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Collaborating with Cocoon Experience, AICEP – a portuguese public entity that promotes the attraction of foreign investment to Portugal and the growth of Portuguese exportations – initiated a digital transformation process that started off the design of a completely new set of services with a renewed client experience for Portuguese companies in order to help them significantly increase their exportations.
Setting a common intention amongst all stakeholders
When we accepted AICEP’s challenge we knew that designing a complete new client experience with so many different services would require us to deeply understand the organisation and how ready it was for a significant transformation.
Creating new services under a transformational process it’s hard for any mature organisation like AICEP. It means creating new processes, client centred mindsets, and the adoption of new technologies. So AICEP’s board made sure we listened to the needs, fears and expectations of its employees and key stakeholders. In this process we learned that there was a lot of time consuming manual and repetitive work and AICEP was struggling to reach all the companies that could use their help.
At this stage, all stakeholders understood that to better serve their clients change needed to occur and everyone involved started to trust the process. They knew and felt that their needs would be taken into account and were willing to fully participate in the Cocoon process using a user-centred design approach that started by listening to portuguese exporting companies.
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So AICEP’s board made sure we listened to the needs, fears and expectations of its employees and key stakeholders.
Understanding how difficult it can be for a company to enter a new market
We listened and felt the pain points of many companies of different sizes and capacities, geo locations and sectors that were already internationalised or had just started preparing to export. We identified so many different needs! From not knowing which markets to select, to which types of clients to sell to, or what specific rules they had to comply with.
With all the collected information we then created a set of personas representing different company managers and entrepreneurs, as well AICEP staff members. We then designed their respective journeys to show everyone the pain points of those who needed the help and those who wanted to help.
From empathy to problems definition
After listening to companies and all stakeholder’s pain-points, our key challenges were clear:
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How were we going to deliver services with great added value in line with the needs of 15.000 exporting companies, in different levels of exporting experience, from 8 different sectors, with innumerable types of products which in turn had to comply with different commercial rules and legislation of over 60 different markets?
How could we create greater proximity and personalised services to cater to all the companies without increasing the employee count at AICEP?
How could AICEP increase its client count if it already had over demanding requests to answer?
Cocooning and the process of letting go of the old ways of providing help
To face these challenges, digital transformation was inevitable. Now we had to conceptualise not only the new services but also the technological ecosystem that would make these services possible.
Therefore, we hosted 4 full day workshops in a collective immersive environment at our office by the Tagus river, away from AICEP’s regular daily work setting. We crafted and curated the co-creation conditions for a mixed group of people that represented all types of stakeholders. Everyone was then able to empathise with the directors of big and small companies, and with ACEP staff members. Amongst dark chocolate and fresh fruit cocktails, cookies and plenty of hydration we formulated the problems we needed to solve, brainstormed freely, sketched the main ideas and learned a lot by experimenting those ideas with roleplaying.
After these workshops we got into the more detailed work of making these concepts more tangible, of investigating ideas and designing the first storyboards that would make up the future services and how to deliver them. With this comprehensive work some services disappeared, others were transformed, and new ones emerged.
Prototype and test the new services and digital platform concept
We then prototyped and crystallised this new vision with the use of service blueprints, storytelling and concept maps about a new technological platform that would make use of artificial intelligence algorithms, machine learning, content management and intuitive user interfaces oriented for both clients and AICEP staff.
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With this new platform all companies would now autonomously be able to have access to AICEP services and find the best guidance for the types of products they wish to export. They would also have recommendations of new geographic markets and e-market places to explore, with catered online training to aid them through the needed steps towards a successful exportation. Additionally a company would access action plans that could involve private meetings with AICEP market experts and a whole lot more.
First set of services flying live
Alongside a robust development team, we designed in detail the user experience for the first MVP of this service platform, with a user interface dedicated towards companies and another specific for the AICEP staff.
From this collaborative work it also emerged the concept for a more broad solution that would address other AICEP business areas. All of which are supported by very precise guiding principles to orient future services as well as design and development initiatives.
Currently you can experience a live part of the public facing solution here: Portugal Exporta.
Materials produced to support the design process
During this project our aim was to find the best way to make the process collaborative, based on factual data, and bring clarity into the future vision.
- Personas and their “As is” and future journeys
- Storyboards
- A concept video to crystallise and share the future vision
- 10+ stakeholder oriented presentations
- 2 detailed UX/UI prototypes for external and internal users
- User testing reports based on our prototype tests with companies and sectoral stakeholders
- Guidelines for design and implementation
Cocoon feels honoured to continue the ongoing digital transformation, side by side with this great multidisciplinary team, now focused on the mission of boosting the attraction of foreign investment to Portugal, facilitate the access to financial incentives and provide the best match making between Portuguese exporters and their most suitable international buyers also known as “Corporate Tinder” as it has been publicly announced.
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