What is the most important aspect when it comes to choosing a development partner?
Is it someone who can take your innovation completely off your hands and hand it back ready for market? Is it someone who will fully integrate into your existing team? Are you looking for end-to-end delivery, quick turnaround and low cost, or detailed development and phased programming? There is no right or wrong answer and everyone’s requirements are completely different.
eg are based in Cambridge, the world’s most intensive science and technology cluster, so we are amongst good company within the product development sector. There has been some coverage in the press recently about pharma and biotech organisations favouring midsize contract research organisations (CROs), but what we’ll say is this. It is crucial to choose a development partner who not only delivers exceptional product engineering, but also compliments your business and ethos.
At eg, when we partner with a new client, we spend a lot of time on the onboarding process to ensure we really get to know their way of doing things and get under the skin of their project. Innovators trust us with their ‘baby’ and in turn it becomes our ‘baby’. Our engineers treat each project as if it is their own to ensure they get the best results, which means our clients get the best results.
So, here are a few reasons why our clients repeatedly choose us at a development partner:
We are agile, adaptive and curated for excellence
eg are a team of 50 people, this includes non-engineering staff, so every player counts. With a smaller team, it is imperative that each person is excellent at what they do and at eg, we stand by that claim! When we are allocating engineers to work on your project, you can be reassured that we are fielding our best team.
Being a smaller consultancy means we have the autonomy to be adaptive. Collaboration is often the answer to many problems and by being agile, flexible and by working together, we can prioritise our clients’ needs and solve their problems. We are constantly learning – through training, upskilling, from each other and from our mistakes – and therefore remain at the forefront of engineering innovation.
This flexibility also extends to the service we provide, which can be as integrated as you need it to be. We can act as a fully outsourced engineering resource – offering help with work programme development for funding applications and the option to leverage our network of suppliers and manufacturing partners – or we can provide the pieces of the development puzzle that you are missing, adding to your existing team and collaborating with your preferred partners to realise volume production.
We are a strategic partner
We take the time to understand our clients’ business processes, value propositions, objectives and goals. This forms a central part of every project and puts us in a position to provide strategic input and guidance. We not only help our clients to engineer the best product outcomes but also help them to navigate the development process from concept through to transfer to manufacture, and beyond in some cases. Our aim is not to develop a product that we think is great, but to build a product that will get manufactured and reach the market, because it’s great!
We have built partnerships with universities, accelerators, incubators, VCs, investors and other organisations which help their members to progress their innovation. These partnerships facilitate early introductions, allowing us to be integrated into our clients’ development programmes at an early stage. Early collaboration provides clients with our integrated expertise and extensive capabilities from the outset, allowing them to leverage our refined development roadmap, whilst we drive innovation and deliver optimum outputs, strategically.
Obviously, we don’t only work with innovators at the very start of their programme. Many companies come to us with an existing product which needs iterating or improving, or with a development which they are struggling to get to market. Going back to the beginning is not an option for many, but with a thorough gap analysis or technical due diligence, any gaps can be identified, addressed and strategically factored into their programme.
Communication is central to programme success and regular meetings, progress reviews and updates are scheduled into each project, keeping us abreast of client-side market changes or requirements and keeping clients informed of project progress. This leads to better-informed decisions and optimisations whilst never sacrificing strategic direction.
We offer a tailored fit
We understand that your business may have multiple stakeholders – including external investors and partners. As such, we place emphasis on programme transparency and visibility. This enables us to identify risks from the outset and plan for all eventualities. It also allows us to phase our schedule of work to align with funding cycles, clinical schedules (where applicable) and investment rounds. Some of our clients are large, blue-chip companies, some are SMEs and some are smaller start-ups and in each of these relationships, we are dealing with different people – from clinicians, engineers, and innovators, to midlevel executives, CTOs/CEOs and board members. Each client or stakeholder has different challenges, requirements and expectations and we are well-versed in tailoring our approach to ensure our partnership not only compliments their business objectives, but also delivers the required outcomes.
We are not a ‘jack of all trades’
Many organisations want a one-stop-shop for their development. That’s not us.
We are an integrated product design, engineering and development specialist, with expertise in electronics, software and mechanical engineering, industrial design, human factors, technical due diligence & project management. We are ISO 13485 accredited and deliver inspiring and marketable products across MedTech, Lab/BioTech, VetCare, CleanTech, AgriTech, Consumer and Food/Drink Sectors. We are excellent within this space and are proud to have a team of exceptional engineers who know the development roadmap inside out.
However, product development is multifaceted and there are certain specialist areas in which external expertise is not only recommended, but required, specifically within MedTech development. We have built a network of partners, with whom we work in order to offer the best solutions to our clients. For example, although we have extensive knowledge of regulations and classifications, there are regulatory partners and test houses we work with to ensure our clients receive the best advice. The same goes for intellectual property. We are unusual in the fact that our clients keep their IP in its entirety, and to ensure they get the best protection, we can introduce them to trusted 3rd parties, if they so require. We have built a carefully curated selection of suppliers and manufacturers and can advise which we think will be most suitable for each project. We are happy for our clients to leverage our partner network to maximise success.
We would rather be masters of our trade, rather than a jack of all trades and master of none.
As you can probably tell, we are very proud of our team and the business we have built. eg technology became employee-owned in 2023, so we all take great pride in what we do and the business we have built. But, don’t just take our word for it…we might not be for you…but we’d love to have a call and find out if we are a fit and share how we can transform your product development journey.
For more information or to chat with one of our team about your product design and development requirements, please do not hesitate to get in touch:
Via email on design@egtechnology.co.uk, by giving us a call on +44 01223 813184, or by clicking here.
