Challenge

I am cofounder for a technology consultation company. We are a team of 10 employees and one

of our focus areas is the web and social media monitoring for brands and organizations. Our customers  have specific requirements that have not been earlier tried in the market and all available services does  not provide the customer what they actually need. We have been for 7 years working closely with our  client and we know how we can tackle this gap. Thus, we have decided to develop a software to support  our customers with their day-to-day work. We have already agreed to have it build in agile way and  leveraging the design thinking approach to make sure the service delivers the customers the value they  aspire to. The challenge we have is that we have limited budget and time to launch the product, yet we  are not sure if the product will satisfy the customers’ needs.

Selection

We have been following the design thinking approach to develop the service, we have written the

mind-maps, the customer journey and some prototypes. It is the time to launch the service in a fast and  low-cost burden. Our goal is to test and experiment our hypothesis and get the true results as quickly as  possible with the right data quantities and qualities.

Application

We have first identified five key customers to launch the service with. The service was with a low

cost for our customers so they were welling to get in and use the software functionalities. We set a plan  for execution to have one engineer on site with the customers to monitor and support their use of the  software and to capture the issues that appear and collect the customers feedback on the spot. We were  able to identify some of the limitations and issues and we were able to identify one of the main issues  that all our customers faced which was with hosting the software on-premises. Thus, we have pivoted  from the on-premises software to a cloud-based service that overcome the issues we faced and focus on  key functionalities from the first release.

Since we have enough insight to build the cloud-based service, we had to iterate the process of

design thinking and the user journey to address the cloud-based service perspectives. Thus, we had our  second launch for the service which is now a cloud-based service. Going with the cloud-based approach  has given us the privilege to reach out to more customers as we were able to reach to ten customers. We  have the service launched with the main functionalities that provide the customers the highest value. We  used monitoring tools to capture the user experience in lifetime and we used analytics tools to study the  user behaviors. With the data we have and the feedback we collected; we are ready to launch the next  release with more functionalities for our customers.

Insights

At the beginning we assumed our customers had enough resources to enable the software from

within their organizations, however, we have realized there was big differences in the priorities between

the IT departments and business department which resulted in delayed times to deploy the solution on- premises. This issue made us realize that it would not be easy to scale the product to other customers.  The good thing here is that we did not do much investment upfront also the early adaptors of the services  have had actually minimized the impact of the sunk cost of the first release. Also, the learning from the  first released were captured to address them in the second release. The second release is more dynamic  and have provided us by even more insight having the service on the cloud.

Approach

The learning launch is very useful tool, without applying this technique we would have incurred

high cost. The one aspect that we did not cater for was to broaden our thinking to other stakeholders, our  earlier focus was the direct customers, but we did not consider the whole eco-system. We will continue  using this tool and other tools of designing thinking and at the same time we will ensure we include other  potential stakeholders into our scope when considering the next releases.


Challenge I am cofounder for a technology consultation company . We are a team of 10 employees and one of our focus areas is the web and social media monitoring for brands and organizations . Our customers have specific requirements that have not been earlier tried in the market and all available services does not provide the customer what they actually need . We have been for 7 years working closely with our client and we know how we can tackle this gap . Thus , we have decided to develop a software to support our customers with their day - to - day work . We have already agreed to have it build in agile way and leveraging the design thinking approach to make sure the service delivers the customers the value they aspire to . The challenge we have is that we have limited budget and time to launch the product , yet we are not sure if the product will satisfy the customers ’ needs . Selection We have been following the design thinking approach to develop the service , we have written the mind - maps , the customer journey and some prototypes . It is the time to launch the service in a fast and low - cost burden . Our goal is to test and experiment our hypothesis and get the true results as quickly as possible with the right data quantities and qualities . Application We have first identified five key customers to launch the service with . The service was with a low cost for our customers so they were welling to get in and use the software functionalities . We set a plan for execution to have one engineer on site with the customers to monitor and support their use of the software and to capture the issues that appear and collect the customers feedback on the spot . We were able to identify some of the limitations and issues and we were able to identify one of the main issues that all our customers faced which was with hosting the software on - premises . Thus , we have pivoted from the on - premises software to a cloud - based service that overcome the issues we faced and focus on key functionalities from the first release . Since we have enough insight to build the cloud - based service , we had to iterate the process of design thinking and the user journey to address the cloud - based service perspectives . Thus , we had our second launch for the service which is now a cloud - based service . Going with the cloud - based approach has given us the privilege to reach out to more customers as we were able to reach to ten customers . We have the service launched with the main functionalities that provide the customers the highest value . We used monitoring tools to capture the user experience in lifetime and we used analytics tools to study the user behaviors . With the data we have and the feedback we collected ; we are ready to launch the next release with more functionalities for our customers . Insights At the beginning we assumed our customers had enough resources to enable the software from within their organizations , however , we have realized there was big differences in the priorities between the IT departments and business department which resulted in delayed times to deploy the solution on- premises . This issue made us realize that it would not be easy to scale the product to other customers . The good thing here is that we did not do much investment upfront also the early adaptors of the services have had actually minimized the impact of the sunk cost of the first release . Also , the learning from the first released were captured to address them in the second release . The second release is more dynamic and have provided us by even more insight having the service on the cloud . Approach The learning launch is very useful tool , without applying this technique we would have incurred high cost . The one aspect that we did not cater for was to broaden our thinking to other stakeholders , our earlier focus was the direct customers , but we did not consider the whole eco - system . We will continue using this tool and other tools of designing thinking and at the same time we will ensure we include other potential stakeholders into our scope when considering the next releases .