CASE STUDY: MYMILITARYLIFE

COMPANY
The National Military Family Association is
nonprot 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization
based in Alexandria, Virginia
BENEFITS OF
THE MY MILITARYLIFE APP
Information synthesis: 1 app has the
potential to gather material from 3400+
websites
Improved outreach: The National Military
Family Association can connect with all
members through mobile devices
Streamlined process: Checklist-driven
process ofers clear direction for members
Built on Titanium and using Appcelerator Cloud Services,
Clearly Innovatives MyMilitaryLife app ofers members of
the National Military Family Association a mobile solution that
expedites information delivery for families in frequent transition
BENEFITS OF TITANIUM
Single code base: Ability to expand into
Android and other markets
Ease of support: Developers know Javascript
Cost- and time-efective: Faster and less
expensive than native development
DEVELOPMENT PARTNER
Clearly Innovative is a mobile development
company based in Washington, DC
OBJECTIVE
Develop an app that expedites information
delivery for military families in frequent
transition.
BENEFITS AND ROI OF MOBILE APP
Enhanced benets to National Military Family
Association members including expedited service
and ease of access to tailored information delivered
to any location through greatly improved CMS
Extended outreach to and support of members of
National Military Family Association
Time and cost savings to the National Military
Family Association as well as to many branches of
the military
Implementation of ACS eliminated need for
traditional IT staf to maintain and to monitor a
server suite, as the CMS is now in the cloud
More ROI yet to discover because of the ability
to build out the app in phases in a relatively
inexpensive way because of the exibility of the
platform
BENEFITS OF APPCELERATOR
CLOUD SERVICES
Ready to use: Suite of pre-built web services
already optimized for mobile devices
Speed: Quick creation of APIs
Innite scalabilty: No server space
constraints in the cloud
Reduced on-site support requirements:
No maintenance or monitoring required as
would be for a traditional, on-site hardware
server suite
CASE STUDY: MYMILITARYLIFE
THE CHALLENGE: REACHING THE LARGEST NUMBER
OF MEMBERS WITH TAILORED INFORMATION IN THE
FASTEST WAY AT THE LOWEST COST
Based in Alexandria, VA, the National Military Family Association provides
information, guidance, and advocacy for families throughout all branches
of the military. Seeking to leverage technology to extend their reach and to
enhance benets to their members, the National Military Family Association
partnered with Clearly Innovative to develop a custom solution for their
primary concern: how best to serve families who are frequently in transition.
Outreach
Since most people carry mobile devices, the National Military Family
Association thought that a mobile solution would be the most advantageous
way to reach the most people. They sought to build an app where their large
wealth of information and resources could be tailored to meet the needs
of any military family in any number of new situations, such as deployment,
moves, educational attainment, and more.
Impact
Because the National Military Family Association is a non-prot serving military
families, their business case isnt purely based on an ROI model. Rather, their
success is in reaching a large number of families and meeting their specic
needs, especially saving these on-the-go families frustration in trying to
obtain information from too wide of a variety of sources. The convenience of
having these resources culled into one app cannot be underestimated: over
3,400 websites versus 1 app. Long-term, the services provided by the National
Military Family Association through this app may save its organization, not to
mention various military agencies, time and money by streamlining the delivery
of information, yet the end-goal in creating the app was improved service
delivery in reduced time rather than any specic dollars-and-cents gures.
Bottom Line
Being prudent about costs and choosing the right technology to protect costs
was paramount given the organizations non-prot status. A Titanium cross-
platform solution with an ACS back-end served best to meet these cost-
conscious goals.
Despite the existence of over 3,400 military websites, 58% of military families
report difculty in nding information they urgently need. The National Military
Family Association sought a tailored way to deliver helpful information to their
members; they recognized that mobile technology plus organized content
structure would be the best way to achieve that objective.
BRIAN BLANKENSHIP, CLEARLY INNOVATIVE
CASE STUDY: MYMILITARYLIFE
THE CHOICE OF TITANIUM AND APPCELERATOR
CLOUD SERVICES (ACS): EFFICIENCY AND SCALE
AS PARAMOUNT CONSIDERATIONS
The Titanium Benet
All of Clearly Innovatives work involves Appcelerator products and
is performed in-house with no outsourcing. Clearly Innovative built
MyMilitaryLife on Appcelerators Titanium cross-platform tool because it
ofered the ability to reach both iOS and Android customers with a single
code base. As well, Clearly Innovative and the National Military Family
Association realized the ease of supporting apps written on JavaScript-based
Titanium. Hiring and training staf to support apps written in Javascipts
well-known, popular code would be a snap. Clearly Innovative did its due-
diligence in considering other solutions, including native development, ruled
out because its cost-prohibitive, especially for a non-prot client.
The Appcelerator Cloud Services Solution
Choosing a back-end server-side solution proved to be urgent, as it became
apparent that the National Military Family Associations existing web content
management system would not be exible enough to handle the type of logic
necessary in support of the new app. They faced a choice: modify their native
back-end with signicant cost and complexity, or nd a new solution. Cleary
Innovative recommended Appcelerator Cloud Services (ACS) to meet the
National Military Family Associations growing back-end server-side needs.
The benets ACS ofered far exceeded the capability of the prior back-end.
Fundamentally, ACS is an MBaaS (a mobile back-end as a service) a ready-
to-use suite of pre-built web services that are already optimized for mobile
devices, including pre-loaded services ranging from user registration to push
notications and more. As well, ACS ofers the ability to quickly create custom
Application Program Interfaces (APIs) and to integrate other external data
sources and even internal enterprise data. Because it is in the cloud, it is also
scalable and does not need to be maintained and monitored by an internal IT
staf as a traditional server suite required.
The ACS features used in this app were many, including the following: users,
push notications, access control lists, emails, social integration, photo
collections, key values, and les. Soon, Clearly Innovative will partner with
a third-party to implement an authentication platform for military members
and spouses so that users submitting ratings, comments, and likes can be
properly validated. Clearly Innovative hopes to write that functionality into an
Appcelerator module that will be available in Appcelerators marketplace.
Youd be hard-
pressed to nd more
Appcelerator knowledge
in one place. Its all
that we do. All of
our developers are
Titanium-certied, and
all that they do is write
Appcelerator code.
This is our niche.
AARON SAUNDERS, FOUNDER
CLEARLY INNOVATIVE
CASE STUDY: MYMILITARYLIFE
USERS AND USES OF THE APP
The typical user of MyMilitaryLife is a military spouse going through one
of eight transitions: moving, having a baby, raising kids, spouse education,
deployment, reintegration, separation, the basics. There are presently eight
life paths available on MyMilitaryLife for use, with more to be implemented
soon. Each life path ofers a checklist of things the user needs to do,
ofsetting the need for the user having to do research on his or her own. The
app takes as inputs their spouses branch of service and rank and then asks
questions about the situation.
The backend CMS culls the information so that the information provided
is whats useful to that specic user. For example, an Army spouse sees
scholarship information specically available to Army spouses without the
addition of information for Air Force and other spouses. This CMS eliminates
clutter and distraction.
MEASUREMENT: THE APPS SUCCESS
The National Military Family Association measured the success of
MyMilitaryLife in terms of how it helped the community. Outreach is their top
priority, and this mobile solution is adding greatly to that outreach capability.
Post-launch, MyMilitaryLife had 200,000 registered users. To date, there
have been nearly 2,200 downloads of the app. The National Military Family
Association is involved in an outreach and marketing campaign involving the
app right now to increase the number of registered users and downloads.
LOOKING FORWARD:
THE FUTURE OF THE MYMILITARYLIFE APP
In the future, three more life paths, such as those for spouse employment or
caregiving, will be added to the MyMilitaryLife app.
In the third phase of MyMilitaryLifes release, ratings, reviews, and comments
modules will be added in partnership with a third-party authentication system.
ABOUT THE NATIONAL MILITARY FAMILY ASSOCIATION
Founded in 1969, the National Military Family Association is the leading
non-prot organization focusing on issues important to military families. The
Association believes that all military families deserve comprehensive child
care, accessible health care, spouse employment options, great schools,
caring communities, a secure retirement, and support for widows and
widowers.
The military spouse
community is highly
connected and very
mobile- and tech-
savvy; through our
own research, we
knew that there was
a high percentage
of smartphone users
among them. It became
clear that an app the
best way to go in order
to meet our goal of
providing information to
spouses where and when
they needed it.
MICHELLE JOYNER,
COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR
FOR THE NATIONAL MILITARY
FAMILY ASSOCIATION
CASE STUDY: MYMILITARYLIFE
About Appcelerator
Appcelerator ofers the only platform built for a Mobile First world. It is the mobile platform of choice for thousands of
companies including eBay, Merck, Mitsubishi Electric, NBC, PayPal and Ray-Ban, as they become Mobile First enterprises.
With 50,246 mobile applications deployed on 123,226,372 devices, the Appcelerator Platform helps enterprises accelerate
their time to market, reduce costs, manage risk, and deliver exceptional mobile user experiences.
For more information visit www.appcelerator.com
Through continued advocacy on behalf of military families, the National Military Family Association anticipates, listens, and
reacts to the needs of military families through:
Ofering more than $2,000,000 in scholarships to nearly 2500 military spouses to pursue their education goals.
Sending 45,000 children to Operation Purple summer camp, a free program for children coping with the
absence of their deployed parent(s).
Organizing retreats to help military families reconnect after dealing with a war-related injury or after
long separations.
Conducting research to assess the ever-changing military environment and its efect on families.
Efciently managing our funds:
o Earned 4-star ratings from Charity Navigator nine straight years
o Meet all 20 of the Better Business Bureaus standards for Charity Accountability
o Hold an A+ rating from CharityWatch
ABOUT THE DEVELOPER: CLEARLY INNOVATIVE
Clearly Innovative is a mobile development company based in Washington, D.C. Incorporated in 2010, Clearly Innovative
began stafng in 2011 and now employs ten people. Clearly Innovative founder Aaron Saunders estimates that the
company will have ofered up to 15 new apps in 2012 on the iOS, Android, and Blackberry platforms built on Titanium; at
least 5 projects involve ACS as well.
Saunders brings to the table over twenty years of software development experience. His background includes an MBA in
Information Technology Strategy and Marketing from New York Universitys Leonard N. Stern School of Business. Forty-
eight year-old Saunders shares Ive been programming since the sixth grade. Saunders shares his wisdom, experience
with Appcelerator products, tutorials, and more at blog.clearlyinnovative.com, and he notes that blogging about his
Appcelerator experience helped his company to take of. A former employee in developer relations at Appcelerator found
Saunders through his blog and invited Saunders to become a platform evangelist for Appcelerator in 2011. Saunders is
about to publish a book with Wiley & Sons on Appcelerators Alloy product.
CORPORATE HEADQUARTERS | 440 Bernardo Ave, Mountain View, CA 94043
CONTACT US | www.appcelerator.com | Phone: (877) 909-4589 | General info: info@appcelerator.com | Sales inquiries: sales@appcelerator.com