Opportunity
To make the company easier to do business with by leveraging technology and creating impactful digital customer experiences.
Agency / Content Credit
North Highland
Creative Team
Anja Huebler – Vice President
Austin Kasse – Senior Manager (Service Design)
Jordan Reiser – Sr Manager (UX)
Devanshi Rao – Interface Designer (UI)
Product Challenge
Disparate Channels:
Disparate means of communication forcing employees to search for and chase answers.
No Single Source of Truth:
Employees rely on information that lives in disparate systems, causing delay, extra effort and risk of error Lack of Trust in
Data:
Reliance on spreadsheets and email communication creates redundancy and distrust in the accuracy of information.
Manual Processes:
High reliance on phone and email communications to process customer requests causing delays in order placement and fulfillment.
High Effort, Low-Value Work:
In the absence of the above, employees spend excess time and effort on lower-value tasks that could be automated.
Our Approach
North Highland established the digital roadmap through a series of Futures workshops. The immediate need was an e-commerce platform to speed up the sales cycle and enable self-service for customers. But in order to transform the entire organization to become digitally enabled, we understood that back-end systems had to be put in place to support logistics, fulfillment or order tracking and new ways of working established: new processes and work flows had to be established, roles and responsibilities (esp. for sales personnel) had to be redefined. To understand the implications for the business, its employees and customers we developed a current and future state service architecture in co-creation with stakeholders to visualize the changes needed. It helped all stakeholders to connect the pieces and highlight high value areas of focus. To get buy-in from across the organization, we ran a parallel track to create a proof of concept in the form of a rapid prototype. The prototype made the vision come to life and helped socialize the initiative internally.
As the service architecture matured the prototype evolved. Value Delivered North Highland borrowed key elements from design thinking – empathy, co-creation, and iteration – to keep the project’s focus on people, best ensuring eventual tool adoption. A prototype was designed and launched in phases, accelerating the process and allowing for adjustments throughout. Once developed, the ultimate value of the tool will be its ability to serve customers at scale. Customer transactions will no longer be a bottleneck; teams will be able to process.
Future Blueprint
The Outcome
Increased customer and employee satisfaction
Revenue growth and customer growth
Reduced cost to serve
Improved data availability and accuracy
Transition from a reactive to proactive forecasting and inventory management
Reduction in manual processes and reliance on spreadsheets
