Introduction
The journey to launch aumico, a scalable web-based financial auditing software, began with a shared vision between Rietmann & Partner and Modeso Ventures. Recognizing a need for optimization in the Swiss financial auditing process amid growing digitalization, Rietmann & Partner sought a technology-driven agency with an entrepreneurial mindset and technical expertise. Modeso Ventures AG, with their experience in developing SaaS solutions and strong technical background, saw potential in the idea and agreed to share investment, risk, and potential success. This collaboration gave birth to the new venture, aumico.
Client Overview
Rietmann & Partner is a financial audit specialist firm based in St. Gallen, Switzerland. They provide a wide range of services, including auditing, tax advice, corporate advice, and trust management. With a focus on delivering quality and personalized service, Rietmann & Partner is well-regarded in the industry and trusted by clients to deliver expert financial advice.
In 3 Steps to a Product Market-Fit
The challenge of simplifying the complex financial auditing process was overcome by dividing the product vision into a Minimum Viable Product (MVP). This approach facilitated a phased software development process and reduced overall risk.
Alignment Workshop (Research-Phase):
The journey began with an alignment workshop. This workshop provided a deep understanding of the markets and product’s complexity and vision, and allowed the team to get to know each other and develop a shared vision for the project. Ensuring that everyone shared the same understanding and vision was essential for the success of the venture. Here are the main steps we conducted:
- Storyboard: we clearly identified the problem we want to solve and our value proposition in our target market.
- We conducted interviews with potential target group
- Defined the user journey
- We conducted a competitor analysis
- MVP Scope – we identify minimum set features required to address the problem and validate the idea with potential customers.
- We provided a detailed cost indication for MVP with a binding cost selling.
Minimal Viable Product (MVP):
The team scoped the simplest possible version of a product in order to test its viability in the market. Our MVP included only the most essential features necessary to satisfy early adopters and provide valuable feedback for future product iterations. It allowed for a fast time-to-market, reduced development costs, and a reduced risk for the development team. Some key elements of this phase:
- We create a working prototype of the MVP with the minimum features identified.
- We iterated and improved our prototype based on feedback.
- We developed & launched our validated MVP.
- We continuously updated and improved the MVP based on feedback to ensure that it continues to meet the needs of our target market until the Product Market-Fit was reached.
Product Market-Fit
With our agile and lean software development approach, we were able to achieve a product market-fit within 10 months. With the MVP we could onboard 10 clients (early adopters) and continuously validate and iterate client feedback to increase our client base.
Scrum framework
This methodology allowed the team to be highly agile and responsive to changing requirements, while reducing the overall project risk. Communication was facilitated through Slack and Google Hangout, while Jira and Confluence was used as the project management and documentation tool. The key steps of the Scrum framework used by Modeso are:
- Two weeks sprints, including regression testing
- Daily stand-up meetings
- Refinement meeting
- Sprint planning 1 and 2
- Demo meeting
- Release deployment
- Retro meeting
