Exclusive Interview with Kevin Bolger - CEO, Calibrate Software

In this exclusive interview, He shared his experiences in IT and several more things. Let’s check his success story and thoughts.

1. Tell Us about yourself and how you started your career in the IT Sector?

Out of college, I traded futures at the Board of Trade. A good friend I traded with left trading to work at a fast-growing startup in Chicago called Groupon.

He convinced me to come over and build out the supply chain of the Goods business unit. We had to create the processes then work with our product team to automate and streamline what we were doing so we could scale.

I then co-founded a mobile app startup called Tally that allowed users to open, close, and pay for their bar tab from their phones.

Being CEO of that company forced me to take a keen interest in mobile app development, UI/UX Design, POS systems, DevOps, and more. This is where I really started to acquire an extremely deep understanding of technology and app development.

2. Briefly tell us about your company and the leadership..

Calibrate designs and builds websites, dashboards, and mobile apps in a cost-effective and scalable manner.

We have a myriad of clients across a broad array of sectors, including startups, fin-tech, eCommerce, healthcare, private equity, logistics, education, cybersecurity, and more.

We use our decades of experience as developers and entrepreneurs to provide strategic insight on technology-driven solutions, which help companies generate incremental revenue, achieve greater efficiencies, and release more innovative products.

3. What is your outlook for 2021?

We have a very positive outlook for 2021. With the re-opening, stimulus injected into the economy, and the world realizing how vital technology is to their business, we are very bullish on the tech sector; particularly software.

4. How do you assess the role of research agencies like TopappFirms in bridging the gap between clients and service providers?

I think engines such as Top App Firms serve as a central hub for those seeking specific software services.

Those in need of software development services, can visit these sites to research and find qualified agencies to help meet their requirements. It is a great place to start the process.

5. Is there a particular technology or industry you typically target? How do you plan to prepare your workforce for the upcoming technology upgrade??

We are industry agnostic, however, given the clients we’ve worked with over the years, we have a very deep understanding of healthcare, e-commerce, logistics, and fin-tech.

6. What services are you considering adding in 2021?

As entrepreneurs, we’re always open to new opportunities and constantly trying to identify gaps in the market. Having said that, we are not planning to add to our services this year.

We are very focused on adding value and continuing to master our core competencies. With tech, there are always opportunities to learn more and innovate. It’s a constant evolution.

7. How impactful are the web and mobile apps developed by your team when it comes to enhancing your clients’ business?

Most of our clients benefit tremendously from the solutions we build; particularly our B2B clients who build internal tools to streamline existing workflows. This success is in large part because of our process.

8. In your opinion, what are the best practices to achieve the highest client satisfaction?

•  Researching and understanding the client’s pain points •  Setting expectations and having a clearly defined scope •  Working with the client to understand their objectives and budget •  Helping the client determine what is necessary for their project and what features or functionality can be sacrificed to meet the budget and/or timeline •  Treat every engagement as a partnership. It is imperative for a client to know the agency is not just doing the work and going through the motions but also is investing in the success of the client.

Developing high-quality solutions with great customer service is the surest way to exceeding customer expectations

9. Share some case studies or examples of projects you’ve successfully completed.

One success story that resonates is building out an entire Web and Mobile app-based solution for a healthcare client.

We worked closely with the key stakeholders in every department to build a solution that eliminated bottlenecks, optimized efficiencies and moved the company to a paperless process.

Some of the benefits or success criteria of the project were:

Easy mechanism to distribute nurse training materials

A CMS we built on the backend allows admins to upload and manage training materials instead of manually printing and distributing them to various staff in multiple states

A seamless way to manage reviews across multiple parties

To meet government compliance and various corporate regulatory policies, Nurse reviews are conducted regularly throughout the year. These used to be on paper and had to be shared with multiple stakeholders. Now this is all digital and occurs in the custom mobile application we built

Automated a component of Employee Background checks

Built a CRM to manage inbound leads, medical equipment assigned to each patient, and track equipment sales for patient leads.

This allowed the client to 1) eliminate the recurring cost of a large CRM provider and 2) give CRM access to more employees given there were no more cost constraints on issuing more licenses

Much much more!

10. How do you help your clients in choosing the best and most cost-effective platform for Web development?

We typically utilize ReactJS (frontend) with node.js or Golang (backend) for web applications. Every client’s objectives are different, however, this software stack is a very modern and lightweight solution that fits most use cases.

For basic landing pages, we recommend building on top of Ghost CMS or WordPress CMS.

We can still create custom designs, however, integrating those designs with a CMS such as WordPress ensures Calibrate or our clients can more easily support and maintain the platform over time.

11. What is the price range (min and max) of the projects that you’ve closed in 2021 after COVID 19?

Every project is bespoke, so it really depends on the platform (mobile app, web app, basic landing page, email templates, etc) and the required features.

12. Please describe the operational structure of your company- from the moment a client walks into the product deployment.

Our high-level process is outlined on our website here: https://calibrated.io/our-approach/

13. After service is a necessary part of development. How do you provide customer support to your client?

We typically recommend our clients opt into a maintenance agreement where we maintain the app, gather user feedback, and iterate on the product.

14. Android or iOS, Native or Hybrid — which platform is best to use to build your app? What are your recommendations?

For mobile apps, we typically work with React Native, which is one of the more modern mobile frameworks and has a myriad of advantages.

See our blog where we compare RN to Flutter (another new framework). https://calibrated.io/the-new-kids-on-the-blockflutter-vs-react-native/