Coherent Solutions | News - Coherent Thoughts Q4 2008

Requirements and software development have a strange and sometimes strained relationship. Good requirements are a prerequisite to ensuring you (the buyer) get what you need. But written in a prose style, they rarely offer a complete picture for the developer. Thus, over the years, software developers have made many attempts at improving this situation. One consistent mechanism they have used is actually showing you what you will get—first by writing and sharing prototypes and eventually evolving to developing and demonstrating working software.

This evolution has been an important enabler to the world of distributed development. As teams are dispersed, they need stronger means of communicating, and nothing speaks louder than showing the actual product in action. You now have a much earlier opportunity to shape the software as it is developed. This, in turn, enables global development teams to better deliver what you want.

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CUSTOMER PROFILE

Lighthouse1 turns to Coherent for product development capacity and process expertise

Founded in 2005, Minneapolis-based Lighthouse1 (LH1) found its stride quickly in the white-hot healthcare industry, learning along the way that early success in any industry is not without its bumps and bruises.

The privately held company quickly captured the attention of the health benefits administration marketplace with innovative products that rode the crest of the hottest trend in health care—consumer-directed health plans such as Flexible Spending Accounts (FSA), Variable Employee Benefits Arrangements (VEBA) and Health Savings Accounts (HSA). By leveraging a hosted, software-as-a-service (SaaS) model, Lighthouse1 empowers benefits administrators with its flexible, cost-effective OnDemand system to help manage the many complexities of these healthcare accounts.

As a startup, Lighthouse1 got out of the gate fast but quickly learned they had limited resources to keep the new product pipeline flowing. And in the highly competitive healthcare industry, where innovation and time-to-market is critical, the company knew they needed incremental resources quickly. What’s more, Lighthouse1 was young, with virtually nonexistent software development processes, which drastically complicated the prospect of seeking software development outsourcing partners. Management realized they needed to augment their OnDemand platform with strategic capabilities such as the ability to support Health Savings Accounts, and both time and software development resources are in short supply. That’s when Lighthouse1 turned to Coherent Solutions.

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COHERENT NEWS BRIEFS

Q4 busy for Coherent Solutions

Coherent continued its rapid growth by signing up several new clients in the fourth quarter—in both the U.S. and Europe.

BoundaryMedical (Eden Prairie, MN) for Java development to augment product development of its SaaS Healthcare Outcome Measurement system;
Entriq (Carlsbad, CA and London, UK) for .NET development and testing of its digital media content management and publishing solutions;
Infotecs (Moscow, Russia) for architecture and design work related to its network security products; and
StoneArch Software (Minneapolis, MN) for Java and Perl development of an application that extends StoneArch’s industry-leading compliance system.

TODAY'S TIP FROM COHERENT

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