When reflecting on the success of rapidly growing companies, I often find myself asking, “How did they reach this point?” As a CIO, I wonder: Did they start like we did, manually prepping new laptops for each hire, just barely keeping up with the demand? Or did they have the foresight to create a scalable and intuitive onboarding system using tools like Microsoft Autopilot, automating the entire process from software installation to setup—without even touching the device? Did they continually innovate as they scaled, or were they always one step ahead?
Over the past five years, we’ve relied on a methodology we call Design Intelligence® (DI) to keep pace with our growth and maintain a relentless focus on customer experience. This iterative approach allows us to continuously adapt our processes, not just technically but from a management and design perspective. Our ability to adjust and scale has been essential to delivering impactful process improvements that drive both the company’s success and its unique culture.
What Is Design Intelligence?
At its core, Design Intelligence® is about more than just design. It’s a holistic framework that integrates technical expertise, an unwavering focus on the customer experience, and Agile delivery methods. Collaboration is embedded in the process, with everyone on the team—not just designers—responsible for ensuring success. We employ Agile methodologies to streamline our work, holding bi-weekly sprints and regular demos for stakeholders. Our team members are equipped with the skills to ensure that our customer’s voice, Steampunk employees, is incorporated into every step of the design process. Additionally, we have dedicated service designers on staff, ensuring every solution we deliver is customer-centric, backed by the robust capabilities of our highly technical team.
Looking Ahead: Overcoming Challenges with Design Intelligence
This blog series will explore the unique challenges the CIO team has encountered as Steampunk has scaled, and how we’ve leveraged Design Intelligence to address them. From overcoming hurdles to delivering an exceptional employee experience, DI has been central to our ability to innovate while maintaining operational efficiency. As a testament to this fact, this year alone, the company has processed over 9,500 tickets in our Fresh Service ticketing system– over 75% of those were resolved through automation, delivering capabilities quickly and leading to a 98% overall customer satisfaction score. This was not accidental. We meticulously reviewed each process using our DI approach to re-imaging Steampunk business processes through the customer lens. The result is an exceptional and intuitive customer experience.
In the next article, we’ll delve into our venture into the world of artificial intelligence (AI)—from designing our first AI policy to deploying AI solutions throughout the business. We’ll explore how these initiatives have enhanced access to information and streamlined processes across Steampunk.
Stay tuned for more insights into how we’ve used Design Intelligence internally to fuel our growth and innovation!