Wesfarmers Decipher
Co-designing, co-creating and launching an Agtech SaaS product from scratch.
Challenge
In an important collaboration with the Wesfarmers group, we were challenged to help them co-design, co-create and launch a brand new SaaS product from scratch. As this was the client team’s first foray into the world of SaaS, we had to help shift their perspectives to see Decipher through the lens of a product, not as a project. From refining pricing and business models, to user journeys, design, development and marketing through to launch, we helped the Decipher team take the product from concept to market in 11 months.
Part of Wesfarmers Chemicals, Energy & Fertilisers, CSBP sells fertiliser to WA growers and has done so for over 100 years. CSBP developed several pieces of software to provide to fertiliser customers free of charge. While it was clear it helped secure fertiliser sales, Wesfarmers recognised the untapped market potential and began exploring how the IP could be repurposed to form an agtech SaaS product.
Approach and Inputs
The first step was to identify the people who would find the Decipher product useful: the grower, the agronomist and the ag service network. Honouring the dynamic of these user groups was something we kept front of mind as we worked with the Decipher team to refine the business model and product strategy.
It was important to ensure Decipher could offer a clear value proposition for each segment and avoid encroaching on established relationships. In tackling this challenge (and many others), we found a role model in Xero. We gleaned analogous inspiration from analysing how the cloud-based software product democratised accounting for small business, while also providing a clear value proposition for bookkeepers and accountants too. To develop an appropriate strategy, we had to champion and instil a product mindset. This meant shifting the way we thought about everything from budgeting to resourcing and timelines.
Our first area of focus was to gather insights about each of the customer segments and visualise them as customer journeys. We tapped into frontline employees and others with first-hand farming experience. Working with these proxy customers not only helped us map the journeys, it also helped us understand the voice of the customer to shape our language and tone. To ensure customer needs and preferences remained at the heart of the product roadmap, we worked with Painted Dog (market research specialists) to conduct choice-based modelling with actual customer segments. The insights from this helped refine the product bundles, pricing and feature sets.
We ran a series of sprints to devise the product marketing, customer onboarding and support strategies. We mapped marketing journeys encompassing different needs throughout the customer lifecycle and distilled it into a custom sales funnel. We then laid out a marketing plan that defined the channels, strategies and tactics used to push prospective customers from one phase to the next through the funnel. With the overarching plan in place, we created a media plan and developed a suite of headlines, taglines and creative assets to support the MVP product launch.
Outcomes
Making headlines
Played digital coach
As their team scaled from 2 to 40+ in <12 months.
Product to platform
Worked alongside their team as they successfully pivoted to mine site rehabilitation management.
“From the beginning we worked as one team to build the service offer from creation to development and design through to activation in the market.
We found the team had the ability to quickly understand what we wanted to achieve and what our customers’ needs were to deliver the best outcome. During our many in-depth co-design sessions the visual prompts helped us to step through the service workflow and understand all the different pieces of the service - technical, in-product engagement and support wrapped around it.
There were many learnings from the experience, the key ones for us were understanding software as a service industry best practice, the different dimensions to the UX process and that it’s about the customer perspective and use of the service.
Four weeks after launching our free service we had over 270 customers, 50% farmers and 50% ag service providers, from all over the world and no support request. This is a credit to the team in delivering an easy to use self serve service.
Our journey has only just begun, with many features and functions yet to be developed and we look forward to working with Hatchd and our other partners to bring them to life.”
– Decipher Marketing Manager: Suzanne Malone.