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Hyla Mobile
Web & Native Mobile Device Protection Platform
The Challenge
A company on the verge of its next big thing, but looking for help bringing it to life.
Hyla Mobile was in the midst of developing its next-generation mobile protection platform, a new B2B service that would provide aftermarket device coverage to employers as a benefit to their employees. Their team of designers and developers had been hard at work building a web platform and client apps that could automatically enroll new devices in the protection plans, and they approached Wolfco to help develop a new product for B2B audiences.
Hyla Mobile was looking to grow a prototype into a fully fledged digital product, and they needed the right team of designers and developers to do it. To get started, the team engaged Wolfco to evaluate their existing codebase and make recommendations for how to scale their platform. But one of their biggest goals was to assemble a product team that could work efficiently together to launch and iterate the new product, with the technical capabilities and product knowledge necessary to build a product and platform that lasts. Forming a product team is no small undertaking—especially a brand-new startup team within a larger existing organization—and the company was looking to bring on the right kind of developers that could build and maintain its future.
In addition to bringing on new team members, the existing organization was also looking to evolve. The company hadn't been using scrum practices before, and sought Wolfco's help in advocating for best practices and modernizing its processes. On paper, Hyla Mobile was looking for help to launch its new platform. But in reality, making their product a success would require consulting outside the realm of any one project.
The Solution
Launching a product company, and a product, from square one.
Wolfco staffed a cross-disciplinary team of developers and strategists to begin partnering with Hyla Mobile and solving problems. In addition to providing development services to finish work on its B2B web and mobile platform, Wolfco provided consulting on building a new team, improving internal processes, and change management to introduce new ways of working to support future growth.
Hyla Mobile's platform consisted of a responsive web app and web platform that leveraged innovative technology to automatically assess a mobile device's physical health and provide device protection. These aftermarket employee device protection plans relied on a proprietary testing SDK that verified every component of the phone is in working order—running tests to confirm the touchscreen works, checking that the battery is healthy, and even using machine learning to automatically determine if the screen glass is cracked.
The platform also integrated with third parties for mitigating fraud in the B2B product’s employee-facing endpoints, integrating a mobile SDK that uses specially tuned machine learning models to automatically flag suspicious activity as potentially fraudulent behavior. From there, Hyla team members and their customers’ IT teams could access a comprehensive admin portal to review fraud events, connect with a claims management system, and automate common tasks.
But for sustained success and maintenance of its new B2B digital platform, Hyla Mobile really needed to grow out its product and development teams with great new hires. Wolfco's team helped with vetting and interviewing developer candidates, identifying promising hires who went on to become star contributors to the product itself, including taking it to the next level and expanding its reach beyond B2B.
Beyond assisting with vetting and hiring new team members, Wolfco also piloted scrum processes with Hyla's existing team of developers, and advocated for Agile with other impacted stakeholders throughout the organization. With Wolfco's partnership and daily interactions with the existing team of app and API developers, the product team was able to roll out continuous integration and establish operations best practices that improved the quality of the code and accelerated development. Wolfco advised on developer involvement in design reviews, creating a more collaborative environment that incorporated developers' ideas and feedback into the design process.
Technologies Used
The Outcome
From concept to product company.
After just under three months of working together, Hyla Mobile was able to launch its new B2B device protection platform and apps to production—on schedule in December 2019. Since then, the company has begun issuing new plans for employee mobile device protection directly through its app, a first for the industry.
Looking ahead, Hyla Mobile's new product team is equipped to build new features and maintain the ecosystem of apps and APIs, and prepared with processes necessary to operate a scrum team within a larger organization. As they retrain their focus on the future iteration of the product into new applications beyond B2B, Hyla Mobile has the foundation it needs to build and support its next big thing.
Since starting on this project, everyone from Wolfco has truly felt like a part of our team. They've given us great feedback and helped us make the right decisions not only for the product, but also for the product team we’re assembling to support it long-term. The end product is a service that I'm really proud of.
— Head of Delivery, Hyla Mobile
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