“I’ve never before worked on a project where a company has committed this much time and resource to understanding and confirming our needs” – Ash Carroll-Miller, CEO

Access Fertility is an Oxfordshire-based company which was founded by experts in the fertility therapy area to simplify access to treatment for anyone considering IVF.

The company works closely with the best UK clinics to provide bespoke IVF payment programmes and treatment plans in order to secure the best chance of fertility success.

• Build a new CRM system, integrating patient treatment histories
• Manage a seamless transition over from the old to the new system
• Accommodate all the stakeholders’ needs (patients, medical review teams, clinics, finance, and Access Fertility itself)

Discovery – arguably the most important part of a project is the initial Discovery Phase. This is where we seek to agree
on the big issues early on, ensuring that everybody is onboard with the proposed plan and the scheduled time & costs – Data Security was a particular concern here.

Understanding – before we build anything ‘for real’, we visualize the needs & wants of both the client, and the client’s customers – Wireframing is one of the most valuable tools we use at this stage.

Agile – we use Agile Software Development for building software solutions. This is a structured methodology, involving frequent short meetings over a 2-week cycle, with a debrief at the end of each cycle.

“We had grown exasperated by the limitations of our ‘off-the-shelf’ product”

This was a complex project, which was handled extremely well from start to finish.

We had previously bought a well-known, off-the-shelf CRM system from a major provider, but found ourselves increasingly exasperated by its limitations, and by the fact that we were effectively ‘locked in’; i.e. any changes to the system could only be made (expensively!) by an authorised reseller.

We wanted to invest in our brand and develop our own bespoke system to ensure that all the data collected was absolutely safe, and could be used efficiently by internal and external stakeholders alike.

“Everybody’s opinion is valued at Surge Online”

It’s all well and good saying that a company is ‘professional & efficient’, but that massively under-sells what Surge Online were able to provide us throughout this project.

Uniquely, Surj gives his team the ability to express themselves – everyone has right to air an opinion. I’ve been involved in countless meetings where one senior person dominates, and everybody else has to either remain silent or ‘on message’.

Through the whole build process – the planning meetings, the wireframing, and the debriefs at the end of every Sprint Cycle… etc. this truly has been a team effort from Surge Online.

“I’ve seen other projects go ‘wrong’ before, and it is very frustrating!”

Once the build was underway, Pete [UX expert from Surge Online] more or less ‘embedded himself’ into our company! He was always asking us questions and making sure that he understood our needs – it was so reassuring to have that level of ‘hands on’ experience.