Connecting Partners to Better Serve Customers
Evolving a product into a Service Marketplace
I have had the privilege of working with a global PC hardware manufacturer with over 58,000 employees on an ambitious project. Our goal was to design and build a cloud-based ecosystem, dubbed the Partner Service Network Marketplace, that would connect support buyers and sellers more efficiently than ever before.
The vision for this innovative platform was to foster close collaboration between our client and its partners, enabling them to better serve small and mid-size businesses (SMBs) by automating processes, enhancing service support, and creating lasting business relationships.
Business use case validation and audience alignment
The scope of the project encompassed a wide range of features, such as service scheduling and pricing, onboarding new partners, selecting partners via an intuitive map interface, and more.
Design Thinking: A User-Centric Approach
To ensure the platform truly catered to the needs of its users, we employed a design thinking approach throughout the project. This began with the empathize phase, where our team conducted extensive research to understand the challenges and pain points faced by small and mid-size businesses (SMBs) when dealing with PC hardware vendors and service supports.
Next, in the define phase, we synthesized our findings and identified the key objectives for the platform: automating processes, enhancing service support, and building lasting business relationships.
Our ideation phase involved brainstorming and prototyping numerous potential solutions to address these objectives, with a particular focus on streamlining transactions and optimizing customer support.
Lean: Rapid Iteration and Continuous Improvement
In line with the lean approach, we prioritized rapid iteration and feedback loops to optimize the platform's overall experience. Throughout the project, we collaborated closely with users, gathering their insights and incorporating their feedback into our design process. This helped us identify and eliminate inefficiencies, ensuring that every feature of the Partner Service Network Marketplace added genuine value to the user experience.
PARTNER SERVICE NETWORK HOME, SETUP AND SERVICES SELECTION FOR B2B CUSTOMERS TO FIND
We also implemented regular checkpoints and progress evaluations to ensure that our design remained aligned with the project objectives, allowing us to quickly pivot and make adjustments as needed.
Key Features and Outcomes
Our design thinking and lean approach resulted in a platform that boasted an array of user-centric features, such as intuitive partner selection via a map interface, seamless invoicing and payment exchange, and an Uber-like experience for tracking field support engineers.
By prioritizing user feedback and continuous improvement, we were able to create a platform that significantly reduced the time it took to support customers, boosted sales of products and services, and strengthened the network of service providers catering to SMBs.
As a result, the Partner Service Network Marketplace has emerged as a game-changer within the PC hardware industry, demonstrating the immense potential of combining design thinking and lean methodologies to revolutionize traditional business models.
