Bridging the Gap Between Technology and Business to Create a Better Customer Experience

Challenge

Savers, a publicly held for-profit thrift store retailer, decided to create a Customer Fundraising Portal to enhance the customer experience aspect of direct fundraising. This portal, later known as the Savers FUNDrive project, would allow organizations to launch and manage their fundraisers through a custom web platform online. Savers’ business and engineering teams began working immediately to design and develop various components of the Customer Fundraising Portal. However, each team soon realized they had different understandings of who their customer was and how they would use the customer-facing website. This resulted in each team having different goals and endpoints in mind, which lead to a communication gap between the teams on the FUNDrive project.

Action/Solution

Savers enlisted the help of Forum Solutions for technical project management and product management over the FUNDrive project. Forum worked with development teams and coached business stakeholders to work and communicate effectively with the FUNDrive delivery team. Forum was able to help the engineering team at Savers refocus who their customer was and determine how to shape the customer experience by acting as a translator between them and the business teams. Forum also helped direct goal setting and expectations for the cross-functional team by implementing daily IT stand-ups, backlog, and sprint planning meetings.

To meet the needs of the client, Forum was able to seamlessly transition from their role within the IT organization to work with the marketing and operational teams for the remainder of the FUNDrive project as Savers worked on a nationwide launch plan for their new FUNDrive platform. Since Forum had experience working with both sides, there was an ability to assess the project’s position quickly and understand each side’s standpoint efficiently. This helped jumpstart the activities of training staff and educating customers on the new system.

“[Forum] was able to work independently, talk to various stakeholders and use their experience to give us their unbiased opinion and recommendations.”

— Erfan Bhojawala, Savers Director of Engineering

In addition to helping each team individually, Forum helped both teams implement a new internal process of checks and balances so that the teams stayed in sync and received timely feedback from the other side. Setting up a regular cadence of communication and collaboration between business stakeholders and engineering set a standard for future cross-functional projects to be more agile and customer-focused.

Results

Forum helped Savers improve their day-to-day organizational structure by being present and hands-on. By facilitating collaboration between individuals and providing support from beginning to end, Forum was able to be objective and help both the business and IT teams at Savers develop the best possible platform to meet their customer needs and establish a repeatable process for future collaboration projects.

Forum Solutions is a management consulting company dedicated to crafting and delivering transformational outcomes for our clients, our colleagues, and our community. With our help, clients become more agile, resilient, and connected, bringing great ideas to fruition with brilliant results. From start-ups to the Fortune 50, business leaders rely on Forum Solutions to help them form and realize their strategies. Our company is a certified Woman Owned Business that believes in developing and growing our colleagues, company, and region in a socially conscious way.