Birdie

R&D Activity

Birdie is a social enterprise, with a mission to reinvent care so that older generations can live longer, healthier and happier in their own homes. They use digital products, cutting-edge home connected devices and AI to empower the care community to deliver better, preventative care.

Claim History

Birdie previously claimed with a traditional R&D specialist. They switched to EmpowerRD in 2019 having seen the benefits that using a platform could bring in making the claiming process more efficient for a larger team. With Birdie’s projects becoming more complex, and their team growing, they needed a solution to scale with them and allow multiple members of their tech team to easily collaborate on their claim.

Something else which appealed to Gwen was the overall transparency of the EmpowerRD process, and the real-time visibility he had during every stage of the claim.

Working with EmpowerRD

Birdie’s R&D claim is a team effort. As CTO Gwen is the overall coordinator. His team of 10 project leaders then work together within the platform to build out the claim details, with tasks assigned to them based on the projects they’ve worked most closely on. Time efficiency is important, and Gwen finds the platform makes it easy for the team to work productively, and for him to manage the overall claim with minimal effort:

“What I find so useful is having a platform that anyone can work on at any time. I ask each project leader to provide information for their challenges, and give them two weeks to fill out their part. There’s no dealing with annoying back and forth. I can supervise everything on the platform, and see the progress of the claim.”

“The guidance and benchmarking provided within the platform and from the EmpowerRD team is also really valuable in helping us understand the level of detail we need to go into and the challenges we need to show. When our claim is submitted we’re confident that it’s the best it can be.”

Gwen’s team find the platform “easy to navigate” and their narrative is stronger having been compiled by those who worked directly on the activity. With Birdie’s research projects spanning over a number of years, the platform will also ensure the process will be even easier for the team going forward, by allowing them to build on their past claims each year.

For their next claim, Birdie plan to use the EmpowerRD platform to build their claim in year, collecting data on an ongoing basis whilst the project details are still fresh in the minds of the tech team. This will further improve the quality of the claim, and ensure they
are ready to submit their claim as soon as possible:

“The biggest challenge is remembering exactly what you have done and when, and where you have spent your time. We aim to do the claim as soon as possible when the project is fresh – and the sooner we can receive the funds the better!”