Digital Transformation of Business Processes in the Road Driving Sector

Digital Transformation of Business Processes in the Road Driving Sector
Introduction

Having an obsolete technological platform, already incapable of responding to the challenges of the digital age, it was a strategic need for an important organization in the Portuguese road driving sector to submit its business processes trough a significant digital transformation that enabled the full potential of efficiency gains and quality provided by the trendiest digital technologies.

Knowledgebiz was the chosen partner to undertake this digital transformation. The initially high requirements of the project, to which other unanticipated ones were also added during the solution development, were fulfilled and the expected results realized.

01
The Challenge

The challenge that Knowledgebiz faced with this project was twofold. On the one hand, success depended heavily on rigorously surveying key business processes, with extreme detail on the requirements of the respective sub-processes and procedures, therefore the involvement of the client organization was mandatory. However, its previous technology for everyday operations had specific requirements that were not totally dominated by the organization, since it was not a property solution, and the organization was not involved in its development.

On the other hand, the digital transformation that was imposed on the organization would have to consider an already established mode of business operation that is stable, predictable and without relevant complaints. The digitization of business processes should therefore, as far as possible, be carried out with only the strictly necessary changes in processes and working methods. An unproblematic change management and internal responsiveness would depend on that.

02
The Solution

The key business processes were identified, as well as all the necessary requirements for the normal operation of the organization's business, ensuring their optimization and minimizing, without jeopardizing the project's expected gains, its impact on work methods and procedures.

From here, the digital transformation of the organization's business processes was developed in order to integrate and interoperate its different geographically deconcentrated business units. Thus, all these processes became available on a digital platform accessible through a Web interface and grounded on a cloud-based computing infrastructure.

The user interfaces were developed taking into account the best web design practices in order to create a favorable UX/UI environment. Regarding the backend functionalities, they were developed in order to include state of the art databases, increasing overall application performance and response times.

Several external entities APIs were also integrated into the platform envisioning the support of activities such as payments and invoicing.

The Approach

The overall objectives of this project, and the conditions of complexity and uncertainty that characterized it, suggested that the best approach to adopt was to follow the Lean and Scrum Agile methodologies of project management.

The gains from this approach were several, of which we now highlight the main ones.

The key business processes were redesigned, and their requirements raised in such a way that they were focused on creating value for customers, correcting or eliminating procedures that did not contribute to this value stream, as long as they did not jeopardize legal and regulatory compliance.

The collaborative work with the client and other stakeholders and their periodic validation of the work objectives and the respective sprints assumed by the development team, as well as the results obtained, proved to be a legitimate and mutually committed basis for continuous learning and decision, which was instrumental in the successful progress of the project.

The responsible autonomy and collaborative spirit of the Knowledgebiz development team allowed for greater speed of work and the ability to generate solutions to emerging problems.

Training and support for users in the new work tools were essential to a change that was intended to be well received and quickly integrated into the organization daily activities.

The Results
  • At the end of the first month of operation with the new digital platform, its users were fully adapted to them, and change was no longer a risk factor in the customer's business.
  • The quantity and quality of integrated and available information allow for the improvement and acceleration of global and decentralized management decisions.
  • The client has full control over the system that determines the operation of their key business processes.
  • The new digital platform prove to be reliable and with the expected efficiency gains.
  • Applications that needed some sort of certification to be used were certified by independent entities.
  • The client's trust in Knowledgebiz was reinforced, having been entrusted with the development of new digital transformation projects in the organization.
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