Developing an E2E business platform in 18 months using Agile WoW

The client

About AND Digital

Founded in 2014, AND Digital has scaled rapidly to 1,600+ ANDis (our people) across the UK, Netherlands, and the US. This incredible growth has been the result of a different kind of partnership. We form high-performing blended teams with our clients, to build their digital products faster - and better. The unique part? Whilst working as one blended team, we equip our clients' people, teams and organisation with the digital skills and knowledge they need to thrive and deliver, independently.

Key Outcomes

Delivery at pace enabled significant time savings on business operations as well as the ability to reduce costs by retiring expensive SaaS applications.

Pace 18 Months from inception to delivery
Scale 20 Business applications launched
Insights 40 People, client, and company reports built
Accuracy 1 Single source of truth created
Consolidation 5 SaaS applications retired
Efficiency 20% Time saving on business operations

The Challenge

Designing an E2E solution for hyper-growth

In its infancy, AND Digital managed back-office processes on spreadsheets. But as the start-up quickly became a scale-up; operations like invoicing, HR, and pipeline management needed additional support, from dedicated SaaS applications. That meant fragmented data across disparate platforms, and growing costs for licenses that weren't delivering what we needed.

Existing E2E solutions that were on the market didn’t meet our commercial requirements. Particularly the growing need for talent management tools to support ANDi development and retention, and underpin our people-first approach to business. In addition, the difficulty of accurately reconciling data across multiple applications was inhibiting our growth ambitions, which were reliant on the ability to make accurate business decisions, based on reliable data and backed up by powerful and insightful reporting.

“When our CEO asked me if I would accept the challenge of building a software and data platform to run our business processes, with a lean team, in less than 2 years, I immediately said yes! The opportunity to disrupt industry standards through the use of bold design principles and innovative tech choices, with strong reporting insights, was enticing. In just 3 months we had built and launched the CRM and pipeline management applications, and from there we kept on building. Iteratively adding 10 further employee and client management applications.”

Isabelle Blanchot Chief for Business Platform - AND Digital

THE SOLUTION

Building from the ground up to deliver quickly

The bespoke E2E solution, Luna was built from the ground up using an 80/20 approach which allowed us to deploy core functionality quickly in the form of a minimum viable product (MVP) whilst avoiding feature creep that often occurs as a result of focussing on edge cases.

Luna combines everything our Client Partnerships teams need to nurture relationships and manage pipelines in order to drive AND’s growth. This is supported by a suite of scheduling and engagement tools that empower Service Delivery teams to track billable time and deliver effective client engagements.

Company-wide, ANDis can use Luna to do everything from showcasing their skills, to managing their career development, through to booking time for annual leave and upskilling. Last but not least, ANDis at all levels can quickly and easily extract meaningful insights via Power BI reports that enable them to make informed decisions.

This powerful and varied functionality is easy for all ANDis to access via an intuitive, user-friendly web application that works seamlessly across both desktop and mobile. Critically, it has allowed us to retire 5 separate SaaS applications, streamlining and simplifying day-to-day operations in one convenient place.

“We built powerful operational and performance dashboards that enable the business to confidently make accurate recruitment, scheduling, sales, and budgeting decisions. We built Luna by following the advice that we give to all of our clients: follow an Agile methodology to create small, nimble and empowered product teams. This then allows for the quick release of a minimum viable product (MVP) which can be rapidly iterated. This enables the selection of modern technologies, regular refactoring of code, and the creation of a short feedback loop with users that allows for ongoing iteration.”

Isabelle Blanchot Chief for Business Platform - AND Digital

The Principles

Designing for humans as well as business

The key to Luna’s success is the 6 principles upon which it was built:

The 3 human principles:

Non-hierarchical - Luna promotes trust; it is democratic with minimal built-in levels and controls
Less is more - Luna reduces bureaucracy and complexity, capturing only relevant data, once
Transparent - Luna empowers our ANDis by facilitating easy access to and sharing of data

The 3 business principles:

Growth focussed - Luna is designed to support both individual and business growth
Dynamic - Luna evolves continuously to unify business operations whilst adapting quickly to changing requirements
Enhancer - Luna puts intelligence and knowledge into the hands of all ANDis, connecting us and protecting the essence of our business

The Results

A data driven organisation

The end result is that AND has become a data driven company. This has been achieved through the fact that every ANDi has access to company KPIs as well as critical information pertaining to diversity & inclusion (D&I), business unit performance, and company-wide skills.

This has been underpinned by lean and consistent processes that allow the Luna platform to continue to evolve alongside business needs.