Case Study - From DevOps Bottlenecks to $456K in Savings: Empego’s Strategic Shift with Chrono

See how Empego saved $456K by solving DevOps issues with Chrono’s help.

Jul 12, 2025

Client Overview

Empego is a pharmacy tech platform built by pharmacists to raise care quality and optimize resource use. This SaaS company helps digital pharmacies streamline operations with smart, scalable tools. With a lean team of 15 and over $1M in predictable annual subscription revenue, they’re firmly in growth mode.

Company Name: Empego
Industry: Pharmacy SaaS
Team Size: 15
Stage: $1M+ ARR, Growth Stage

The Challenge

As Empego scaled, they faced critical gaps in infrastructure, capacity, and reporting that were slowing delivery and straining their small team.

Some of the problems they faced include:

1. Cloud Subscription

Empego needed a secure and scalable cloud environment, but hiring a full-time DevOps engineer wasn’t realistic for their team size.

On top of that, compliance was non-negotiable. As a SaaS company working with sensitive pharmacy data, they required SOC 2-level safeguards and round-the-clock infrastructure support. The stakes were high, and the team couldn’t afford downtime or delays.

2. Capacity On-Demand

When deadlines loomed or proof-of-concept projects popped up, Empego’s team didn’t always have the bandwidth to respond. They needed extra muscle, but temporarily.

Hiring more full-timers for short bursts of work wasn’t practical. What they wanted was the ability to scale resources up or down as needed, without the hiring overhead. The goal was clear: deliver faster without burning out their team or blowing the budget.

3. Talent Acquisition

Finding the right engineers is hard enough, but doing it quickly and affordably? Even harder.

Empego didn’t want to rely on traditional recruiters and needed access to top-tier talent that could start delivering immediately. Traditional hiring cycles and placement fees weren’t sustainable for a lean team like theirs, trying to move fast and stay within budget.

4. Platform Pro Licenses

Like many SaaS teams, Empego had serious reporting obligations, especially for programs like SR&ED and e-business claims. But categorizing developer time and validating it properly was eating into their engineering hours.

On top of that, they lacked a clear view of how resources were actually being spent across projects. In short, they needed automated, audit-ready tracking that didn’t slow the team down.

The Solution

Empego wanted more than quick fixes, so Chrono Platform delivered a full, integrated solution that actually matched how they built and operated.

Here's what Chrono rolled out and how it worked for Empego:

1. Scalable Cloud Infrastructure

Chrono introduced a cloud environment that was built to scale according to Empego’s requirements.

Everything from the CI/CD pipelines to secrets management was already wired in. The team didn’t have to configure anything. Observability tools gave them the visibility they needed, and the fully managed clusters meant Empego never had to worry about stability.

Security was no exception either. We built SOC 2 compliance into the foundation. Every action was logged, all data was encrypted, and audit trails were readily available. With access controls and monitoring fully configured, our team aligned with strict compliance standards from day one.

Our collaboration with Empego was built on understanding. We listened to them, mapped their existing processes, and shaped the platform to fit seamlessly into their day-to-day operations.

Even post-launch, we stayed in the loop. Our team kept a constant eye on performance, handled incident response, and fine-tuned their setup in the background.

2. On-Demand Engineering Capacity

Alongside the cloud setup, Chrono gave Empego something just as valuable: high-quality engineering support available on demand without the usual delays or overhead.

We brought in fully structured multidisciplinary teams with all the right tooling already in place. Empego didn’t have to onboard anyone, set up workflows, or explain how they operate. Our vetted teams were synced with their roadmap from day one and jumped into active development without slowing anything down.

For short-term sprints and fast-moving PoCs, this was a game-changer, and Empego agrees. They could move quickly without shifting focus away from core priorities or overloading their team.

3. Curated Talent Pipeline

Beyond on-demand support, Chrono also stepped in to handle talent recruitment, from defining the role to delivering a curated shortlist, with a high level of precision.

Our team didn’t operate like a typical recruiter. Instead, we brought in engineers to run technical interviews, review coding challenges, and evaluate candidates based on real performance, not keyword-matching or gut feel.

Empego didn’t need us to simply plug into their stack. They were looking for a partner who could adapt to how they work. So our team took the time to understand their culture, workflows, and goals.

As a result, their hiring process transformed. Instead of slow, manual reviews, they received candidates with clear performance breakdowns, which made each decision faster and backed by real confidence.

4. Chrono Platform Pro Tools

What tied it all together was our platform. We gave Empego the visibility, automation, and control they needed, all built into features like:

Time Tracking for SR&ED and CDAE

Time tracking used to be a manual drain on their engineering team. With Chrono Platform, that changed overnight.

Our system integrated directly into their existing tools with no installs or extra setup. Once connected, it ran silently in the background to capture and categorize developer activity automatically.

Tasks were labeled, hours were sorted by project and activity type, and everything was mapped to the correct R&D categories in real time. That clarity helped them operate more efficiently day to day, not just during claim season.

Take a snapshot of their dashboard, for example. It showed 3,586.75 hours logged against one core infra project, all automatically categorized and broken down into task-level data.

Alt tag: Chrono Platform dashboard — Source

Automated Compliance and Reporting Features

Tracking hours was one thing. Turning that data into solid, audit-ready reports? That’s where we made the difference.

Once Empego’s R&D time was categorized, our platform handled the rest:

We automatically pulled together the documentation they needed for SR&ED and CDAE claims.
We tracked project progress throughout the year.
We kept everything synced across their tools.

They didn’t have to dig through spreadsheets or chase down missing details. Eligible activities were already tagged and organized. If anything looked off, the system flagged it early, so Empego was able to fix it while there was still time.

Our platform also surfaced work they didn’t even realize was qualified, which helped Empego claim more, without doing extra paperwork.

Real-time Resource Allocation Visibility

Empego’s team says that before Chrono, they were guessing. Who’s free? Who’s overloaded? Which project’s about to derail? It was all gut feel and last-minute check-ins.

Now? They just open the dashboard.

Chrono gives them a live view of team capacity, project demands, and overall workload.

That’s how it looked like:

Snapshots like these helped Empego spot when one project was eating up more than its share, or when another needed backup. One look, and their team could rebalance before it became a problem.

But visibility is only the foundation. Our platform actually helps them allocate resources intelligently by matching the right people to the right work, based on real data. It has made their planning faster, teams more focused, and software delivery smoother.

Implementation & Rollout

From infra setup to license activation, Chrono’s team got everything fully operational in under a week. Empego didn’t have to pause a single sprint. Onboarding was seamless, and our support team was already looped in before they hit day one.

That speed made a difference. Instead of waiting weeks to see value, Empego was live, supported, and seeing results almost immediately, with zero disruption to their flow.

Outcomes and ROI

Chrono didn’t make a small difference; we helped Empego level up across the board.

Here’s what the company walked away with:

$456,000 in salary costs saved.
108.78% annualized ROI across platform, talent, and infra
SR&ED and CDAE reports prepped with just 2 hours from their Head of Engineering
Audit-ready compliance built into their workflow, not bolted on
Real-time reporting that leadership could actually rely on

From the Inside: What It’s Like Working with Chrono

"Working with Chrono allows us to move quickly and scale with peace of mind. They provide a secure cloud environment, SOC 2 compliant, and 24/7 incident management." — Eric Poitras, Head of Engineering @ Empego

Your Engineering Team Could Be Next

You’ve heard Empego’s story. But what they pulled off with Chrono, including faster rollouts, cleaner reporting, smarter resource use, measurable ROI, and scalable support, doesn’t have to be a one-off.

It’s available to you too.

We built this platform for teams that are growing fast but hitting friction, with limited visibility, overloaded engineers, messy compliance, and constant delivery pressure. Sound familiar?

Here’s what we bring to the table to solve all of this: