A systemic and holistic Design approach to develop strategic options and execute changes at scale

Our client asks Hivemind to help bootstrap the company’s success through customer experience, organisation and operations at enterprise scale. This includes tackling current issues of increasing complexity, and achieving a coherent enterprise design in brand identity, product experience and operational delivery.

In particular, how might we…

…design a compelling brand to express the company’s powerful core idea? How to make it understood by the community of stakeholders, and bring it to live in products and brand messages/behaviour across various touchpoints?
…identify customer top tasks across the customer experience? How to enable taking these insights to rapidly design, prototype and validate product interactions and user experiences?
…enable delivering services and experiences through a set of well defined capabilities across the value chain? How to implement these capabilities in technical architecture, team organisation and operating model?

…to tackle challenges such as
digital enterprise: shift to digital and platform driven business models and make the changes to execute?
scaling startup: develop an innovative venture or startup into delivery at enterprise scale?
IT system: introduce a new operational system such as SAP or Salesforce, or significantly improve how we use our current IT?
data: deal with all the data collected and turn them into knowledge and actionable insights?
disruptive tech: make use of new technical capabilities of a software or infrastructure solution becoming available?
green enterprise: set up our enterprise to be ecologically sustainable by introducing a circular model?
merger or alliance: turn a collaboration or merger into a well designed entity with mutual synergy?

The proposed approach follows a structured but open methodology. It is based on the Enterprise Design Framework, a comprehensive design tool with two main characteristics (represented in the framework’s Stack model):

• It’s holistic: we take into account diverse stakeholder priorities and research results for scoping, and also determine what is out of scope for any given workshop or workstream.
• It’s systemic: we ensure coherence between the business goals, the product portfolio and customer experience, and both operational and technical capabilities.

Following a kick-off, we propose the following approach to deliver actionable results in a time frame of three months:

• Start with a Scan: we base our work on 360° research to understand the reality of the customer experience and customer Top Tasks, CLIENT’s business objectives and brand/product portfolio, and existing strengths visible in developed enterprise capabilities (technical and human). 
• Draw an enterprise map that sparks conversations and makes the links visible: we draw on research insights and data to map Scenarios that highlight constraints and opportunities for the digital enterprise.
  • we map the customer experience and key moments/tasks to filter high potential opportunities for delivering exceptional value and making a difference (1).
  • we relate CLIENT’s unique delivery capabilities by adding operational processes, offerings and skills, and how their performance/maturity relates to customer experience excellence (2).
  • we reveal opportunities for future digital products and services to ensure (2) delivers (1): this mapping shows strategic options for investing in innovative digital products, and reveals the transformation gap needed to deliver them.

• Co-creation of the solution with CLIENT’s teams: we run a series of two Sprint workshops to rapidly design and validate the opportunities and solutions, resulting in a fast track roadmap.
  • Strategy Sprint with the leadership team: express the target product vision and success metrics, map the gap with the current operational capabilities, and scope experiments on product design and delivery.
  • Experimentation Sprint with product or brand teams and experts: using the vision and enterprise map as a guide, work on defined priority challenges for the future offerings and changes required.
• The results of these workshops are the basis for a System toolkit. It allows teams to self-organise and design, build and deploy digital offerings, and operationalise the changes required to do so. This toolkit will cover the initial priority digital product portfolio and can be gradually extended to other opportunities, brand and markets.

* Access to customers and stakeholders
* Availability of internal resources
* Comprehensive support for our desk research (documentation)
* Ensuring an executive sponsor from your organisation is allocated to the engagement, communicates the rationale behind it and signs off any ‘Terms of Reference’.
* Assisting in all possible ways to ensure that a contract, (and confidentiality agreement where necessary) is in place, in advance of any work commencing.
* Ensuring all support is in place and access is granted for all and any required data, processes, policies, meeting rooms and nominated resources to enable successful delivery of the engagement.
* Ensuring sponsor availability within the agreed timeline, to resolve any significant issues that may impact the timely completion of the engagement, if not resolved in a timely manner.

The outcome of this engagement is a customer-oriented digital enterprise design, similar to an initial entrepreneurial investment needed to build a successful startup team. It enables the team to align on an ambitious target product experience and how to deliver it together.

Beyond standard practices such as Agile or UX Design, the team will understand the links between measuring customer success and operational delivery capabilities, and own both the product vision and process to get there. This becomes a blueprint to be scaled to a digital platform to realise CLIENT’s vision.

* Provide support throughout service delivery using our World Class Professionals and Subject Matter Experts.
* Provide high quality deliverables in a timely manner and in line with agreements upon engagement with the client. (Any changes to this will be mutually agreed in writing, in advance, between all involved parties).
* Provide deep insights and genuine value-add in all possible areas throughout the engagement.
* Provide progress updates and feedback at regular intervals, agreed in advance or at the engagement ‘kick off session’.
* Respect all personal and professional development of client team members throughout the engagement.

Workshops

Short workshops (remote or on-site) to plan and frame the engagement, share relevant information, define the challenge and objectives.

Research, Mapping and Tooling workstreams

A mix of highly effective research techniques to generate insights and develop views as part of an integrated mapping capturing the customer experience, value delivery, and operational capabilities

• Objective: Aligned vision, shared information base across teams, reusable toolkit
• Activities: Blend of research techniques, insights and system mapping
• Outcome: A set of useful shared mappings and tools driving product design decisions

Enterprise Design Sprint (2-4 days)

Rapid co-design sessions, remote or on-site, covering key aspects to be addressed: from a shared 360° view to validated concepts to be implemented

• Objective: A shared understanding of problem and solution spaces, a confirmed way forward.
• Activities: Rapid research/co-creation/validation using lightweight mapping/prototyping
• Outcome: Strategic options put into validated prototypes/mappings

Sprint training (2 days for people involved in organisation/solution design)

• Optionally, training and certification in Enterprise Design Sprint methodology to provide the team with a methodology for design-led innovation and transformation

Project based engagements operate on the basis of agreeing work and any outcomes or milestones for delivery in advance of commencement of any engagement in a ‘Statement of Work’. Prices are fixed for the agreed deliverables and should changes be required, these may incur changes to delivery costs. Payment for Project Based Engagements are agreed on a case-by-case basis, giving consideration to risk, contract value, client payment history, relationship longevity and duration.

• Enterprise and Business Architecture
• Business Design
• Design Thinking
• experience design
• service design

• Purpose to Portfolio
• Accelerated Solution Delivery
• Digital Enablement