- Work/
- Vanheede
Vanheede
Our approach
Discovery Bootcamp
The development of this app is part of Vanheede’s digital transformation strategy. In just a few years, they want to process all customer requests through digital means for both environmental and productive reasons. At the moment, 75% of their customers already use their web portal myVanheede, but they want to increase those numbers, which is why Vanheede asked us to develop their own app to increase customer engagement.
We hand-picked members that had participated in the bootcamp, so we’d be sure that they were already familiar with the subject and its complexity. After all, waste management is far from an easy industry to understand. The development team consisted of a product owner from Vanheede, two backend developers, two frontend developers, a UX designer and a scrum master.
The solution
Het eerste doel was om de kalender en het overzicht duidelijk weer te geven. We streefden ernaar om tegen eind 2019 onze MVP (Minimum Viable Product) klaar te hebben. Dankzij de keuze voor scrum als methode en het reeds bepalen van de prioriteiten in de voorgaande workshops konden we snel schakelen. Er werd tweewekelijks met de stakeholders afgetoetst en bijgestuurd waar nodig. Hierbij werd ook telkens een inzicht gegeven in het up-to-date budget. Ons eerste doel werd dan ook succesvol behaald dankzij het harde werk van het volledige team.
Het tweede grote doel was om ook het beheer van het “bijzonder en gevaarlijk afval” te ondersteunen in de applicatie. Hier zijn we ook gestart met een workshop met experten uit de business. Samen brachten we de uiterst complexe flow in kaart en brainstormden we over mogelijke oplossingen Op basis hiervan werd de knoop finaal doorgehakt door de Product Owner, dit zorgde voor alignering en focus.
The development
Our first goal was to have a user-friendly calendar and overview of the waste collections. By the end of 2019, we wanted to have a Minimum Viable Product (MVP). An MVP is the first working iteration of an application and contains only the most essential functionalities. As a development team, an MVP lets you:
- Quickly launch and test a digital solution
- Learn from users what actually works, so you can set functional priorities
- Prevent resources from being wasted on developing unnecessary functionalities
- Lay the groundwork for further development and scaling
Our second goal was to enable the management of hazardous waste retrieval appointments in the application, since users have to schedule these themselves. We discussed its development in a dedicated workshop during the bootcamp with some experts, because it requires specialist knowledge. Vanheede’s product owner had the final say in our project, which also helped to set priorities.
Because we used the Scrum methodology and already determined the priorities in the Discovery Bootcamp, we achieved both the MVP and hazardous waste retrieval feature relatively quickly. We held biweekly update meetings with our stakeholders, in which we also reported on the budget.
Looking back
The result of all this hard work is Vanheede Plus, an app for both Android and iOS that lets customers view and manage their waste retrieval appointments. By developing this app, we helped Vanheede with their mission to increase digital customer engagement. This also results in a reduced workload for service desk and sales employees, so they can focus on other, more important tasks.
Vanheede Plus’ original release plan consisted of a gradual roll-out. We were going to start with ambassadors, and then release the app province by province in both Flanders and Wallonia. However, because of the Covid-19 pandemic and its increased reliance on digital-first interactions, Vanheede asked us to speed this plan up. In the end, we managed to get the entire application live with little to no hiccups. Certainly an impressive achievement by our team!
Vanheede Plus is available for download in the App Store and Google Play Store.