Fortune 500 Commercial Real Estate and Logistics Solutions Provider

Data Warehousing and Analytics

Fast Growing Company Upgrades its Data Systems

Challenge

This client is a leading global investment manager and business leader in commercial real estate and logistics. The business was growing fast and expanding its footprint across five US regions.

Fast growth can be exciting, but it comes with challenges. As the business expanded into new regions, its legacy home-grown tools built in Excel struggled to meet the operational needs of management. The company had significant data but was reliant on manual processes and unstable data processes to produce reports that were critical to decision making.

The leadership knew that there were important insights hidden within their data but couldn’t reveal those insights with their legacy tools.

This challenge inhibited agility, innovation, decision-making, and reporting.

Solution

Kopius was engaged to develop a data strategy to help our client organize its data and use it to inform the business. Kopius also designed and developed KPI dashboards to make it easier to understand and use the data.

We conducted site interviews with client stakeholders to document the existing reporting processes and technologies in each region, along with tracing the KPIs from current Excel files to source data. The transitory steps focused on data foundation updates, restructuring core data platforms to enable readiness in integration with a unified global reporting architecture. The new architecture was consolidated into a global BI Reporting Suite for automated KPI reporting across regions and performance insights via interactive dashboards to the company’s leadership.

Our design team worked with the data engineering team to develop a branded interface that would highlight key data points based on input received during the discovery and interview period.

Results

The dashboards were launched and widely adopted. The client reports high satisfaction and excitement about the impact and ROI of this project.

This project also initiated a digital transformation for this client. Experiencing the efficiency gained by automating certain reporting functions from varied data sources freed the management team to consider additional opportunities to advance their growing business.

The company is now exploring additional technical advancements that could transform its business, including AR/VR, IoT, Artificial Intelligence, and Machine Learning.

*Kopius performed this work under its previously known business name, Valence.

Healthcare Non-Profit

Clinical Trials Healthcare Research Accelerator

Background

Our client is a national not-for-profit healthcare system committed to improving the health of all people. The system includes hospitals, clinics, and a comprehensive range of services.

Among its services, the client’s organization offered a web portal where donors, patients, providers, and research scientists could look for clinical trials to improve patient health outcomes, called the Healthcare Research Accelerator.

The Healthcare Research Accelerator is a special project because it is used by doctors across the globe who are working with patients who are out of options. These doctors want to help their patients, and they have to be creative, so they seek out the latest trials in hopes they can enroll their patients and get them access to promising therapies. These doctors are often under a lot of pressure when they come to this tool, and they need a tool that is easy to use.

Challenge

The original search tool was designed and developed long ago by in-house resources, and because of considerable gaps in functionality and usability, platform support was going to end. Further, the design and development team that had originated the portal had disbanded and there was no documentation about its architecture or functionality. Our client needed to replace the Healthcare Research Accelerator with a new solution for this critical service.

The accelerator is incredibly important, but the search function had coding flaws and had reached a point where patients and providers didn’t like or trust the tool – because our client’s organization is on a mission to improve patient outcomes, it was urgent that we deliver a better way to connect people with clinical trial information.

Solution

Thanks to our significant experience working with this client on other digital projects, Kopius* had gained the client’s trust and was engaged to re-platform the clinical trials Healthcare Research Accelerator tool. Services included user experience design, user interface design, engineering, quality assurance, and deployment support.

Because of the loss of user confidence, change management practices were woven into our approach. From discovery to user experience design, and through user acceptance testing, we engaged a variety of users and provided visibility into our thinking and process. This rebuilt trust in the tool’s potential and helped to improve market sentiment.

“If you want a deployment to be adopted, you must invest time and energy in communication and collaboration with your users. The change management plan needs to address stakeholder communication and internal business processes.”
Glen Lewis, Kopius technical project manager

One of the first stages of the effort was to reverse engineer the structure of the previous iteration of the platform to identify data sources and reveal the cause of the failed search results. We conducted a four-week assessment to document how the platform was built.

Understanding why the previous platform was failing was an important step in rebuilding trust among users that this new iteration would perform as expected.

The assessment unearthed that the previous platform relied on a search function in what amounts to a continuous document. Kopius engineers built a new database according to industry best practices, which is more flexible and can scale and be managed over time.

Our data team also built custom logic for the clinical trial searches to address the unique and specific needs of users. The updated search function uses criteria to return highly relevant results without requiring an exact string of words.

We simplified the XML ingestion process by reducing and consolidating a three-step process that moved data across multiple servers to a single drag-and-drop interface.

The User Acceptance Testing period (UAT) included additional time and resources to engage users and build trust in the new tool. We prepared users for the UAT by explaining what they should expect and how we expect the tool to work before they tested it. The UAT process was divided into three testing events, and each event was followed by a detailed review of issues identified, including what happened, why it happened, and how it would be fixed, further building trust in the system.

Upon completion, we provided comprehensive and detailed documentation of the new platform and how it is built so it can be referenced, integrated, and updated more easily in the future.

Results

The new Healthcare Research Accelerator tool is easy to use, and users are excited to use it. The database has also become the primary source for clinical trial information across client websites. The design was seamless with the client’s updated brand strategy, and the platform nested within the larger brand strategy perfectly.

Through our collaborative process and open communication, we won over users who were skeptical that our project was merely to re-skin a dysfunctional tool.

Kopius’ efforts to build elegant mapping logic will help doctors and patients easily find the trials they need, which will hopefully enable patients to overcome their sickness and feel better.

“This project was not easy. You handled our requests with grace and with integrity, and we’re so thankful to you for this hard work.”
Client Project Director

*Kopius performed this work under its previously known business name, Valence.

Fintech

Cryptocurrency Trading Screens

Results in Faster Adoption by Users

Challenge

A global financial technology provider needed cryptocurrency trading screens created from scratch as part of a digital assets trading and payments platform for a cryptocurrency offering.

Our client had an API that could be coded against, but it lacked a front-end screen for retail-based customers to trade.

The trading user interface needed to be visually engaging and easy to use for traders as well as encompass the nuances of managing a crypto asset.

The work needed to be delivered quickly to get ahead of certain market conditions.

The Solution

We were engaged to design and develop cryptocurrency trading screens. Our nearshore team implemented a React.js solution to build out the trading order entry screens, which allowed for efficient updating of screen elements and a fast and responsive user experience, with screens that included engaging trading chart visualizations. Our services included visual and user experience design, resulting in a new and improved graphical user interface (GUI).

Results

The client now has a world-class trading screen that allows for faster adoption by users that don’t want to integrate directly into their API. The work was accomplished in half the time that it would have taken the client’s own teams to get to market.

EdTech

Software Delivered to Market 225% Faster

Nearshore Development Reduces Labor Costs by 40%

Challenge

Our client is a Chicago-based education technology (edtech) company that creates K-12 writing software and curriculum to help students become strong critical thinkers. Highlighted as a “game-changing educational software” by Bill Gates, controlled studies also show that its product helps students with reading and writing growth. The company teaches critical thinking through argumentative writing via its personalized literacy platform for English, language arts, science, social studies, and math.

This edtech startup had a unique opportunity to distribute its products to several schools. The company had a small and highly skilled engineering team, but did not have the internal resources to scale up the product in time to serve this high volume of school customers. If the company missed the opportunity to ready its products for this opportunity, a competitor would win the work.

As an early-stage company, they needed a cost-effective solution as they sought to build an intuitive SaaS platform for teachers, students, and principals.

The Solution

We were able to meet this client’s needs for scale, speed, and cost-effectiveness by engaging our nearshore engineering team. Based in Argentina, we were able to match working hours, and integrate quickly with the internal team. We provided an autonomous team that included Ember.js, React.js, and Ruby on Rails developers, a business analyst, and QA resources to build an evolved teacher lesson library and grading experience. Our team provided end-to-end service and guidance to the client by developing the product roadmap, supplying resources, and performing QA.

Results

Our client scaled-up quickly, moving from two developers to three parallel teams in just four months. They reduced time-to-market by 225% thanks to streamlined engineering and collaboration capabilities. They saved 40% on resource costs over a three-year period, compared to estimated costs to staff the team internally from Chicago.

Fortune 10 Company

Immersive Technology Showcase

This global technology business serves the public sector, with federal, state, and local governments relying on its services. The business had successfully established itself as a leading productivity technology provider.

Challenge

The public sector market represents a massive opportunity for this business. The worldwide emphasis on cloud services meant that this client needed to join its peers in pivoting its business model to promote cloud services, but public sector clients struggled to make the connection between the client’s productivity offerings and its cloud services.

Solution

Our client needed to demonstrate cloud capabilities and tell a clear and compelling story to its customers.

Kopius* was chosen to conceptualize, design, develop, and support a live demo facilitated by technology. Kopius was chosen thanks to the firm’s deep understanding of cloud technology. The demo tells the client’s story and helps to activate sales conversations between our client’s sales team and its customers.

Behind the scenes, Kopius provided project management, demo curation, and technical support for an immersive experience that was spearheaded in Washington, DC and then replicated across the United States. In our role as demo facilitators, we contributed a comprehensive understanding of cloud technologies, the competitive landscape, our client’s technology offerings, and market needs.

Tour sessions serve groups of 8-10 attendees, who engage in 90-minute tours through an immersive trade-show style booth with several rooms. Each room showcases real cloud solutions impacting organizations using our client’s technology.

Results

The first round of demos delivered 101 tours reaching 602 people from 200 organizations. The combination of demos and tour facilitation drove new cloud and artificial intelligence (AI) business opportunities for our client. The success of the effort resulted in a decision to repeat this model at additional locations for expanded services.

*Kopius performed this work under its previously known business name, Valence.

Robotics Engineering Services Company

Robotics Scheduling Software

In 2020, the world changed forever because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The sudden shutdown of office and work environments was a shock, and the challenge only deepened when business leaders tried to understand how to introduce employees back into their in-person commercial spaces.

Challenge

We were approached by an engineering company that specializes in advanced technologies because they wanted to explore ways to use its robotic solutions to increase health and safety outcomes in workspaces and for its customers.

This company had built a disinfection Mobile Industrial Robot (MiR) by attaching industrial-grade UV lights to an existing robotic base. Customers could activate this robot when spaces were unoccupied to sanitize and disinfect work areas thanks to pre-built software to build and run sanitizing activities.

The challenge was that there was no mechanism to schedule those sanitizing activities. Our client’s customers also needed to schedule activities in advance with frequently recurring options.

Our client needed to address the scheduling issue quickly because, with COVID-19, speed-to-market was critical.

Solution

Kopius was engaged to develop scheduling software to run alongside the MiR software. The scheduling software was developed inside a docker container which ran on the Windows-based PC installed in the MiR base.

With this software, users could connect to the disinfection robot WiFi network and easily create activities or schedules by selecting from a list of existing activities and adding options like start time and recurrence.

Users could also check the status of the robot and run other MiR utilities from the same page.

Behind the scenes, the new scheduling software periodically checked the list of scheduled activities to ensure they launched as planned. A reporting function was added so users could see what was scheduled to run and what was recently accomplished.

Technologies used include Doctor, JavaScript Express WebApp, Mongo Database, NPM Agenda Service, NPM AgendaDash Service, and MiR Robot APIs.

Results

Our client completed the UVC disinfection robot ahead of schedule and delivered this highly anticipated product to the market creating a new revenue stream and meeting an important health and safety need.

Architecture

*Kopius performed this work under its previously known business name, Valence.

United Launch Alliance

Augmented Reality Application

United Launch Alliance (ULA) is an American spacecraft launch service provider that manufactures and operates rocket vehicles that are capable of launching spacecraft into orbits around Earth and to other bodies in the Solar System.

Challenge

With a new rocket in development, United Launch Alliance needed to engage its target audience at the largest and most influential event in the space industry. This event is sponsored by large, innovative, and competitive brands, so it was imperative to differentiate from the competition with an experience within the event.

Solution

The physical size of a rocket prevents it from being transported and shared for marketing and sales opportunities, but much like a car, there’s a certain impressiveness to a rocket’s physicality.

Kopius* conceptualized, designed, and built a fun and immersive end-to-end experience. The solution included a mobile augmented reality application called ULA Anywhere that created life-sized rockets in virtual showrooms, social media photo sharing, and a mission-based game employing light simulation-based physics to demonstrate the complex rocket trajectories and satellite orbits.

By using augmented reality on mobile devices, Kopius could help ULA engage a diverse audience for sales opportunities and to increase brand awareness and affinity.

Technologies used included augmented reality, iOS application development, and Android application development.

Results

The ULA Anywhere experience differentiated ULA from its competitors, expanded the brand’s reach beyond the event’s walls, and created IP that could be repurposed for future events, increasing total ROI.

*Kopius performed this work under its previously known business name, Valence.

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Spaceflight

Book My Flight Web Application

Spaceflight is a premier launch services and mission management provider, offering routine, cost-effective access to space, helping customers to explore beyond our planet.

Traditionally, access to space has been limited to government entities due to cost. Sending satellites into orbit once required purchasing an entire rocket; however, with the growing industry of smallsats, the demand for routine, cost-effective access to space has increased exponentially. Demand, coupled with the growing number of launch vehicle providers, created an opportunity for Spaceflight to assist in identifying, booking, and managing rideshare launches.

With a straightforward and cost-effective suite of products and services including state-of-the-art satellite infrastructure, rideshare launch offerings, payload integration and global communications networks, Spaceflight enables commercial, non-profit organizations and government entities to get launched, achieving their mission goals – on time and on budget.

Challenge

Spaceflight’s services are delivered by using a network of launch providers, each with distinct booking and management processes. To be an industry leader, Spaceflight needed its customers to be able to reserve and manage satellite launches from its website. Spaceflight also needed to provide the industry with an aggregated launch schedule for all possible launches.

In addition to the website needing new functionality, the visual design of the website was not competitive and needed to be refreshed.

Further, Spaceflight was challenged by inefficiencies in its internal operations, and complicated customer communications.

Solution

Kopius* was engaged to design and develop a web application to address the booking process for Spaceflight customers. The solution allows users to make a payment, reserve their launch, and to manage all steps of the launch process through an integrated portal.

The process started with UX exercises to plot the ideal user experience and typical user requirements when incorporating this functionality into the existing site. Applying the UX and UI principles designated by Kopius’ design team, the engineering team build the web application, which enables customers to specify launch and satellite criteria, which is matched with an optimal reservation using a cloud-based serverless architecture and a React framework. Kopius used a complex launch capacity matching algorithm, coupled with multiple existing systems to speed time-to-market.

The design team re-skinned the website to deliver a cohesive and competitive visual identity along with enhanced functionality.

Technologies used include Amazon Web Services GovCloud Services, DynamoDB, API Gateway, S3, SES, Cognito, Lamda serverless-based architecture, CloudWatch, and Secrets Manager. Third-party connected services include Smartsheet, Box, Jira, and Strip.

Results

The client experienced the brand elevation that comes from a beautiful customer-centric web application, with a simple, easy-to-use experience. The web application was well-received upon introduction at a major industry conference, demonstrating how space launch services can be simplified. The effort advanced Spaceflight’s mission to offer best-in-class launch provider services.

React Framework

*Kopius performed this work under its previously known business name, Valence.

Space Needle

Virtual Reality Application

Since its grand opening in 1962, the Space Needle is one of the most recognizable landmarks in the world. This treasured Seattle icon is recognized for its 520′ saucer-shaped “top house”, which offers visitors a 360-degree panoramic view of Seattle and its surrounding landscape.

The Space Needle underwent a multi-year $100M renovation, including a glass rotating floor, to preserve the landmark and inspire the next generation of visitors.

Challenge

Because the preservation and renovation project was prolonged over multiple years, the Space Needle needed to engage and excite the market about the upcoming experience, even when the first-person live experience was unavailable.

To build anticipation for its re-opening, Space Needle also needed to attract media and influencer excitement around updates like the thrilling all-glass rotating floor.

The Solution

Kopius was engaged to create a 4D Virtual Reality immersive experience that blends drone footage, 360-degree panoramas, beautifully detailed models, and digitally triggered physical elements into a custom-built stage.

The experience incorporated advanced VR locomotion techniques to give users the illusion of walking through large-scale spaces, and physical queues such as haptics and windpipes to give users the sensation of standing on a rotating floor or sitting in the open air.

Results

The Space Needle met its pre-launch press and influencer goals, driving multiple articles in technology, tourism, and local publications such as GeekWire, Facility Executive Magazine, King5 News, VRFocus, and The Puget Sound Business Journal.

*Kopius performed this work under its previously known business name, Valence.

Geekwire

“Seeing is believing, but not really—feeling is believing,” Olson said. “And that’s why we created this.” – Karen Olson, COO of the Space Needle

Fortune 10 Company

Experiential Marketing Application and Internet of Things (IoT)

Our client had established itself as a leader in enabling IoT technologies. The Internet of Things has grown increasingly complex as virtually any electronic device in any space can be used to collect and use data, resulting in a variety of services and experiences.

Challenge

As more smart home and office solutions enter the mainstream, it’s become difficult for the average, non-tech-evangelist to navigate the sea of hardware, software, and connected hub devices. Our client needed a retail experience that would allow its consumers to touch, feel, and demo smart devices to ensure they meet their needs.

Further the experience needs to showcase the tech company’s brand and showcase its leadership compared to other big brands.

The Solution

Kopius* was engaged to conceptualize, design, build, and deploy an in-person experiential retail experience showcases the connected life experience, which brings the smart home and office to life in a visually stunning, engaging way.

The in-person experience showcases technology and is supported by technology, including web applications and digital demos. The demos bridge the virtual world on screen with the environment around the consumer, showcasing a connected world by immersing the consumer in a connected world.

Customers interact with a mobile device, choosing from a variety of common “smart” scenarios. Once selected, a screen shows the scenario in action while smart light strips in retail cubbies light up the screen according to the products being used.

Technologies used include Microsoft Azure, Blog Storage, Application Insights, LifX Strip Lighting, UWP application development, and Android application development.

Results

The experience is an effective, scalable, and self-guided way for customers to understand how a variety of IoT products can integrate into and improve their day-to-day lives. The retailer sold more product to first- and third-party customers thanks to increased customer confidence and understanding from the demo and experience.

*Kopius performed this work under its previously known business name, Valence.