Click here to download the paper.

NIIT Technologies became an independent organization in 2004, after spinning off from NIIT Ltd., India’s Global Talent Development Corporation which was established in 1981 with an objective to bring people and computers together, it has been heralded by independent media as a key catalyst for India’s IT growth.  NIIT Technologies has made strategic acquisitions and joint ventures to boost its offerings in its chosen verticals like the acquisition of German-based Softec Gmbh, a specialist revenue accounting and operation solutions provider addressing the airlines segment and ROOM Solutions of the UK, a leading player in the commercial Insurance market. Very recently NIIT Technologies entered into a (60:40) joint venture with Georgia – based media company Morris Communications. The new joint venture – NIIT Media Technologies – will offer integrated IT and business process outsourcing (BPO) services in North America.

Customers of NIIT Technologies have spoken in independent media and conferences on the association decision with NIIT citing high touch account management, superior service delivery, flexible contracts and ability to constantly reduce cost and increase productivity as the key parameters. The company is co-founded by Rajendra Singh Pawar, co-founder and Chairman of NASSCOM (India’s IT trade body) and Padma Bhushan (India’s third highest civilian honor).

Service Lines

NIIT Technologies focuses on the well-defined industry verticals of:

• Insurance
• Travel, Transportation and Logistics (Hospitality)
• Financial Services
• Media
• Healthcare
• Manufacturing & Retail

Financial Services:

• Data security, compliances
• Legacy maintenance and modernization
• New product lines
• IT Application support and maintenance
• IT Infrastructure support

Insurance:

NIIT Technologies has been servicing the Insurance Industry for over 17 years. The black book report has ranked NIIT Technologies as number 2 in the Insurance Industry. It contributes 33% to NIIT’s consolidated revenues.

• Channel and Customer Interface Solutions
• Core Systems, Legacy Modernization
• Enabling core Insurance Business Processes
• Regulatory Compliance and Tax Environments
• Intellectual Property-Solutions and Solution Accelerators
• Value Added Services

Travel, Transportation and Logistics:

Data monitor Black Book Report has ranked NIIT Technologies # 1 in the Travel Industry three times in a row. It has end-end business solutions in this space.

• Airlines and Travel Distribution
• Airports
• Surface Transport and Logistics
• Hospitality

NIIT Healthcare:

NIIT Technologies has launched an all-new Healthcare Division based in Orlando, Fla.

With a core philosophy focused on helping healthcare providers bridge the care gap, its products and services are designed to address continuity of care, which ultimately – and definitively – results in better clinical outcomes, increased patient satisfaction and improved physician loyalty.

The two products offered by this division are Preferr and MASH. Preferr is a SaaS-based electronic health records and referral management platform. By enabling a seamless collaboration between all providers – physician practices, hospitals, outpatient and diagnostic facilities, and laboratories – Preferr improves continuity and quality of care for the patient and improves physician connectivity.  M A S H (Manage, Analyze, Sustain, and Harness) is a one-of-a kind industry framework that connects the patient, the physician and the provider on a common technology platform. M A S H delivers various applications to transform the patient experience at different interaction touch points. The Check-in application on MASH reduces the check-in time by 80%.

NIIT Media Technologies:

NIIT Media Technologies (NMT) was formed by the joint venture between NIIT Technologies and Morris Communications. It is the world’s first solutions and services firm to provide media companies with comprehensive, media industry-specific, business and IT solutions and both front- and back-office operations delivery. With a track record of nearly 100 years of media industry, business process and technology expertise, NMT helps media companies enhance their operational efficiency, reduce their operating expenses and increase their revenue. NMT’s core offerings include:

• End-End Business Process Delivery
• Advertising and Sales Management Solutions
• IT and Business Consulting

Distinctive Capabilities

• Focus – work in very few verticals, have long client relationships – some contracts are over 15 years
• Flexible Contracts – business client’s way
• Management focus – senior management a part of steering committee review in all strategic accounts
• Future proofing the business – NIIT’s group company is one of the largest IT education service providers and largest in Asia, NIIT can build comprehensive, highly efficient ecosystem to support your IT and Business process needs. Many clients have successfully leveraged this model.
• Onsite Datacenter and Call Center – superior Disaster Recovery and true best shore offering

NIIT Technologies at a Glance

• Revenues: 280 Mn in 2010-2011
• Employees: 6200
• Verticals Globally: Insurance, Banking and Financial Services, Travel, Logistics and Hospitality, Media, Healthcare
• Service lines: Application Development Management, IT Infrastructure Management, Packaged Implementation, BPO
• Headquarters location: Atlanta, GA in North America and New Delhi in India
• Data Center and Call Center in US: Augusta, Georgia and Atlanta, Georgia

For More Information

• Telephone: 770 551 9494
• Fax: 770 551 9229
• E-mail: aninda.bose@niit-tech.com
• Web site URL: http://www.niit-tech.com

Certifications

• ISO 9001:2000
• SEI CMM Level 5
• CMMi Level 5
• ISO 27001

Awards and Recognitions

• NIIT Technologies Ranked No.1 globally among IT Outsourcers in Travel Industry Survey and #2 in Financial Services and Insurance, Datamonitor Black Book of Outsourcing 2010 survey
• Ranked No. 3 globally amongst 1800 IT outsourcers in Data monitor Black Book of Outsourcing 2010 survey, largest investigation with clients using outsourcing
• NIIT Technologies was ranked among top 3 globally by the American Society for Training and Development (ASTD) in the 2010 ASTD ‘BEST’ Awards.
• Novarica 2011 – Market Navigator (leading P&C provider for Insurance market)
• Ranked amongst Top 20 IT Outsourcing Vendors, ranked globally by the Global Services Survey 2010.
• Ranked amongst Top 10 Emerging ADM Vendors, ranked globally by the Global Services Survey 2010.
• Ranked amongst top 7 service providers in Gartner’s Industry research report in 2010 ”Seven Vendors Dominate the European Market for General Insurance Policy Administration Systems”
• NIIT Technologies receives the “National Award” for innovation in career development by the Global HR Excellence Awards at the Global HRD Congress 2010
• NIIT Technologies was amongst the Top 100 IT organizations ranked globally by IAOP. Best 20 in Financial Services and Insurance (no ranking), Best 5 in Travel 2009-2010
• Recognized amongst the top 50 IT Innovators for the year 2009 and 2008 by NASSCOM
• Awarded the Distinguished Services Award for their initiatives and efforts in promoting business with USA by Georgia Tech Center for International Business Education & Research

Case Studies

• http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20110912006552/en/NIIT-Technologies-Launches-Solutions-North-American-Airline
• http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20110713006207/en/NIIT-Technologies-Enters-Strategic-Partnership-Morris-Communications
• http://www.niit-tech.com/media/media-release/niit-technologies-ranked-no1-globally-among-it-outsourcers-travel-industry-surve

NIIT Technologies’ Slogan

“Best and Big Enough”

Existing customers have independently ranked us to be the most significant and focused partner providing superior services, meeting and exceeding agreed deliverables, hence providing highest customer satisfaction in independent surveys.

TriZetto was founded in 1997 and employs 2,450 people. One hundred percent of its revenue is derived from providing solutions to the healthcare industry. TriZetto has over 330 payer customers, which include health plans, benefits administrators and over 60% of Blue Cross Blue Shield plans. TriZetto processes 27% of managed Medicare and 46% of managed Medicaid on its systems. TriZetto is owned by Apax Partners, BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee and the Regence Group.

Only TriZetto has invested in a long-term architectural approach to bring core, care and constituent capabilities together with services to deliver a powerful solution that helps payers triple their operating margins while supporting new initiatives—value-based incentives, payment bundling, and new delivery models like Exchanges.

Service lines

TriZetto focuses only on the healthcare industry and provides solutions that meet 5010 and ICD-10 compliance initiatives, drive administrative efficiency, improve the cost and quality of care and compete to win in the new era of healthcare reform. TriZetto provides services for all lines of business including commercial, specialty, Medicare and Medicaid. TriZetto’s staff has extensive experience with plans working across all lines of business and supporting local, provider-owned plans, regional Blue Cross Blue Shield plans and national payers.

Because leading software is not enough to win in today’s healthcare market, TriZetto continues to expand the scale and scope of its services capabilities. In 2010, TriZetto signed a strategic agreement with Syntel to expand its IT services. In 2010, it also acquired Tela Sourcing to expand its BPO capabilities including full BPO; front-end; enrollment; billing; claims administration; configuration; customer service and Medicare-specific enrollment, eligibility and reconciliation. With the acquisitions, TriZetto has more than 70 customers and can now offer outsourcing on both TriZetto and non-TriZetto applications.

Distinctive capabilities

TriZetto Advantage Services help payers increase administrative efficiencies. Managing more than 30M lives in its data center, TriZetto has the scale to drive and manage the business of healthcare. More importantly, it has the proven best practices and proprietary tools to execute scale with the efficiency and precision that drives bottom line results. TriZetto BPO customers typically save between 20-40% for core administrative functions. TriZetto Hosting customers typically achieve a 3% or better operating margin; adding BPO to that integration picture can improve the operating margin to almost 6%.

TriZetto at a glance

• Year founded: 1997
• Revenues: TriZetto is a private company and does not report revenue
• Employees: 2,450
• Service lines: BPO, Application Management and Hosting, and Consulting
• Headquarters location: Greenwood Village, CO
• Locations of global delivery centers: Pune, India; Baltimore, MD; St. Louis, MO; Naperville, IL

For more information

• Telephone: 800-569-1222
• Fax: NA
• E-mail: salesinfo@trizetto.com
• Web site URL: www.trizetto.com

Certifications

• SAS 70
• ISO 9001

Representative awards/industry recognition

• 2010 VAR 500
• 2010 HCI 500
• InformationWeek 500 2010
• 2010 Software 500
• 2011 Support Capability and Performance (SCP) Certification from Service Strategies Corporation
• Ten Best Web Support Sites, 2009, The Association of Support Professionals

Additional content

• TriZetto’s QNXT Ranked #1 for a Third Year in Gartner 2011 MarketScope Research
• Can include one graphic (suggestions: diagrams illustrating market share, growth, methodologies): NA
• URLs for to up to 3 of your customer case studies: NA

Company slogan

Powering Integrated Healthcare Management

Main marketing message

Through the power of integration, TriZetto Hosting customers typically achieve a 3% or better operating margin than those not using our integrated solutions; adding BPO to that integration picture can improve the operating margin to almost 6%.

Systems In Motion’s investment in a truly agile, domestic technology development capability provides high performing US enterprises with the perfect balance between cost, expertise and business alignment needed to drive growth in a dynamic marketplace.

Service Lines

Systems In Motion’s key areas of expertise include the following horizontal services:

• IT Strategy and Consulting
• Application Development and Management
• Integrated Testing
• Business Intelligence and Data warehousing

Primary areas of vertical expertise include:

• Financial Services
• Healthcare
• Retail
• Telecom
• Manufacturing

Distinctive Capabilities

Systems In Motion is changing the status quo in the outsourcing industry. It is no longer true that a US enterprise has to go offshore to create cost efficiency for their technology investments. Though our focus on local workforce development, a strong foundation of operational expertise tightly integrated with deep domain consulting capability, Systems In Motion has developed a service model that is a true competitive differentiator for our customers.

Our Company at a Glance

• Year founded – 2009
• Revenues – Annual Revenue Run-rate is currently $22 million
• Employees – Total staff of 200+
• Service lines – Application Development, Application Management, Testing, BI/EDW
• Headquarters location – Fremont, CA
• Locations of global delivery centers – Ann Arbor, MI

For More Information

• Telephone – (415) 367-4479
• Fax – (510) 795-1421
• E-mail – info@systemsinmotion.com
• Web site URL – www.systemsinmotion.com

Recognitions

“I’m very impressed with Systems In Motion. Your engagement manager is a rock star, and the team outperforms my expectations in terms of their flexibility and commitment to quality. After working with large offshore companies for many years, I firmly believe that Systems In Motion’s Inshore delivery model is the right balance of agility and cost-performance for fast growing companies like Chegg. ”
- Chuck Geiger, CTO, Chegg.com

Case Studies

http://www.systemsinmotion.com/customers.html

Outsourcing Center studied this question within the context of 26 BPO relationships that were nominated in 2011 for its annual Outsourcing Excellence Awards program. The customers and providers ranked these relationships as highly successful in partnering aspects and in delivering the expected value proposition.

Even so, the study found that 69 percent of the relationships experienced some significant challenges that impacted the provider’s ability to continually provide the expected level of service.

The biggest challenges encountered by 69 percent of the studied relationships include (listed in order of most frequently cited):

1. Meeting the requirement for year-over-year cost reduction while at the same time increasing the volume of the work and also pushing the productivity level. Several buyers commented that this stretched-resources situation can cause burn-out among the provider’s employees and lead to higher attrition.
2. Changing market conditions and regulations in certain industries (especially healthcare, financial services and telecommunications). In most cases, it led to a need for different strategies in order maintain the buyer’s competitiveness in its market.
3. Delays from multiple hand-offs due to multisourcing.
4. New product releases in technology supporting the outsourced business processes; keeping up with the changes, fixing bugs, etc. cause a challenge in end-user adoption.
5. Short time line for launching expanded services. To achieve success in the time constraints required “over-managing,” which added costs and some relationship issues.
6. Surge in volume of work and need to ramp up quickly because the buyer’s pace of growth was higher than what the parties initially forecasted.
7. Having to keep our eyes on the ball everywhere to make sure that improvements in one area do not cause a negative impact to another area and lead to the service provider having to focus its attention from month to month on whichever area is experiencing trouble.
8. Conflicts that arise around the speed of decision making and communications about changes to all stakeholders, which are due to the differences in corporate cultures of the provider and customer.
9. Changes in organizational structure and/or top executives in either company led to changes in stakeholder priorities.

These challenges serve as alerts to companies planning for future outsourcing arrangements. While such situations are known risks that buyers and providers often include in the planning stages before signing their contracts, it’s important to note that companies seldom anticipate the full extent of the impact from these risks. With the exception of challenge #9 above, each company in the 26 studied relationships recognized these risks up front; but all underestimated the impact that such challenges would cause to the providers’ ability to deliver to expected performance levels.

Our IT portfolio consists of E-Commerce, Business Intelligence, Content Management, Third Party Testing and Custom Solutions.  In SCM, we specialize in Source-to-Pay (S2P), Procure-to-Pay (P2P), Spend Management and MRO.  Corbus offers a complete set of PMO solutions including Project Management Capability Assessment, Project Recovery, Project Plan Validation and the Project Audit, and Enterprise Project Management Software.  Corbus has been a leading Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) provider offering Procurement, Supply Chain, E-Commerce and Credit Services.

Corbus creates technology-empowered solutions with industry leading processes and technologies that deliver business value to global clients through year-on-year savings. We are known for our ability to work in true partnership with clients to innovate and bring cost reduction along with enhanced product quality.  Corbus’ alliances allow for effective use of resources and modern knowledge and technology.  With competitive positioning and complete transparency, Corbus and clients together achieve success.

Corbus is a global organization, headquartered in North America with presence in Europe and Asia Pacific markets. Corbus is a wholly owned subsidiary of Soin International LLC, a private multi-national holding company that provides strategic management, administrative systems, and financial support to a diverse array of worldwide subsidiaries and affiliates.

Service Lines

• E-Commerce
• Web Application Development
• Business Analytics
• Digital Marketing
• Mobility Solutions
• Cloud Enablement
• Strategic Sourcing
• Supply Chain Platforms & Tools

Corbus at a Glance

• Founded: 1994
• Employees: 700+
• Service lines: Aviation, Consumer Package Goods (CPG), Retail, Oil & Gas, Manufacturing, Media, Healthcare, Publishing
• Headquarters location: Dayton, Ohio
• Locations of global delivery centers: United States, United Kingdom, China, India, Switzerland

For More Information

Telephone: +1 888-608-9975
Fax: (937) 586-3059
E-mail: sales@corbus.com
www.corbus.com

Certifications

• ISO 9001:2008
• Six Sigma
• ISO 27001
• ITIL
• Certified Minority Business Enterprise

Awards and Recognitions

• Innovation Award
• Amity HR Excellence Award for Overall Corporate Culture
• Golden Peacock National Quality Award
• Business Journal “Best Places to Work”
• The Global Outsourcing 100 List
• “India’s Best Companies to work for”
• “Fast 25″ by Business Journal
• “Exciting Emerging Companies to Work for”
• “Amity Corporate Excellence Award for Leveraging Technology in Global Business”

Companies turn to NuuKo for executive advice in healthcare

Companies needing advice typically hire consultants to help them. But few of the consultants have C-suite experience and expertise. Now they can turn to NuuKo, a consortium of retired C-level executives, for help. Currently the company is focusing on the healthcare vertical.

“In today’s rapidly changing world, it’s becoming more and more difficult for C-level executives to get their hands around the healthcare issue. It’s harder than ever to understand the dynamics. They want to add top experts into the mix,” says Doug Poretz, NuuKo Co-founder.

He says enterprises are discovering they need to “be smart in niches at 100,000 feet.” Few, if any, have that kind of talent in-house, so the chief option was to hire a $300-an-hour consultant. But companies, he says, found consulting bureaucratic and slow. “They thought they would get help from the rainmaker, but they ended up with a recent MBA who was learning from the client instead of the other way around,” Poretz says. “Nuuko’s goal is to provide true experts quickly.”

Poretz says he founded the firm two years ago because there is now a wealth of retired C-level executives both available and willing to work. “There is a monstrous pool of talent that’s untapped,” Poretz observes. “At 65, people want to quit their jobs, but they don’t want to quit their careers.”

NuuKo experts retired from Fortune 500 companies. “They don’t want to spend every day on leisure activities. They want to remain useful, they like being in the game, and they still want to make money,” he explains. Working for the fee-based provider, these executives can work on their own schedules. They don’t want to return to a full-time position.

However, they also don’t want to handle the back-office details or do any of the marketing necessary. NuuKo does all the billing, marketing, and support for them.

The boom for home-based call center companies

Jared Fletcher, Vice President, VSC Operations for Arise Virtual Solutions, an outsourcing service provider specializing in at-home workers, says the number of older workers providing customer service, sales, and tech support for Arise’s clients increased 30 percent in 2010. Arise defines an older worker as anyone 45 or older. Currently the oldest worker servicing clients is 78, he reports.

The numbers are similar at Alpine Access, another home-based call center service provider. Remi Killen-Weber, HR Project Manager, says the company has 641 employees over the age of 50; 137 of those are over 60. While the average age of Alpine Access workers is 38, the number of people over 50 increased threefold in the last 12 months. “We will continue to see this trend happen,” she posits.

Fletcher says the wide-scale reductions in force created a large pool of experienced, unemployed workers. Fletcher says these people are looking for a full-time opportunity. On the other hand, retirees have found the low interest rates on their investments are eroding their budgets; funds are running out early. “They are looking for supplemental income” and flexible part-time work, he explains.

Outsourcing service providers welcome this trend. “Generally, older workers are more seasoned. They have maturity and responsibility,” he explains. “They tend to show up more often than a 20-year-old who is a less focused on generating income, and they deliver excellent results,” the Arise executive explains.

Killen-Weber reports older workers currently are the company’s top performers. The service provider found older workers handle phone calls in a shorter time while achieving higher customer satisfaction scores.

How home-based workers work

All virtual agents at Arise sign a statement of work commitment that they will provide services between a minimum of 15 and 20 hours a week. But they can work 100 hours if they choose. “One of our clients provides roadside assistance. We answer calls 24/7. There are plenty of options if our home-based workers want the hours. Our agents choose the clients they want to support and the hours they want to work, including evenings and weekends,” Fletcher says.

Jackie Booley, 65, is a customer care professional for Alpine Access. She retired from AT&T in 2007, having worked in a bricks-and-mortar call center for 15 years.

She went back to work in 2009 when her financial adviser told her that her nest egg cracked, thanks to falling stock prices. She turned on her computer, Googled “work from home,” and discovered Alpine Access. “I checked them out to make sure it wasn’t a scam,” she says. Then she submitted her resume.

“I love working from home. I don’t have to go anywhere if we have a hurricane,” she says. (She lives in Florida.) “I don’t have to do my hair or buy work clothes. I love my bedroom-slipper job.”

She currently answers calls for Office Depot six hours a day. “They don’t care which six hours,” she says. “I’m not a morning person, so I work from 2:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m.,” she continues. Her office is her guest bedroom.

Booley loves the satisfaction she gets from helping people. One older gentleman in upstate New York ordered 15 cases of paper. The order clearly stated not to leave the cases in front of the garage. Of course that’s exactly what the truck driver did. It was snowing and the customer couldn’t lift the cases. Booley saved the day by having the courier move the paper to his front door.

She does not get lonely because Alpine Access set up a virtual break room. She can type “I need help” and get it. “There’s always someone to ask,” she explains.

She’s proud that Alpine Access only hires U.S. workers. “This is the best job I’ve had in my life,” Booley notes.

Emerging markets will play a “big role” in altering the business mix of medical device manufacturers, posits Jyotirmay Datta, Global Industry Head for Medical Devices for Wipro.

Medical devices include any and everything physicians and caregivers use to treat patients or deliver healthcare services. Surgical equipment, MRI scanners, pacemakers, stents, medication delivery systems, imaging and diagnostic equipment, and even hospital workflow management and archiving tools (e.g. PACS) fall into the medical-device category. Major manufacturers include GE, Johnson & Johnson, Medtronic, Philips, and Siemens.

Until the current recession, Datta notes most of these manufacturers enjoyed operating margins of more than 20 percent serving the developed world and successfully growing their business. “They had no incentive to seek new markets,” he explains. The current economic conditions, coupled with strong Asian competitors, changed that viewpoint. “Consumers now have less discretionary funds to spend on healthcare,” he explains. Government regulation is adding to the challenging business environment, he adds. The result: these manufacturers are under “keen growth and cost pressures in their home markets,” continues Datta.

The answer is clear. “These companies have to look at growth options elsewhere,” says the Wipro executive. Emerging markets, especially China and India but also Brazil and Russia, are adding one billion new patients into the global healthcare system “who are relatively untouched,” he estimates. He predicts these markets will “become increasingly important to the medical device manufacturers in the next three to five years.”

The challenge: devices that are affordable for emerging markets

In India, for example, healthcare currently accounts for just three percent of the gross domestic product, Datta says. “There’s enormous potential,” he believes.

However, there is one major challenge: cost. Datta, quoting from other studies, states members of the Indian middle class earn $4,500 per annum. Currently they spend about $6 per year for medical devices; in the United States consumers average $230 a year. “A medical device conceived and successful in America is not likely to sell in China or India as is,” he says matter of factly. Manufacturers either have to find a way to bring costs down or come up with different products.

Datta says they can do that by changing their research and development, their processes, and their technology. “They can’t just replicate what they are doing in the Western market if they are going to be successful in the emerging markets,” says Datta.

How Wipro helps medical device firms compete in emerging markets

That’s where Wipro comes in. Its consulting team can help medical-device manufacturers do just that.

Many of the major manufacturers already have set up plants in India. Wipro has the experience to help others set up supply chains in these markets. Ditto for their distribution systems and validated processes. Wipro is also capable of aiding them in brand building, “which has to be different.”

Currently Wipro is the one of the world’s largest third-party research and development services companies according to Datta. Wipro’s 18,000 engineers can aid the manufacturers in developing new, affordable products end-to-end.

One example is Wipro’s Telehealth Solution, a device that enables effective patient monitoring in remote places. It automatically captures vital data from various devices (like blood pressure monitors) and then transmits the data through wireless or wired connections to patient management systems. It has live video and audio for real-time patient-caregiver interaction. The Telehealth device can deliver quality care at an affordable cost to patients globally.

In addition, compliance to global requirements can be a challenge for medical device manufacturers. Legal scrutiny can be difficult in various markets. Wipro has a regulatory practice that is up-to-date with the latest policies from regulatory bodies and associations worldwide. Wipro’s knowledge ensures engineering specifications meet the requisite criteria.
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Finally, Wipro, a company having its roots in India, has a deep understanding of how to do business in Asia and the Middle East. “We understand the Indian market and can help companies gain a foothold in the Indian market,” he says. Indian’s population of 1.2 billion people “is a huge market for anybody.” Last year he says 50 percent of the $1.7 billion worth of medical devices Indians purchased were imported. But he predicts that should change by 2015. In the next few decades he expects the Indian appetite for medical devices to equal that of the United States and larger than any market in Europe.

Different routes to success

The Wipro executive reports there are several current strategies for success. Large players “with money and muscle” are setting up their own captives. Some medium-sized firms are forming joint ventures with local players. Some of the larger Indian companies are buying smaller European companies to enter their markets. “They are designing products for the Indian market and also selling them in their European market,” he explains. And some have partnered with Wipro itself.

Lower device costs can help make everyone healthy: consumers globally who can now afford the device and the manufacturers that make them.

However, there is a solution available today that enables them to avoid the risks and costs associated with the typical manner of moving toward full payment automation.

This paper discusses the barriers to full healthcare payment process automation and a cost-effective, simple solution for overcoming the barriers.

Click here to download this paper.

“We had three choices: interview and hire a team in house that could build what we needed, outsource it in the United States, or outsource it offshore. It was too difficult for us to find the right resources, vet those resources, and have the ability to swap resources with the right skills in and out of the project as needed. And that resource flexibility was too expensive in the United States. So that was a strong case for exploring offshore. When we compared it on a cost basis, it was really a no-brainer – the offshore solution was half the cost of a U.S. solution,” says Lee Essner, CEO.

Although it’s common for companies of all sizes to outsource R&D or product engineering, success is not guaranteed. There is always the risk of expanded time line and costs. There are also intellectual property risks, communication risks if the product development team is offshore, and these days there’s a significant likelihood of a merger or acquisition occurring in the midst of an R&D initiative.

Inherited Health overcame all these issues and also structured its outsourcing relationship to ensure collaboration and a partnering approach. Essner shares his company’s experience and insights into successful R&D outsourcing.

Choosing a service provider

“A partnering approach is absolutely vital in R&D. But there are so many service providers out there, and finding a true partner is a challenge,” states Essner.

Inherited Health started out as AccessDNA, a basic online genetic health screening process to help consumers identify their risks of inherited diseases. In January 2010, after talking with consumers to learn more about their needs and what they were interested in knowing about their family health, the company rebranded as Inherited Health and shifted its focus to improving its product and services in three aspects:

• Expanding the intake process of collecting information about clients’ family health
• Expanding the output to provide more disease risk assessment and follow-on information about the risks
• Adding a viral functionality to easily enable people to collaborate with their family to find out who had diseases in order to build a more comprehensive family health history.

The company outsourced the building of those three functionalities into its system to Core Objects. Essner had known the CEO of Core Objects from the LA software start-up community and liked his aggressive approach. When the provider’s CEO met with the Inherited Health team, they were impressed at how well he understood their business and their concerns, which convinced them that the provider would take a partnering and flexible approach.

And the provider demonstrated that approach right away. Inherited Health’s system was built on .Net. “We had to decide whether to throw away our system, build on it, or go for open source,” says Essner. The service provider did an assessment and decided to build on our existing system because it was the most cost-effective route for Inherited Health. “It would have been easy for them to throw it out and start from scratch. I applaud them for not doing that,” says Essner.

“Any project will have its hiccup moments,” says Essner. That’s when the partnering, or lack of it, really becomes evident. Inherited Health’s product development had a very quick time frame for launch, so the company requested that no resources be allocated to the project that were not the most capable among the provider’s resources. But the quality of work produced by one of the resources was poor and resulted in the need to redo a piece.

“They pulled in three to five extra resources to fix this problem, and they stopped billing us,” recalls Essner. “They took accountability. Only partners do that, not vendors.”

“So we had fears when our partner got acquired nine months later,” he adds. But Symphony Services walked them through the acquisition and also kept the same people on the team who had been doing the work before the acquisition. “Even though we are an extremely small client for them, Symphony showed us they would be our partner and made it clear that they wanted to work with us.”

The provider’s healthcare domain expertise was also a decision factor. Wayne Irwin, Executive Vice President and General Manager of Embedded & Telecom at Symphony Services, comments that companies have shifted away from basic outsourced development activities and now look for providers that have specific industry knowledge. For instance, in healthcare, the provider needs to understand the regulations and necessary certifications and how to integrate payment systems.

The provider also needs to understand specific use of technology expertise within an industry. “As an example, our customers not only want to know if we have the appropriate number of engineers who have wireless LAN expertise but also if those wireless LAN experts have expertise in the healthcare domain,” says Irwin.

Collaboration and flexibility

Irwin explains that Symphony Services, an outsourced product development company providing end-to-end services through the product development life cycle, always prefers to take a collaborative approach to product development. “Inherited Health came to us with ideas on where they wanted to go with enhancing their product, but they didn’t have a roadmap of how they were going to get there. We collaborated with them on how to develop it.”

He says that most of Symphony’s clients expect collaborative activity and some push back from the provider on some ideas, as there are a lot of different ways to do something. Essner states there were “definitely moments where Symphony had suggestions of better ways to skin the cat to make things faster and more efficient.” Pop-ups on the Web site, for instance, allow consumers to tag a family member that has a disease and then add relevant data. But the way Inherited Health originally specified the project, the pop-ups were too slow and didn’t allow the healthcare company to do all that it wanted to do with the data. Symphony suggested modifications, and now the system works faster and smoothly.

“They are also good at suggesting ways to do things with an eye to scalability for future changes,” says Essner. The original idea was to collect hereditary disease information on two generations in a family, but Symphony suggested a way to scale up to three generations.

Now that the Web site is in beta and the project is in the optimization phase, the two companies are collaborating on iterations resulting from user feedback and collaborating on finding the right market fit for the Inherited Health product and services.

Irwin says ensuring collaboration begins with an open mindset in both companies. The customer needs to be open to the provider’s guidance along the way based on its expertise. The provider needs to listen with an open mind to the customer’s needs so it won’t be too stubborn in pushing back or insisting on a certain way to accomplish the goals.

Smaller companies are more flexible and open-minded in the design stages, he explains. Larger companies usually have an internal strategic group that has already thought through the design stages before outsourcing it and just needs a provider to work the specs to develop and implement the product.

Symphony also conducts user experience testing and planning, but clients can’t realize the real benefits of this process if they aren’t open-minded. “We’ve had clients that debate user survey results, analysis, and research results. But they need to be open-minded around the information the data provides.” Cost constraints and concerns about the user testing results that could trigger the need for more work cause some clients to be inflexible in this area, thus hindering the collaboration. In these cases Irwin points out the need for the provider to be flexible and adopt the business model of just working purely around the statement of work and specifications, yet continuing to reaffirm the direction, asking “Are you sure this is what you want?”

Communication and control

A major aspect of facilitating a collaborative environment was two critical strategies Inherited Health put in place at the outset to avoid communication risks.

“I felt the biggest risk in offshoring R&D was the lack of proximity to the team and intermittent communication. That obviously could cause us to be in a situation where the offshore resources go down a path for 24 hours that not’s necessarily the right path,” says Essner.

The “number-one ground rule” he put in place was that the offshore team should never make any assumptions. If they didn’t know something or if an issue could go one way or the other, they were to ask Inherited Health.

“We set it up so that whenever they had suggestions or issues, they wouldn’t make assumptions and had to engage in conversation with us, making it very collaborative. So when there was a question, they would have an answer based on what we wanted and not what they thought we wanted,” says Essner.

Good specifications and use cases were also important factors.

The second strategy critical to success was having a local presence from the offshore team to facilitate communication. Essner admits the lack of a local presence from the offshore team “would not take a lot away” or impact success because they had a strong relationship with the senior offshore person. “But having a strong technical guy here locally to facilitate communication gave us a level of comfort.”

“In smaller companies, entrepreneurial companies, the dollars are coming directly out of their pocket,” explains Irwin. “So the loss of control through outsourcing feels a little dicey to them and they’d rather have somebody on site.”

Providing a local presence has cost implications, but it’s part of Symphony Services’ flexible business model, which includes fixed-price projects rather than time-and-materials pricing. He points out that not having an onshore presence would increase the provider’s margins but might not instill confidence in the client and thus would not help build a long-term partnering relationship.

Symphony’s flexible business model includes options for outcome certainty. “We’ll take risks up front with our clients and guarantee certain aspects of the speed of the project, quality of the project, or a certain reduction in the number of iterations as well as other aspects,” says Irwin.

Guaranteeing outcome certainty helps give confidence to companies fearing loss of control. “We put our money on the line and take discounts if we don’t deliver the quality. We try to give peace of mind to our clients that the quality of their project is as important to us as it is to them,” states Irwin.

Intellectual property risks

A lawyer by training, Essner was especially aware of the intellectual property risks associated with offshore development activities. Inherited Health made sure there was only one-way access into its code repository. After each iteration, the provider deposited it into the repository so that Inherited Health always had the latest copy and version control.

More importantly, he made sure the contract includes terms that give Inherited Health full ownership of the code upon payment of undisputed amounts. He explains there often is a conflict where an outsourced development firm does not let the client have product ownership until all the bills are paid.

“That means at the end of the project you could end up with a dispute over the last $4,000 in a $100,000 project and all of a sudden you own nothing,” Essner says. “So it’s important to make sure a contract states you own everything as long as you’ve paid undisputed amounts.”

What’s the best aspect of this relationship? Beyond providing the expertise, flexibility, and lower costs, Irwin says it’s the collaborative activities. “Collaboration allowed Inherited Health to get its next-generation or 2.0 platform out to the market in a timely fashion. The win for them is that they are able to achieve their vision. The wins for us are a satisfied client and increasing our domain expertise in this area. It’s definitely a win-win relationship.”