Design Led Methodology: An Intrinsic Element of Alvarium

“Digital Transformation without design is like gearing up to produce a car without having a design prototype.”

As technology intrudes deeper into our lives, the focal point of innovation is getting more and more inclined towards the customer and user experience than just being on products and services. Customer demands have evolved over time and hence, their expectations are higher and more rigid than ever.

In order to offer a great and more importantly, different user experience several factors need to be considered holistically and cohesively like business needs/challenges, product/service vision, user needs, and current state of social, economic and technological factors. It is essential to do so for designing a user experience that is well accepted and meets business objectives, whether it is generating revenue or optimizing the cost.

This is where Alvarium comes into the picture and eventually creates the bigger picture. It enables stakeholders, with its processes, tools, and frameworks, to ideate and offers innovative products and services by converging all these key elements in a collaborative environment.

Alvarium is a Design-led approach with the following key points:

1. It demonstrates empathy for the stakeholders.
2. It seeks user inputs to discover and define the problem statement. It discovers the actual problem through a guided collaborative process and separates out the symptoms from causes.
3. Alvarium helps to recognize the patterns and resolve assumptions through its frameworks.
4. It enables the generation of divergent ideas or consideration of divergent solutions available in the market and converges them to the most acceptable solutions based on business, markets and users.
5. It helps to assess the business case through quick prototyping and cost-benefit analysis.
6. It helps sell the solutions to internal and external stakeholders for better marketability and acceptability by delivering tangible and measurable outcomes.

The digital disruption is accelerating, mainly due to e-business proliferation because of the increasing digital-savvy customer base and their anticipations of the innovative user experience through Digital Transformation. A plethora of available digital solutions in the market is making it difficult for Chief Digital Officers (CDO) to take those Make vs. Buy decisions. The most difficult part is whether and when they can realize the ROI from digital initiatives.

As soon as CDOs are on the Make vs. Buy spree, it is assumed that they have already considered the following steps, which is mostly not the case:

1. Business objectives to be achieved at large
2. Competitive analysis and market dynamics
3. Customer segments, personas and buying behaviors
4. Internal and external stakeholders’ inputs
5. Organization’s readiness assessing its strengths and weaknesses
6. Business urgency and impact
7. Market acceptability
8. Changes in the existing data journeys

Without a holistic approach, it is possible to overlook some of the above steps. Implementing a digital initiative without considering the above aspects would make the digital transformation journey chaotic. Adding a digital solution without a well thought holistic approach may fulfil the purpose in the short run, however, in the long run instead of digital asset, it would become a digital liability for an organization, thereby making the digital acceleration journey more complex and costly.

Alvarium is a holistic approach! Some of the live cases where we helped CDOs to take right the Make vs. Buy decisions are as follows:

• One of the leading multi-brand global dealerships decided to make digital customer onboarding application with uniquely innovative features to provide a competitive edge and seamless integration with existing data journeys were the two key parameters behind this decision. Unique features were assimilated based on the feedback of car users and inputs from sales teams.
• One of the largest automotive dealerships in Europe wanted to replace their existing DMS, and through Alvarium, we concluded to enhance the existing DMS and front-office digital applications portfolio.
• One of the leading automotive parts traders decided to buy a parts data platform to integrate it with its parts management platform and decided to revamp parts selling and buying journeys. Buying parts data platform was an obvious decision; however, arriving at the decision to revamp and digitalize the parts business process was a complex process which was concluded by deploying Alvarium methodologies.
• One of the US-based healthcare companies was in the market for an integrated elderly care digital marketing platform, however, they dropped this idea and decided to outsource when they found the impact of Alvarium on brand consistency and brand perception.
• One of the leading banks in Europe decided to buy a digital payments solution when they considered business urgency, time to market, internal capabilities, and challenges in developing the solution, and cost-benefit analysis.
• One of the retail giants in Nordics decided to make Blockchain-based traceability solution to meet their environmental sustainability goals.

Reach out to us at consult@thealvarium.com to know whether you need to make, buy, or look at alternative digital solutions.