The Case: We Do Have a Deadline
In one of my previous blogs, I wrote that we are not in a hurry to develop our software. The reason for this is that quality is very important to us. Our software is directly used and evaluated by thousands of users. Deadlines are therefore actually not done. However, I have been gently reminded internally that I have not adhered to this. For dentists, we need to have something ready before December 1st of this year.
We have been active in dental care for a year now. Through a connection with the software in which the dentist processes their actions, we help this market with creating and collecting invoices from their customers. This way, we learn a lot about this market. In the administrative domain with insurers, the factor Infomedics is active, practically a monopolist. Declaring treatments is also quite a complicated process, so some specialization is necessary. As we build knowledge about these processes this year, we find that there is much more demand for our software than initially thought. Moreover, it turns out that a cancellation with Infomedics always goes per calendar year.
What to Do?
Quality is still the most important criterion for a SaaS solution like Payt’s. And there is an unyielding deadline for dentists, January 1, 2022. Taking on the challenge to solve the declaration and invoicing process integrally for dentists results in so much time savings and process improvement. So, we decide to take on this challenge!
The first thing we did was hire extra development capacity. Additionally, we organized sufficient capacity from product management and our own development team to have all the thinking and problem-solving power available. We also planned to have the minimally required software ready by October 1, 2021. This way, we can step in on time if difficulties arise during the testing phase.
Although I have no doubt about delivering all the necessary software on time, this is, of course, something we do not want to do too often. It does take a toll on the organization. And the strange thing is, it mainly consumes capacity in marketing, product development, and sales. Due to corona and the way dentists work, we have become skilled in holding webinars outside of dental hours. Unexpectedly, we will now have to expand in these areas, instead of software development.
