The old platform didn’t play nicely with external systems for planning, booking, and tracking shipments, leaving Anchor staff stuck with manual data uploads and booking update notifications. It was clunky, inefficient, and slowed everything down.
To get a clearer picture of the problem, we ran user research sessions and created journey maps outlining processes, touchpoints, and pain points. These maps helped us see exactly where things were breaking down and where improvements were needed.
Armed with these insights, we built user stories and a story map to define platform requirements and manage the backlog. Model Driven Apps proved to be the best choice over Microsoft Dynamics 365, offering the right mix of cost-effectiveness and flexibility.
For a seamless experience, we set up Azure AD and Azure AD B2C for secure authentication, used Azure Logic Apps and API Management to automate tasks, and created a Power Portal as the front end for external clients. Microsoft Dataverse tied it all together, simplifying data management with its built-in information architecture.
Key activities:
- User research: We conducted user research to capture business processes by engaging staff, resulting in the creation of journey maps that highlighted pain points and opportunities.
- User stories: Based on the research, we created user stories to outline platform requirements, visually linking them to the user journey with the platform.
- Technical options: We evaluated technical options and chose Model Driven Apps over Microsoft Dynamics 365 for its cost-effectiveness and functionality.
- Sequence diagrams: We used UML sequence diagrams to demonstrate messaging between the Anchor platform and external systems.