The Client and Setting
The client is a very large data collection and reporting agency. Its primary role is to collect data that it has been mandated to collect by its stakeholders, and then produce reports and metrics that are widely consumed.
The company has multiple sets of stakeholders. However, historically, the company has primarily served one set of stakeholders and neglected the others.
In 2019, the CEO recognised this and commissioned a data diagnostic study that I undertook in partnership with some senior strategy and growth consultants. This case was the follow-up to that study.
Client Mandate
The first phase was definitely useful. We now understand that there is significant potential in our data to serve this set of stakeholders. We also now have a better understanding of what they want.
However, having chiefly built products for one set of stakeholders, we’re not sure we have the ability to really think of using our data to serve this other set of stakeholders.
Hence, can you come up with prototypes for three products based on our data that serves this set of stakeholders?
Problem Solving
This assignment was once again carried out in association with my senior strategy and growth consulting partners.
While it was a follow up to the data diagnostic, we continued to operate with that template. As I got busy in “talking to the client’s data” (for once, the client’s claim that they had “big data” was actually correct), my partners interviewed potential clients of our client among our new set of stakeholders.
This, once again, went through the data diagnostic “positive feedback loop”. The inputs from our client’s clients produced the initial set of hypotheses for us to look for in the data. Some of them seemed promising and we saw potential for products in both.
In order to narrow down, we built at set of “pretotypes” (pretend prototypes) and continued to get regular feedback from our clients and client’s clients. In time, we had managed to drill down to three product ideas for which there was a strong “signal” in the data, and which our conversations had told we had the potential.
Then, it was all about quickly building out the prototypes. We regularly talked to our clients to take their inputs, and once the prototypes were in some shape, we took them back to all of our client’s clients who we had spoken to earlier to get their feedback.
Results and Outcomes
The three prototypes were successfully handed over to the client, as per their expectations.
At least two of our client’s clients have expressed strong interest in the products that we had prototyped and offered to be partners and beta users as our clients build out these products.