The process began by identifying topics that Smartum would want to explore further. We formed three teams that collaborated for eight weeks together with experienced Futurice coaches. The goal of these workshops was to develop Smartum’s working culture to become more independent and to validate ideas directly from customers. The process was run as a Lean Service Creation (LSC) program, which aims to validate and perfect ideas at each stage of new business design. During the process the LSC program trains internal agents of change to help spread the LSC method further into the organization.
In the workshops, the teams examined whether the preliminary concepts would solve real problems that Smartum customers and end users have had. ‘Problem interviews’ closely analyzed Smartum’s customers’ needs, motivations and expectations. This step of LSC helps businesses refine the concept, validate it for end users, and finally define what Futurice calls the ‘Minimum Lovable Product’. In two demo sessions, all teams presented their concepts. These demo sessions brought customer understanding to the rest of the company and strengthened an inclusive and transparent culture. After the second session, the audience voted for the winning concept. The winning concept, SmartumPay was then taken further into development and was launched to market in March 2019.
Collaboration stayed close throughout the entire production stage of SmartumPay. Futurice, a full stack and a genuine end-to-end service partner, provided Smartum with two coders who worked in-house until SmartumPay was launched.