Client: Qifang

The Symbio Group has partnered with Qifang to create a web service for individual students and institutions to find funding, manage loan and grant transactions, relationships with funding sources and share in a community of borrowers, lenders and donors. From university financial aid management tools to a lending community that enables students to find alternative funding sources, Qifang supports all facets of education finance.

Symbio provided the following services to Qifang:

• Business Model, Marketing Strategy, and Product Specifications Creation
• Full Life-cycle Development
• Site and Logo Design
• Detailed Requirement Analysis and Planning
• QA/Testing
• Technical support for the China market including hosting and maintenance

Qifang’s goal is to enable everyone to afford an education.

Qifang is an open platform and online community with the singular purpose of giving everyone a way to pay for their education. Leveraging the latest in web and community technologies, Qifang efficiently brokers data and relationships through a transparent platform built on trust to connect and assist everyone involved in education finance. Qifang is committed to maximize social benefits through a sustainable business model. Qifang is based in Shanghai, China with an international team from diverse business and technology backgrounds driven by the pursuit of a common vision: education for all.

Faced with an obstacle of taking an idea to making a business plan to eventually launching a finished product, Symbio was challenged with helping Qifang, not only to launch the product, but to also make it successful in the market.

Such challenges included:

• Making sure the overall plan and execution were following government and regulatory policies of China
• Studying the Chinese market
• Implementing both a credit and financial system
• Understanding the functions of e-commerce websites
• Making sure the end product exceeded expectations

To overcome these challenges, Symbio used its Symbiosis Process as its base foundation which required full cooperation from both Qifang and Symbio. The Symbio process enabled Qifang to focus on its core competencies and business strategies, while Symbio focused on executing the solution and delivering the result. Both companies worked together to optimize the business idea, maximize product value, and through mutual collaboration, develop a solid relationship. This foundation coupled with Symbio’s existing expertise on the China market, its well established government relations, and its acquired knowledge in e-commerce enabled Symbio to triumph over the business challenges and lead Qifang to a successful project.

In September 2007, Qifang was brought to Symbio as a mere idea. Having understood the primary business idea of Qifang, which was loaning money to prospective students, Symbio began one of its first projects of taking a simple idea and going through each of its development phases to launch and sustain the end product.

Symbio developed a specific process to take an idea and bring it to full functionality. Every step was taken into full consideration, making sure that Symbio was not only launching the website, but also a successful and profitable one too. The Symbio Solutions Model was divided into four phases – product planning, analysis, implementation, launch and support.

• Product Planning: During this stage, Symbio took time to listen in detail about Qifang’s concept and idea. From there, Symbio validated the concept and measured its feasibility and viability to sustain it as a business, producing a Business Requirements Document (BRD), Marketing Requirements Document (MRD), and Product Requirements Document (PRD). The initial phase enabled Symbio to create the initial Business Model for Qifang.
• Analysis: The next phase required Symbio to create, analyze, and release the Product Implementation Document (PID). The PID included the outline of the business process, architectural model, feature list, data model, infrastructure schema, detailed project plan, and UI prototypes, which contained screen mockups, simulated flows, color schemes, and the overall site layout. Knowing the importance of customer satisfaction, Symbio required Qifang to approve the PID before moving onto the next phase.
• Implementation: The third phase was the actual implementation of the Qifang website. The Symbio team used its specialized software development methodology of RUP + Agile to develop Qifang’s website. This allowed Qifang to communicate with the Symbio team and prioritize the development process by dividing the workload into iterations while staying closely involved with each step of the implementation phase. Qifang has recently just released the beta version live in July ‘08 and is approaching the last stage of the Symbio Solutions Model.
• Support: During this last stage, Symbio will support the business by offering technical support and maintenance.

Primarily, Qifang felt that partnering with Symbio gave them the best possibility to succeed. Utilizing Symbio’s advanced Solutions Model helped Qifang save time and effort while receiving invaluable advice on entering the China market and developing its core strategy. Qifang also realized Symbio’s connections with some of the major universities around China, which helped Qifang create its early relationships with select schools to use during the beta testing phase.

On July 25th, 2008, Qifang launched its beta release onto the web. The beta release has given Qifang time to review its concept and centralize the beginning stages of its business by testing it at select universities. Additionally, the biggest advantage from working with Symbio was being able to provide a fully dedicated team from day one, which allowed Qifang to save up to four months of ramp-up time. Overall, for four consecutive months, the Symbio team received perfect scores on the client satisfaction survey, which measured technical ability, quality of service, time on delivery, and responsiveness. Ultimately, these factors played heavily into the successful launch of Qifang’s beta release. On Dec. 5th, 2008, Qifang was named World Economic Forum Technology Pioneer of 2009.