We created Process Hub, a product that enables Essence to manage their processes from one location, in real-time, aligning the whole company behind a consistent way of working.
Seeing the opportunity to harmonise processes
When we began working with Essence on their product portfolio, we observed that their processes and systems relationships were not opaque and easy to understand. They had experienced rapid growth across the globe, and as many rapidly growing companies experience: there were communication gaps between teams and across offices, staff were often handling the same tasks differently, few knew what the other teams were doing, and too much time was spent getting the relevant parties up to speed. We knew there was a solution to this challenge.
Defining the vision
During our wider engagement, we had mapped every step of Essence’s workflow together with their staff, specialist consultants and key stakeholders. The enabled us to envision a digital product that would create operational efficiencies by visualising all the elements of their complex campaign lifecycle, enabling staff across the globe to have a clear view of what was happening, who was involved and responsible. Process Hub is a product that provides unrivalled visibility on all their processes, is visually engaging, interactive, adaptable and can scale-up as they expand.
Iterative design and development, from MVP through to a refined product
Working to a fixed budget, we were unsure of how far the product could be pushed from the outset. With a core team of UX designers, interface designers and developers, we utilised an agile methodology and actioned in parallel design and development sprints, iteratively realising and testing along the way based on a feature prioritisation roadmap.
Realising a highly utilitarian and usable product
With stakeholders and end-users, we defined the best way to organise the different campaign types, stages and tasks. We wanted to strike a balance between allowing each member of staff to keep “the big picture” in view while keeping track of where their own focus should be.
Each department has its own dedicated swim lane where members can see the tasks related to them and their team, see the links to other departments, and open each task to see descriptions and related documents. The breadcrumb navigation feature allows for multiple process groupings while allowing users to keep track of where they are, and ‘keys’ explain how to read the maps and visually identify each task. Logging in with their personal Essence credentials, each user is first shown their department swim lane, and can easily cycle through other key process maps relevant to their work, zooming in and out for more detail vs. a bigger picture view, and opening all lanes one-by-one or all at the same time.
Real-time process updates rolled out across the globe
Designated operational leads and team heads are in charge of managing, amending and updating their assigned fields, and changes roll out in real time across the globe; users can share, download, store or print the maps as needed, and know they are always working with the most up-to-date versions of the campaign lifecycle; the blog records all process changes over time. Process Hub thus dramatically reduces on-boarding time across teams and departments, and allows for full transparency for every step taken in the campaign lifecycle.
At the cutting edge of Business Process Mapping
Process Hub thus dramatically reduces on-boarding time across teams and departments, and allows for full transparency for every step taken in the campaign lifecycle. The Process Hub looks, feels and operates at the cutting edge of Business Process Mapping. It represents Essence at its best and most innovative, providing unrivalled visibility and transparency across their global locations on their workflow, enhancing productivity and guaranteeing a core and consistent set of processes are followed. Process Hub’s highly adaptable architecture makes it an indispensable product for any process mapping needs.