A new beginning
Netflix and Domino’s Pizza have something in common, and it’s not about being key ingredients for a Sunday binge-watching session.
Both companies run hundreds (even thousands) of experiments a year. They do it not because they are lost and in search of purpose — both are extremely successful leaders in their field. On the contrary, they have realized this is what innovating in the digital field looks like.
Let’s look at Domino’s case for a moment. This is a company that started as a pizza-to-go parlor on the early 1960’s. It’s not quite your typical digital native. But they have an epic story of reinvention as a technology company that delivers pizza. In 2007, Domino’s was the first in the industry to offer mobile ordering. Just months after, they pioneered the online pizza tracker. For the first time ever, customers could follow the progress of their order, from purchase to oven to delivery.
Nowadays Domino’s famously features up to 11 ways to order a pizza, including sending “🍕” to their Twitter account, talking to your Amazon Alexa, or the shortest mobile checkout process ever, at zero clicks (just launch the app and it will place an order for your favorite pizza ten seconds after).
Most importantly, these are not just marketing stunts. The bottom line impact has been tremendous. Digital channels account today for 60% of their orders, their stock has soared 1300% since the start of this initiative in 2010, and they are widely regarded as an innovator and the most loved pizza brand in America.
How did they get there? They narrowed down their core value — being a pizza delivery company— and developed into a company where iteration and experimentation are the norm. In other words, they pulled this off by thinking like a startup. They put their customer at the center and, only then, used technology to make ordering more convenient in every way they could imagine.
A year and a half ago, together with two of the best professionals I know and good friends, we started a company. The three of us with years of experience across multiple startups on our backs. Our mission for this new company, a simple one: bring this way of working, that we had lived and breathed, to clients looking to launch innovative digital products that connect with their customers.
This is why North came to be: to create digital products and services that generate relationships with people.
In our experience, breakthrough innovation ideas in the digital field happen during the hard work of iterative design and development. Integrated teams of designers, developers and product managers working hand-in-hand with stakeholders on a single product experience. At North, from the early stages of a project, we will work with you to determine the few use cases that drive the main KPI of your company. Those are the ones to focus on. From there, all team will work together prototyping solutions until the best one is found and shipped.
Clients are team members from the outset, and keep involved in the project day to day. The big reveal approach—going away for a month to come back with a bunch of ideas—has worked well for the advertising industry for decades. But it is not the way successful digital products are created.
Even GE, a high-profile failure case of digital transformation, now openly reckons that acting like a startup is one of 3 key factors to make this switch successfully. Once again, it’s not about technology per se, it’s a way of working that makes all the difference.
As we come close to our second anniversary, we have already partnered with clients to launch a new concept of car marketplace, redesign an online loan service, deliver double-digit conversion rate improvements to e-commerce checkout experiences, or create an e-health service that intends to make healthcare accessible to anyone. We also have ongoing partnerships to design in-car interfaces for one of the major car manufacturers and the payments app of a leading financial institution in Spain. We’ve been busy.
And here we are. Taking all we’ve learned and putting it to use in creating the kind of partner we wish existed. One that will help you navigate the uncharted waters of the digital product development process.
Keep posted for more to come here. Or get in touch with us now: hello@thenorthstudio.com
