Spire Digital

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I'm the CEO and founder of an independent, nationally licensed insurance technology agency. We build APIs to change the future of insurance. Partners use our technology to seamlessly provide point-of-sale insurance policies. We fulfill these purchases on their behalf.

What challenge were you trying to address with Spire Digital?

Our project focused on speed to market. We had award-winning designs and partners lined up to use our products. We aimed to increase this velocity by injecting our engineering team with additional horsepower. Spire Digital provided financial technology (fintech) expertise and close attention to detail for our security compliance.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We contracted Spire Digital to enable the rapid delivery of our MVP product. Referring to our fintech requirements, they analyzed the architecture’s security and scalability. They expertly conducted the frontend design and delivery of our MVP product. Engineers used our proprietary tech stack during the build stage. Working with banks, mortgage lenders, and insurance carriers have strict security requirements. The team has substantial experience with financial institution clients.

What is the team composition?

They assigned several engineers and a product manager to our project. My main point of contact was Michael (CEO, Spire Digital). Adam (President, Spire Digital) was our secondary connection.

How did you come to work with Spire Digital?

We received a referral from a technology investor. We had spent several months researching and vetting potential outsourced engineers. I'd been receiving encouragement and guidance from local venture capitalists. When I mentioned the large opportunities we hoped to capture, they suggested contacting the principals at Spire Digital. I met their CEO at a venture capital meetup.

What is the status of this engagement?

We began our engagement in May 2017 and wrapped up the project by November. We're not actively engaging with Spire Digital at the moment.

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

Spire Digital enabled us to launch our MVP. It's received substantial traction and users. Since Spire Digital reworked our architecture, our product had operated more efficiently at a fraction of the cost. Businesses use our products to rapidly close sales, eliminate paperwork, and increase revenue and efficiency.

How did Spire Digital perform from a project management standpoint?

Their organization and strategy were top notch. Sara (Director of Operations, Spire Digital) knew process and project management like the back of her hand. She was persistent, attentive, and communicated effectively with our executive team and Spire Digital’s engineers and product designers. We primarily used Slack and multiple project management tools.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Spire Digital worked like a part of our team. I appreciate how they made us feel like family. They treat both their clients and their own resources considerately. Anytime I had questions, the project manager or lead engineer would be readily available. The executive leadership was accessible at any time.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They're not the most affordable firm, but Spire Digital is worth the investment.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Anyone considering hiring Spire Digital should thoroughly consider and clearly express the scope. Include as much detail as possible in the requirements document. When the team knows exactly where they're going, they have no problem getting there quickly.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I'm the director of product management at Pitney Bowes, a 100-year-old international technology provider with 14,000 employees. We help customers process global digital and physical transactions across the borderless world of commerce. I’m based in our Boulder, CO office and focus on our SaaS products and APIs.

What challenge were you trying to address with Spire Digital?

We needed a partner to contribute solid design thinking. Spire is skilled at developing target personas and ethnographies for an identified audience. Our project aimed to socialize designs based on these findings internally and with our customers.

What was the scope of their involvement?

During our initial meeting, we carefully explaining the product’s scope and functionality. The team developed personas and built ethnographies based on these discussions. Both types of working documents are key deliverables that facilitate our design process. Dedicated resources provided copywriting and visual content. Spire Digital ultimately completed the final designs for our web-based products.

What is the team composition?

I worked with Adam (VP of Business Development, Spire Digital) and Michael (CEO and Founder, Spire Digital).

How did you come to work with Spire Digital?

I’d worked with Spire Digital with a different company and wanted to continue our partnership in my current position.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent around $100,000 on their services.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in early 2015 and finished this project by the end of the year.

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

Spire Digital created design deliverables that served our exact purpose. I was very pleased with the work they did. We socialized their designs with our community of customers and got positive feedback. The team took a message that was otherwise somewhat dry and made it fun. Most importantly, they designed viable products that enabled us to progress to the development stage. We've stayed in touch ever since, and I hold them in very high regard.

How did Spire Digital perform from a project management standpoint?

They did an excellent job. We regularly worked with our assigned project resource while formulating the scope. Communication mostly took place via email and phone. Spire Digital is located in Denver, CO. Our proximity let us frequently meet in person.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Spire Digital’s designers have a keen ability to genuinely empathize with our target customers through the personas we collaboratively developed. Rather than just designers for hire, they really worked as an extension of our team. They deeply immersed themselves in our organization and considered my perspective.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I don't have any criticisms about their work.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Spend some time in person with Spire Digital when you kick off the project. Taking that step will quickly things get things going in the right direction.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We are the nation’s leading provider of insurance technology. We offer about 40 software as a service (SaaS) products that serve all areas of the insurance industry. I’m the vice president of our development team.

What challenge were you trying to address with Spire Digital?

We were working on a greenfield software application and during that process, we were also ramping up our staff and relocating some of our centers of excellence to Denver. As we were hiring our UX team, we decided to augment our staff with expertise and experience that we didn’t yet have.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Spire had one developer in our office and a project manager on their end that guided our team through the UX/UI design and implementation process. They used customer feedback we had gotten to design specific elements of the platform and create the UX/UI and a way that aligned with user preferences and best practices. The help they provided never felt like they were taking over, and they let our young leaders be in charge while offering their knowledge and expertise. They worked closely and collaboratively with our staff and helped to educate them on specifics of the project.

The platform is a software as a service (SaaS) that pulls data from four or five different systems and presents it as a usable proposal for our clients to sell new business to their customers. We essentially wanted to do for insurance forms what TurboTax has done for tax forms by creating a smooth, user-friendly experience. It was a challenge and many of the necessary forms were from outdated systems, but we strived to modernize the process in a way that’s accessible to everyone. Spire was instrumental in navigating us through the scope of work.

What is the team composition?

We had a project manager and a UX/UI designer working with us.

How did you come to work with Spire Digital?

I was in Denver as a part of the relocation process and we were researching local firms online. After reaching out to a few different groups, we were confident that Spire was the best option.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve invested about $80,000 so far.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in October 2017, and the project is ongoing.

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

Our project is in early availability, and some of our customers are already using it. Our largest customer used the platform for the first time just yesterday, and they gave us very positive feedback. Although we’re not selling the platform yet, the initial response has been great.

How did Spire Digital perform from a project management standpoint?

They performed very well and delivered everything on time. Their ability to lead from behind was very helpful for our staff throughout the project. We communicated primarily in person, and the in-house designer that we worked with used our collaboration tools during development. At the beginning of the project, we communicated via text and email and met in person about once every two weeks.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We really appreciated their ability to get up to speed very quickly. They had never done anything in the insurance space before, but within three weeks after scoping out the project, we had a workable prototype that we were pursuing.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Looking back, I have nothing negative to say about the engagement thus far. This has been a very focused and specific project, and we hope to use them more broadly in moving forward.

Advice for potential customers?

Get them involved as early in the process as possible. We started off by telling them what we wanted them to do but quickly realized that the best way to utilize their expertise is to simply explain the problem you’re seeking to address.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the marketing technology director for Janus Henderson Investors, an asset management company. As part of the marketing technology team, I serve as a liaison between our channel marketing teams and IT groups.

What challenge were you trying to address with Spire Digital?

Our external sales team doesn’t have access to our marketing resources when they’re on the road. We wanted to design a mobile iPad application, giving our team better opportunities to make sales.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We started with a couple of workshops with our marketing team to understand the challenges of the project. Additionally, Spire Digital conducted interviews with a few of our external salespeople to determine their needs.

Next, they put together a list of requested features based on their research. We gave them the green light and they created an interactive prototype. They tested this with our team and went through several rounds of changes based on feedback.

While we initially wanted to develop the app in-house, we realized we lacked the necessary expertise. With the design completed, we contracted a developer through Spire who is currently assisting our internal team with development.

What is the team composition?

We were assigned a project manager, two designers, and a UX expert.

How did you come to work with Spire Digital?

We’re both based in Denver, so we were aware of their company. We’d considered them for past assignments and this project finally gave us the opportunity to work together.

How much have you invested in them?

We’ve spent around $80,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked with them between November 2017–January 2018.

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

The app is still in development, but our sales team had positive feedback about the prototype and they’re very excited to use it.

How did Spire Digital perform from a project management standpoint?

We’ve worked with a number of agencies in the past that provided poor project managers. Spire Digital, on the other hand, was great. We conducted status meetings each week and they compiled a list of action items. Because we had a fixed budget, they also gave us cost updates each week to ensure we stayed on target. We primarily communicated through email and phone, though we had a few in-person meetings during the initial stages of the engagement.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They were reliable, accomplishing every task on time and to a high degree of quality. I was very impressed by their consistency.

Are there any areas they could improve?

We were happy with the engagement, so nothing comes to mind.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

It’s helpful to clearly articulate your business challenge. Spire Digital helped us fine-tune our idea, but we could have completed the job sooner if we had been more prepared.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the COO of the Medical Group Management Association (MGMA). Our mission is to empower practices, providers, and patients with the tools they need to thrive. I’m in charge of both operations and leading our technical activities.

What challenge were you trying to address with Spire Digital?

Our website had over 29,000 pages and many navigational challenges. This was a problem because our customers leveraged the site as their primary resource for obtaining services and products. Although we had made incremental changes, we needed an overhaul to conform to industry best practices as defined by our clients. We engaged Spire to create an online environment that would attract new audiences, have improved navigation, and increase sales.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Spire knew that we wanted the website to reflect our customers’ needs, not our leadership’s preferences. At the start of the engagement, they surveyed members and non-member customers and performed quantitative analysis on the 1,200 responses. They then interviewed influencers in our industry to gain further insight. They focused on the differing needs between members and non-members, what visitors valued most, what they wanted to see, and how they preferred to navigate our resources.

Concurrently, we had a subsidiary firm that had already branded our new visual identity as an association. Spire and the firm partnered on the design aspects of the build. We also collaborated with an additional organization on communications strategy. Specifically, we needed to strike a balance between playful and professional language to engage our audience appropriately. This process made us re-emphasize the frontend design; we used a separate firm to implement that using Microsoft Dynamics.

Spire project managed their team and led the other agencies’ work. They used AngluarJS/4. We generated content for the navigation hierarchy, stylesheets, and deployment of web pages.

The website and CRM launched in February 2018. Currently, we’re updating legacy pieces until the phase two rollout; certain pages like event registration couldn’t be taken down during development. Performance optimization is ongoing as we monitor users’ behavior; we want to make sure our enhancements align with their activity.

What is the team composition?

The team included developers, designers, QA specialists, and UX/UI experts. They also had a full suite of project management members that acted as liaisons for the entire development process.

How did you come to work with Spire Digital?

We found them through industry connections in the Denver business community. Spire not only had the technical capability, but also understood how we wanted to connect with our audience.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent over $500,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

Work started in January 2017 and is ongoing.

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

Spire successfully alleviated our navigation concerns and optimized the website’s look and feel. The MGMA board thinks it’s natural and intuitive.

They’re working on search functionality and performance for the next three weeks. I anticipate both will be world class when completed.

How did Spire Digital perform from a project management standpoint?

The project manager cultivated an effective relationship. Her team was adaptable and timely. We used Jira and weekly phone calls and meetings to coordinate the joint development. We also met in person on a monthly-to-bimonthly basis. Spire’s efforts and resource allocation demonstrated their commitment to excellence.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Spire did a fantastic job balancing their expertise and efforts to please the customer. The team appreciated our diverse audience’s needs and expectations. They listened to our feedback in a professional manner and were open to our recommendations.

Are there any areas they could improve?

We didn’t want to influence the outcome too much, but inadvertently had significant say in the final product. Spire should be able to push back on their clients as much as work with them.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Clients should assign a team member to make sure everything’s working effectively. Don’t be afraid to provide strong feedback; they’ll factor it in.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Health eCareers is a digital recruitment platform for the healthcare industry. I’m the Managing Director.

What challenge were you trying to address with Spire Digital?

The goal of the project was product innovation.

What was the scope of their involvement?

It was to create an MVP [minimum viable product] for a freelance recruitment platform. It was a greenfield project, and Spire Digital gave us a pretty turn-key service offering. We created the concept together, and they did user interaction design and UI/UX [user interface/user experience]. They did the full-stack app developments and quality assurance. There was no integration. They helped us set it up in Amazon Web Services, and they helped with the ongoing incremental development. We will take it in-house once we’re ready, but they’ve been our turn-key provider thus far. It was a web app which they created, and it is completely mobile-enabled, mobile-first, if you will.

How did you come to work with Spire Digital?

I’ve used them off and on for 15 years. I can’t remember how I met them, but they’ve been a pretty trustworthy partner on various projects for over a decade.

How much have you invested with Spire Digital?

It cost between $200,000 to $1 million, and that’s just for this project. Our whole partnership has cost in the multiple millions of dollars.

What is the status of this engagement?

We are still working with them.

Could you share any results of the engagement?

We had some assumptions, so we began propping up an MVP so that we could learn a little bit about the space and find out if it was viable. We were first-mover, and a couple of our assumptions were: Would this platform be attractive to agencies? Could we generate freelance job postings to support these agencies? We quickly added roughly 10,000 jobs across 18 agencies. The other side was for professionals; would this be appealing and viable, and was it the right interface? With just a couple simple marketing campaigns, we generated about 8,000 professional registrations.

How did Spire Digital perform from a project management standpoint?

I think that they’ve got project management completely wired. Spire Digital has been outstanding.

What did you find most impressive about Spire Digital?

Spire Digital has a tier of resources that are highly strategic. Beyond just taking our concepts and our ideas and executing, they’re actually highly strategic on the frontend, through the concept development with a lot of pushback. I really appreciate that about Spire Digital.

Are there any areas Spire Digital could improve?

I think that on every single project, you can autopsy and find three or four things, but I wouldn’t say that in my years of working with them that they’re the same three or four things. Every project has new learning. It’s never perfect, but it’s really good. I don’t want to sound cheesy or overly supportive, but I think that bringing them in early is important, letting them be a part of the strategic planning process as opposed to signing off and saying, “Do this work.”