Overview
Health and Wellness · Proof of Concept · MVP · Startup · Operations · Scaling
Background and Context
Our client, was a joint venture between Holmes Murphy, a privately held national insurance and benefits company, and Marcia Upson, Nurse Practitioner, the creator of the Naturally Slim program.
Naturally Slim (now WondrHealth) is a 10-week behavior modification program that has been statistically proven to lower BMI and improve health outcomes.
Prior to the joint venture, the Naturally Slim Program had been delivered in-person by Ms. Upson who personally coached participants through a 10-week journey. The Goal of the joint venture was to scale the offering online as a corporate benefit.
Improving the Prototype
Problem: Naturally Slim at the time, had an existing rough Proof of Concept (PoC) with poor UX comprised of two separate off-the-shelf SaaS products with independent logins
Goal: a branded web portal with one login providing SSO across components, with ability to on-board corporate clients and online purchase for individuals.
Solution: Dialogs worked with stakeholders to develop an online portal experience that greatly improved UX and enabled bulk onboarding of customers.
Outcome: A viable POC that increased top line revenue with minimal investment; increased participant satisfaction.
Building a solid MVP
Problem: Current Proof of Concept lacked a fully-branded custom UX, there were severe limitations of the 3rd party LMS that required compromises in the prototype and the offering did not demo well to corporate prospects.
Goal: an in-house, custom LMS experience highly tailored to the unique requirements of the growing program.
Solution: Dialogs migrated the platform to a custom LMS with tools for the success team to monitor and advise participants, and robust reporting for feature analytics.
Outcome: Increased top line revenue 5x with minimal investment; the new platform demoed well and allowed closing increasingly larger corporate clients.
Scaling Challenges
Problem: Revenue stalled. There was a need to scale the MVP and become a robust product.
Goal: Grow Revenue to land ever larger corporate clients and improve user engagement in weeks 2 through 10 of the program.
Solution: Naturally Slim increased internal staff. The new CTO's expectation was an eminent phase-out of Dialogs Involvement. After working with Dialogs for 6 months, the CTO recognized the value of the partnership; Dialogs continued as a strategic advisor and development partner through exit enhancing the AWS architecture, building endpoint support for iOS and Android mobile apps, implementing Billing as a Medical Claim and working with internal staff to achieve HITRUST certification.
Outcome: Increased revenue 6x since the MVP phase.
Stabilization and Growth
Problem: High-profile clients and a growing user base shifted the focus from rapid-release to risk mitigation.
Goal: HITRUST and SOC 2 Certifications.
Process: Working with the in-house team, Dialogs formalized compliance controls appropriate for a mature application, increased Unit Test coverage and deployment automations that significantly reduced issues in production.
Outcome: Stress-free, scheduled releases; continued growth.
Optimize for Exit
Challenge: Prepare for Exit.
Goal: Enhance offering by rebranding and maximizing profitability.
Process: Naturally Slim became a highly profitable segment of Holmes Murphy's business with incredible EBITA growth and doubling internal team productivity every 8 months for 4 years using ops automations developed by Dialogs. The Naturally Slim product was rebranded to Wondr Health.
Outcome: WondrHealth sold to a private equity group for an undisclosed amount of money.
Final Outcomes
- Under Private Equity ownership, Wondr Health continued the partnership with Dialogs for 3 years until it transitioned to in-house development.
- 30-75% YOY top line revenue growth for 4 years
- 30x revenue growth from the PoC phase to Scale phase
- Back end automations led to EBITA of 50% of top line
- The successful and highly profitable sale of Naturally Slim to a private equity group
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