Systems & Software
A secure area where customers do for themselves what they currently email you about: checking status, retrieving documents, submitting requests. Its success is measured in removed inbound, not logins.
Stated as we hear it, before any mention of what we would do about it.
Qualitative, because we do not publish numbers we cannot evidence.
Scope
Ten to twenty weeks depending on integration depth.
How it works
Systems connected by people versus by integration
Before: three systems, each bridged by a person moving data across by hand. After: the same three connected directly through an integration layer, with one declared source of truth per record.
The boundary
Naming the boundary early removes the most common source of disappointment in an engagement.
Scope it from the questions customers already ask you. A portal built around real inbound has demonstrated demand; one built around what the business would like customers to do usually does not.
Stale data. If the portal shows something different from what a staff member would say on the phone, customers stop trusting it and return to email, so integration matters more than interface.
A secure area where customers do for themselves what they currently email you about: checking status, retrieving documents, submitting requests. Its success is measured in removed inbound, not logins.
Service businesses with high volumes of repetitive customer contact; Organisations where account information lives in systems customers cannot see; and Businesses whose customers ask for visibility they cannot currently give
Scoping from the actual inbound: which questions, at what volume; Authentication and access control, including multi-user accounts where needed; Integration with the systems holding the underlying data; Document access with permissions and an audit trail; Structured request submission that lands in your existing workflow; and Accessibility built in, since a portal your customers must use has to work for all of them
Staff answer the same status questions by email every day; Customers cannot retrieve their own documents without asking; and Requests arrive by email and get lost between inboxes
Routine questions answered without anyone being asked; Documents and history available to the customer directly; and Requests captured in a structured, trackable form
Ten to twenty weeks depending on integration depth.
Connected
Describe where the work currently is and what it has to achieve commercially. We will tell you what we would scope, what we would leave alone, and whether this is the right service to be buying first.
