REACH PLC: User research, user journeys and product evaluation
About Reach plc
Reach plc is the UK’s largest commercial, national and regional media brand publisher. It owns 120 brands including iconic titles such as The Daily Mirror, Daily Express, The Manchester Evening News and the Daily Record.
The challenge: A platform to support and engage a highly diverse workforce
Reach plc was considering investing in a new intranet or employee experience platform to help connect an extremely diverse and busy workforce spread over multiple locations in the UK. They wanted to know if there was a solution that could better engage employees while also supporting efficiency and helping employees navigate changing work patterns.
The team sought external expert advice so they could consider their options and make the right investment decision.
Solution: Detailed user research to understand employee user journeys
After a competitive tender, a joint team from Reach’s Internal Communications and IT functions engaged Spark Trajectory to lead a user research and discovery process, define a set of requirements for a potential new intranet, and then evaluate suitable intranet software.
We carried out a comprehensive set of user interviews representing Reach’s diverse geographical footprint and set of journalist and non-journalist roles. This allowed us to get a detailed understanding of information needs, pain points and employee user journeys. We also interviewed several process stakeholder owners to consider the views of those responsible for key areas and systems throughout Reach.
We codified and analysed the data from interviews using our Task Trajectory user journey mapping framework. This helped us to gain a deep understanding of key employee user journeys around areas such as staying informed, finding information, pay & benefits, wellbeing, and IT – all where a new intranet might play a role.
We then charted these user journeys in detail, presenting this as a set of expansive charts and structured data which would allow the team to consider the structure and content of the new intranet so that it would be both effective and well-adopted. As part of this we also estimated the potential wastage across each user journey and how a new intranet could drive efficiencies. This information was presented in a way that could be slotted into a future business case.
A potential new platform and related business case
We then synthesised information from the discovery period to drive a set of requirements for any potential new intranet. These were presented to the project team and validated through a MoSCoW rating in order to derive a final, priotised set of functional and non-functional requirements.
We then used Spark Trajectory’s Product Evaluation Framework to find a potential intranet or employee experience platform that would meet Reach’s unique requirements. Using our knowledge of the market and our contacts in the industry, we identified eight suitable products which were then scored to reduce a shortlist of three to be confirmed by the team.
Finally, we carried out a detailed evaluation for each of the three products, which involved engaging with each intranet vendor to fully assess fit across each requirement as well as understand pricing. Finally, based on this exercise, we were able to report our view of the suitability of each product, placing the team in a position of strength to make the next step. We also provided some bespoke consulting to support any potential business case, which included an estimate of wastage reduction.
The user research left Reach in a strong place to make an informed decision with requirements and user journey maps that could also inform the future detail of any new intranet.
