W2S Solutions

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

We are a healthcare consulting and performance coaching service, specializing in environmental cleaning, disinfection, and infection control. We work with hospitals and long-term care facilities across North America, to improve their performance in their self-operated infection control environmental hygiene program.

What is your position?

I am the president of the company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with W2S Solutions?

The project was related to a specific client application. The challenge was coming up with a technology solution to incorporate data points from three distinct environmental disinfecting systems, which had completely different scoring scales and algorithms attached to them, and bring that data to a common repository. Secondly, we had to organize it in a consistent framework that could be brought back to the customer. We had created a blueprint of a scoring algorithm that transposed the actual data into a common framework. Their task was to automate the process.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement in greater detail.

The challenging component for them was that they had to take a fairly complex algorithm and set of logic points, and automate it. There were a number of points that had to be factored in and conditioned.

How did you come to work with W2S Solutions?

I knew of them because their Chief Executive Officer and I had become acquainted years ago. I got to know of their capabilities, and it was only a question of picking up the phone and telling them that I had a challenge. He said “Sure, we'll figure it out”.

Could you provide a sense of the size of this initiative in financial terms?

It was about $75,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

The project started December 2013. It is complete, and we still selectively work with them on smaller projects.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

I think that they ultimately were successful in delivering what we needed. The quality of the product is high and they delivered within the price quoted. There were no overdues or change orders. Delivery time was a bit over, by a couple of weeks, I think. It was within our customer's range though.

They were very good. There was some fine tuning that had to be done; more so because the client kept discovering new situations when they actually started having data. They discovered all sorts of new complications and factors that had to be pulled in. We kept having to go back and asking about this and that. This was outside of the original framework that we gave them, to be fair. They were able to take each new curve and build it in.

How did W2S Solutions perform from a project management standpoint?

We were kept informed along the way. As far as deadlines and milestones, W2S Solutions delivered as they promised.

What distinguishes W2S Solutions from other providers?

Their ability to interpret what we were trying to achieve, and articulate it back to us, genuinely impressed us. We had their team on a joint discovery call with us and our client. Quite frankly, we probably did a terrible job of crisply articulating what we were looking for. We probably babbled and contradicted ourselves, and yet, they took all that and reversed back to us a pretty well organized scope of work, objective statement, and deliverables. I was impressed by that. They very nicely told us what we desired. I think that that was their strength: they could interpret our needs and desires, and reframe it back to us, in a structured way.

Is there anything W2S Solutions could have improved or done differently?

There were a couple of times, in training and education, where the customers would say they could get an answer from them, but only if they get to the right person. Their overall customer handling, for a North American audience, needs a North American interface perhaps. Sometimes, things got lost in translation. It rarely was substance, rather perception. When we encouraged the customer to call their customer service, they told us they tried that but they're still fuzzy. We would have to intervene to facilitate communication sometimes.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

We are a small consultancy and business support agency, which specializes in focusing on culture engagement, supporting managers and leaders in developing strong cultures. We work with a range of clients, both in the United Kingdom and internationally.

What is your position?

I am a cofounder and one of the directors of the company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with W2S Solutions?

Part of our positioning, as a company, is based on the business book that my cofounder and myself wrote. It's a book that looks at how managers engage their employees, and the key skills and traits that they need. Through the research with the book, we identified a number of factors that can be measured around strong engagement within leaders. We wanted to formalize this into a tool that would allow us to measure capacity and capability within a specific population. We had all the research and data. The challenge was creating a tool that we could use with a number of people who could be trusted, give us accurate data, and would relay to other organizations, for them to use. When we went to W2S, we had just an idea, the data, and nothing else.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement in detail.

I cannot remember the specific technology they used. They created a web application. My requirement was straightforward: I needed it to work across all platforms and operating systems and to have a tablet version. That was my spec, and it was up to them to decide their approach.

How did you come to work with W2S Solutions?

I've known the company's founder [Madhu Kesavan] for some time. He's delivered other, smaller projects for me. I'd always found his approach to be in tune with my requirements. He was always very good at focusing on the details, on the how. By contrast, I would have the big expansive ideas, with no thought on what it could look like in practicality. I turned to him and a few other companies I'd worked with, and we put out a competitive tender, but also a solution. W2S were the most cost-effective, but also the ones that understood what we were looking for. I could see from their proposal that they were starting to think about implications and applications that didn't even occur to me. It made sense to go with a company that was cost-effective, but also like-minded to us.

Could you provide a sense of the size of this initiative in financial terms?

It is in the range of £30,000 [approximately $4,500].

What is the status of this engagement?

We started the projects around three years ago. The first phase lasted for six months. From there, we continued to make further enhancements, and to have the next level created. That was a year and a half ago. We've had a couple of enhancements implemented during the last year. They still co-manage the application on our behalf and have made a few small implementations.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

The main success factor is it working as specified. In that sense, it's a 100 percent success. I needed it to do very specific things and produce specific results. The tool works by turning insight into metric. We would present a list of questions, the respondents self-score the questions, and the system itself creates a report based on those results as compared to a norm group. The formulas within it are massively complex. You have to create standardized numbers and compare one score with another. The key factor, in terms of the tool being trusted by our clients, was the results being stable and accurate. When it ran live, we had an extensive testing period to ensure that, compared to my research data, the output of the tool was accurate. It's a complete success. It does exactly what I need it to do.

The other measure of quality, for us, is the uptime of the system, which has been very high. There were a couple of points where third-party systems had changed, we spotted it, and they updated the necessary areas immediately. You can't fault them for speed.

Any ongoing developments have been very flexible. They always knew that we would do more with it. They didn't build it and think it was finished, but made sure that we could add other elements: 360-degree feedback, group reporting, and so on. A measure of success was how quickly we could add on the new functions rather than doing a massive rebuild. It is a very scalable tool.

In terms of general finish quality, it's built to a very high spec. We just gave them the templates of the reports. The actual interface was created by them; it's nice and user friendly. They could see the need for certain things being in certain ways. They were co-designing, not just having me say, "Do this." Rather, it was them telling me, "If you do this, this will happen." They changed some of my thinking, to make sure we got a better product. Overall, it was a very positive experience with them.

How did W2S Solutions perform from a project management standpoint?

The budget we set didn't shift and they met their deadlines. We were probably a bit late on things like testing and providing data. In terms of hitting the key milestones, all the way through, they were ahead of us. We were playing catch-up with W2S Solutions, rather than the other way around. Compared to some other software companies, this was a refreshing change.

What distinguishes W2S Solutions from other providers?

The can-do attitude. Nothing is a problem to them. They immediately say, "Yes, we can do that." They don't think of how expensive they can build something, but rather realistically focus on making what you want quickly.

Their CEO is someone in whose hands you feel safe. They are an international company, and there's always the worry of losing track and control of your project. With the team there, though, you never feel that. Their attitude, more than anything else, distinguishes them. I really enjoy working with them, and I'm eager to find the next piece of work to do with them.

Is there anything W2S Solutions could have improved or done differently?

The only thing would be that they're not the right people for writing the descriptions and names for things. Occasionally, you will find something named quite randomly or find a mistype. They are not copywriters, and are not necessarily proofreaders. I had to make sure that, where I had specific text requirements, I was more explicit in telling them which words to use, rather than letting them second guess. It is something that they can sharpen up, but it is a shared responsibility. This is more of a caution for working with any software company.