Connecting workflows within a complex maritime platform.
and validating the need for an improved platform communications and notification system/product to support it!​
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Context
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Our mission was to roll out a complete digital transformation for a well-known private maritime company over a 2 - 4 year period. This included providing a complete suite of cloud-based products, tools and services (via a single platform called Open Ocean Studio) to replace numerous outdated and disconnected tools, processes and manual ways of working.
This also included dozens of software solutions and products to be built across the broader organisation, including iOT, shore and vessel based software and hardware, auditing, crewing and dozens of operational management tools.
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This specific study fast forwards one year, when a number of products had already been designed, dev'ed and delivered. However there was still a major problem which we estimated accounted for approximately 30-50% of their "spent" time during an average working day. (based on our teams qualitative research). So essentially we need to bridge the workflows gaps with triggers, notifications, and better cross department methods of communication.
Problem / Opportunity
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The problem was initially hidden from plain sight. Over the course of dozens of discovery workshops with different teams during the first couple of years, we began to notice there was a few issues that continually resurfaced during our user interviews = which was 'transparancy and accuracy of information. Every team shared similar feedback, however when talking with the teams one by one over nearly 2 years, it only account for about 10% of the feedback each time, so it wasn't proritised as a problem that needed solving immediately.
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However, by the end of the second year, that ten percent feedback had come up so many times, if you added them all together - became a serious problem for the business.
The challenge for me in this case, was how do I present this issue and demonstrate it to our leadership team,
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This presentation was created in order to demonstrate to our internal teams and customer, the impact from a single change in decision to an itinerary and it's impact to all the workflows already in place. Also to highlight the dependancies between teams on workflow hand offs between departments.
Towards the end of the presentation, we took the opportunity to identify and conceptualise the need for a solution which aggregated all relevant information together for the required users in the form of a dashboard - where they could monitor activity and action tasks relevant to their roles. (This screenshot shown towards the end).
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(example from presentation below shows the domino effect of a cancelled port call on multiple teams within the organisation a the high level of interoffice communications surrounding it)
Discovery
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Once support from the rest of the business was achieved, the team began conducting a number of workflow mapping and collaborative discovery/ design sessions with department heads. This was done in an effort to understand how their existing enterprise workflows looked and how they worked when they also intersected with one another. The Image below is one of the these mapping sessions used to identify the workflow for onboarding for a new member of crew.
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Definition
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After a number of collaborative design sessions. with the teams, this resulted in the creation of a new product called ‘OnRadar’. OnRadar worked in a similar way to a task management system and 'live actions' board for the company.
(below highlights the "OnRadar" product - an eventual outcome of the above attached workflow presentation).
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OnRadar was successful in providing various departments and teams, improved communication workflows, transparency and trust in data. A huge win for the target audience and bold step towards providing a new default "view" of their daily workflows.
Case-study on request.
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Unfortunately, not everything can be shared in public. If you'd like more information around any of the below, please get in touch.
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How we identify the problem and communicated the opportunity
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The opportunity, empathy and problem statement to testing, measuring and optimising workflow optimisation
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Design systems / scaling horizontally.
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Collaborated on this project with multiple teams across the organisation
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