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Value of offering Mobile Payments

What we think

Not so long ago, a mobile phone was for making calls, sending texts and not much more.

Over the last decade, the rise of the smartphones has changed the way we use our mobiles. This change has paved the way for a huge number of new opportunities and ways we can be connected while on the move – with stats showing most of us make payments and do banking increasingly from our mobiles.

PayPal has redesigned its mobile payments app, emphasizing features that make transactions easier and streamline purchases based on location (see video). In addition to offering $100 worth of in-store deals, the app lets you “order ahead and skip the line” at eateries, pay restaurant bills without engaging the server, and eliminate the credit card companies by opening a line of credit with local merchants.

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Such change can offer up new commercial opportunities for new businesses to seize on the simplicity and power of mobile payment functionality.

NSW Health multi-site roll-out of EMR

Customer Stories, , ,

In late 2011, Westmead Hospital Cancer Care Clinic undertook to make the bold move over to an electronic medical record system for cancer patients.

By mid 2012, it had been decided to use and roll-out Charm Health EMR system which had been subject to a pilot at Blacktown Hospital for the last 6mths.

The issue was that the existing Charm Health EMR was not geared to field of oncology and both the hospital and software developer were at loggerheads

In July 2012, Alisdair Blackman was called in to gather up the requirements for a new EMR from across a large number of different and often opposing disciplines to try and synthesize a common set of universal requirements for the EMR. Working with medical oncologists, radiology oncologists, hematologists, palliative care, allied health, nursing, administration and hospital management, Digital Rehab’s Alisdair Blackman documented the business requirements and made specific interface change recommendations to the existing Charm Health system so as to ensure optimum take up by all across Westmead, Blacktown and Liverpool Hospitals.

While change is gradual in the public health system, there is a hope that by mid 2014, the requested changes to the Charm Health EMR can be made and deployed successfully.

Unlock the value of your company Intranet

What we think

This article looks to detail why intranet’s generally fail to receive the importance they should and possible approaches that can be taken to overcome these hurdles.

Intranet’s play a critical role in internal communications YET are rarely given the importance and proper planning required in order for them to be of most value.

The ingredients for successful deployment of an intranet, in my estimation include:

  • Get CEO or MD to be project sponsor – this provides weight to the project and will serve to break down the walls that will be otherwise be erected around those who are reluctant to change
  • Leave politics out of it – too often due to lack of ownership, Intranet projects become fiercely political
  • Broad consultation with end users – in order to deliver something that will be widely applauded and used by end users, you must bring a cross section of end users into the consultation process
  • Clear and detailed governance framework – there are a number of divergent views around governance but whatever your coulis, having a suitable governance structure in place is of fundamental importance
  • Create structured content – you need to clearly class your assets and arrange a hierarchy for content as this will inform permissions, management and ongoing periodic reviews
  • Have a migration plan – content is the single most important aspect of a successful intranet.
  • Allow sufficient time for change to be absorbed by the business – rolling out a new intranet can represent sizeable change for any organisation. Ensure sufficient time has been set aside for the consultation with key stakeholders and end users, migration of content, implementation and digestion of new governance framework and for training.
  • The worst thing you can do is rush the implementation and rollout as this will greatly degrade the value and will threaten take up and usage of the new intranet.
  • Create training packs to help transition users – ensure supporting documents be they job aids, ‘how to’ guides, workflow diagrams etc to provide an easy access point for end users to refer to prior to Digital Rehab’s team of consultants have delivered over 15 intranets most recently for Coates Hire in 2013.

Responsive Design versus app development

What we think

Principal Consultant & Owner of Digital Rehab, Alisdair Blackman speaks to CIO’s Andrew Birmingham on responsive design.

As increasingly tech savvy users are demanding more from digital, it is becoming difficult for business and IT functions to grapple with the best mode around how best to satisfy these demands taking heed of ‘enterprise’ level architectural considerations.

Business requirements focus typically on rapid delivery of capability into customers/clients/partners and ‘first to market’ imperatives while IT requirements looks to enterprise data model, solution design, hardware, user management, security (and other) factors.

IT departments are increasingly required to deliver services out to the mobile Web, but in circumstances under which they have no control or even certainty over the types of devices being used by staff and customers to view content. In order to ensure that the user experience is not compromised by the choice of device or the form factor of the screen IT departments are increasingly turning to development approaches like responsive Web design to deliver more ubiquitous, lower cost outcomes than can be achieved with native apps across multiple mobile operating systems like iOS Android and BlackBerry.

Read CIO article titled: “Using responsive design to lower build and support costs”

Janssen’s new site to help with chronic pain

Customer Stories,

Janssen, formerly Janssen-Cilag, is the pharmaceutical division of Johnson & Johnson. Janssen provides prescription medicines for a range of conditions in the areas of mental health, neurology, women’s health, haematology, gastroenterology, and pain management. Four Janssen medicines are included in the World Health Organisation’s Essential Drug list. Janssen has over 340 staff in Australia.

In 2011, Janssen approached Alisdair Blackman, to design, build a new website to help sufferers manage their chronic pain.

The website saw 3 websites being brought into one platform – Drupal, re-writing of site content and successfully deploying the site.

Project Budget = $150k

Macarthur Coal Website & Intranet

Customer Stories

One of Australia’s largest coal companies – Macarthur Coal, prior to their acquisition by Peabody Coal, required assistance with the design, development and implementation of a new investor relations centric website and intranet to increasing communications between staff internally.

The website saw the content migration post re-write, and deployment on internal servers and was delivered in 3 months.

Halfway through the website project, we were engaged to build a new intranet for the business which sought to promote and foster better communication with staff operating from a diverse number of locations.

Requiring considerable internal consultation particularly with the intranet, the projects required the project team to work largely from Brisbane.

Budget was combined $350,000 and new intranet delivered within 5 months

Darrell Lea Digital Marketing & Website

Customer Stories

Darrell Lea is one of Australia’s top brands.

Darrell Lea was a family owned and run business until due to financial stress in 2007, then sold to a private equity firm.

When it was a family business, the business was reliant on its marketing and advertising. The issue – while there was a growing appreciation for the importance of digital, the entire budget spend was focused on Point Of Sale and traditional TV and radio advertising.

Digital Rehab Owner and Principal Consultant Alisdair Blackman worked with the Head of Marketing in 2005 to integrate and embrace digital into their pre-existent offline centric media and marketing activities. This saw two releases and designs of the Darrell Lea website which back in 2005/06 received over 27,000 UVs / mth and deployed search and eDM activities.

Alisdair Blackman worked with Darrell Lea up until 2007 prior to the business being sold.

Dulux Channel Distribution Strategy & New Website

Customer Stories

Engaged to devise a channel distribution strategy for Dulux. This strategy involved assessing competitor channels, growth pillars and differentiators.

While Dulux is the leading brand in their respective category, they had fallen behind on innovation. So, this strategy was designed to redress this.

so-why-use-us

MyColour was born

One of several key innovations outlined and recommended in our strategy was the creation of a leading colour tool that harnessed and leverages on the fact that Dulux, above all other competitors had and still have a larger range of colour from which to choose from. This application, built in Java, enables users to create a colour palette for any project, renovation or application easily and simply.

 

Coinciding with the launch of MyColour, the entire Dulux site was redesigned and built. We oversaw the UI, information hierarchy, web design and development of the new site and managed all stakeholder management both internally and externally.

Within the first week of launch, this new innovative additional to the marketing arsenal of Dulux blew large holes in competitive offerings and even after 5 years since launch still is seen as one the of finest examples of marketing innovation in the industrial sector.

What this again highlights is the need and importance for business to objectively review the marketing mix, key channels and continually reassess opportunities to innovate so as to become or legitimise market leadership.

Budget was $750,000 for MyColour and the new website was $500,000. Project took just over 17 months to deliver.

La Trobe Uni Digital Strategy, Marketing Plan & Website

Customer Stories

La Trobe University marketing function underwent a restructure in 2007. This restructure resulted in the need for a complete marketing refresh.

Digital was the missing ingredient in university marketing

Alisdair Blackman, then Managing Director of leading digital marketing agency Blackglass, worked to create a digital marketing blueprint and tactical marketing plan designed to review, assess and make recommendations on what the university should do to better position itself digitally.

The strategy, extensive workshops took near on 4 months working onsite at the multiple campuses of Victoria’s third largest university to run and document and resulted in an over 400 page detailed blueprint and tactical plan along with recommended budgets.

Alisdair Blackman worked on the information architecture, UX design, user interface design and oversaw the build of the new website and video components. This project took near on 18 months to complete and Alisdair Blackman was the Project Director reporting into the university’s Head of Marketing and Executive Council.

Discovery Hospitality National Skills Shortage Initiative

Customer Stories, ,

In 2005, Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry was appointed by the then Department of Education Science & Training to launch a national initiative to curb a step decline in hospitality related apprenticeships and to combat at ever increasing skills shortage.

Rich media usage

Federal Government Initiative

The government in 2005 gave key industry sectors of Engineering, Building & Construction, Mining and Hospitality & Hotels over $4m to speed on initiatives to redress the skills shortage.

Alisdair Blackman, Digital Rehab’s Principal Consultant prepared over 9 months a complete creative pitch, business case and funding submission for “Discover Hospitality” – for a 2 year national campaign championed by Curtis Stone, Luke Mangan and Neil Perry.

Only in 2008 was the funding submission agreed to which saw the creation of a rich media website for the Discovery Hospitality campaign www.discoverhospitality.com.au, using engaging video testimonials, educational materials to supply to career advisors and influencers as well as Discover Jobs – a job board for all hospitality, tourism and hotels to use to advertise for free their available jobs.

The site and campaign received praise for its creativity, tone and messaging. Website and campaign materials still in use and being managed by peak industry body – Restaurant & Catering Australia.