old with the new
Two UK based water companies presented SFW with the dilemma of integrating legacy systems with a new shiny self-service customer website. We rose to the challenge and achieved an award-winning customer experience
UTILITIES INDUSTRY
Integrating existing systems with a new digital platform
It’s not unusual for companies to create a new frontend customer facing digital experience that plugs into an old legacy system – largely due to budget, product roadmaps, or inability to change because of system connectivity into other areas of the business. SFW overcame all the associated challenges that come with integrating the old with the new, and delivered this award-winning digital experience product to the market fast.
Understanding the limitations
The key is to build a bridge to productise the technology whilst maintaining, then enhancing the customer experience. Providing a self-serve customer website for two high-profile water companies, one in the North of England and one in London, we encountered a number of performance and requirement issues which potentially could have a negative impact on the customer experience.
Common issues:
- Calls to backend system were slow
- Backend updates roadmap doesn’t map to product roadmap
Maintaining the customer experience
To maintain the customer experience SFW strive to fully understand the commercial desires of the client (Product Owner) and the limitation of the technology. With this understanding SFW works as the bridge to qualify the desire, provide a perceived impact (if any) and implement workarounds where required.
Examples workarounds and optimisation
- Ensuring the calls to the backend are minimised by storing information in session until an agreed point
- Understanding the negative responses from the backend
- Providing helpful animation whilst waiting for calls
- Placing some user journeys into the backlog marked as an improvement whilst the backend system is updated.
What sets us apart
Our hands on approach and our culture of building strong and communicative relationships with all stakeholders and across commercial and dev teams gives us a unique advantage when it comes to discovery, design, development and delivery. Plus, we work across all time-zones, putting the hours in to maximise everybody’s time.
Specialists
SFW validated the digital product concept and its potential value in order to establish a level of understanding between the technical and product functions, making for a truly enhanced customer experience.
Skills
- Technical Delivery (backlog grooming)
- Process definition
- Acceptance criteria creation
- Test resource
- Test lead
- Jira expertise
- Agile methodology
Professional
We synchronised the product and tech team, working on the customer site in North East England by day (UK time) and managing the offshore delivery team by night to create an award winning solution
Experience
Drawing on 20+ years’ experience in leading teams and the development of technical acceptance criteria on multiple projects, we achieved a first-class testing team experience with global web cross-browser deployment
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CONTACT US
- If you're looking to reduce your operation costs and enrich your customers digital interactions through digital transformation, talk to the specialists at SFW. We will align your commercial and technical goals, get your teams onboard, increase their knowledge base, streamline your workflows and fill any resource.
- Suite 4, 29 Mill Lane, Welwyn Herts, AL6 9EU
- 07958 633047
- [email protected]
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Also trading as Sim Free World Limited (company number 9313172 and VAT number – 304 3827 24). Registered address Taverners Lodge, Cockfosters, EN4 0DU