and they’ve woken up in the middle of the night to help us solve those crises.

I’d give recommendations on any of the developers I’ve worked with through Resolve Digital. They have phenomenal abilities compared to other companies I’ve tried in the past. There was one person they started to bring in that didn’t fit, but they screened him out before he started working on code. They take measures to protect our process.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Our communication was tricky in the early stages, but that’s because we have a nontraditional communication system. I can’t say that I have negative feedback about them. I put out unrealistic timeframes, and they told us they couldn’t do that.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

Clients should meet with them and talk. If the client has the ability, they should spin them up and start with something small. 

They’re handling a big project with us very well, and they’re a great team for someone in an emergency. They stay in communication and reach out to us. 

If they have other clients that they need to be at work with, they will reach out to me and we’ll collaboratively make sure that they’re respecting us as a client as well as the needs of their other clients. We’re not their only client, but that’s what it feels like most of the time.