challenge
When the potential of your organization’s yet-to-be-launched product is so great that it’s the reason you’re being acquired by a multinational conglomerate, you need a partner who can quickly understand your business’s needs and get that product to market fast. This is exactly what happened for our Wisconsin-based client, who was looking to revolutionize the travel insurance industry with a completely digital product. At the time, if you wanted to purchase a travel insurance policy or file a claim, you’d have to do it over the phone, or in some cases, by mail. This new product was going to offer a much better customer experience on three different platforms: iOS, Android and web. Our client needed a partner with product strategy expertise that had experience developing innovative products with tight timelines and stringent requirements.
solution
Since this new line of business was going to be completely digital, it was imperative that we got the product and customer experience right. With a strict, tight timeline, our product strategy team wasted no time meeting with the executive team to get a thorough understanding of what the business goals were. Next, our team met with potential customers to start building personas and fleshing out what the buying cycle looks like.
Three teams were working simultaneously, developing native iOS, native Android and web-based versions of the product. They used native iOS for iOS deployment, Java for Android deployment and Javascript for the web side. There was also a team who built all of the underwriting engine that was based in Salesforce. In addition to staffing the three core development teams, we program managed the entire effort including additional client and partner teams.
results
We deployed a brand-new product in three different environments that was intentionally developed to bring in new customers as quickly as possible. The work upfront from a discovery and design standpoint was really impactful and led to our product winning a Webby award, which is a prestigious award presented annually by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences for excellence on the internet. Sparq’s modern architecture allowed our client to swap out underwriting systems mid-project with zero disruption to business and development efforts.
Data Mining and Machine Learning Empower Sparq to Better Select Their Newest Locations
Sparq needed a better, more analytical way to efficiently target the most promising American cities to establish a local presence. We took on the challenge of using a unique combination of results from both data mining and machine learning approaches applied against purchased third-party data to evaluate tens of thousands of data points across 59 mid-sized cities.
Rearchitected eCommerce Platform Increases Revenue, Stability and Speed
A leading automotive eCommerce site needed to make major improvements to its online platform to gain more market share. In just eight months, Sparq revamped their outdated architecture and moved from on-premise to the Cloud (AWS). The new site could now be viewed from any device, was more user friendly and visually appealing, and showed a 15% improvement in speed.
Anti-money Laundering Solution Helps FinTech Company Stay Compliant
At risk of being out of Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) compliance, our FinTech client needed to adjust how they audit and track suspicious financial activity. The company needed a partner with experience working in heavily regulated financial institutions to create a new system or risk major consequences to their bottom line.
Leading Streaming OS Provider Positions to be Leading Home OS Provider
Our client, a leader in smart TV operating systems, was looking to introduce a suite of products that would be a natural extension of their business and make them a leader in a second industry. These products would integrate things like home monitoring, custom lighting and smart power at a better value than what had previously been on the market. Our client needed to test their new devices in a broad array of consumer environments and complete end-user testing scenarios quickly in order to meet their tight launch deadline.