Here at Team6ix we’re looking forward to sharing and showcasing more of the kinds of projects on our blog that we’ve been working on, both current and in the past. Today’s blog focuses on the detail of an exciting project for a Global Business Process Outsource Provider from 3 years ago where we were brought in to work on the Product Strategy and Roadmap, Demand & Requirements Management, Product Operating Model, as well as improve the User Experience.

Here’s what we did…

Background to the project

Our client was a global Business Process Outsource provider to the Insurance, Fleet and Lease Management industries. With over 3,000 employees and offices worldwide they support over 1,000 clients and provide a range of claim management, accident management, repair management, network management, warranty and service plan management services.

The services provided, and the people, technology and expertise behind them, extend deeply into the supply chain sector, with a need to provide a range of complex and diverse solutions to clients on a regional or global level.

At the heart of our client, is investment and excellence in technology, with an established reputation for producing and delivering high quality technology solutions, that matched the increasing expectations and innovation demanded within the insurance industry and associated supply chain. 

The Problem

At the time our client was struggling with the speed and cost of development of bringing in new technology iterations / innovations to market, complex legacy integration solutions, maintenance and support of many technically different products and platforms, user experience deficiencies, cost to serve and resource skills challenges.

Team6ix identified that several of the older, previously developed technology solutions were starting to impact areas of operational efficiency and cost-to-serve targets as the business grew rapidly.

Furthermore, as the client was moving further up the value chain in terms of services it was able to offer to larger clients / prospects, many of their existing technology solutions were not particularly fit-for-purpose for further upstream services and activities, which presented further challenges to the group in terms of growth strategy.

Our Solution

In 2016 our client carried out a strategic review of their technology operating model and all technology solutions. The conclusion of this review was that a transformation program was required to consolidate a large and technically diverse estate of over 40 separate individual technology solutions, into a single global operating platform to manage all their services from / with.

A program of work was launched in mid-2016 with the objectives and targets to deliver the following outcomes -

•                     A unified platform across client and internal operations, and consumer engagement globally

•                     A technology operating model and organisational structure based on contemporary principles and best practice

•                     Easier connection and integration to clients and the supply chain

•                     Accessible through any device (device agnostic)

•                     Regular, repeatable and sustainable development releases to a published yearly calendar

•                     Improved user experiences based on UX principles, research and heuristics

•                     High availability, scalability and global implementation

•                     Reduced time-to-value for operational and client onboarding

•                     A contemporary enterprise architecture, utilising common and best in-class development frameworks and techniques, with high levels of integration, modularity and extensibility

•                     The ability to handle 10s of millions of transactions per year

•                     Ability to migrate all existing business operations, functions and clients to the platform over a period 3 years

The Client appointed Team6ix to lead and manage several areas of the program, and simultaneously a new technology leadership group was established, covering all the disciplines required to deliver a global, single codebase, multi-tenanted platform within the business.

Team6ix represented Product Leadership within that leadership team, and our Product experts initiated a global engagement program with multiple business units / business leaders in over 10 countries, and local & regional technology teams to develop the product strategy, roadmap and operating model for demand and requirements management.

Over an 18-month period Team6ix then went on to manage and deliver additional transformation and program activity outlined in this blog.

Product Operating Model

The Client had many subject matter experts (SMEs) in various geographical locations – including business leadership, operational, and technology SMEs, however they rarely collaborated or worked as collective on account of the need to focus on local or regional requirements over the past years for the main.

Under this complex program, there was a need to harness expertise into the global program and global team.

Team6ix led an accelerated operating model transformation project during the early part of our engagement. Working with global and local leadership, we established and set up

-          A global Product Group and Product Operating Model made up of Product Owners / Senior Product Owners and Product Leadership

-          A User Experience centre of excellence (COE) –

-          A global stakeholder group

-          A global steering group framework and implementation

-          A ‘Key User’ group

-          Initial business case for the program

Demand and requirements management and stakeholder hold engagement and management are critical to the success of projects of this nature, particularly in a complex, multi-country, multi-operation and multi-client environments, and when replacing many existing and well-established products and systems.

The group we established spanned experts and SMEs in 5 countries and owned the process of gathering and prioritising all local and regional demand and requirements for the program.

During the transformation, as well as capturing all key stakeholders and their relevance to the project, the product group identified and negotiated input from ‘Key Users’ within region. Team6ix has many years of experience in product development, and we knew the key user concept was important for this program.

Key Users are individuals with exceptional operational or client knowledge, who can (and often do) make a material difference to the success of the program. They typically engage into initial requirements, support process development, and dedicate time to other activities such as acceptance processes within regular iterations / releases of the program and support other downstream project and implementation teams later in a program.

Product Strategy, Roadmap and Governance

The Product Group initially delivered the following objectives / activities –

-          An agreed product strategy, which aligned closely to the evolving business architecture and business strategy and supported the growth and revenue targets laid out by the CEO and CFO

-          An acceptable minimum viable product (MVP) and a reasonable (but not inflexible) medium term roadmap beyond MVP for review and sign off

-          A multi-market launch and roll out plan (including consolidation of existing operations)

-          A sustainable demand production model for generating low-level requirements (User Stories / Acceptance Criteria) for x 6 development teams

-          A refined /updated business case – reflecting wider investment demand, extended growth and business value - signed off and advocated by group executives and country / group leadership

-          A global & agile decision making, steering group and governance framework

Low-level requirements / User Experience

Beyond strategy and program set up, we moved on to the work of on-going low-level requirements production, which was significant on this program, along with the demands for high-performing User Experience and User Interfaces, and finally the demands of executive and leadership team for certainty of investment.

User experience -

Many of the users of the platform would be made up of –

-          Call centre or high demand / high volume users

-          End consumers / policy holders

-          Supply chain users

This wide and diverse group of users had one thing in common – a requirement for a highly optimised user experience on whichever device they were using.

This requirement necessitated the demand for a significant amount of time / effort to be focused on user experience development for the various user groups / key personas, and effort on testing, benchmarking and refinement of the User Experience.

Hence establishing a UX COE with several highly capable UX Designers, UX Researchers and UI Interaction Designers.

Multiple research and test programs were established and delivered to ensure the quality of the User Experience matched the objectives of the program.

These were typically delivered through User Centred/Human Centred techniques, and the research and data collected was analysed and incorporated into UX/UI outputs and improvements. 

Low level requirements -

Supporting this, multiple Product Owners from the product group managed areas of the platform, owning product backlogs and production of low-level prioritised requirements in the form of User Stories & Acceptance Criteria.

Prioritisation was managed at local and regional levels, but also when required would be aligned and governed through the global steering group framework – which was agile-by-design and set up primarily to work on a management-by-exception basis.

Product owners worked extensively with both Key Users, other agreed business SMEs, UX and technical leads to produce, refine and qualify requirements.

The Software Development Lifecycle used - was Agile SCRUM – a methodology and framework that Team6ix and the wider global technology leadership team had deep experience in.

Continuous improvement -

There was a significant effort in optimising the performance of the combined teams continuously – in partnership with the Global Development Director, the following areas were focused on to provide certainty to the business –

-          Frameworks were developed to measure Level of effort (LOE) based on team & area of the platform (including product, UX, dev and all downstream technical disciples e.g. test, dev ops etc).

-          Estimation – The combined teams became highly accurate during the program in the generation of high-level estimation (t-shirt sized estimation based on epics only) and low-level estimation (based on defined user stories and a/c)

-          Best in class Epics, User Stories and a/c – significant effort was placed on the quality of input, through education, upskilling and mentoring – in this often-overlooked area

-          Velocity of each sprint / each team was measured and benchmarked continuously - and used for the purpose of performance analysis, roadmap projections and to drive further continuous improvement

-          The effort to produce requirements – e.g. user stories, a/c, UX and Key User / Stakeholder sign-off effort – was analysed and incorporated into a requirements-effort-framework, enabling rightsizing of the product team continuously based on demand / phase of the program

-          A development quality framework was developed including code reviews / peer reviews, quality assurance benchmark targets

Program Delivery and results

During an 18-month period the following objectives and activities were met and delivered –

-          A signed off product strategy and global product roadmap

-          A refined business case with qualified in-year and multi-year investment requirements and key objectives, measurables and targets

-          An MVP of the global platform was launched in multiple countries – based on a PaaS architecture, and delivering a fit-for-purpose global platform to run the operations of the Client

-          An on-going multi-country migration and platform consolidation roadmap was refined and delivered

-          Detailed low-level requirements roadmap and a database / capture of all previously developed requirements with full traceability

-          A sustainable product, UX and technology operating model, right sized and with resources represented in multiple regions

-          Product and technology processes and practices implemented, harnessing best practice, and using continuous improvement techniques to refine and mature on-going

-          Created a harmonised culture between Business & Technology groups, and create far high levels of understanding, empathy, collaboration and delivery focus within the company

-          A target on-going yearly technology budget / level of investment was agreed

-          The platform received high levels of advocacy and positive sentiment during MVP and subsequent on-boarding and implementation in countries

-          Through on-going research - platform was proven to increase productivity levels, and reduce the level of effort for many key users by significant percentages – particularly in high-demand areas such as call centres

 

The operating model and the new platform continues to be a success to this day and is now supporting the next phases of our client’s business strategy and growth journey.

If you would like to understand more about this case study, read other case studies, or have a chat and see how Team6ix can help you, please contact us at - hello@team6ix.com

Have a read of some of our other case studies over on our blog