THE CLIENT:
A global consulting leader in health and benefits who delivers innovative solutions for clients in over 130 countries. They are at the forefront of digital healthcare solutions delivering insights and designing strategies and platforms that enable companies to stay ahead of the changing health and welfare needs of their employees. This company enables their clients to implement programs designed to improve overall employee health and well-being while at the same time manage their health care benefit costs which have been on the rise in recent years.
THE BUSINESS NEED:
The company’s research showed that employee demand for personalized health and wellness tools was accelerating. While consumer willingness to share personal health information with technology companies declined from 2018 to 2020, they learned that most employees trust their employer’s ability to protect their personal health information. Other studies indicate that consumer willingness to share health data also ranked highly with health care providers and health insurance companies.
Their research in employee satisfaction showed that employees value patient-centered healthcare solutions and the majority of employees are willing to try a digital health tool that would make healthcare more accessible, customized, and convenient.
Adding to the drive for a new offering was the increased demand from employers to include more wellness initiatives in their plans as a way to deal with increasing medical costs. Clients who had begun piloting wellness initiatives as part of their benefit offerings were seeing reductions in absenteeism and medical costs with improvements in employee satisfaction.
The company wanted to create a new health and wellness mobile application that their clients could include in employee benefits plans. It enables employees to select high quality, lower cost healthcare providers and options targeted to address their health care needs as they occur. It also incorporates suggestions for staying healthy that are personalized based on the health information they provide.
WHAT GENECA DID:
Geneca partnered with the client’s project stakeholders and agile delivery team to lead the Experience Analyst efforts. We designed user stories, visualizations, performed data analysis, and created technology assessments required to enable the team to build the solution. Our analysis work also included a prioritized backlog and technology roadmap that enabled the delivery team to scale from 3 to 12 people so that the application could be brought to market sooner.
THE RESULTS:
Our efforts allowed us to streamline the project approach and reduce rework and stakeholder churn. We implemented a clear user story frame that was easy for developers to consume and organized, validated, and prioritized a 100-story backlog. We also facilitated and focused working sessions in with stakeholders, designed and implemented a technology assessment matrix, and introduced agile techniques. As a result of this work, we:
- Reduced back and forth and rework among the global team
- Decreased meeting time spent rehashing and revisiting of decisions made in earlier sessions
- Streamlined business decision making
- Produced a body of work that could be delivered by a larger team
- Enabled the team to adapt and deliver results that aligned with the stakeholder priorities