One of the more interesting projects India Partner #10 shared with us sounds simple on the surface, but dig a little deeper, and it was actually quite complicated. The project? A license verification app for Walgreens.

Naturally, every pharmacist and technician must have a valid license to dispense medications. Each of the 50 states, plus DC and Puerto Rico, have separate licensing requirements. Because Walgreens did not have a centralized location that maintained information on every employee’s licenses, license verification had to be done manually – and it was time-consuming.

Additionally, some people have 3 licenses for 3 different states, so if Walgreens really needed more pharmacists in Illinois, for instance, they couldn’t easily identify current employees in other states who were already licensed in Illinois – and therefore able to relocate.

Walgreens didn’t quite know what they wanted at first, so a business analyst from India Partner #10 through the drawbacks in the existing system. They quickly realized that all of Walgreens’ licensing information needed to be moved to one spot – and then have it integrated with a scheduling system. To accomplish this, India Partner #10 created 52 different websites – one for each state, plus DC and Puerto Rico.

“We did a pilot concept and implemented it for one specific state,” said Bala, a Senior Project Manager at the Indian partner. “Then we did the 25 states that are really big and where Walgreens has a lot of stores, and then we rolled out to the remaining states.”

The biggest technical challenge they faced was maintaining licensing requirements in different formats for each state. Since completing the project, they have expanded to other license types – there are around 30 different licenses that go beyond pharmacists and technicians – like food licenses, alcohol licenses, etc.

Because this was such a complicated project, India Partner #10 used the agile software development process. “It took 3-4 weeks for each state [website],” continued Bala. “We needed to find the licensing information, validate it, and then add it to the system. We had teams onsite and offshore, so we were able to complete the websites in a short timeframe.”

The agile process they followed was especially useful for this project. “One major challenge was a state changing their website’s formatting while we were doing the website, so we had to change our programming,” said Bala. “And that happened with several states!”

To learn more about Agile Software Development, or to discover how Accelerance’s India Partner #10 can assist you with your software development requirements, please contact us today at 877-992-2235 x 100 or by email at info @ accelerance.com.