On this page go to:
▼   Business objective, business environment & risk analysis
▼   User needs analysis, usability testing & competitive analysis
▼   Business guidance & customer experience strategy

Business objective, business environment & risk analysis

Process

• We interview relevant stakeholders including senior managers to understand your objectives for the project.
  
• We interview line & operational staff across various business units to understand issues such as:
  
  
  • Help desk feedback on problem areas
    
  • Publishers, editors and internal developers to understand the processes & I.T. requirements, particularly for large web sites, intranets & applications where staff input is critical
    
• We also have experience & partnerships in business strategy development & strategic planning

Outputs & outcomes

• Clear target business objectives & business justification for projects
  
• Agreed project plan & scope
  
• Buy in from staff & accommodation of staff resourcing issues where applicable
  
• Input to customer experience strategy & interface design
  
• Ensures design accommodates competitive business & legal factors
  

• Contact us to discuss business analysis for your organisation or project

User needs analysis, usability testing & competitive analysis

Process

• We use a range of techniques to understand user needs, priorities, perceptions that provide insights into opportunities for satisfying customer needs & achieving competitive leadership.
  
• Techniques include:
  
  
  • Usability testing of current services as a way of understanding aspects of a site that are working or that should be improved.  This involves observing customers using a site, completing a range of tasks to identify areas they find easy or difficult.  This is now a standard technique internationally in the design of web sites, intranets, applications.
    
  • Competitive analysis of local & overseas services to understand international best practice & opportunities to achieve leadership. These can involve reviews of the services of other organisations without user input, or with user input in the form of usability testing.
    
  • Focus groups involving group interviews with current or future customers to brainstorm & discuss needs, priorities, situations, contexts & experiences.
    
  • Contextual inquiry involving short or long term studies into the actual usage of current services, often involving site visits to the places where users access the services.

Outputs & outcomes

• Generally these activities lead to a report listing:
  
  • User needs & opportunities in terms of design or new products & services (e.g. new account types offering simpler rates, clearer names…)
    
  • Key risks to be mitigated, even including whether new services should be developed
    
  • Usability strengths / usability problems
    
  • Competitive ranking / best practice
    
• Contact us to discuss user needs analysis, usability evaluation of current services of competitive analysis.

Business guidance & customer experience strategy

Process

• Information from stakeholder & user input is analyzed & used as an input to business strategy, business cases, project plans & customer experience strategy.

Outputs & outcomes

• Business strategy guidance – whilst we do not develop business strategy, we provide input to business strategists & management to represent user needs, market opportunities, risks & other factors that could affect business success of specific products / services or for the business globally in terms of cost-benefit of competitive leadership.
  
• Business case input where again we contribute formally with observations & learning about customer needs, current service weakness & opportunities & market situations.  We can also review business plans to validate & guide strategic initiatives to ensure resources are focused on areas likely to deliver the greatest business benefit. 
  
• We can also contribute to merger & acquisition discussions by providing input about the standard of current customer services (i.e. insights into how much effort will be required to fix the services, where they fit competitively & how the services from a company will fit together (i.e. which party offers the most usable services that should be retained post-merger)
  
• Customer experience strategies – which involve defining key values of a customer’s experience.  These are similar to brand values but reflect qualities of the interactions a customer has with an organisation, rather than the perceptions a customer may have.  These strategies can apply to a single channel (e,g, web site) or they can apply across all customer service channels).
  
• Contact us to discuss how we can support you in business strategy, business cases or customer experience strategy.