Service discovery programmes

Our service discovery programme offers a short, but intense work package to discover, design and prototype based on the very best practice.

It can be applied when designing a new service, or to vastly improve an existing one.

We’ll work with your teams to help you refine an entire process. The service discovery programme can find efficiencies, expand responsibilities or support the delivery of adjacent programmes in a fixed amount of time at a fixed cost.

At the end of this short programme, you’ll have a clear way forward to a successful online service.

For all process-based services

We have over a decade’s worth of experience in designing workflows and online services that prioritise the user’s needs – whether that user is a citizen or a member of your staff.

Our knowledgebase lies primarily in finding efficiencies in transaction-based services, like smoothing citizen-to-council interactions, facilitating channel shift, reducing unneeded contact and automating repeat tasks.

We examine users’ journeys and remove irritants large and small. The resulting recommendations will propose how to create a service that is a joy to use: for you, for your staff and for your residents.

Wondering whether the service you have in mind is suitable for the service discovery programme? The answer is almost certainly yes. If it’s online (or you would like it to be) and it involves a series of steps, whether internally or public-facing, we can help you make it the best it can be.

Fulfill accessibility guidelines.

Avoid costly mistakes before you build.

Be confident that citizens will take up your online service.

Give your staff the tools they need to work more efficiently.

Incorporate up to date best practice in usability standards.

See a clear way forward for the next phase of development.

How it works

Once you’ve decided to employ our services we’ll work with your teams to run a combination of discovery exercises and find out:

What is the process?
Who are the users, and what do they need to do?
What are the external systems and processes and how do they need to interact?
What are the constraints?
What are the elements of success?

This can either be at a day-long on-site workshop, or conducted remotely with the assistance of industry-standard collaborative software. Our service design team will work with the people you nominate as being most relevant to the service’s success factors. This may be council officers, citizens, senior and middle management, elected representatives or any combination of these.

We then take the product of the workshop exercises to inform a full report with action points for you to apply.

Recommendations and findings

We deliver our findings in your preferred format. Opt for:

a demonstration of how the service will work in a functional, or semi-functional prototype;
a written report of findings and recommendations;
a presentation to senior management or council;
or a combination of the three.

Whatever you choose, these are yours to take away and use how you wish: create the service in-house, employ a third party to build it, or take advantage of our development services. The recommendations are technology agnostic and delivered in clear, concise, transferable format, ready for action.

See an example report from an FOI case management discovery & alpha