The customer’s challenge
When an energy company needed guidance to develop creative solutions to their outdated safety reporting process, they decided to work with ConvergentIS in a series of Design Thinking workshops. Back in August 2018, their existing safety reporting process looked as follows: While working remotely in the field, the company’s employees would fill out paper cards and give them to an administrator for processing upon their return. The paper form did not adequately capture all the necessary information; so further communication was required, making the process time-consuming and prone to error. So, the design challenge for the workshop was to create a mobile application that encouraged user adoption by making the new safety reporting easy, intuitive, and efficient.
The Design Thinking phase
Led by Design Thinking coach and UX specialist Alissa Sylvestre, the interdisciplinary team of workshop participants unpacked the challenge by identifying potential roadblocks, then collaborated on tangible solutions. With the help of maps and storyboards, the attendees shared perspectives, and gave and received feedback in a new creative way. From there, participants created paper prototypes, experimented with their ideas and determined feasibility through user interaction and testing. No doubt, the SAP AppHaus environment helped to explore new ways to solve problems in a playful and communicative manner. One of the workshop participants put it as follows:
We really enjoyed the atmosphere of the design centre – it really helped get the creative juices flowing and created alignment between us. We felt like ConvergentIS really walked us through the Design Thinking process in a way that was comfortable and helped us see things in a way we otherwise wouldn’t have.
– Design Thinking workshop participant, Client
Almost three months later, on December 10, 2018, the client began piloting the new application. Test users were thrilled with the intuitiveness and efficiency of their new application and the project moved forward with a technical go-live on January 22, 2019.
The safety reporting app
On February 6, 2019, the app became available for download company-wide and has been tremendously successful with over 1100 downloads in less than one week. Now, with the new application up and running, employees can use their mobile device and work offline to complete their reporting. Only relevant questions are presented to the user and they can see their progress as they move through the application. “Without a doubt, we picked the right implementation partner,” says the project manager. “We are really impressed with the quality of work and the low number of defects.” And most importantly, field workers now enjoy a nearly 70 percent time reduction when they do their safety reporting, leading to a 60 percent increase in overall reporting compared to last year.
The end user feedback we received early on in the process really highlighted what worked and what didn’t, allowing us to quickly make changes, improve the design and develop the application in a short amount of time. We implemented the solution based on SAP Mobile Platform, SAPUI5, and Kapsel.
– Alissa Sylvestre, Design Thinking coach and UX specialist, ConvergentIS
SAP AppHaus and Convergent IS - A partnership of success
When designers work together, magic happens,” says Shaun Syvertsen, Managing Partner and CEO of Convergent IS. As an SAP AppHaus Network Partner since April 2018, Convergent IS offers its customers an incredibly skilled organization that gets SAP technology and guides them to simple, precise, and cost-efficient solutions – based on a foundation of creativity, curiosity, and innovation!
* Midstream is the business category that involves the processing and transportation sectors of petroleum and gas industries.