Consulting Archives - Ekino global

The objective  – Build a user-centric approach via a new digital platform

Arkema is a global leader in innovative and sustainable specialty materials, with sales of €8 billion and operations in 55 countries. As Arkema accelerates its organic growth in all countries, the company has decided to overhaul all its websites, cornerstones of the B2B digital customer experience. The challenge was to develop customer acquisition and loyalty via a user-centric approach to attract visitors, introduce them to all the Group’s products and brands, and generate qualified leads for the sales teams. It is in this context that ekino supported Arkema in the digital transformation of its sales.

Challenges – A profound transformation

The challenges we faced were diverse and numerous:

● Methodological and cultural: This was the first project carried out in agile for our client

● Organizational with many actors involved throughout the project, from different businesses, companies, and countries, in a context of fragmented project teams due to the Covid-19 pandemic

● Techno-functional, with a complex need to adapt to a platform while guaranteeing the maintainability of the functionalities developed

● Cultural, with nearly 40 languages integrated with all their technical specificities with a strong consulting value

● Pedagogical, with support for local webmasters in managing change.

Our solution – A unique digital platform optimised for both the Arkema group’s webmasters and the sites’ visitors.

Thanks to agile methodology, we were able to prioritise the backlog and create high value-added functionalities.

● Support and advice throughout the implementation of the technical architecture

● The implementation of user support in HCM

● The creation of new user paths and a graphic charter aligned with the Group branding for all new sites

● The drafting of a complete user guide including videos

● A comprehensive training program for users worldwide

Finally, we organised our delivery to best meet the Group’s challenges by dividing the functionalities in the following way:

● The common base for the Arkema and Bostik brands was implemented in 9 months, which allowed the launch of the Bostik sites one after the other.

● On the other hand, the Arkema-specific functionalities enabling the launch of the Arkema sites, were implemented over a 3 months period.

The results – Streamlining costs and transferring skills

Proxima has been an essential building block in Arkema’s digitalization. This project has helped to instill new methods within the group. The Arkema teams who worked on this project acquired several skills, in particular the agile method and value-based prioritization.

The objective of rationalizing costs was achieved, as the whole group was put on the same technical platform. Jahia components have been developed that can be used by both the Bostik teams and the other BUs.

The objective – Implementing an administrative tool for training

Created in 1994, IPERIA is mandated by the professional branches of employees and childcare assistants of private employers to design and deploy the professionalisation offer aimed towards childcare assistants, nannies, family employees, and life assistants. Ekino assisted IPERIA in the implementation of a tool allowing the administrative division to manage their growing activity. This tool (ERP/CRM) was designed to handle the administrative aspects of training for people working in the family and home care professions.

The challenges – How to implement a new IS in the complex and changing training sector?

This project’s challenge was to understand and integrate a complex and changing business to ensure a smooth transition from their old ERP to a new tool, both in terms of internal training and migration/transformation of voluminous data. To this day we continue to support them in this endeavour.

Our solution – The implementation of agile methodologies that meet regulatory constraints

Our teams supported IPERIA in the design and development of the user journeys of IPERIA’s new IS. We worked via agile methodologies to adapt to IPERIA’s fluctuating constraints related to regulations and legislations.

The results – An efficient tool that meets the current needs of users

We designed a modern and efficient tool that corresponds to today’s business needs and takes into consideration the current needs and future evolutions: facilitating the work of data entry and mutualising, among several users, the information to be completed, guaranteeing the exchange of information among several entities as well as the efficiency of the activity in all phases, and facilitating the follow-up and repetitive tasks to allow the business to focus on the target activity.

Objectives – Rethinking supply supervision

Bolloré Energy distributes heating oil, diesel, and gas oil to 600,000 private and professional customers worldwide. On the occasion of the technical overhaul of the main application used by its petroleum product supply service, Bolloré Energy asked ekino and MFG Labs to assist in this tool’s functional and visual design. The objective for this new application was to better support the department’s employees in their daily missions:

• The daily setting of basic sales prices used by the sales agencies.

• Management of stocks and product orders.

• Monitoring the coverage of sales and purchases of products on the stock markets.

Challenges – How to design a tool adapted to different uses in a complex business context?

The oil market being highly fluctuating, the employees of the supply department needed personalised tools. This application had to be efficient and flexible to quickly react to unforeseen events such as a drop in oil prices or strikes at a storage site.

We faced three main challenges:

• Understanding a complex business context between logistics and financial trading.
• Rationalising the ecosystem of tools, transforming new uses, historically very spreadsheet-oriented, into ergonomic interfaces that allow the best possible visualisation of data.
• Engage business teams by quickly presenting them with operational and directly implementable solutions.

Our solution – Integrate the business teams into the design process

To better understand the reality of the different business uses, and to challenge the specifications initially provided, we proposed the project teams an initial phase of observation and interviews with all the department’s employees.

Subsequently, they were fully integrated into the tool’s co-design workshops, either by participating in creating the journeys or by validating the possible solutions. The involvement of all future users in the design of the application facilitated its subsequent adoption.

The results – Improved business performance and experience

Co-creation allowed Bolloré Energy’s business teams to truly identify their functional needs. The business teams were entirely on board and convinced by the approach, thereby ensuring this new tool’s adoption once in production. We are proud to have contributed to

• The design of complex business tools for the energy sector

• A user-centric methodology that takes into account the needs, uses, and cognitive reality of users

• Immersion in the business, analysis of uses and needs in the field

• The creation of business interfaces with high stakes in the visualisation of a large quantity of data.

The Objective – Providing a turnkey solution for TV providers through the Cloud

The rise of VOD platforms has forever changed the way we consume TV and video content. From pure players to TV channels, all actors offer VOD or replay services in today’s competitive landscape. These changes are now extending to developing countries and represent a growth driver for Eutelsat, which launched CIRRUS in September 2018, a hybrid satellite-OTT* solution that enables satellite TV channels and operators to offer a flexible and seamless multi-screen consumption experience.

In January 2019, Eutelsat mandated ekino to develop a new module to upload and encode video content to the Cloud and publish it in VOD catalogs. Eutelsat can thereby leverage its existing network and activities to provide a turnkey, high value-added solution for OTT & DTH TV providers, all on a white-label basis.

The challenges – How to build a new service offering from scratch?

Visionary and precursor of a new model for video content distribution, there was no feedback on experience from the market.

Starting with just a brief on user needs, the challenge involved with the design of this new service offering was considerable. It was ultimately met by co-constructing a platform with a strong technological dimension, combining Cloud technologies and integration via APIs with editor tools, in compliance with the initial brief and the envisioned value proposition. The overall solution infrastructure leverages AWS resources including Glacier, Batch, Lambda, Step functions, Fargate, Transfer, Cognito, SQS, SES, SNS, RDS, and CloudFront. 

Our solution – A scalable Cloud architecture to optimise the TCO

Multiple interviews and a design sprint were carried out to specify the business model, the strategy, the functionalities, the UX/UI, the product roadmap, as well as an agile production of the platform. We created a process orchestrator allowing the ingestion, control, encoding, packaging, and broadcasting of videos, alongside the back-office administrator. We created a scalable Cloud architecture, based on AWS Lambda, intending to optimise the TCO (Total Cost of Ownership).

The results – Eutelsat successfully positioned itself in a new market

An MVP delivered in 5 months allowing Eutelsat to successfully position itself on this new market. A high-performance, scalable, accessible, and deployable platform worldwide, which was unveiled at the IBC (International Broadcasting Convention) in Amsterdam in 2019, the world’s most influential media, entertainment, and technology show.

1. ^* OTT : Over-The-Top service is a service for delivering media over the Internet without a traditional operator (such as a telecom operator) in the control or distribution of content. The ISP may be aware of the content of the IP packets flowing over its network but cannot control the display or redistribution of the content passing over its network.

The objective – Making life easier for people who are moving

To make life easier for customers during the complicated period of moving out, Orange called on ekino’s Experience & Service Design department to improve the customer experience throughout this journey.

The challenges – How to get teams involved in a collaborative project?

The challenge was to increase customers’ satisfaction who move out through several solutions – including services, loyalty rewards, postures – that we prototyped and tested in 2 call centres. We then had to evaluate the impact of these solutions on customer satisfaction by measuring the NPS. The challenge was also to involve call centre employees in the process, as they were responsible for communicating these solutions. We implemented an agile methodology with short cycles to continuously improve our solutions.

Our solution – A multidisciplinary organization

A multidisciplinary team made up of Orange, and ekino people worked collaboratively 2 days a week on two call centres for almost 5 months. In order to test the solutions identified and aimed at improving the customer experience on the moving out journey, ekino created prototypes and artifacts for the advisors (storyboard of the targeted experience, solution sheets, memory aids, etc.), and for the team (Kanban, experience map, customer follow-up file, communication tools, etc.). A satisfaction survey was regularly conducted to observe the NPS’s evolution over time and thus measure the impact of the implemented solutions on customer satisfaction.

The results – A Net Promoter Score (NPS) multiplied by 2.5

The experiment – which consisted of testing solutions to improve the customer experience along the moving journey – resulted in a 2.5 times increase in NPS on two test call centres. Besides, the internal teams also became actors of customer satisfaction, which contributed to the acceleration of the transformation at Orange, notably due to different working methods (Agile methods). This experience also allowed us to standardize an approach that will be used towards other products.