Tools & Methods
a collaborative approach

Here are some of the tools and methods we use with our clients throughout the delivery of their systems change projects:

DISCOVER. UNDERSTAND. SCOPE
  • Change Readiness Assessment & Strategising. Evaluating how ready an organisation is for specific change, culturally, capacity and commitment-wise, and assisting in planning to overcome any challenges to enable successful transformation.
  • The Project Kick-off. All our projects start with a short and sharp facilitated kick-off session with your organisation's key stakeholders and leaders. An opportunity to meet, greet and discuss how this digital change fits into the broader strategic organisational objectives. Together we co-design the project deliverables so we all achieve the desired outcomes and agree on the actions to take forward. We will show you the Miro Design Hub, where the end-to-end project collaboration occurs.
  • Process Mapping. Online, live collaboration events that visually map the 'As Is' journey of a given process, drawn out collaboratively by those in the organisation who are responsible for it. Opening the opportunity space to overlay strategic improvements for the realisation of the 'Should Be' process and document how people and process systems will inform the delivery of organisational objectives with consideration for the internal and external points of view.
  • Specialist Technical Consultations. Targeted, dynamic, yet fluid technical conversations with the stakeholders responsible in your organisation for the technical implementation of the new systems. Facilitated by Creative Analysis Directors to consider all angles and capture the critical elements of the project brief.
  • Self-Reflective & Strategic Resource Tool. Metacognition. For participants in digital change to actively self-reflect on their strategic approach to change, used throughout the change initiative to assist in transitioning to and adopting the new systems and processes.
DESIGN. COLLABORATE. CO-DESIGN.
  • Technical Design Workshops. We determine exactly how the technology can work for your process and business. We co-design the system, delving into the functionality you need, how it will look and what fields it will contain.
  • Systems & Process Prototyping Sessions. Prototyping early ideas with a cross-section of stakeholders will allow you to test what could work in reality without the cost and pain of making mistakes in the live system. This type of human engagement will help to identify the early adopters and internal Super Users who are fundamental to the implementation and adoption within your organisation.
  • Engagement & Training Planning Sessions. We have brought together some simple-to-use methodologies and tools to create a solid engagement and training strategy that can be adapted to your needs, so you can roll out a programme of engagement and training activities to support the delivery and, critically, the adoption of systems change across your organisation. Please read about our new E&T client platform, academy.
  • Empathy Mapping. An empathy mapping session allows teams to consider things from the customers' perspective, the surface needs and digs into the latent needs and the emotional triggers that drive their behaviour and impact their decisions. Mapping this out assists in defining the system needs at a different level.
  • Customer Journey Mapping. Journey mapping can follow from empathy mapping; it is used to journey through a given system or process wearing your customer's shoes. Particularly useful for considering new potential or pain points and looking at communication touchpoints through your service.
DELIVER. BUILD. IMPLEMENT. ADOPT.
  • Live Systems Testing. Following the rigorous approach of empathising, defining, ideating, prototyping and testing solutions, the build and implementation occur. We ensure time is booked into essential stakeholders' diaries to enable critical live systems testing. We are right there with you for this.
  • Bespoke Systems Training. Fundamental to adoption is our bespoke systems training. Our highly empathetic and experienced systems trainer, Sue, passionately advocates for end users throughout your project's prototyping, design and build phases. Sue expertly takes new users through system exploration to competence in the live system whilst balancing the needs of the group and the individual throughout the session.
  • Technical Support & Aftercare. We truly value the connection we form with the clients whose digital change projects we work on, and our aftercare services reflect that. We provide a named primary contact and ensure priority support and access to the expertise of our team.

Our collaborative events are delivered using online platforms:

  • Miro. Miro helps us go beyond brainstorming with various tasks that require synchronous or asynchronous collaboration: workshopping, meeting, mapping, researching, designing, prototyping, testing, and process visualisation. We offer Miro 10-min coaching sessions to those who want it.
  • Zoom. Zoom has a user-friendly screen share function, which is fundamental for information sharing between us and our clients. We take care of the logistic set-up via our own Zoom account.
CHANGE READINESS

Most change falls short of its full potential.
Why? Because, consideration of the diversity of people and the needs of the broader system can be difficult to understand and articulate. The implications of a mediocre or failed digital change initiative are far greater than just the financial loss.

A Change Readiness assessment gives an indication of how prepared an organisation is for a specific change. In this case, a digital transformation. People, not the technology, are key to digital change success. Conducting a change readiness survey helps maximise human engagement. It listens closely, giving people an opportunity to say how they feel about the proposed change early on. This informs how the change project moves forward as a result.

Analysis of the change readiness survey data is an important research and scoping activity; early indicators for implementation and adoption success are identified, and any blind spots or readiness gaps can be overcome early on. This upfront, proactive human-centred approach increases the likelihood of the digital transformation being more quickly, easily and successfully implemented and adopted across the organisation.

Take our FREE Introduction to Change Readiness short course in academy. You can try our Change Readiness self assessment tool there, too.

Source Combe, M. (2014). Change Readiness: Focusing Change Management Where It Counts. PMI White Paper.
PROCESS MAPPING

Engaging the humans across the system is key and rewarding.
At Creative Analysis we use design thinking to put you and your team at the centre of system design, resulting in successful digital change implementation and adoption that in turn leads to greater, lasting impact felt far beyond the fiscal gains.

You can analyse the past, but you need to co-design the future.
Live, dynamic, visual, collaborative, fully facilitated process mapping is designed to help people better understand their relationship with the wider business system and the technology required to support, captured dynamically to ensure long-term continuity of the outputs and outcomes.

There are many and varied outputs from process mapping. Those who understand their power and value tend to get a little excited about creating them, like us. At the end of the process mapping workshops with us you will have:

  • Your own Miro Design Hub set up and good to go for collaboration
  • A set of As-Is process maps ready for first phase optimisation design
  • Practical knowledge and hands-on experience of process mapping.

Deep, visual understanding of your systems
  • What you do and when. The headlines of what you and others do in role.
  • Who needs what. The things you most need to help do that E.G client engagement, collaboration, management information.
  • What is important. The things you need E.G. Action triggers, SLA's. What system tech could help.
  • What the priority is. What do you need now. What do you need next.
Engagement of those who the system change directly impacts
  • Listening closely to the users to pin-point potential and the pain points in the process flow.
  • A system that has been co-designed, prototyped and tested by users, prior to build and implementation.
The widening of the opportunity space
  • Insight to make informed recommendations to steer the digital transformation now and beyond.
  • The Zoho app landscape and how they can fit with your business vision and objectives.
  • Understanding the power of process mapping and how it can be applied to other areas of the business.

TECHNICAL DESIGN WORKSHOPS

CO-DESIGN YOUR SYSTEM
Led by our Directors, this is your opportunity to discuss the technical design of your bespoke system with us. The relevant stakeholders involved in the development will be invited to attend this workshop. Here we determine exactly how the technology can work for your processes, and for your business. We co-design the system in the Miro Design Hub that we have set up for your project collaboration events and communication.

Delving into the technical functionality you need, we explore how it will look and what is needed in terms of workflow efficiencies E.G automation. If required, we will look at analytics. This is where we design the essential business overview dashboard with you, and discuss reporting. If Zoho’s off-the-shelf apps don’t meet all your requirements, our developer can collaborate with you to co-create specialised, sector specific customisation. We recognise that different industries have different requirements.

PROTOTYPE AND TEST
Building upon the visual ‘As Is’ process maps developed in the scope and understand phase, we overlay the technical enhancements that form the ‘Should Be’ process provided by the new system implementation. This allows stakeholders who will be using the system, in their role, to interrogate the design, giving it a ‘visual test drive’ before the project moves more fully to the build-live test-implement phases.

We recommend leveraging your enthusiasts/innovators early, as they often feel a sense of duty to find issues and bring them to light. This honest feedback helps mitigate problems before it reaches the wider organisation. Also involve the early adopter’s, who we tend call Super Users, the leaders of systems networks. They will want to be a part of the early change project stages, expect all of the bugs to be worked out and often enjoy teaching others how to bring it to life in their roles. This all helps with gathering momentum, galvanising support and continuing the ‘change conversation’ within your organisation. Engagement of this type plays a massive part in raising awareness, and to that end successful adoption of the system.

Here is a summary outlining the topics for discussion that drive the deliverable outputs during a technical design workshop:

  • 'Should Be' Process. Discuss the technical enhancements applied to the 'As Is' map, test and interrogate the design.
  • Base Set Up. Domain verification and agreeing the onboarding grid.
  • Data Dictionary. Review the system definitions, review the scope of data customisation and migration.
  • Blueprint Design. Confirming what are repeatable actions, building in task and journey automation.
  • Report & Dashboard Design. Details the requirement for reports and dashboards enabling insights needed for direction and growth.
  • Permissions. From the requirements gathered, confirm the different access levels and permissions as required for system usage.

METACOGNITION. A tool for participants of digital transformations.

We are currently prototyping and testing a resource we are designing – to be used by participants involved in a digital change or transformation. It uses metacognition, which put simply, is thinking about thinking. Studies have revealed that metacognition can help improve how you learn, adapt and perform amidst change.

This tool is best used throughout the life of a digital change initiative, and is broken into three short sections at different times in the project delivery.

The interface is simple, uses tick lists and areas for your notes. You have the option to save your responses and return to your answers at any point in time for reference.

PART A. Pre Digital Change Implementation
Completed prior to any changes being implemented. It asks you to think about how you feel about the change at this moment in time and what things you feel you can do to prepare for the change ahead.

PART B. Digital Change Adoption
This section looks at bringing the digital change to life from your perspective. Use this section to think and make notes about your systems learning or digital change project focus areas.

PART C. Post Digital Change Implementation
Reflects on how you personally approached the adoption, implementation and embedding of the digital change and what helped or hindered your adoption of the digital change.

LEARN MORE ABOUT OUR SERVICES
Reach out to book your free consultation
Source Detail
Incubator Group
Campaign Code

Your privacy is important and we don’t do SPAM. Win!