SeeSaw Labs

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO of a medical company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with SeeSaw Labs?

We hired them to act as our product team.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

The output was supposed to be mockups for our product — the initial designs we could use to present to our customers and identify our initial specifications.

The process of product mapping and developing was from scratch, starting with creating personas for the users who may interact with the system. We built a journey map for them. First, SeeSaw helped us we use Equip to define the amount of personas we had and what our success criteria was. In Equip, there’s a text editor that’s easy to share among team members, so we put visualizations inside to create a strong plan. We agreed on our initial personas and then further defined them.

The platform Miro helped us establish and keep touchpoints. It’s easy to share visual objects on there; it’s like a whiteboard that can be shared among everyone. You can make sticky notes and utilize organized shapes and templates for user journeys, customer empathy maps, etc. This process took multiple meetings.

We were new to using Figma, but SeeSaw guided use through leveraging it to produce a presentable mockup that reflected the correct experience to our customer. It’s a clickable experience that acts as a low-fidelity app.  

What is the team composition?

We’ve always engaged with Ivan (CTO) and Jeff (CEO), though they have more team members and designers in the background.

How did you come to work with SeeSaw Labs?

They were a recommendation from another company that was consulting for us and were good fit for us; they knew what they were doing. Able to act as a product team in addition to a development team, I searched for their reviews and read about them on Clutch. They’d worked with other medical companies and had received positive evaluations, and their designs looked fantastic. They checked all our boxes.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent around $30,000 with them.

What is the status of this engagement?

We’ve been working together since January 2022. They’ve completed the first phase of prototyping and are now going to provide full production.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

What best shows our success is the prototype. We had a limited amount of time to generate it, and SeeSaw was able to accomplish it. Their technical work has been fantastic – both the quality of design and the quality of the experience, especially in this short amount of time.

They’ve exceeded our expectations a little bit. We were able to show our customers that we were working according to plan.

How did SeeSaw Labs perform from a project management standpoint?

They’ve been fantastic. I would give them 9.5 out of 10. We communicate over Microsoft Teams; we use it internally and offered it to SeeSaw.

They’re very respectful of our time. We haven’t cancelled or delayed any meetings to this point. If there’s a hiccup, they notify us quickly and appraise us of their mitigation strategy. There haven’t been any surprises, which is excellent given our short timeframe.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their process stands out. We don’t have an internal product team, and SeeSaw has been able to think and innovate for something that started as imaginary. Their ability to put this imagination into a process and put out a reality that can be touched has been amazing.

Their process is very clear, and they continue to implement it as it’s updated. It allows us to reach our goals as we describe them. Rather than taking orders, they suggest the best options from their perspective to ensure that the output adds value. Other companies do what we want and then come back and say it didn’t work. SeeSaw gives us advice that we choose to accept or set aside.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I’m fairly experienced in the technical field with 10 years of expertise, and their process was very clear to me. This may not be the case for someone who’s less experienced, however. It could be seen as complicated or confusing. They might be able to do better in showing non-technical partners why the work is progressing in the order it is. Those types of customers would need a full overview of how the process would go

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Be clear about your vision and what you’re imagining so you don’t waste time trying to define this with them. This will get you the best product in the shortest amount of time. One of their biggest points is that they think with their clients. They will take time to clear up your idea, but if you come to them with this clarity first, you’ll be able to finish in a short amount of time.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We're a private equity-backed healthcare company providing prescription drug insurance specifically for hospices. We're based in Dallas, Texas, but we have our corporate headquarters in Raleigh, North Carolina.

I'm the president of the hospice business line associated with our parent company. In addition to the prescription drug services, we also provide a number of clinical advisory services to hospices. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with SeeSaw Labs?

We're behind the ball when it comes to technology as compared to the rest of the market and competitors in our space. Moreover, our IT team doesn't do product development effectively. In the past, we’ve had a lot of product development projects for the other business lines, but they were pretty high-cost, low-value projects. 

On top of that, our developers receive vague requirements since our products aren't well-defined. We then end up with products that aren’t what they’re supposed to be. As a result, I wanted to bring someone in who understands how to define a product properly and help us avoid bleeding money through development. The products we'll develop should also function in a market-leading way. 

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We've engaged SeeSaw Labs for product definition tasks and software development. We want to avoid major cost-related problems and have a much more polished process.

SeeSaw Labs scopes out everything we want to build in great detail so it can readily be handed off to our development team, which will then have everything they need to execute the product development process. We also need SeeSaw Labs to create a prescribed workflow to change the way we think about our needs, allowing us to focus on our higher-order problems. 

Our company also wants to create a better mobile environment for our customers. We have a call center that facilitates some of our functions, including our prior authorization management. Given that, SeeSaw Labs is creating a system to automate calls and enable secure communication between businesses and customers. 

In terms of software development, we’re creating a web app to replace much of our system. They’re also building functional prototypes for us. In the healthcare space, people face many challenges in terms of what they can download, especially when the device is a company-provided phone or computer. As a result, we’re keeping things as web-based as we can.

For tools and platforms, our company already exists in the Microsoft Azure Cloud. SeeSaw Labs have greater experience in the AWS cloud environment, but they have the resources for Azure.

What is the team composition?

One of their co-founders is my primary contact, but I mainly interact with the person who’s running the product design task. Then, there are people working on other tasks such as UI/UX design. 

How did you come to work with SeeSaw Labs?

My brother, who has a social robotics company, recommended SeeSaw Labs to me. He needed outsourced development support, and he wasn’t satisfied with the vendors he initially engaged with. Then, he found SeeSaw Labs, and he was happy with their development services. 

How much have you invested with them?

So far, we’ve spent around $150,000 on their services. 

We’ll start developing the project that they’ve scoped out, which will cost around $100,000. I’m expecting to pay another $150,000 or so for them to scope out other software development projects and do all actual development tasks. Overall, I anticipate spending anywhere from $250,000–$500,000 this year. 

What is the status of this engagement?

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

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

SeeSaw Labs’ work exceeded all of my expectations. They’ve helped us think differently about what it means to define a product, to know what problems to solve, and to understand what a customer needs. When we get into actual development, the success metrics will be around time and budget. In terms of general project evaluation, SeeSaw Labs hit all of their milestones and deliverables on time and with high quality — that in and of itself is great. 

The inordinate amount of documentation they provide has also been valuable to me. It covers everything that they’re doing, including their recommendations and the reasons behind them. Further, their wireframes and prototypes have helped us get useful user feedback. We can interact with the product before the actual build, which will help us save a lot of money in actual development. 

How did SeeSaw Labs perform from a project management standpoint?

SeeSaw Labs is top-notch on all fronts in terms of general client relations and project management. They’ve been extremely available to me. When I have questions, I can have a conversation with anyone about anything. I also expected to do a lot more work than what I’m doing now, but they’ve been owning the project.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’re exceptionally talented at product conceptualization as well as UI/UX design. They go above and beyond to understand exactly how the product is going to be used.

SeeSaw Labs has also been extremely ethical. Other vendors simply let the business run up enormous bills with little intervention, and none of them tells the client the best thing to do in terms of not wasting money.

Meanwhile, SeeSaw Labs has cautioned us at every turn from things that may result in unnecessary expense — even if that expense will be paid to them. I trust that they won’t do anything that would impact our business negatively because their process drives their recommendations.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I believe SeeSaw Labs is tied to their process because it’s the best for them. They hesitate to waver from such a process since it ultimately produces better results. However, being flexible to the environment that they’re in could help them improve. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

If you want to bring them in only to tell them exactly how things will be done, SeeSaw Labs may not be a good fit for you. However, if you want them to come in as experts, they’ll be a phenomenal asset. They’ll take the project, run with it, and you’ll get something great. 

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the president of Abstract Construction. We’re a midsized commercial general construction contractor. We exclusively work in Texas, and often Dallas.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Enterprise Mobility Xperts?

There were no CRM solutions on the market that addressed all the construction and real estate details we wanted to track in our acquisition process. Our is a relationship business and its driven by people we know. We don’t do public or hard-bids; it’s all select bidder or individually negotiated work. We needed a CRM that provided a picture of our entire network—projects and opportunities for the same tenant or building; who, internally, knows or has worked with someone else; budgets we made for projects that didn’t come to anything initially; leases that are going to be up soon.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Enterprise Mobility Xperts helped us build a CRM solution from scratch that was custom-tailored to us. It tracks every interaction we have with all the stakeholders involved in current or past projects. Reporting was our main requirement, so it produces 7–8 reports that are critical to our business.

Overall, the solution acts as a parking lot for leads. Field employees send information to the system and salespeople in the office follow up with the leads.

What is the team composition?

We’re working with 3–4 people.

How did you come to work with Enterprise Mobility Xperts?

I went to college with one of the principals, so I reached out to him to see if he could help us with this project. He said his company could do it, so we went with them.

How much have you invested with them?

In the end, we will have spent $50,000–$100,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started the project in January 2018 and it’s still ongoing. The CRM is live and collecting data, but we’re still developing features to catch other information. Introducing automation and integrating it with other construction software are going to be the focuses of the next burst of work.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The system is working exactly as we wanted for whom we wanted it to. With additional features, we’ll roll it out to everyone in the company. This is one of the best parts of Enterprise: They’ve taught us what’s possible and given us unique technology that can help many more parts of our business than we originally planned to address.

How did Enterprise Mobility Xperts perform from a project management standpoint?

They listened and grew to understand our business because they hadn’t work in our industry before. Rather than have a CRM that tracked sales and generated invoices, we needed to track all our interactions and link them to people in our company. They asked all the right questions about what we needed to track and why we wanted to track those things. And beyond that, they offered their own suggestions and insights.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We like working with their people. Everyone understands what we’re doing and has a 10,000-foot view of the work. Even better, they have the patience to deal with the granular details like a drop-down menu not working exactly how we want it to.

Are there any areas they could improve?

It’s been such a unique project that I can’t think of anything to make it better. Everything was communicated well, and we’re really satisfied with how we’ve gotten to where we’re at.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Have a firm idea of what you want, not a nebulous idea of a CRM solution. We were very specific and now have a tailored solution for our business. They didn’t have to dream up what we wanted because we came in with a fully baked idea.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there. 

I have my own consulting company, Delphi Analytics.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with SeeSaw Labs?

As a small organization, we do different types of data and financial consulting projects. I needed to hire an external resource to help us with website projects.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement? 

SeeSaw Labs did both web development and design. In terms of technology, they used PHP, SQL, and many others that I'm not aware of. They were involved from early inception before a product was fully defined. They helped us by laying out the options of what was possible and most economical. Then they used tools to help prioritize and focus attention on what needed to be done. Finally, they defined the product, built prototypes, and rolled out an MVP. It was everything from soup to nuts. 

What is the team composition? 

Jeff (CEO, SeeSaw Labs) acted as the technical lead and I was the subject matter expert. In total, I worked with three people from their team. 

How did you come to work with SeeSaw Labs? 

I read a book that Jeff published on the PHP framework. I was able to get in touch with him and develop a relationship with him through Delphi Analytics. 

How much have you invested with them?

I spent $100,000.

What is the status of this engagement? 

The work took place between May–November 2015.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

SeeSaw Labs took us from a prototype to actual proof of concept, allowing us to win multiple contracts. Because of that success, I continued to work with them for a number of years when I was working at another company.

How did SeeSaw Labs perform from a project management standpoint? 

Jeff’s project management was excellent. SeeSaw Labs was always in communication and did their best to juggle our multiple priorities. We used the full range of Slack, Trello, and phone calls to stay in touch. 

What did you find most impressive about them? 

SeeSaw Labs was willing to compromise on their end to help us get to where we needed to be. They were always going above and beyond what was expected. 

Are there any areas they could improve? 

No, there’s nothing I can think of.