
<p>ResourceSmart Schools (RSS) is a leading, internationally-recognised sustainability and climate change education program offered by Sustainability Victoria (SV). The structured framework and facilitated support provides guidance, knowledge and skills to achieve measurable environmental change within schools and beyond the school gate.</p>



<p>ResourceSmart Schools helps school communities benefit from embedding sustainability into everything they do and is well placed to help Victorians take action on climate change. By participating in the program, schools implement appropriate solar generation systems, energy efficiency and other sustainable practices (water efficiency, improved waste management, and biodiversity improvement) through curriculum, school operations, culture and community.</p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
<p>Exco Partners <strong>Digital Experience Runtime,</strong> bridging the enterprise grade performance of Dynamics CRM with an amazing digital customer experience and user engagement capability&nbsp;</p>
</blockquote>



<p>Despite the RSS program being highly successful to date, SV was facing a significant problem with declining user participation attributable to the legacy web application that supports the program. The legacy web application was built on an ageing technology stack that was relatively slow, unintuitive for users, and caused a range of user-related issues driving user decline.</p>



<p>Sustainability Victoria engaged Exco Partners to address these challenges and uncover better ways to reach and engage with school communities and develop new ways to interact with these groups to support a long-term and sustainable benefit.</p>


<div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="aligncenter size-large is-resized"><img decoding="async" src="https://cms.excopartners.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/rss-mockup.png" alt="" class="wp-image-3057" width="800"/></figure></div>


<p>Exco Partners delivered an innovative solution based on the Microsoft Dynamics 365 platform. The Microsft Dynamics 365 platform provided an enterprise-grade foundation for customer relationship management (CRM), business process automation and customer support. Teachers and Students interacted with the platform via a React-based user-experience oriented web interface designed by our award-winning design team.</p>



<p>We established the project with the following objectives:</p>



<ul>
<li>Enable further reach and engagement with the teaching, student and school communities in general</li>



<li>Develop new ways to create a long-term connection with the above user groups</li>



<li>Increase the accessibility and usability of the program</li>



<li>Increase SV’s ability to contribute to Victoria’s positive sustainable and environmental practices.</li>
</ul>



<p>The project was approached with three key phases drawing on our CoreMethods™ methodology. We designed each phase to address key aspects of the project and drew on specific skills across our multi-disciplined Exco Partners capabilities.&nbsp;</p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
<p>“An innovative solution was required to utilise the Microsoft Dynamics platform without compromising the consumer user experience”</p>
</blockquote>


<div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="alignright size-full is-resized"><a href="https://excopartners.com/2022/08/26/crn-impact-awards"><img decoding="async" src="https://cms.excopartners.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/CRN_Impact_FinalistTiles_PlatformInnovator.png" alt="" class="wp-image-3110" width="300"/></a></figure></div>


<p>Our first phase, Discovery, focused on customer research, stakeholder engagement, visual design, and planning. The key finding from the Discovery phase indicated there were three critical areas of focus the new platform needed to address.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Usability: make the system easy and intuitive, reduce steps, automate processes, and simplify user workflow.</p>



<p>Engagement / Motivation: building an environment that encourages and motivates students toward sustainability through sharing, small wins and clarity of benefits.</p>



<p>Support: creating a platform and online community from which teachers and students can manage their journey without the need for a dedicated SV support</p>



<p>Our second phase, Build, delivered the technology solution in a series of two-week sprints. The functional components were documented as User Stories and then iteratively developed and system tested.</p>



<p>A vital requirement of the technology stack was to vastly simplify the legacy platform infrastructure, which required multiple web and database servers.</p>



<p>The back-of-house capability needed a secure and robust data management capability so that the Sustainability Victoria product managers could support their customers. The ability to search, filter and report on school data without speciality support was important, as was the flexibility to continue to evolve school data with data and process automation.</p>



<p>We selected the Microsoft Dynamics 365, and Microsoft Power Platform based on power and ability to integrate seamlessly and securely into an enterprise technology environment, such as managed by Sustainability Victoria. &nbsp;</p>



<p>The power of tools such as Microsoft Power Automate and Power BI further enhanced the capability of the back-of-house solution.</p>



<p>An innovative solution was required to utilise the Microsoft Dynamics platform without compromising the consumer user experience and to address the user research findings of usability, engagement, motivation, and support.</p>



<p>The React framework was desirable for the technology solution of the consumer user interface. React is the most popular framework for delivering amazing user experiences on the web and has significantly enhanced our solution’s user experience capability.</p>



<p>We used our Digital Experience Runtime toolset to accelerate the integration of the front-of-house React user interface to the back-of-house Microsoft Dynamics platform. This integration created a seamless experience for managing data for both consumer and internal SV users.</p>



<p>We selected an Azure Active Directory B2C solution for managing consumer user authentication, reducing the need for bespoke security and user identity management. Our front-of-house user interface solution was deployed in a serverless container environment, which vastly simplified the infrastructure needed to support the system.</p>



<p>The final solution, live in mid-2022, successfully delivered a solution that supports almost 3000 schools across Victoria. Sustainability Victoria is also discussing options to bring other Australian states on board using their own branded version of the technology solution.</p>



<p>The solution was recognised by the industry for innovation in the CRN Impact Awards 2022.</p>



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<h2 class="has-text-align-left"><strong>Our Experience Runtime and RADD stack</strong></h2>

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<figure class="alignright size-large is-resized"><img decoding="async" src="https://cms.excopartners.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/radd-stack@2x.png" alt="" class="wp-image-3059" width="600"></figure></div>

<p class="has-text-align-left">Our Digital Experience Runtime is a curated collection of services, tools and methods designed to accelerate the delivery of amazing digital experiences.</p>


<p class="has-text-align-left">These accelerators enable the rapid development of rich consumer user experiences. The solution is backed by the enterprise-grade performance and flexibility of the Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power platforms.&nbsp;</p>


<p class="has-text-align-left">The Exco Partners Digital Experience Runtime lets us create innovative and user-experience oriented solutions using the React user interface framework.</p>


<p class="has-text-align-left">The Exco Partners RADD stack allows for a serverless deployment of the Digital Runtime based solution to simplify infrastructure support and management complexity. React, Azure AD B2C, Dynamics and Docker.</p>

</div>


tomatos

Amazing digital experiences with Dynamics CRM

A platform for sustainable schools


<p>Enrolling a child in kindergarten is a critical turning point in families&#8217; lives and is a significant, often first, interaction with the local government or council.</p>



<p>With the Victoria Government making significant contributions to early childhood development programs, many local governments are looking for innovative ways to engage, support and sustain their early childhood programs.</p>



<p>Exco Partners have engaged with various councils and local government groups as part of many programs to digitise the citizen experience.</p>



<p>Our most recent work was with Knox City Council (KCC) to design their &#8220;KN Enrol&#8221; system. The objective of the design was to simplify the kindergarten enrolment process for parents and to streamline the enrolment review process for the Educators. In line with the KCC&#8217;s Service Excellence value, it was important for this initiative that the process be efficient, convenient and easy for parents, including those facing language and other barriers.</p>


<div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="aligncenter size-large is-resized"><img decoding="async" src="https://cms.excopartners.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/knox-concept@2x-1024x630.png" alt="" class="wp-image-2832" width="600" srcset="https://cms.excopartners.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/knox-concept@2x-1024x630.png 1024w, https://cms.excopartners.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/knox-concept@2x-300x185.png 300w, https://cms.excopartners.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/knox-concept@2x-768x472.png 768w, https://cms.excopartners.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/knox-concept@2x-1536x945.png 1536w, https://cms.excopartners.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/knox-concept@2x-2048x1260.png 2048w, https://cms.excopartners.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/knox-concept@2x-1400x861.png 1400w, https://cms.excopartners.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/knox-concept@2x-800x492.png 800w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></figure></div>


<p>Our process started with a design sprint to review the existing processes, conduct research and analysis with the end-users and design a prototype user experience concept the delivered on the specific needs of Knox City Council, its educators and its citizens.</p>



<p>The solution will go live in Q4 2021.</p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
<p>The Exco team have been fantastic to work with. They worked to really understand what was needed and always had our families in mind and what their experience would be. Their innovative thinking helped us create an enrolment form which is easy for families to navigate and edit.</p>
<cite>Andrea Bulacios, Knox City Council</cite></blockquote>



<h3>Our solution to Kindergarten Enrolment and Placement</h3>



<p>Our Digital Kindergarten Enrolment and Placement (KEP) solution enables councils to accelerate their digitisation efforts and meet the demands of a digital-first user experience for their citizens.</p>


<div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="alignright size-large is-resized"><img decoding="async" src="https://cms.excopartners.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/kinder-mock-ups-1-1024x943.png" alt="" class="wp-image-2829" width="400" srcset="https://cms.excopartners.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/kinder-mock-ups-1-1024x943.png 1024w, https://cms.excopartners.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/kinder-mock-ups-1-300x276.png 300w, https://cms.excopartners.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/kinder-mock-ups-1-768x707.png 768w, https://cms.excopartners.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/kinder-mock-ups-1-652x600.png 652w, https://cms.excopartners.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/kinder-mock-ups-1.png 1108w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></figure></div>


<p>Exco Partners have designed KEP to take advantage of existing Victorian Government licences and existing Microsoft based infrastructure to deliver a secure, scalable and cost-effective Kindergarten information management system.</p>



<p>The KEP solution supports the Department of Education and Training requirements (KIMS) for data collection and reporting automating procedures for compliance and funding support.</p>



<p>KEP does not mandate strict and rigid processes allowing complete customisation and integration with existing council infrastructure and operations, including approval workflows, identity management and CRM</p>



<p><br><br></p>


kinder-drawing

Microsoft PowerApps Development

Digitising Kinder Enrolment


<p>Exco Partners was engaged to implement a customer engagement initiative targeting an immersive and personalised online channel experience for a large international automotive replacement parts organisation.</p>



<p>Data analysis identified a propensity for members to purchase once for a specific need. The hypothesis was that harnessing all of the business&#8217;s vehicle data and matching it to a consumer&#8217;s&nbsp;registration, would allow a car enthusiast could engage in their B2C channel with products, offers and insights&nbsp;tailored to their specific vehicle.&nbsp; It was felt that this would have an immediate impact on sales as well as brand loyalty (shown in&nbsp;repeat visits to the online store).</p>



<h3>Our method</h3>



<p>Purchase data was gathered and analyzed to understand the size and scale of the opportunity (to inform a business case) and to baseline current ‘repeat’ buying by dimension (product, location, car manufacturer and vehicle model) and confirm the viability for using customer registration information in the way needed to provide an accurate result.</p>



<p>The user journey was assessed as part of the overall design and analysis process.&nbsp; The analysis helped to understand that the technology capability needed to deliver the required experience.</p>



<p>The data analysis continued after launch to gain further insight and to particularly cater for quality and error handling scenarios.</p>



<p>For example, the data analysis identified a scenario where “vehicle registration” errors would occur and prevent the consumer for accessing the correct vehicle information and parts, resulting in bounces and/or abandoned carts.</p>



<p>The analysis lead to the implementation of a change to allow for a consumer to identify the issue which would be flagged with a member of customer service for follow up and resolution prior to their next visit to the site.</p>



<p>Whilst the lower-level customer considerations were included as above, the secondary “customer” of a partner wishing to use this service were also considered.&nbsp; In this case security considerations were applied as well as identifying which data a partner had access to (by level) and how they would seamlessly incorporate the API into their technology stack were also part of the architecture.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Within 3 months of first release a total of 10 partners had been able to incorporate the service with little to no technical code changes or deployments needed.&nbsp; This frictionless architecture was a core component of the overall benefit of the solution.</p>



<p>From the initial data analysis insight, Exco Partners defined the user stories, gathered and agreed the specific business requirements from Business, Security, Data and Technology stakeholders, and then designed the technical solution and led the development team to build the API solution.</p>



<h3>The outcome</h3>



<p>Since go-live, the business has seen a significant improvement in ‘repeat’ buying and other identified metrics of loyalty program member aligned purchases as well as an overall increase in the revenue generation of the B2C channel (measured before and after the release of this feature).&nbsp; Additionally, channel partnerships have been established with product suppliers who are utilising this customer to registration API embedded in their own go-to-market channels resulting in more product sales and stronger, more aligned industry partnership models.</p>


car-sunset

Data, Analytics & Insight

Automotive Data Strategy, Analytics & Insight


<p>Founded by the Victorian government’s Future Farming Strategy the National Centre for Farmer Health (NCFH) is an organisation focused on the education, research and innovation into health, wellbeing and safety of farmers and rural communities.</p>



<p>In 2018, farms accounted for 23% of worker fatalities in Australia, yet the agriculture industry made up only 2.3% of the workforce (1).</p>



<p>NCFH had an incredible asset of information, research, and data on farming health, yet a challenge remained:</p>



<ul><li>How can these “hard to reach” community groups be better engaged to build awareness of farming hazards and to create a sustained, long-term and positive impact</li><li>How can the information, research and data be best presented in a way the is consumable, discoverable and in a medium that is useful to the community to utilise? </li></ul>



<p>Exco Partners was engaged by the National Centre for Farmer Health to address these challenges. Specifically, to uncover better ways to reach and engage with farming communities, and to develop new ways to interact with these groups to support long-term and sustainable benefit.</p>



<p>A project was established with the following objectives:</p>



<ul><li>Enable further reach and engagement with the clinical, educational, research and&nbsp;farming communities</li><li>Develop new ways to create a long-term connection with the above user groups</li><li>Increase the awareness of the NCFH and the hazards present in farming</li><li>Increase the NCFH ability to contribute to the positive health, wellbeing and safety, of farming and regional communities across Australia and internationally.</li></ul>



<p>The project was approached with three key phases drawing on Exco Partner’s CoreMethods™ methodology. Each phase was designed to address key aspects of the project and drew on specific skills across a combined Exco Partners and NCFH team. The first phase, Discovery, focused on customer research, stakeholder engagement, visual design, and planning. The second phase, Delivery, focused on software development and delivering the key features/functions as defined during the Discovery. The final phase, Launch, completed launch activities, released the finished project deliverables to the public and supported the release through the initial stages of user uptake.</p>



<div class="wp-block-exco-flex-container exco-flex-block container-fluid">
<div class="wp-block-exco-icon-card exco-icon-card" data-sal="slide-up" data-sal-duration="1000"><div class="icon"><img decoding="async" src="https://cms.excopartners.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/light-bulb.svg"/></div><div class="title">Discovery</div><div class="details">Mobilisation and project initiation. Planning, review existing artefacts, user research and analysis and visual design.
</div></div>



<div class="wp-block-exco-icon-card exco-icon-card" data-sal="slide-up" data-sal-duration="1000"><div class="icon"><img decoding="async" src="https://cms.excopartners.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/tools.svg"/></div><div class="title">Delivery</div><div class="details">Agile software build phase to deliver discovery scope.

Output of this phase will be a tested and release ready software package and completion of business readiness activities such as training.

</div></div>



<div class="wp-block-exco-icon-card exco-icon-card" data-sal="slide-up" data-sal-duration="1000"><div class="icon"><img decoding="async" src="https://cms.excopartners.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/rocket.svg"/></div><div class="title">Launch</div><div class="details">Business readiness, software released into production and Hyper-care activities to support business change and hand-over to lifetime support.</div></div>
</div>



<p>A “Human Centred Design” approach was used as the centre piece of Discovery activities. Human Centred Design is a method of problem solving and design that seeks to develop solutions that promote consideration of a human perspective. This method was particularly suited to the project as the core outcomes were human related, specifically regarding the health, wellbeing, and safety of farming and regional communities.</p>



<p>To better understand the problem space, the Exco Partners Customer Experience team started with a focused period of heuristic review of existing data and initiated a set of user research.</p>



<p>Exco Partners engaged a user stakeholder group comprising of farmers, industry body representatives, Deakin University, Agriculture Victoria, DHHS and health professionals, running a series of workshops, forums and interviews to understand the problem space. The insight from this stakeholder group informed a series of initiatives including:</p>



<ul><li>Development of a digital Health and Wellbeing Application, the Farmer HAT</li><li>A new Farmer Health Website, focusing on awareness, engagement, discovery and accessibility of health wellbeing and safety information.</li></ul>



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter size-large is-resized"><img decoding="async" src="https://cms.excopartners.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/farmer-hat-1024x683.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-2404" width="700" srcset="https://cms.excopartners.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/farmer-hat-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https://cms.excopartners.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/farmer-hat-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.excopartners.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/farmer-hat-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cms.excopartners.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/farmer-hat-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cms.excopartners.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/farmer-hat.jpg 1200w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></figure></div>



<p>The Delivery phase proceeded for the Farmer Health Website and Farmer HAT product. The Delivery phase used a “Scrum” based framework for managing the software development activities. The Scrum framework is a method for breaking down large complex problems to smaller units of work that can be managed and delivered iteratively. Scrum is largely associated with “Agile” software development practices which is a method for managing software projects that promotes collaboration and flexibility over more rigid methods of traditional project management.</p>



<p>The delivery phase was structured in a series of two-week “Sprints”. Each Sprint was planned to focus on a particular set of features as were described in the User Stories. In each sprint, the User Stories in focus would progress individually through the process, as shown in the User Story Life-cycle diagram below, to progressively detail, build and test the required software.</p>



<p>The project team, comprising a blend of Exco Partners and NCFH staff, would meet each morning via video call in a “Stand-up” meeting to review the progress of the previous day, plan for the next activities and discuss challenges preventing progress. A “Kanban” was used to monitor the status of each User Story through the delivery process. A Kanban is a visual method for monitoring and managing units of work moving through a process. The Kanban, represented virtually for the project team in the Microsoft DevOps platform, was key to being able to collaborate on the project delivery with the team members needing to work remotely due to COVID.</p>



<p></p>



<p>The NCFH Farmer Health Website and Farmer HAT launched in September 2020 projected to serve over 50 thousand unique users in the first 12 months since launch and over 100 thousand page views.</p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator"/>



<ol><li>Safe work Australia. (2017) <em>Traumatic Injury Fatalities database and national Data Set for Compensation-Based Statistics</em>.</li></ol>


Engineer

A platform for sustainable schools

Digitising Kinder Enrolment

Automotive Data Strategy, Analytics & Insight

National Centre for Farmer Health