Just as the spread of COVID-19 was gaining momentum, Anthem launched a virtual care app, Sydney Care. Find out how Foxbox Digital collaborated with the Sydney Care team as the lead mobile app development partner.

How We Helped Anthem Launch a Mobile Telehealth Product During a Pandemic

On January 1st, 2020, just as the spread of COVID-19 was gaining momentum, Anthem, Inc., a leading health benefits company that serves over 110 million people through their affiliated companies, launched a virtual care app, 

Foxbox Digital collaborated with the Sydney Care team as the lead mobile app development partner, because of Foxbox’s experience and deep knowledge of 

Sydney Care, available on iOS and Android, utilizes AI-driven guidance to empower users to assess their symptoms and then choose the virtual care option that’s best for them. Additionally, through its COVID-19 Resource Center, Sydney Care provides an end-to-end solution that helps employees more safely return to the workplace.

“We built a solution that some of our customers have reviewed as being ‘life-changing.’ The ability to address health issues without physically going to a doctor, and in the comfort of their own home, is a rewarding experience to be part of, and we continue to see the growing impact of our telehealth platform.”
- Plamen Petrov, Ph.D., Vice President, Exponential Technologies, Anthem, Inc.

In 2020, Sydney Care was downloaded over 260,000 times, while thousands of users continue to utilize the application daily to diagnose symptoms and seek guidance for their health conditions from a device that lives in their pockets. Additionally, over 41,000 people have assessed their COVID-19 symptoms using Sydney Care.

The pandemic has forced many professionals to work from home and prevented critical care for many non-COVID patients. Sydney Care became a desired application for many people who needed preventative care, and also consumers with chronic illnesses.

“I was able to quickly chat with a doctor this afternoon about allergies and pick up my prescription within an hour. This beat taking 3-hours out of my workday, fighting traffic, and sitting in a waiting room (especially right now during a pandemic) to see a doctor. I found a new way to do health care,”
- jscrmil1, 04/14/2020 iOS App Store

A Delightful Mobile Experience (Built in React Native)

As the React Native mobile development experts, we interacted with Anthem’s Product, UX, Business, Integration, Authentication, Backend Development, and Security teams to build both iOS and Android native applications, using a single React Native codebase.

React Native allowed us to develop one app that works natively on iOS and Android instead of building two separate apps with disconnected codebases. Using React Native as the programming language enabled Anthem to streamline development and maintenance costs while still creating a stellar mobile consumer experience.

Through our collaboration and contributions, we delivered these core features and benefits:

Integrated Video and Chat for Virtual Doctor Visits

: Chat in real-time over video and text with healthcare providers.

:This triage functionality in the app allows a seamless experience for consumers to check their symptoms and get personalized guidance.

:A login-less experience for existing customers, as well as integration with other insurance providers.

: All of the technical enterprise security protocols needed without sacrificing the experience for the consumer.

: The ability to pay via credit, debit, or via insurance provider, all within the app.

A COVID-19 Return to Workplace Solution Built in 10 days

As Covid-19 started growing, we quickly pivoted along with Anthem’s product and design teams to develop an 

AI-powered Covid-19 daily-check in solution

 that helps protect workers by keeping potentially infected employees away from the workplace.

We developed the front-end and back-end of this new functionality and published on both app stores (iOS and Android) within 10 days—in addition to a previously-created COVID-19 assessment solution. This service is currently being used by many large organizations, some with 30,000+ employees, and more partnerships to come.

Better Healthcare Experiences Start with a Seamless Digital Experience

Together, with the partnership of Anthem’s robust global design, product, and integrated teams, we assisted in the development of an easy-to-use, direct-to-consumer mobile telehealth solution. With the added complexity of working within an enterprise environment, we continued to be flexible and agile in our approach of acting like a startup within an enterprise.

We’re honored to work alongside a leader in healthcare and innovation.

“They are professionals, talented, smart. They are committed, with a very strong core team. They owned the problem."
- Elliott Torres, Staff VP, AI and Architecture

We worked with NSLC to move them from a paper-led organization to a powerful digitally-enabled ecosystem. This included the creation of a new custom streamlined and automated scheduling system, as well as a modern customer-facing mobile app.

How NSLC's Digital Transformation Improved Operational Efficiency

The National Student Leadership Conference (NSLC) hosts hundreds of on-campus conferences to help high school students better prepare for College. NSLC’s goal is to help students make the biggest impact on their future careers.

As their operations grew to host thousands of students and parents at one of their many conferences, they struggled with communicating scheduling and event information. This resulted in delayed communication and labor-intensive operations work to keep their students and parents updated with the latest information while making sure events run smoothly.

To support their growth goals, we worked with NSLC to move them from a paper-led organization to a powerful digitally-enabled ecosystem. This included the creation of a new custom streamlined and automated scheduling system, as well as a modern customer-facing mobile app.

This resulted in increased student engagement and parent communication, improved operations efficiency, and higher Net Promoter Score (NPS).

Here’s how our digital transformation impacted NSLC:

Hundreds of Hours in Efficiency Saved Through Automation and Digitization

NSLC’s multiple-day conferences depend on a single resource—the schedule. This schedule provided the timetable of events and event information for students and their parents in formats such as printed paper, email, and megaphone announcements.

If any information changed, it would result in a manual effort from the NSLC staff to correct and update (think: hundreds of paper schedules, reprinted and distributed to students).

When you’re working 14-hour days, every minute saved in operations is a cause for celebration.

A new automated scheduling system, built from the ground up

The schedule was the core of the student experience. This told them where they had to be, when, and what they should expect in each event. By creating a new scheduling system from the ground up, we digitized the student scheduling system and automated the creation of the digital and printed schedules.

This scheduling system not only saved the NSLC staff a lot of time, but helped the organization coordinate with outside vendors and university partners.

A new modern mobile app built with React Native

The digitization of NSLC’s business resulted in significant operational improvements, resulting in hundreds of hours saved every month.

“The staff-side software made an exponential difference in how we work. It’s so much easier! Words can’t explain how big of an impact this was for our organization,” - Susan Lowitz, Director of Operations, NSLC

Automation of paper schedule modifications

When a schedule change happens, paper schedules need to be updated. Previously, the design team would need to be notified and changes were made manually, and all of the changes involved new email notifications and paper schedule changes, sometimes resulting in confused students. Now, the new digital system makes the design changes seamlessly and automatically.

In the new digitized system, changes happened in real-time and behind the scenes. With immediate access to their updated schedules on mobile and web, students and parents had the relevant information they needed to make every session count.

“We found that parents were checking in on their kid’s schedules and activities while they were on the train, or any down moment they had. The relevant information was getting to them much quicker, and that made a huge impact on our customers’ experience,” - Susan Lowitz, Director of Operations, NSLC

Students were instantly connected with their peers

Teenagers can be shy. Connecting with other students and making friends was not always an easy activity for them. We fixed this by connecting them with other students through the Group.me chat message platform they could access through the NSLC app.

Students were interacting with other students before they even attended their first event. Connections and friendships were made almost instantly.

Student Referrals Skyrocketed and Access to Student Feedback is Now Instant

NSLC relies on survey data to improve their conferences. Traditionally, they would distribute paper scantrons and students would hand write their comments. We saw an opportunity to collect more thoughtful survey responses, as well as an ability to collect more refined data.

Session-level feedback surveys allowed for more feedback than ever before

With the new digital platform, NSLC was now able to collect surveys immediately after a session was complete.

The operations staff had the flexibility to dynamically assign session feedback to many types of events. This resulted in immediate, personalized feedback that they previously weren’t able to capture.

A dynamic database that allowed NSLC to personalize experiences.

We created a dynamic database that allowed the staff to access their student roster, with access to information needed to personalize their students’ experiences. This included their contact info, emergency contacts, dietary preferences, information on their assigned staff, and whether they were on or off-campus. This easy to access database, allowed the NSLC staff to personalize each and every student experience.

Happier Students, Grateful Parents, and a Productive Staff Results in More Student Referrals

It was more than moving from paper to digital. It was about enabling NSLC to serve their clients. As a result of an improved experience, substantially more students invited their friends for the next conference season than they did last year.

More technology isn’t the answer to everything. In some cases, more technology is a burden and doesn’t solve your current business problems. We were cognizant of this as we focused on building a simple to use platform that allowed the NSLC staff to do what they needed to do with minimal training.

Students had a more seamless experience than ever before, parents were grateful that their kids experienced the NSLC without any hiccups, and the NSLC staff was able to do it more efficiently. That’s a win-win-win for everyone involved.

If you enjoyed this case study and you’re looking for a product development agency that can help you the same way we helped NSLC, 

How NSLC’s Move to Digital Increased Parent Communication, Student Engagement, Staff Productivity and Program Referrals

Mountain Management approached us to help them modernize their property management systems. With our help, Mountain Management became one of the premier property managers in Colorado.

How We Helped a Leading Rental Management Company Increase Revenue and Occupancy Through Custom Data-Driven Software

Mountain Management, a full-service property management company, oversees hundreds of short term rentals across the country. As they grew, they began outpacing their systems and needed to search for a new technology solution to match their ambitions. As the short term rental space became more crowded, they knew leveraging custom-built technology was the answer to remaining competitive.

Mountain Management approached us to help them modernize their property management systems. With our help, Mountain Management became one of the premier property managers across several markets including Breckenridge, Vail, Telluride, Aspen, Denver, and Chicago. They helped their clients increase occupancy and revenue all while automating their property management and financial reporting.

Here’s how we helped them achieve their goals:

We built a data-driven dynamic pricing model, increasing revenue by nearly 25 percent

Mountain Management struggled with their strategy to find the optimal daily price for hundreds of properties across a calendar year. Their existing software did not allow them to implement customized or market-based pricing, thus leaving thousands of dollars on the table.

We set up a data feed to analyze live data sets across their markets

 that determined an optimal daily price for every single property on the platform. This allowed Mountain Management to compare and adjust rates on a daily basis across the entire market and for the next 365 days to ensure they remain price-competitive.

 to account for daily adjustments to supply and demand. This gave Mountain Management more control over how conservative or aggressive they wanted to be with their prices for each property.

We update pricing on multiple booking platforms for 365 days all at once, every single day.

 We eliminated the frequent headaches of manually setting prices and adjusting rates across their hundreds of properties. With automation, Mountain Management can determine the strategy and never worry about the daily manual hours required to adjust their rates. We integrated directly with Guesty, Rentals United, Airbnb, HomeAway, and Booking.com among other platforms.

We increased occupancy by implementing smart and flexible booking rules

Increasing occupancy is a goal for any short term real estate owner, but is really difficult to monitor across a large portfolio of properties. Inevitably, the bottom performers start feeling left behind.

 — We put the power back into Mountain Management’s hands by letting them configure their own dynamic rules. Each property can be configured to a different pricing and availability strategy.

 — Other software solutions allow owners to set static minimum stays across their entire calendar. We changed that by implementing several new features, all customizable by Mountain Management, including the following:

 depending on the season and holiday schedule. Mountain Management can require higher minimum night stays for in demand dates, and allow one night stays over slower seasons.

. If Mountain Management could not secure a 5-night stay over Christmas break, their tool now allows them to reduce those restrictions to ensure occupancy still remains high.

 to allow Mountain Management to sell nights they wouldn’t normally sell. Even if a range of dates has a 5-night minimum, and two reservations have a gap of 3 nights in between, our tool recognizes the inefficiency and assigns a 3-night minimum accordingly. Yay for back-to-back bookings!

We automated customized financials and accounting

If you’ve ever tried to produce a monthly financial report for a single property, you know how difficult it is. Now, imagine managing hundreds of properties and clients alongside thousands of reservations, adjustments, property expenses, and refunds. Simply put, a simple accounting software for Property Managers does not exist.

Mountain Management’s finance team handles this manually, which causes quite a bit of inconsistency. Here’s how we made the process easier for them:

 — Previous reports were consistently inaccurate due to the nature of up to 20 reservations each month for each property with several listings across several different platforms with different commissions, sales tax, and payout rules. We streamlined this process and built safety checks along the way to ensure the accuracy of every single reservation.

Reduced hundreds of spreadsheets to one single click

 — The finance team was producing each accounting report individually and manually. Our engine instantly generates and emails reports for any month and any owner with a single click of a button. We saved hundreds of hours and a lot of Tylenol.

Automated the distribution of payments monthly

 — As part of the streamlined generation of reports, the system instantly sends ACH payouts to each owner. Reducing banking pains and delays, allowing owners to receive their money sooner!

In the end, we took a traditional property management company and empowered them with modern tools to compete with the emerging tech players in the market. We continue to help them grow their tools with our strong engineering team.

If you enjoyed this case study and you’re looking for a product development agency that can help you the same way we helped Mountain Management, feel free to 

Home Chef partnered with Foxbox Digital to rebuild their mobile app with React Native and help them increase ratings and conversions.

How We Increased HomeChef's App Ratings

Home Chef, a subsidiary of Kroger, is the third largest meal kit company in the U.S. As Home Chef was scaling their business, and providing new offerings to their growing customer base, they were looking for a modern framework with extensibility to support their new service offerings. They brought in Foxbox Digital to rebuild their mobile app with 

, a modern cross-platform app framework, to help them achieve their ambitious goals.

Through our engagement with Home Chef, we developed and published iOS and Android apps using React Native. This helped them significantly increase app store ratings, meal kit conversions, and user engagement rates.

We focused on building a great experience from the ground-up

We knew that re-platforming to React Native was only one part of the solution. We worked closely with the CTO & Head of Product to deliver an experience that delighted their customers.

Here are three of the core activities we focused on:

 - We provided early architectural recommendations based on their future technical and business goals. This included a revised roadmap that better fit their goals to maximize customer impact.

 - We seamlessly collaborated with the UX team to ensure the app was instantly responsive to the end user.

 - Customers added their first item to the shopping cart 20% faster than with the previous app.

Foxbox Digital’s deep technical knowledge of React Native helped us move quickly through technical roadblocks.

 In early stages of the development, they guided us through architecture decision and foresaw many of the issues we would run into with our current development setup. If you’re looking for React Native developers, I can’t recommend them enough. 

With thousands of paying customers on the platform already, and owned by a large subsidiary, speed-to-market is often not feasible. Our deep knowledge of React Native and our philosophy of tight product and engineering coordination allowed us to build the new iOS and Android application 

Here’s a breakdown of how we were able to move so fast.

 - Our engineering team is focused on the React Native platform. This allows us to provide deeper recommendations and build a modern architecture best suited for React Native.

Strong Relationships and Coordination With Engineering, Product, and Design

 - We know that developing an application isn’t just a list of requirements. We start every project by determining the specific goals of each team and work closely with each stakeholder to build the best product possible.

- We were instrumental through the beta testing phase ensuring a fast feedback loop from their most valuable customers, prior to launch. We quickly iterated to implement the feedback, which led to a successful launch.

I think the app is easy to use as well as navigate.

 I’ve tried other meal services and this was the best! 

We enabled them to build better features based on data

Prior to engaging with us, Home Chef was having a difficult time experimenting with mobile features. Here’s how we resolved that.

Embedded Customer Behavior Data Analytics

 - We knew that to improve the experience of the app, we had to collect data at every major customer interaction. We worked directly with their executive marketing team to implement Amplitude to track key user data points and define the events they needed to track.

 - We implemented A/B Multivariate testing functionality. Now, instead of guessing which functionality makes the customer happier, it is simple to deploy A/B Testing for both iOS and Android.

 - With React Native and Expo, they're able to publish weekly updates with the push of a button. Allows them to collect fast feedback from customers.

Simply put, Foxbox Digital was amazing from start to finish.

 Their maturity in understanding our product, engineering, design, and business needs was exactly what we needed. They were proactive and intentional in every decision they brought forward. This product is core to our experience and we couldn’t have imagined a better partner than Foxbox Digital. 

- Julian Rockwood, Head of Consumer Product, Home Chef.

If you enjoyed this case study and you’re looking for a React Native development agency that can help you the same way we helped Home Chef, feel free to 

case studies

4 posts tagged with “case studies”

How We Helped Anthem Launch a Mobile Telehealth Product During a Pandemic

How NSLC’s Move to Digital Increased Parent Communication, Student Engagement, Staff Productivity and Program Referrals

How We Helped a Leading Rental Management Company Increase Revenue and Occupancy Through Custom Data-Driven Software

How We Helped Home Chef, the Kroger-Owned Meal Kit Delivery Service, Increase App Store Ratings and Meal Kit Conversions