Case Studies
Evaluating developers can be a difficult job.
What are they capable of? Do they stick around to support their code, or do they bolt for the next new thing? Below we've chosen a few projects we've enjoyed working on that are representative of our abilities and the relationships we build with our clients. If you see some of your own business needs in the descriptions below, we'd love to talk about what we can do for you.
GOED
GOED is the global trade organization for omega-3s, and its site does two jobs at once. In public it speaks for the industry. Behind a login, it delivers what members join for: market research, paid reports, a member directory, company profiles, and a deep library of scientific resources.
We've maintained that site and the systems behind it since 2016, including report delivery, data access, and the workflows GOED uses to reach its membership. A good share of the work is making sure the right material reaches the right people without anyone having to think about it.
The Clinical Study Database is the deepest piece of it, a complex production application built for working researchers. Our job there has been to make studies easier to review and to strengthen what sits underneath, without interrupting the people who rely on it.
LUMEA
LUMEA initially hired us to expand development on their flagship product, BxLink, a web-based digital pathology platform that tracks specimen samples between the labs, pathologists, and clinics handling them. The company was growing faster than the software or the team behind it. We came in as consultants, running BxLink projects parallel to their internal team.
In 2020 the engagement changed shape. Pete, our founder, took a full-time role as LUMEA's VP of Software Development to accelerate the growth of their development team, and asked Jim Cottrell, a seventeen-year veteran of Aspen Digital, to join as Technical Lead. That meant defining the modernization strategy for BxLink, recruiting developers, and bringing on outsourced talent where it could speed the work along.
Alongside the hiring came the things that let a growing team move quickly without breaking a healthcare product: developer documentation for BxLink and the services around it, a CI platform with pipelines for automated testing, dedicated QA and cloud development environments, OAuth 2 and HL7 integrations with the clinics, labs, and vendors on the other end, and the beginning of a migration to a HITRUST-compliant architecture on AWS.
By 2022 LUMEA had the internal development team it had hired Pete to build, along with the practices to support it. Pete returned to Aspen Digital, and LUMEA's team carried on from there.
Kyowa Hakko USA
Kyowa Hakko USA has been with us across several generations of websites and campaigns, going back to 2010. That covers the corporate site along with branded ingredient properties like Cognizin, Setria, Pantesin, and EyeMuse, each with its own audience and purpose.
Some of that work has been full rebuilds. Much of it has been quieter and just as necessary: forms, newsletters, hosting moves, accessibility fixes, and the content tools that let their team make changes without calling us first.
The goal hasn't changed since: keep a broad portfolio of sites current, useful, and manageable as the brands evolve.
Zane Benefits
Zane Benefits, a health benefits company headquartered in Salt Lake City, came to us while they were transitioning away from the technology stack behind their subscription software product. They were building something new with an architecture that could scale past the old platform's limits, but all of their revenue still ran through that old system. They needed someone to keep it viable in the meantime, fixing bugs as they cropped up and clearing bottlenecks.
Once we knew the code, we took on data integrity, performance, billing, and the automated system maintenance that had been failing sporadically. As we reworked the rough spots, we built a suite of automated tests to verify the codebase stayed correct. With the internal processes running smoothly, we added deeper reporting and automated syncing of financial data, along with modest improvements to the customer experience.
Smoothing out the performance problems let us cut the system's hardware requirements significantly. The reporting and financial syncing gave management better insight into the state of the business, and the product improved for customers and support staff alike. The work extended the useful life of the platform, protected an existing revenue stream, and gave them the room to finish what they were building. Zane Benefits operates today as PeopleKeep.
When we decided to build a new technology platform from scratch, we knew it would significantly slow down our efforts if we had to continue maintaining the existing platform in parallel. At the same time, we had all of our revenue on the existing platform, so we knew we could not ignore it.
Not only were we able to transfer 100% of maintenance of our existing platform to Aspen Digital without issue, but they exceeded our expectations and made significant improvements. We were able to remain focused on delivering a new platform and taking a huge step forward for our business, and we couldn't have done it without them.
Sibu
Sibu sells sea buckthorn health products, and they wanted a cleaner storefront that worked better without moving off Shopify to get there. We rebuilt the theme from scratch while the store kept selling.
Starting fresh meant we could leave behind the leftovers of an older page builder instead of patching around decisions made years earlier. We reworked how products, subscriptions, and media are presented on desktop and mobile, and shaped the theme around how the store gets used.
Building from scratch also meant we caught accessibility problems in the design instead of after launch. We worked through the WCAG issues as the theme came together, so the store went live meeting accessibility standards rather than needing a remediation pass later. The result is a storefront that's easier to shop, easier to run, and accessible from the day it launched.
Finlayson-Fife
Jennifer Finlayson-Fife is a sex and relationship therapist who sells courses, publishes a podcast, and runs a mobile app. Her work had grown past what a content site could carry, and the problem was less about pages than about access: who's allowed to see what, and where.
We built the system around a single customer account. One purchase can unlock course access on the website, protected video and audio, a private podcast feed, and content inside the app, whether it was bought on the web or through the phone. All of it resolves to that one account, so a customer's full history stays in a single record rather than scattered across systems.
Eight years in, we're still building on it. When she wants to launch a new course or open a new series, the question is what she wants to teach, not whether the platform can handle it.
Vine Lore
Vine Lore brokers wine and spirits out of Salt Lake City. They came to us for a website update. While we were talking through the changes they wanted, we started hearing about inefficiencies that had nothing to do with the website. Product management turned out to be the prime target: they were spending several hours a week updating spreadsheets by hand, and any analysis or reporting on that data relied heavily on cutting and pasting. The more we talked, the clearer it became that automating those processes would save real time and money.
We designed a database and automated the import of product information to simplify portfolio management. We wrote a tool to automate the data updates and built custom reports that opened new ways to analyze what they'd collected. We delivered the original request too, designing an attractive new site that showcases Vine Lore's portfolio in a way both current and potential customers can understand.
The tools have streamlined their workflow. Rather than being bogged down in tedious, time-consuming data entry, their team can focus on servicing customers. Reports that used to take hours are now available at the click of a button. Their clients see the benefit too, since they can search for products and check up-to-date inventory on the new site.
We were originally in the market for an updated web site and creation of a database for our portfolio. Pete and his team at Aspen Digital came highly recommended by one of our clients.
We quickly realized Aspen Digital’s high level of expertise in software development. As we started utilizing the database we realized the potential of increasing the scope of the project would increase our efficiencies - removing time consuming data entry and allowing us to focus on growing and managing our business.
Pete and his team are terrific to work with- they are responsive, professional, and work with a high level of integrity.
Utah Association of Counties
The Utah Association of Counties needed software for work that off-the-shelf products don't cover. County processes tend to be specific, and these were no exception.
We built Appeals Watch to help counties track centrally assessed property tax appeals. Bill Tracker came later, coordinating legislative bills, county positions, forums, votes, and the exports that come with them. Instead of scattered files and one-off email, UAC has structured systems built around how county teams work.
Diathrive
Diathrive sells diabetes supplies on subscription, and they had outgrown their e-commerce platform. Subscriptions, stored payment methods, and employer-group reimbursements all needed support the old setup couldn't give them.
We moved customers, payment methods, and active subscriptions to a new platform, then added custom payment flows for the employer groups. Existing subscribers carried on uninterrupted, which matters when what's arriving is medical supplies. Diathrive got a more flexible store without putting their customers through a messy transition.
ShootDotEdit
The wedding photographers who founded ShootDotEdit in the San Diego area had an idea to make life simpler for other photographers: an online service that would let them outsource post-production and free up time for everything else that goes into running a photography business. Done right, it would remove a common pain point while still delivering the artistic quality and personal style photographers demand.
We were involved from the beginning, gathering the business requirements and building them into a new web application. As the company refined its processes over the following years, we took on a second iteration of the product that folded in what they'd learned, streamlined operations, and focused on code quality to give the company a secure foundation going forward. We set up processes to minimize downtime and used automated testing to verify the business logic that mattered most.
The software at the heart of ShootDotEdit managed post-production for photographers around the world. The company established itself as a resource for wedding photographers and eventually brought development in-house, continuing to build on what we'd made as their business processes evolved.
We truly value our relationship with Aspen Digital, their guidance and expertise with technology has helped open up new opportunities for our business.