Case Study: AchieveIt

Scott Regan had a passion and a dream. As a former hospital executive, Scott knew all too well how healthcare organizations run: inefficiently. In 2008, he set out to start his own consulting practice to help healthcare organizations develop strategic plans and execute more effectively. Through many years of hands-on leadership in organizational change management, one thing stood out to Scott: There was no tool available on the market that enabled organizations to have transparency in developing a strategic plan, as well as managing and measuring the execution of the plan. As a result, Scott developed AchieveIt.

AchieveIt was a very complex piece of web-based software that allowed any organization, primarily healthcare, to develop a strategic plan and measure the progress and effectiveness of the plan. In his first attempts to build the product, he did as many other new software entrepreneurs do: he went to an overseas development firm.

“While I was lured by the low cost of working with an overseas firm, in hindsight, it was a more expensive proposition,” Scott said. “The language and cultural barriers were significant, which significantly extended the time it took to launch our first application. What was a three-month project took a year, and the overseas firm was never quite able to translate my vision into reality. We had a nice application, but it wasn’t a great application, and it took four times longer than planned to bring it to market. The opportunity cost was significant.”

That’s what brought him to The Kyle David Group. Starting in early 2011, The Kyle David Group spearheaded a massive development effort to not only take strategicplanningMD to the next level, but also to develop four other applications that would be critical to running a healthcare organization.

ExecuteIt: The core application, ExecuteIt, guides companies through a proven Execution Flywheel that has generated breakthrough results. It contains a full suite of tools that shortens the planning cycle, enables strategic decision-making, and powers accountability and execution.
AnalyzeIt: A revolutionary decision support application that combines robust data mapping capabilities with point-and-click data analytics. Filter data, plot results at an address level, and conduct analysis on the fly – on demand and in minutes. Through this unique combination of data mapping and data analytics, companies can focus their strategy and zero in on a results-driven plan of action that can be executed immediately.
ImproveIt: Elevating quality and performance improvement to achieve faster and better results is the singular focus of ImproveIt. Create organizational transparency by managing quality and performance improvement in the cloud, where project deliverables, performance, and outcomes can be easily tracked.

By May of 2011, the products were live and saw quick user adoption, including Baylor Health Care System, the University of Florida, Erlanger Health System, Methodist Le Bonheur Health System, and many others. The positive responses were continual affirmation that the products were hot.

“We really believe we have the best technology, an excellent user interface, and the ability to constantly push technology innovation to achieve even better results for our clients and our company,” Scott said. “The team at The Kyle David Group has provided us with a core competency in cloud-based technology development without having to develop the competency ourselves.”

Like many small companies, funding became an issue. Through The Kyle David Group’s unique partnership with Kyle David Capital, L.P., a partially owned venture fund, AchieveIt was able to invest in the project alongside an investment from Buckhead Investment Partners. Newly established funding allowed for business growth and continual technology development.

“The relationship with The Kyle David Group is the foundation of our business strategy,” Scott said. “We made the decision early on to outsource I.T., rather than to try to build it from the ground up, which meant that we needed a strategic partner that would be able to move beyond typical vendor-supplier relationships to one in which the two companies operated as one. The Kyle David Group is as much a fabric of our company as our inside sales team.”

ExecuteIt AchieveIt’s rapid growth garnered the attention of many industries outside of healthcare. Recognizing this demand, in the Spring of 2012, AchieveIt entered new vertical markets, starting with higher education and then aggressively targeting commercial businesses both small and large. With the continued development from The Kyle David Group, in June 2012, AchieveIt unveiled the next generation of applications that were scalable across all companies of all sizes in all industries. Within weeks, AchieveIt had clients in finance, higher education, government, professional services, and non-profit organizations. In addition, the firm’s execution management technology has now been adopted by more than 100 healthcare organizations and eight state hospital associations across 30 states.

The Kyle David Group continues to play a vital role in developing these enterprise level SaaS applications. Major development milestones have included:

Complete redevelopment of ExecuteIt to span across all industries and multi-hospital healthcare organizations using cloud-based virtualization on demand.
Data migrations among the firm’s 150+ clients into new versions of the software.
GIS software AnalyzeIt utilizing the Google Maps API and Telerik reporting controls.
Real-time data input and geocoding API to facilitate the importation of data inside of AnalyzeIt.
Ground up development and planning of the cloud-based quality management software ImproveIt.

Future development currently in the works for these applications include:

Custom API for real-time data-feeds from SAP, MAS90, Epic, McKesson, and many other enterprise-level applications.
iOS and Android applications for ExecuteIt and ImproveIt.
Custom Microsoft Exchange modules to support the facilitation of data through Outlook clients.

To learn more about AchieveIt or learn how they can help your organization execute more, better, and faster, visit their website at www.achieveit.com