BARIDATA Case Study

Accelerance Client Case Study - BARIDATA

“With Accelerance and the outsourced team we are able to bring a quality product to market that was inexpensively coded and quickly completed.”

The problem - Sink or swim…

The development team was behind schedule. Client commitments were looming.  The new BARIDATA CEO Mark Miles was under pressure to find a solution.  It was sink or swim.   And, it was the holiday week between Christmas and New Year when few people are at their desks. Mark needed to quickly bring a functioning product to market, in a cost effective way, before the money ran out. 

Dr. Gary Matson, a thought leader in bariatric medicine (the treatment of obesity), realized the Internet could provide a better way manage and integrate care for his patients.  His idea was the genesis for BARIDATA, a web-based, on-line, on-demand electronic medical records and management/communication system for weight management that gives patients and medical providers an efficient method for communicating, exchanging medical records, and assessing patient progress to help patients live longer, healthier lives.  

Dr. Matson is also a shrewd businessperson.  He knew that he didn’t want or need to set up a software development department or buy hardware servers to host the application.  He chose OpSource as the hosting firm for the application, using software as a service (SaaS) business model.  He hired a US-based outsourced software development firm to develop the product. 

“We have a competitive edge by being a 100% organically grown SaaS-model company,” says Dr. Gary Matson.  “We offer our customers a lower total cost of ownership plus the flexibility for customization and integration of data from other medical applications.” 

When new CEO Mark Miles came onboard six months after software development began, product development was behind schedule and milestones were not being met. BARIDATA clients were anxiously awaiting the first version. The competitive situation was heating up.  Something had to change. And FAST.  

Accelerance “instantly” recommends best-fit teams 

Mark knew that he had to find a new outsourcing team.  However, he was absolutely new to software engineering and outsourcing.  “It was pretty overwhelming,” he said.  “We were under pressure to meet client commitments.  It was sink or swim.”  Accelerance helped him understand how the software development process works and how to select a best-fit outsourced firm. 

Accelerance met with Mark On December 27.  Using tools from the Accelerance Outsourcing Jumpstart service, Accelerance quickly identified five pre-qualified teams, from the Accelerance Global Partner Network of software development outsourcers that fit BARIDATA’s technical and application experience requirements.   Of these, BARIDATA selected two teams for small trial projects (pieces that could be integrated into the overall application) to test each teams’ capabilities and compatibility. 

On the first week of January, Mark provided specs of the components he wanted each team to work on.  By the second week of January, both teams were writing code.  Mark was interested in how quickly the teams jumped on the project, their level of communication, how much creative input they could give on product development going forward, cultural fit, language fit, price, and how well they could work together.
 
 “If we had stuck with the original onshore outsourced team, without adding resources, the product would have been delayed six-to-nine months and would have been four-to-six times more expensive,” Mark said.

Less than three months after starting – the product is in alpha test

BARIDATA selected the team from India.  The team took a copy of the product manual and verbal instructions then compared the desired product with the current source code.  They were able to quickly assess the gaps, fix the bugs, generate new code from scratch, refine, and create a functioning alpha version of the product, plus provided QA testing. All in two and one-half months. Testing continues.  The product is expected to release much more quickly than it would have otherwise.

“Our outsourced vendor has worked with health care companies in the past.  From a technical perspective, they bring that experience as an added value to writing the software code,” Mark says.

The result:

BARIDATA’s goal from the outset was to operate as economically as possible, with the lowest possible cost structure.  OpSource serves as the “operations division,” so that BARIDATA doesn’t need to spend money on infrastructure.  Accelerance and the outsourced vendor are providing the software development and QA, quickly and economically. 

“By working with Accelerance we were able to save months in the search process for a highly capable outsourced development team.  As this was my first time outsourcing, I relied on Accelerance’s guidance in making the team selection, negotiating our contract, and getting the program quickly setup and running.  The outsourced team has helped us reduce costs and quickly got us to alpha. They are better, cheaper, and faster. We plan on continuing with them as our long-term Offshore Development Center, growing as we grow.  Accelerance and the outsourced team have done excellent work and saved us a great deal of money,” Mark said.

Accelerance and its outsourced vendor provided a reliable software development process and qualified and experienced engineers. This led to high quality results and a dramatically lower price. Compared to staying with the original team, savings over nine months would be an estimated $800,000. 

Compared to searching on his own and selecting and starting up with a team in three months, BARIDATA would have spent an additional $350,000 in programming and search costs, may or may not have selected a great team, and would still be many months from completing the project. 

“With Accelerance and our offshore partner, we are able to accelerate our time to market, and deliver a high quality product, at a fraction of the cost.”