Portal and app consultancy
Fit the technology to how your business really works.
Before you build a customer portal or an app, we map how your customers, your teams and your systems work together today, and find where self-service and automation will save time, cut calls and make your business easier to deal with.
78%Fewer helpdesk calls to Northgate Insurance Services’ call centre after its customer portal launched
35%Conversion rate of Pedigree Wholesale's B2B trade app
64%Of Pedigree Wholesale's app users return every week
Your business processes, your customers' journeys, and the systems in between.
A portal or app only pays back if it fits the way your business runs. So we start with the work, not the screens.
Why customers get in touch
With your customer service and account teams, we find the top reasons customers call or email, how long each takes, and which of them a customer could do for themselves.
Customer and user journeys
How each type of customer, partner and member of staff gets things done today, from first contact to renewal, and where they wait, repeat themselves or chase.
The process behind the scenes
A service blueprint of who does what behind each step: the handoffs, approvals and manual re-keying a portal or app could remove.
Systems and data
Your ERP, CRM, case management and finance systems mapped: what data a portal or app needs, where it lives, and how to integrate it reliably, even when a system is down.
Security, access and compliance
Who should see what, secure sign-in and roles, accessibility, and the data protection and ISO 27001 controls around it.
Portal, app or both
Whether a web portal, a mobile app or both fits best: for trade reordering, field teams, offline use, barcode scanning or customer engagement.
Where AI can help
Self-service that answers back: assistants that answer questions and agents that prepare quotes and orders, with a person approving where it matters.
From the way you work today to a plan you can build.
Listen
Workshops with the people who deal with customers every day, and the managers and IT teams behind them.
Measure
A baseline of today's contact volumes, call types, handling times and manual work, so the benefits can be proved.
Map
Journeys, service blueprints and an integration map, showing what a portal or app should do and what it needs to connect to.
Plan
A prioritised first release, a roadmap, and the targets to measure it by: fewer calls, faster turnaround, adoption.
A clear case and a clear plan.
Journey maps and service blueprints
How your customers and teams work today, and how they will with the portal or app.
An integration map
The systems involved, the data each step needs, and the integration approach.
Clickable prototypes
The key journeys as wireframes you can click through and test with real customers before anything is built.
A business case and roadmap
The benefits you can expect, a prioritised first release, and the measures to track it.
Northgate Insurance Services: a portal built around the customer journey.
Northgate Insurance Services, part of ZIGUP plc, needed customers and providers to see where they were in the car hire and repair process without calling the helpline. We designed the portal around that journey: a simple sign-up through a complex agreement process, 24/7 updates at every step, and tracking so representatives know exactly where each client is.
Integrated with its Proclaim case management system, and built to keep working when that system is down for maintenance, the portal reduced helpdesk calls to the Northgate Insurance Services call centre by 78%.
