Case Studies Creating a scalable customer journey framework, through human-centred service design

Case study

Creating a scalable customer journey framework, through human-centred service design

Handelsbanken

Summary

Handelsbanken are a major Swedish bank; their central proposition is they are a ‘relationship bank’ offering a truly personal service. Each branch operates as a local business, with an in-depth understanding of the local market and community; services tailored to each client’s needs.

Handelsbanken had always focused on delivering excellent experiences and services. However, when the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) announced a new Consumer Duty was due to come into force, this was a catalyst for Handelsbanken to implement a formal, structured user and customer experience analysis and action plan.

Company size

10,000+

Industry

Finance

Services used

Challenge

The Consumer Duty requires financial firms to ensure customers receive helpful and accessible customer support, clear information, and products and services that meet their needs and offer fair value. Firms must proactively protect customers from harm and ensure customers in a vulnerable situation, such as financial difficulty or during life events like bereavement, are not disadvantaged or put at risk. Firms must also identify and tackle pain points causing customers harm.

Handelsbanken’s challenge was to ensure they could meet – and evidence – their new regulatory requirements. This requires a culture of customer research, a workforce empowered to achieve the bank’s customer-centred objectives, and toolkits and governance systems in place so stakeholders in the independent branches can work to consistent standards, creating cohesive customer experiences across all channels.

With our experience in Service Design, governance, and training, we were chosen to create a new scalable customer journey framework and embed a customer-centred approach into the existing ‘Handelsbanken Way’.

Solution

From the beginning, we worked closely with Handelsbanken’s internal teams to create a detailed working process and roadmap, using business analyst insights into operational processes in branches to inform our work.

We undertook extensive quantitative and qualitative research with a diverse range of Handelsbanken team members and customers. Due to Handelsbanken’s unique decentralised model, we needed to approach customer journey and pain point mapping from both a branch and customer perspective.

In addition to our usual definition, creation and validation of customer persona groups, to meet the Consumer Duty guidelines we also created 5 vulnerability lenses, that could overlay any customer persona and journey, to identify and trigger the appropriate support and sensitivity for a customer’s circumstances, whether in the case of ill health, fraud or financial difficulty, for example.

A critical part of our work was supporting Handelsbanken’s team with the tools and culture to deliver this new customer journey approach in practice. We developed the concept of a review panel with senior stakeholders, to create a pain point prioritisation roadmap and took outcomes into ideation and put into action quick wins ahead of the Consumer Duty July 31st 2023 deadline.

Results

We analysed the bank’s 54 services and products and identified 99 customer journeys as being in the scope of Consumer Duty. We uncovered 375 pain points for customers, of which 128 were classified as having potential to cause customer harm; running ideation sessions to establish solutions for the 128 priority areas to address.

This was mapped and visualised into a structured framework that will deepen Handelsbanken’s relationship with customers from the day they come on board, right through to ending the relationship – as well as be used to evidence and ensure compliance towards the Consumer Duty.

The insights gathered throughout this process were methodically and transparently documented and collated into a detailed digital knowledge base including context and guidance, how-to guides, templates, case studies, artefacts, and much more. Providing the foundation for ongoing continuous improvement and internal work.

We worked collaboratively with people across the bank, developing a cross-bank operating methodology and providing staff training around customer-centred design. All of this helping to embed the framework and Consumer Duty compliance into Handelsbanken business-as-usual.

Diagram the presents Handelsbankens approach to human centred service design

Case study

Activating data for a flagship customer experience project for the RAC

Summary

The RAC provides complete peace of mind to more than 12.7 million UK personal and business members, whatever their driving needs. They’re famous for breakdown assistance, but they also provide motor insurance and a range of other services, including buying a new or used car, vehicle inspections and checks, legal services and traffic and travel information.

Company size

1,000 – 5,000

Industry

Transportation & Logistics

Services used

Products used

ResolvID

Challenge

The RAC had outgrown its relatively basic campaign tool. They needed something more flexible and efficient to transform the existing manual and time-intensive process for campaign delivery. Their on-premise SQL solution was hosted by a third-party agency. Poor access to data constrained the RAC marketing team, which needed to be more self-sufficient in campaign operations.

The RAC’s Data and CRM Strategy Leader, Ian Ruffle, says:  “Because the legacy technology wasn’t efficient, it took over 48 hours to refresh the data. If it fell over, as it often did, because we were at the limits of the solution’s capability, it could take up to ten days from a customer being acquired to reflect that in the marketing solution. This was becoming a real problem.”

Solution

The RAC and CACI worked together to implement a suite of tools to transform the RAC’s marketing capabilities and to create the efficiencies and flexibility they needed. The first step was to build a single customer view (SCV) database using Snowflake. The pay-by-consumption processing function made it scalable and cost effective as well as future-proof. This gave the RAC direct access and control of their own data, which was a key requirement. Within Snowflake, CACI built a secure, accurate and compliant dataset, in line with GDPR requirements.

The database is hosted in the MS Azure cloud, and is refreshed and managed using Azure Functions, event triggers and DBT models. CACI’s resolution identity product, ResolvID, also plays a part in the solution. It’s hosted in Amazon Web Services (AWS) and consumed in real-time as event-triggered files are added into the database. This gives the RAC a complete view of each customer across multiple datasets and sources, allowing them to engage their customers in a more holistic way.

CACI implemented Adobe Campaign, Target and Analytics. For the campaign implementation, the team created 42 different tables and two different data structures – one for the B2C side of RAC’s business and one for the B2B side. Then, the RAC and CACI worked together to migrate all their existing campaigns from their legacy solution into the new Adobe Campaign instance, automating everywhere that was possible.

Adobe Triggers mean that web-based events from the customer can feed through into Adobe Campaign in real time. The RAC are using this for their enhanced abandoned baskets campaign. Communication can be triggered instantly, catching customers at a key point in the purchase lifecycle.

With Adobe Target, customer journeys can be personalised throughout the RAC’s website. Now, when a customer lands on the home page, they see personalised content based on interaction they’ve had with the brand before and products that they have or have not purchased.

Results

CACI’s team worked closely with the RAC design team to create them an on-brand template within the CACI Email Studio application. This reduced their previous dependency on third party creative agencies. Now, the RAC team is empowered to control and to create their own emails, without needing an HTML skillset. Email Studio delivers confidence in the usability and the rendering of emails when they land in the customer’s inbox, making sure it’s a positive experience throughout.

Ian Ruffle quantifies the value of the transformation: “Our marketing activation project has delivered a seven-fold improvement in data latency. We’re getting a reliable daily build of the core tables, plus many tables maintained in real time or via hourly batch processes, to meet the various trigger needs of the business.

“75% of the campaigns in the new solution are fully automated. We’re in the process of embedding this for newer campaigns. This gives our teams a huge amount more time to think about how to optimise the campaign and get the best ROI. At the roadside, when customers aren’t sure where their patrol was, they phone us. We’ve seen a 6% reduction in these calls, which is huge for us. It’s a massive cost saving and a much better customer experience, to be kept fully informed”

Case study

How CACI’s data supported the University of St Andrews

University of St Andrews logo

Summary

St Andrews, on the east coast of Scotland, is a unique and captivating place. The university is a key part of its charm. Founded in 1413, the University of St Andrews is known for its rich history as well as cutting edge teaching and research. More than 10,000 students attend the university, including around 8,000 undergraduates from Scotland, the rest of the UK and overseas. St Andrews is consistently ranked in the top three UK universities and the best in Scotland.

Company size

200

Industry

Education

Products used

Challenge

Jonathan McDougall-Bagnall is the Planning Innovation and Infrastructure Manager at the university. He explains: “The data project is part of our contextual admissions policy launched several years ago. We are constantly striving to widen access to our institution and ensuring that it remains accessible to all. Historically we have used SIMD (Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation) data and school performance data to identify candidates in Scotland who may require the support of our contextual admissions policy. We wanted to widen this to applicants from around the UK and needed to find suitable equivalent data. Each UK country calculates their index in a slightly different way, so we couldn’t make a direct comparison.”

Solution

The St Andrews team researched the data sources available and concluded that Acorn was the most comprehensive, accurate and current dataset for their needs.

“We use the Acorn postcode database as an integral part of our decision making system, to help us determine which candidates come from areas of deprivation,” says Jonathan. “We have the database and the profiler software, though we mainly use the database directly. The data is simply structured and easy to use, it comes in the same format every year. It’s very straightforward to pull into our systems, because of the consistent format and quality.”

Results

Joanna Fry, Access Manager: Widening Access & Transitions, says: “Our admissions system includes codes attributed to socio-economic deprivation and other widening access criteria, drawn from Acorn data and other sources.

“Both the admissions team and our academic colleagues can now look at students in groups and compare peer groups of those with similar access codes. This gives us vital context to benchmark students from similar environments and circumstances. For example, it can help us interpret the range of exams they’ve taken; the candidates school may not have a wide range of subjects on offer. It also can help us understand how personal statements and references are written, depending on the influences and level of support that a candidate may have had.”

Case study

University of Bath improves student outcomes through Synergy 4

University of Bath logo

Summary

For universities, the past few years have brought funding caps and freezes, a shift in the political landscape and an increased pressure to adapt to the changing needs of new students. In March 2019, a new government report was released proposing a number of changes that mean universities are under further pressure to adapt and evolve in delivering that quality education.

Industry

Education

Products used

Challenge

Costing

Bringing in new students and improving the retention and graduation rates are all areas which are intrinsically linked to a university’s costs and funding. With this in mind, the University of Bath went to tender for a costing solution that would allow them to go beyond TRAC and take a more advanced approach to costing analysis.

Insight

Up to this point, the finance team at Bath University had been running costing activity on Excel spreadsheets, meaning the process was very manual, time consuming, and the output was kept simple. While the simplicity meant it was easy to change, the volume of time spent on processing the data meant there was little, or none left to spend on gathering insightful analysis.

Strategy

Their objective was to implement a solution that would give a more granular view, better insight and enable future improvements. The ability to calculate exact costs of modules, teaching and research, Bath believed would ultimately allow for more effective and strategic decisions at the board level.

Solution

CACI had been appointed by Bath University as a result of the tender and proposed Synergy 4 as the best solution to realise the changes and insight Bath was looking for. Synergy 4 would enable strategic decision making and produce clear, actionable insights across the institution.

For many universities, this detailed level of costing analytics was still relatively new, however this wasn’t a new concept for CACI. The business intelligence team had been delivering Synergy across the UK in the NHS for years, to allow them to cost at a patient level for their regular mandated submissions.

Alongside Synergy were Microsoft Power BI visualisations, to enable Bath to not just calculate costs at the module level, but to produce accessible and digestible reports that could be easily used to support accurate decision making at many levels of the university. This would create a positive change for Bath, to see their TRAC submission summaries transformed into detailed reports that allowed for full clarity at a deep dive level.

Results

Since implementing this solution, the university has seen a number of benefits. At a localised level the manual processes have been eliminated, meaning the finance team can focus on deep dive financial analysis, allowing for key insights to be derived from the data. 

Bath University can now make confident data driven decisions, knowing they have all the information. It can consider all of the data driving cost and income, not just the top levels of activity. This has allowed it to identify opportunities to improve its model and make recommendations for changes that will support delivering better education options for students. 

Synergy continues to provide insights for Bath which generate conversations and action plans across the University into what the next improvement for students will be. 

With this information Bath now have insight that allow them to make data driven decisions such as: 

  • Course mix changes 
  • Competitive price setting for non-regulated fees
  • Benchmarking against other universities
  • Maximising use of their estate across the whole campus

Case study

Creating a strategic segmentation to help TSB understand and drive money confidence

TSB logo

Summary

TSB is pioneering a new kind of banking for Britain, one that’s simple, straightforward and cares about people. Serving five million customers in the UK across a network of branches and operating centres, TSB offers friendly, honest and convenient banking that’s designed to meet customers’ needs, with the aim of delivering on its core purpose to equip them with money confidence. To do this, the bank wanted to better understand its customers’ behaviour, circumstances and priorities so it could be more relevant, engaging and effective.

Company size

10,000+

Industry

Financial services

Products used

Challenge

Customer segmentation

TSB already had creative-led segmentation developed by its brand agency. Yet, while this segmentation helped understand the target audience, it was ineffective for media planning and couldn’t be overlaid on the customer base.

At pitch, TSB’s new media agency, the7stars, proposed a more effective segmentation for media selection, which TSB wanted to advance further by overlaying it onto their own customer base.

Integration

In addition, the bank faced the issue of integrating these insights into its existing systems and ensuring they could be used for practical and actionable segmentation for effective media planning and customer targeting.

TSB had already been working with CACI to map Fresco financial lifestyle segments onto its customer base. So, a new joint collaboration with CACI and the7stars was initiated to address these requirements together.

Solution

Working in collaboration with TSB’s Research and Strategic Insights Team, CACI created an evolved segmentation that clearly distinguishes different customer types and provides clear segment profiles and personas.

CACI used Fresco and other external consumer demographic datasets to give TSB bespoke behavioural and lifestyle insights into its target customer base.

Justin Bell, Head of Insight, Strategy and Planning at TSB explains: “We started with a market-wide segmentation, based on all UK adults. We’ve subsequently created a version of that for our customer base.

“CACI provided a proven methodology and approach drawn from their data expertise and experience. Once we had clear segment parameters, our data team mapped them to our base.”

Results

TSB is actively using the segment insights to develop its media strategies and in campaign briefs, creating content tailored to target consumers’ profiles.

Justin continues:

“Part of the output of the segmentation was to rank the segments in order of money confidence. Working with CACI, we agreed on a weighted mix of key questions in the TGI consumer survey, to derive a money confidence score. We support people with content, products and services to help raise their money confidence and we need to be relevant to those that need that support most.

At the heart of it is a money confidence score: we’ll measure our progress against our purpose: Money confidence for everyone everyday. We hope to see a gap opening up between the money confidence levels of our customers and that of non-customers, with a continual improvement against today’s baseline.

We believe this segmentation will continue to pay dividends as we develop our channel and campaign marketing – we’re looking forward to tailoring products and services even more to meet customer needs.”

Case study

How CACI’s route optimisation software helped Prides Corner Farms

Prides Corner Farms logo

Summary

Prides Corner Farms is a wholesale grower in Connecticut, serving the North East corner of the USA from Maine through Ohio to Virginia. A family-owned nursery business in operation for over five decades, Prides Corner Farms grows over 3,000 varieties of plants and flowers on 600 acres of land. The business is proud of its industry-leading logistics, providing excellent service through easier, timelier deliveries that allow customers to sell quicker with less effort. Prides Corner Farms delivers to over 2,500 individual locations in a typical year, with 70 trucks making over 200 daily drops to garden centres, wholesale yards, landscapers and retailers in peak season – and sales continue to grow.

Company size

500

Industry

Agriculture

Services used

Challenge

Prides Corner Farms knew they needed software to optimise their truck delivery routes as their business grew. With a team of six working on route planning and sales reps spending many hours a day looking at delivery schedules, the team wanted to reduce workload and automate as much as possible.

The team needed a tool that could give them full route visibility, reduce mileage, optimise vehicle numbers and create efficient, cost-effective routes. Prides Corner Farms saw CACI’s route optimisation solutions demonstrated at a trade show and saw its potential immediately.

Solution

Rolling out CACI’s software helped Prides Corner take the next step in their programme to improve efficiency and service, building on a successful lean flow shipping operation that uses carts to load trucks. CACI provided the route optimisation software, consultancy, data customisation and implementation support.

Ray DeFeo says, “We did a two-month pilot – I think we were a challenging customer for the proof of concept because our model has so many variables. CACI helped us develop an excellent algorithm based on our business rules.”

When reps take orders, they’re placed in holding batches for each territory.

This tool groups the orders and allocates them to trucks, factoring in different sizes and type of truck to suit delivery access, at the destination. The algorithm also embraces daily time limits for drivers and variable speed limits on the route, to ensure prompt and accurate delivery times.

Logistics coordinator Brittany Landry runs the CACI’s software twice daily. “We plan it to run two days before the target delivery date. Each territory rep has a quota to fulfil and they fill up the holding batches.”

“We’ve recently implemented cart retrievals,” adds IT manager Christian Joseph. “It’s a big addition to the project. We had our Lean process, harvesting crops onto carts and putting them into our staging area. We have to get the carts back and we were doing it by hand, which was incredibly time consuming. When realised that we could get the cart retrievals handled by CACI Logistics it freed up a lot of time.”

Results

CACI Logistics has helped Prides Corner Farms save a huge amount of time on manual processing, by automating both delivery routes and scheduling and cart retrievals. Instead of six logistics planners, the firm now only needs one.

Sales rep Brad Sorenson says, “Before, I was spending as much as 40% of the day planning deliveries, rubbing out and correcting to get everything fitted together. Now, I meet our logistics planner Cheryl Records at 9am: she shows everyone the plan and we spend half an hour reviewing it to tweak it – that’s it.” Despite being based in another country and time zone, support from the CACI team has been strong.

According to Christian Joseph: “CACI being in London wasn’t an issue – the support has been rock solid. Our account manager was fantastic in answering our questions before go-live. We threw a lot of curve balls and she knocked them out of the park. They have a great virtual working set-up.”

Prides Corner Farms - Digital graph and analysis on a laptop

Ray DeFeo is pleased with the impact of CACI’s route optimisation solutions on sales rep recruitment and training. “One of the biggest challenges a person would have, on top of potentially being new to the nursery business, they also had to understand the logistics pattern and how to route a truck. This is not a core sales skillset. Now, we can concentrate on recruiting and retaining people with great selling and customer service skills – logistics is separate,” he explained.

“Since 2012, our sales have doubled, but we haven’t had to increase the size of our sales teams. The Lean Flow approach and CACI’s software enable our reps to handle bigger territories because they can focus on sales. They’re happy because they have scope to make more commission with a bigger area to go at.”

Brad Sorenson adds, “Talking to drivers, they feel that their routes are now more efficient time-wise. They can start with the customer that can open earliest and keep moving without delays. The drivers really do like it.”

Prides Corner Farms estimates their mileage savings at ten per cent or more, which could mean annual savings of over $100,000USD in transport costs.

Case study

How CACI provided MoD a Compass Audit Solution for the Submarine Delivery Agency

Submarine Delivery Agency logo

Summary

The Submarine Delivery Agency (SDA) is a part of Defence Equipment & Support (DE&S) that procures and project manages the construction of future Royal Navy submarines. It also supports those in service working with Navy Command and the Defence Nuclear Organisation (DNO).

Within the SDA is the In-Service Management Team (ISM), handling quality assurance and performing periodic engineering audits to ensure processes are correctly followed when delivering equipment parts. During these audits, non-conformances may be identified which require attention, resulting in actions which must be tracked to completion.

ISM required a new capability to automate the management of this work and improve governance.

Company size

1,000 – 5,000

Industry

Defence, National Security

Products used

Challenge

ISM wanted a tool that would secure the audit process and better support operations by decreasing the probability of actions being missed or delayed. Easy access to previous audit outcomes would help preserve team knowledge.

Equipment failure could occur with associated potential safety issues due to the inability to track non-conformance actions.

Experience was being lost as staff are normally moved to new posts every two years.

Lessons from previous audits were not always applied due to limited information accessibility.

Efficiency needed improvement. Previous tools used to manage audit work (e.g. Excel and SharePoint) required significant overheads to track and manage the audit calendar.

Solution

The solution needed to be self-sufficient in that all details of the item being audited could be input to the tool and the audit team assigned. In addition, ISM looked for a significant reduction in elapsed time to complete each audit.

The SDA chose CACI’s Mood software to underpin their solution because of how well it lends itself to extending capabilities through the addition of new modules. COMPASS Submarines was initially developed to manage documented business processes and CACI could weave in a new audit module that would avoid users needing to log into separate software tools.

The new tool digitises the recording of audit details such as non-conformance findings and related actions. This is underpinned by a workflow with alert emails triggered by activities like adding or updating audits or a non-conformance needed to be acted upon.

Scheduled emails act as reminders, such as when an audit is due. This is a successful instance of Mood software’s ability to be customised using JavaScript to deliver extra functionality to the end solution.

Results

Efficiency is improved through system-driven working rather than relying on personnel knowledge and human driven processes, leading to: 

  • Strengthened governance resulting from auditable evidence of findings being captured and tracked. 
  • Reduced likelihood of recurring issues.
  • Management overhead surrounding audits have been significantly lowered, allowing a reduction in FTE dedicated to the tasks.
  • Improved knowledge retention, as outcomes of latest and previous audits are readily available.

The audit module is available to other parts of Defence, however, its value as an engineering audit compliance tool isn’t limited to a Defence context. We’ll be exploring new uses and are actively looking at extending the solution design to be relevant to other types of audits such as the complete range of ISO standards. 

Case study

How Air Inform operationally supports the Royal Air Force

Summary

RAF Digital supports the Royal Air Force Air Command through the provision of operational and capability analysis. The scope of this support encompasses air missions, people, goods, reconnaissance, surveillance, air transport, refuelling and air interdiction.

In such a complex organisation that is at the heart of British Defence, some decisions made can be of national criticality. The RAF must be confident that all relevant information is available without delay to decision makers, at any location, at any time.

This intelligence is also vital in planning change. For instance, if an airframe is being considered for retirement, what impact will that have on other equipment and services, and what altered support arrangements will follow?

With this in mind, the RAF needed a Digital Twin to be able to view the connected operational landscape and make informed plans, reliably and efficiently. This is where CACI’s support came in.

Company size

10,000+

Industry

Defence / National Security

Products used

Challenge

Defining these information services and understanding their complexities was the first challenge.

Air HQ Commands a complex range of mission capabilities and activities, which are dependent upon information delivery across a large portfolio of information systems and services.

Designing a solution that would ensure the data collected would be to the right level of detail.

While all relevant intelligence was already in existence, it was in silos—geographically dispersed and in the heads of SMEs, on spreadsheets and other documents in differing formats. In many instances, the amount of detail presented a “wood for the trees” problem, and many sources were not easily understandable. A lack of any unifying information system meant that in a typical situation, decision makers would have to telephone SMEs and others in multiple locations to gather information and make significant efforts to assimilate that information into a usable format that could inform decision making.

SMEs, along with most other personnel, move post every two years, meaning that expert knowledge is lost.

Solution

At a top level, the requirement was to help RAF Digital drive mission-focused information system transformation across all Air domain Mission Vignettes. 

Core to the requirement was to deliver knowledge of what equipment is in place, and where, so that operations such as air missions can successfully proceed. This requires a single view across 25 platforms, 4500 information services and 120 mission vignettes. 

RAF Digital sought a service that could assemble data in consistent formats from multiple sources, relating to a variety of equipment and services. The solution needed to: 

  • Be interrogatable using many filters. 
  • Produce reports both in tabular and highly visual styles to aid understanding.
  • Be consistent in presentation of data despite inconsistent input sources.
  • Maintain up-to-date information through an ongoing managed service with CACI to continue to deploy our skilled business analysts.

This is where Air Inform came to be. It is a software tool that enables a user to see how the RAF is organised in terms of information flows, modelled in terms of aircraft and operational capabilities. 

Critically, it enables RAF decision-makers to understand the data exchanges required to support a mission, including pre-flight, during flight and post-flight phases, and the systems required to support these exchanges. Hence, these decisionmakers can easily answer questions such as what systems are required to support a deployment and what operational capability a system underpins and, thus, identify vulnerabilities and redundancy and inform replacement programmes. 

At the heart of Air Inform is a complex operational architecture. A workshop process was key to eliciting the information, understanding connections and establishing the optimum depth of detail. During this initial phase of joint application development, both CACI analysts, SMEs and other stakeholders created an effective working partnership. 

Following the architecture’s development, CACI created a system for intelligence collection and analysis and overlaid it with visual models to present actionable intelligence from multiple perspectives to end users. Key features include scenario modelling and inter-dependency visualisations by mission as well as platform and information systems (Ground, Air & Space). 

Security was also important: the system can be air-gapped, and a version classified as “secret” is available. 

In terms of technical capabilities, Mood software was used as an object-oriented approach for the visualisation of components to create metamodels and define the relationships between features in a solution architecture.

Results

Air Inform is now embedded within the organisation and is effectively supporting decision makers which not only saves time, but improves the quality and speed of their decisions. Several benefits have already been recognised, including: 

  • RAF Digital can now plan effectively for replacement of airframes. 
  • Interdependencies are now better understood, meaning that changes can be made without unexpected gaps in service provision that could affect the RAF’s ability to deliver its commitments. 
  • Financial management is now supported, helping to avoid over, or premature, spend. 
  • Intelligence is no longer bleeding out as people move on, thus maintaining the integrity of the knowledge base. 
  • New personnel can now quickly understand their working landscape.
  • Security is now protected through more secure data transfers.
  • Data architecture now identifies inefficiencies and drives improvements.

If Air Inform was removed, more personnel would have to be deployed back to managing and analysing data, with a less accurate and speedy outcome. Flt Lt Connor Maguire MEng RAF, elaborated on the vital role that CACI’s support has played in achieving their goals. 

The architecture-based structure of the solution means that going forward, extensions to functionality can be identified and planned for with confidence. Several opportunities are now under consideration, including the ability to view and act upon equipment obsolescence or end of life data.

Case study

Digitisation of Joint Service Manuals (JSM) for defence equipment and support

Summary

Digitisation of Joint Service Manuals (JSM) for Defence Equipment and Support Defence Equipment & Support (DE&S) are the procurement arm of the UK Ministry of Defence. They have a pivotal role in fulfilling equipment requests from across the Front-Line Commands, Executive Agencies and At Arm’s Length Bodies such as the Submarine Delivery Agency (SDA). Their remit ranges from straightforward equipment procurement to the development of new technologies and ensuring the UK Armed Forces can maintain availability and readiness for a fleet of over 400 different platforms.

DE&S summarised the overall task as “to develop the Joint Service Manual (JSM) concept and codify the Receipt, Inspection, Issue, Storage & Maintenance (RIISM) Service Category”. CACI’s main task was to digitise the JSM by bringing them into the “COMPASS for Land” digitised group of capabilities. In fact, CACI were able to go beyond digital transformation of the RIISM manual by adding 3 other important manuals.

DE&S prioritised a solution that not only digitised JSMs but also facilitated improved compliance and included interactive features to enhance suppliers’ understanding of and adherence to JSMs, making the process easier for them.

Company size

10,000+

Industry

Defence, National Security

Products used

Challenge

The commercial documentation is complex, lengthy, and sometimes didn’t keep pace with the evolution of processes over time. Because of this:

Compliance wasn’t high enough.

Interpretations of the commercial documentation sometimes resulted in incorrect actions.

DE&S needed a better way to support all actors in the procurement processes to save time, reduce individual differing interpretations, and improve compliance overall.

Solution

CACI created digitised JSMs with a flexible search facility, explanations of roles and responsibilities, and relevant dependencies involved in delivering items for DE&S.

The solution enables searching across multiple JSMs, for instance a search for “quality” can be set to bring back all quality references in all JSMs. A user can bookmark favourite sections for repeat reference and can make suggestions in the solution for future enhancements of the functionality.

CACI’s large-scale data visualisation and digital twin modelling platform Mood was employed for the document digitisation aspect of the project. From a delivery perspective, this was an example of the CACI Mood team working alongside colleagues from other suppliers and within the Defence industry in a single delivery team under the overall management of Equinox, DE&S’s private sector programme delivery partner. This type of “Rainbow Team” approach worked well. Not only is Mood easy to integrate within a wider process that uses other software tools, but bringing different suppliers together into one team with a single leadership reduces barriers in communications and speeds up delivery.

Bringing the JSMs into the overall Mood Compass for Land* solution brought extra benefits of a pre-existing sign-in apparatus, admin functions and feedback loops.

Results

Users report: 

  • It’s much easier to find the instructions they need. 
  • They have confidence that these are up to date. 
  • Fewer issues relating to process are arising. 
  • Efficiency is increasing. 
  • Communications between parties in an end-to-end process have been improved. 
  • Agreement is reached on actions faster, and with less debate. 

In addition to the day-to-day operational benefits, the new digitised JSMs are supporting highly beneficial business analysis and root cause identification of areas for improvement. 

CACI will continue to digitise JSMs as and when they are prioritised for action and will continue to make enhancements as required. Although this case study focuses on a Defence context, the challenges outlined in this case study will be replicated across multiple industries and operations where adherence to instructions is critical, sometimes even for the preservation of life and limb, but the quantity, complexity and changing nature of those instructions mitigate against compliance. 

*Compass for Land is a Mood software solution that digitised the Common Support Model 

Case study

A powerful architecture tool available via an enterprise-wide MOD support contract

Ministry of Defence

Summary

Defence Digital is the digital lynchpin in the Ministry of Defence’s (MOD) operations, supplying global personnel across the MOD with core IT services vital to their role. Many teams from all commands across the MOD, as well as industry partners, must create architectural models of operations and processes or create interactive solutions to encourage coordinated, efficient and safe working. These needs can be short- or long-term, planned well in advance or be unplanned urgent requirements, and could be for one person or over a thousand users. 

As such, Defence Digital needed a software product and dedicated support that would be flexible enough to meet these multiple requirements, was scalable and instantly available without commercial delays or constraints. 

Company Size

5,000 – 10,000

Industry

Defence, National Security

Products Used

Challenge

A solution was required that could be easily learned, deployed swiftly, that enabled rapid building of models and operational solutions, but would be technically sophisticated enough to tackle a wide range of tasks.

The MOD required a service that would deliver:

Flexible functionality in a single platform. 
Speed in deployment and training of users.
A responsive support function.
The opportunity to influence the future development of the software in partnership with the supplier.
Build and maintenance of the IT infrastructure to support the software platform.

The software platform needed to:

Be a no-code/low-code software platform. 
Give the ability to build architectures from which stakeholders could gain business insights. 
Be architecture framework-agnostic. 
Deliver the ability to create digitised operating frameworks. 
Enable analysis and presentation. 

Solution

CACI and Defence Digital agreed upon an enterprise licensing approach, enabling anyone in the MOD to request a Mood license and access a new Mood repository the same day. This, paired with training provided on request, is all that is needed to start working productively with the large-scale data visualisation platform. 

Our support service guides users to maximise Mood benefits, and CACI runs regular user forums to enhance the MOD Mood user community’s knowledge sharing. Many users have now become expert Mood material creators, and due to the excellence of the presentation layer, several solutions built with it have hundreds of regular users who view and work with outcomes rather than building in Mood. 

Mood Business Architect (MBA) software also provides a no-code/low-code Enterprise Architecture tool for developing and maintaining models. The product is extremely flexible and allows users to define data structures and relationships as required to model their problem space. The software utilises an SQL Server database, and network hosting ensures multiple architects can access and contribute to the model. A powerful permissions model with the MBA tool also enables administrators to protect and restrict access as applicable. 

Once developed, models can be shared with a wider stakeholder base via Mood Active Enterprise (MAE). Models are presented in a web browser and tools are available to make the user experience fully interactive.

Results

There are between 60-100 individual repositories built in Mood at any one time, all supported through the Managed Service. A few of these are: 

GEAR, the Guide to Engineering Activities and Reviews:
A mandated source of guidance for the defence engineering community. Built originally by contractors and now maintained by the MOD personnel using Mood software, it replaces an unwieldy set of previous materials with fully digitised guidance, with unlimited user access at around 22,000 logins per year. 

DLF, the Defence Logistics Framework: A one-stop shop for defence logistics policy, digitising for the first time a comprehensive set of documents, and supporting re-authoring. DLF has over 52,000 logins a year. 

Maritime, Air and Land Defence Frameworks: As Mood-based, high-level capability models of the domains, these provide a vital overview and breakdown of defence capabilities in their respective domains. The reference frameworks save staff officers new in post considerable time and maintain consistency within the FLCs. 

Support Chain Information Service Architectural Repository (Formerly LNECA: Logistics Net Enabled Capability Architecture): In operation since 2008, it holds information on all logistics systems, is continuously updated and is the intelligence source for briefings to senior managers. If deleted, it would have to be re-built as it is vital to strategic and operational thinking. 

Case study

How CACI’s data helped Scottish Fire and Rescue Service identify safety risks in its community

Summary

The Scottish Fire and Rescue Service (SFRS) is the world’s fourth largest fire and rescue service, committed to ensuring the safety and wellbeing of the people of Scotland. Formed from a merger of eight legacy regional services in 2013, the national SFRS organisation delivers frontline services from three strategic hubs and a network of local stations and appliances. In addition to providing fire prevention and protection services, SFRS also responds to emergency incidents including road traffic collisions, rope rescue, water rescue, hazardous materials and flooding as well as working with partner agencies to keep communities safe.

Company Size

10,000

Industry

Non-Profit

Products Used

Challenge

Data

Communities, infrastructure, and demographics are continually evolving. SFRS needed accurate and reliable data evidence to support continual improvement within the service. 

Risk management

Improve GIS resources to help increase understanding of current and emerging community risk. Challenges like an aging population, increased wildfire risks and environmental concerns are well known at a high level. SFRS needed greater detail into how they affect communities in different areas and to organise resources better.

Insight

SFRS needed to be forward looking and showcase the value of data insight. It needed to create a demographic model of Scotland, both now and in five years, to support strategy and planning that will drive the effectiveness of services for the people of Scotland.

Solution

CACI provided SFRS with its Acorn and Household Acorn consumer segmentation tool, supported by advice on how best to use it for delivering targeted insights and outcomes.  

Strategic Analyst at SFRA, Damien Griffith says: “We use a GIS approach, combining geographic information from the Ordnance Survey’s AddressBase (Gazetteer) with social and demographic data drawn from the Acorn datasets. Using the unique property reference enables us to match Acorn housing types with our own data for five years of fire incidents. We look at these together to identify patterns of risk and vulnerability.  

“We feed all the information into a geodatabase and carry out a great deal of analysis. At the moment we’re working with the mathematics department of Edinburgh University to help us refine our models and algorithms, using regression and statistical modelling.  

“We’re now working to build in location analysis and physical evidence. For example, locating building types such as high-rise blocks and adding environmental data for factors like flood risks.” 

Results

“We now have risk metrics for every one of the 6,976 data zones in Scotland,” says Damien.

SFRS asks incident response teams to complete a record at the scene, but it’s often not possible to obtain all the information for a comprehensive report at the time. With the Acorn datasets, SFRS can identify the house type and analyse 450,000 household incidents attended in the last five years, to support the modelling and help identify future FRS community risk and associated demand.

The reporting shows the most vulnerable household types in each area. Damien adds, “Some of the risk factors are common sense, but the data analysis has revealed hidden vulnerabilities beyond the expected areas of deprivation. For example, asset rich retirees and the affluent elderly may suffer from dementia or be susceptible to trips and falls.

“With this modelling, we can predict risk both nationally and at a small area level. The granular detail in the Acorn datasets shows us at a street level where we need to target prevention, protection and response, including risk assessment by home visits.”

Learn more about Acorn and Household Acorn.

Case study

How CACI supported Landsec track performance through 2020

Landsec logo

Summary

CACI and Landsec have been working together for a number of years on a variety of research programmes and projects for some of their key assets. These include full price out of town centres, in town centre schemes and outlets such as Bluewater, Trinity Leeds and Gunwharf Quays. CACI and Landsec have been using mobile and transactional spend data for many years to determine growth potential within the respective catchment on a yearly basis. When the COVID-19 pandemic required more regular tracking of the changes in catchment, shopper behaviour and market shares, a programme of quarterly updates was implemented.

Company size

1,000

Industry

Manufacturing

Products used

Summary

CACI and Landsec have been working together for a number of years on a variety of research programmes and projects for some of their key assets. These include full price out of town centres, in town centre schemes and outlets such as Bluewater, Trinity Leeds and Gunwharf Quays. CACI and Landsec have been using mobile and transactional spend data for many years to determine growth potential within the respective catchment on a yearly basis. When the COVID-19 pandemic required more regular tracking of the changes in catchment, shopper behaviour and market shares, a programme of quarterly updates was implemented.

Challenge

The opportunity for Landsec to re-engage customers and their spend following the pandemic was substantial. 2020 saw the greatest level of consumer disruption ever seen in living memory with mandatory retail and leisure closures, stay at home orders, and schools and offices closing.

This helped the Landsec team identify why guests have reengaged and how to influence future behaviours. Tracking information was also used to provide the data points needed to allow Landsec to measure ROI on marketing and leasing activity.

Landsec’s key questions included:

Who is driving performance and where are they coming from?

How much are they spending per category?

What are they doing in the centre and how are they engaging?

Solution

CACI’s solution used transactional spend and mobile data to track real life actual behaviour in the centre. Mobile data looks at GPS tracking from mobile apps and helped Landsec understand visitation patterns.

Transactional spend data is derived from credit and debit card spend data from multiple sources, including top UK retail bank and credit card companies. Again, this data was used alongside CACI’s data sources to understand which categories and brands drove spend and transactional changes.

Catchment spend for all centres was also tracked using transactional spend data, as well as a valuable indication of online spending for the centres’ shoppers.

Results

The data was used by the Landsec centre teams to fully comprehend the immediate impact of the pandemic and how the centres performed over this period. In addition, the research offered an understanding of how best to react to the easing of lockdowns in 2021. The research continued to be rolled out across 2021 to regularly track the performance of some of Landsec’s key assets.

Solutions

Digital accessibility 

Empowering accessible digital experiences 

Digital accessibility isn’t just a compliance checkbox – it’s a commitment to creating experiences that work for everyone. At CACI, we embed accessibility from the ground up, ensuring your digital services are inclusive, usable, and aligned with both legal standards and real human needs.​

Our approach combines WCAG expertise, inclusive design thinking and rigorous testing to help organisations deliver accessible services that don’t compromise on performance or creativity. From public services to enterprise platforms, we help you reach every user – regardless of ability, device or context.​

Digital accessibility - A person using a Braille display keyboard with fingers on the Braille section above the standard keys

Want to improve inclusivity for your brand? 

Making digital products accessible to all users – including those with disabilities – expands your user base. 

Struggling to meet inclusivity regulations? 

Investing in accessibility means avoiding potential fines and legal issues, as well as the reputational damage that comes with it. 

Want to offer a better experience overall? 

Implementing best practices in accessibility often leads to improved usability for everyone (known as the Curb Cut effect). 

Did you know? 

£274bn

the spending power of disabled people and their households in the UK.

Source: Scope for Business

1 in 5

people in the UK are reported as having a disability.

Source: Office of National Statistics

Make your brand available to all 

Effortlessly make digital accessibility a priority  

Be accessible by design

Ensure accessibility from day one by applying Universal and User-Centred Design principles – reducing costly rework and delivering better experiences for everyone.​

Meet regulations

Identify improvements and deliver accessibility compliance through a blend of expert manual and automated testing against WCAG 2.2 AA criteria, supported by a team with lived experience of disability.​

Go beyond compliance

Conduct qualitative testing with users on assistive technologies – uncovering real-world barriers and ensuring your services are truly inclusive, not just compliant.​

Build a culture of inclusion

Empower your teams with practical training and hands-on Inclusion Labs – fostering organisation-wide understanding, accountability, and lasting accessibility awareness.​

Create a clear path to accessibility

Understand where you stand and define where to go next – with a practical, actionable roadmap that drives accessibility progress across your people, processes and platforms.​

Embed AI powered automation

Use AI-powered automated tools to continuously monitor accessibility and flag non-conformance – enabling scalable, ongoing compliance across your digital estate.

Testimonial

“CACI brought us on a journey with a user centred and design process that focussed on that important aspect of getting accessibility right. We appreciated the diversity of the team and the experiences and perspectives they brought to help solve complex challenges.​”  

Digital Transformation Leader, College of Policing

Experts in digital accessibility 

Leading companies choose us for a reason 

Proven expertise 

Our diverse team enriches digital accessibility with real insights from those with disabilities and neurodiversity. 

Beyond compliance 

Offering comprehensive services from audits to implementation, we ensure full-scale enhancement of digital accessibility. 

Tailored accessibility 

Our tailored approach ensures that accessibility is seamlessly integrated, enhancing both reach and user satisfaction. 

Awards & accreditations

Speak to one of our accessibility experts

We’re your trusted partner in building inclusive digital experiences – helping you embed accessibility from the ground up through audits, training and expert guidance. Whether you’re looking to assess your services, upskill your teams, or need hands-on support, we’re here to simplify accessibility and make it scalable.​

FAQs

Answers to common questions about digital accessibility. 

We perform assessments and deliver work to WCAG 2.2 AA as a minimum and AAA where required. For our US-based clients, we follow ADA standards. 

We apply a blend of expert manual evaluation and automated testing, across a variety of browsers and assistive technologies to ensure broad test coverage. 

We tailor our accessibility training and accessibility inclusion labs to meet the needs of clients, whether that is delivering training in person, remote or a hybrid of the two.  

Solutions

Communications strategy

The potential of data to build customer connections 

Transform your customer engagement by unifying transactional, behavioural and demographic data into a single customer profile, then use predictive analytics and identity resolution to determine the optimal channel, timing and frequency for each individual; automate real-time personalisation—such as next-best-action recommendations and dynamic content insertion—to deliver relevant messages at scale.

Communications strategy - Two young women working on laptops at a table.

Struggling with personalisation? 

Personalised marketing at scale can seem daunting when you’re not sure where to start.  

Want to meet rising customer expectations? 

It’s challenging to deliver personalised, omnichannel communications with limited resources. 

Want to make the most of your budget? 

Achieving early ROI from tech investments is crucial – you need to prioritise impactful communication programmes to boost returns. 

Did you know? 

63%

of customers expect personalised interactions.

Source: Redpoint Global

Make the data work for you 

Get smart with your communications strategy 

Data-driven strategy for every stage 

From crafting tailored contact strategies to continuous improvement through data insights, ensure your customer engagement is both effective and efficient. 

Personalisation at scale 

Maximise the impact of your customer data to deliver personalised communications that not only drive engagement but also increase sales. 

Proven results with data analytics 

Measure and report the effectiveness of your strategies with clarity, aiding in decision-making and demonstrating the value of your investments. 

Data-driven connections driving impact 

Leading companies choose us for a reason 

Meaningful connections 

Whether it’s optimising current campaigns or developing new strategies, by leveraging data and insights, we ensure every message resonates and drives lasting customer engagement. 

Real impact 

Our approach focuses on driving early impact, ensuring your messaging generates measurable results from the outset. 

Expertise across leading communication technologies 

We work with all leading communication tech vendors, giving us the expertise to implement strategies that work seamlessly across platforms. 

Awards & accreditations

Speak to one of our communications strategy experts

We are a trusted end-to-end digital transformation partner, focused on driving early value realisation through data-driven strategies and seamless execution. If you’re looking for a demo, want to book a consultation, or both – we’re ready to help you cut the complexity out of digital transformation. 

FAQs

Answers to common questions about communications strategy. 

Our approach begins with a thorough analysis of your audience, ensuring we understand their preferences, behaviours, and needs. This insight allows us to create a contact strategy that outlines the most effective ways to reach your audience, including optimal timing, messaging, and channel selection. We audit current programs to identify areas for immediate impact, optimising or launching new initiatives as needed.

Our approach is designed for quick wins, enabling rapid program mobilisation and strategic long-term planning for sustained growth. 

Yes, we work with your current data and tech capabilities to implement realistic, impactful solutions that fit your environment.

Solutions

Data strategy and insights

Unlock the power of AI, analytics and data science to drive strategic value

Enhance your business strategy with data-driven decision-making. Our data consulting services align business, customer, analytics and action, giving you the knowledge and tools to drive impact and growth. 

Data strategy - Group of people in a business meeting with one person presenting at a screen in a modern office.

Struggling to identify opportunities?

You need to build a strategy around commercial and customer opportunities – but first, you have to identify them. 

Want to connect the dots?

You need to think about the broader brand vision and the role that AI, analytics and data science will play. 

Not sure how to demonstrate value?

It’s tricky to articulate what value means to your business and how to demonstrate impact. 

39%

of organisations report having a strong data culture, indicating inconsistent support and education for data initiatives.

Source: Deloitte Insights

74%

of companies struggle to achieve and scale AI value.

Source: Boston Consulting Group

The benefits of data strategy and insights

For smart, informed decision-making 

Maximise investment

Realise the value of data science and business intelligence investments to utilise them effectively.  

Data-driven decision-making 

Enhance decision-making with actionable insights from advanced data analytics, leading to improved business outcomes. 

Demonstrate value 

Easily demonstrate the impact of customer strategy and how it’s enabled. 

Actionable insights 

Convert complex data science and AI outputs into pragmatic solutions that are easily understood and applied.  

Simplify complex data 

Transform complicated datasets into clear, actionable insights – our expertise makes the complex simple. 

Strategic integration 

Make sure that data science insights are not just theoretical but practically applied within the business framework.

Testimonial

“For now, we are using the modelling for email campaigns – it’s easy and cost-effective to build them and track the results from different executions and tactics. We will roll the approach out to define activity in media channels, paid digital advertising, print communications and on-demand regional advertising, with integrated campaigns across all channels.”   

Mike Aspinall

Data Activation Manager, DFS  

Experts in data planning and insights

Leading companies choose us for a reason 

Focus on impact 

We start with the business problem and what the value is first. We use proven methodologies that drive and demonstrate impact.

Hands-on expertise 

Our technical expertise in BI and CRM tools is vast – including Power BI, Tableau, Looker, Braze, Optimove, Adobe Campaign and Bloomreach. 

Customer strategy and CRM SMEs 

We know how commercial impact is driven through customer centricity, allowing us to identify the relevant techniques, tools and frameworks to achieve this. 

Awards & accreditations

Speak to one of our data strategy and insights experts

We’re tried and trusted in this industry and have been involved in data strategy for years. At CACI, we want to support you in transforming your business. 
 
If you want to book a consultation, we’re ready to help you cut the complexity out of data planning. 

FAQs

Answers to common questions about data strategy. 

We have an industry-agnostic approach, but have a proven track record in FMCG, travel, gaming, insurance, automotive and fast food.  

We are trained and have qualifications and experience from Power BI, Tableau, Looker, Braze, Optimove, Adobe Campaign and Bloomreach. We are part of the wider CACI network, able to pull in expertise across cloud engineering, MarTech, data science, AI and research.  

Solutions

Service design

Designing seamless, scalable services that work

Design services that work – front to back, for everyone.​

We map how people interact with your services – and how your organisation delivers them – to uncover gaps, align teams, and redesign for seamless experiences. ​

Whether you’re improving a single journey or transforming at scale, we help you reimagine future-ready services that are efficient, commercially viable, and built around real needs. ​

Service design - Young women at a desk using a computer in an office setting with headphones around her neck.

Struggling with inefficiencies? 

Service design reveals gaps, inefficiencies and inconsistencies in how services are delivered – helping you streamline operations and deliver services that work better for everyone.​

Overwhelmed by constant change?

Service design helps you stay ahead of evolving user needs, policy shifts, and market pressures – revealing new opportunities to adapt, improve, and stay relevant in a fast-moving landscape.

Need to align goals with real-world delivery?

Service design bridges strategy, user needs and operational capability – helping you design services that are desirable, feasible and aligned with your long-term objectives.

Did you know?

20%

Companies that integrate service design into their operations can see up to a 20% improvement in customer satisfaction.

Source: McKinsey

25%

Organisations focused on service design can see a 25% increase in revenue due to more efficient, user-centered services.

Source: McKinsey

The benefits of service design

Say goodbye to operational pain points

Resolve operational pain points

Surface inefficiencies across systems, suppliers and internal processes – enabling more seamless, efficient services.​

Deliver seamless, end-to-end experiences

Connect every part of the journey – across channels, teams and systems – to ensure people experience a cohesive, consistent service from start to finish.​

Understand your service ecosystem

Map how platforms, tools and processes connect – unlocking opportunities for innovation while ensuring digital delivery aligns with real business and user needs.​

Bridge silos and align teams

Foster collaboration across departments – uniting teams around a shared understanding of users and the services they experience.​

Balance desirability with feasibility

Ensure services are not just user-centred, but operationally and commercially viable – ready to scale and succeed in real environments.​

Link transformation to measurable value

Connect service improvements to clear business outcomes – making the impact of transformation visible and accountable.​

Testimonial

“We were very fortunate to have one of CACI’s teams work with us to oversee the service design activity across our programme of work. Their work is to a very high standard. The team were very pro-active in recommending new approaches and improved solutions.”  

Head of Service Standards, National Highways

Experts in service design

Leading companies choose us for a reason

Proven approach

We apply established, evidence-based frameworks to help you understand and transform your entire service ecosystem – empowering holistic, lasting change across your operating model.​

Expert guidance

Our team evaluates and elevates your digital and service maturity – supporting you from initial assessment through to successful implementation and beyond.​

Accredited excellence

Our expertise is recognised by the Service Design Network – Europe’s leading authority for service design professionals – ensuring quality you can trust.​

Awards & accreditations

Speak to one of our service design experts

We’re a trusted partner in service design-led transformation – helping you uncover opportunities, align teams, and deliver seamless, user-centred services that create measurable impact from day one. Whether you’re ready for a consultation, a demo, or both – we’re here to help simplify complexity and move your services forward. ​

FAQs

Answers to common questions about service design. 

Service design benefits businesses by streamlining operations, improving customer experiences, and fostering better collaboration between teams. By identifying and redesigning operational inefficiencies, businesses can achieve smoother processes and reduce redundancies. Additionally, service design enhances customer satisfaction by creating seamless and satisfying interactions, leading to increased loyalty and higher sales conversion rates.

The main principles of service design include focusing on the needs and experiences of users (User-Centered), involving all stakeholders in the design process (Co-Creation), considering the entire service ecosystem including all touchpoints and interactions (Holistic Approach), continuously refining and improving the service through feedback and testing (Iterative Process), and using data and research to inform design decisions (Evidence-Based). 

User experience (UX) design focuses on enhancing how users interact with a specific product, aiming to improve usability and satisfaction. It involves activities like user research, wireframing, and usability testing. 
 
Service design, on the other hand, considers the entire service ecosystem. It involves designing and organising all components of a service, such as people, infrastructure, and communication, to enhance the overall experience. Key principles include user-centered design, co-creation, and iterative processes.

Solutions

Customer experience consulting 

Drive growth through data-driven customer experience strategy 

We help businesses leverage data to define customer-centric strategies that drive growth opportunities and prioritise initiatives that deliver real value. 

Customer experience consulting - Young women at an outdoor cafe holding a smartphone and credit card.

Facing growth challenges? 

Understanding shifting customer expectations can be complex. We help you by harnessing your customer data and generating insights into their needs and behaviours that lead to actionable, practical strategies that ensure customer satisfaction and drive business success. 

Struggling to differentiate? 

With a deep understanding of customers’ needs, we will identify the opportunities to distinguish your brand within the category. We uncover the opportunities for innovation, the friction points to be resolved across the customer journey and show you how to create magical moments for customer’s that stand out and create competitive advantage.

Want to improve customer engagement? 

We guide organisations in aligning customer experience and digital strategies. We show you how and where to leverage data to create relevance at every touchpoint and deepen engagement across the entire customer journey.

Did you know?

72%

of customers are willing to pay more for a great customer experience.

Source: Qualtrics

76%

of customers expect brands to understand their needs and expectations.

Source: Salesforce

What does a typical customer experience consulting project look like? 

Our proven methodology is scalable to your brand and broadly follows these stages  

Discovery

Gather and analyse multiple sources of data and complete additional research if needed. Gain perspectives across the organisation of the current customer’s experience of the brand, known challenges or obstacles to improvements. Identify current metrics and reporting capabilities for evaluating the impact of customer initiatives. Understand the organisation’s capacity and capability to deliver on our practical and actionable strategies. 

Customer experience mapping

Aggregate and interpret data into a visualised customer experience map that highlights the key moments that matter (to customers) in their relationship with your brand and the category. Leverage our expertise and decades of experience to uncover where the greatest opportunities exist to create meaningful transformation that improves customer satisfaction, ensures retention and deepens engagement. Define the key blockers and enablers within the organisation to achieving customer experience transformation.

Stakeholder alignment

Dynamic and interactive working sessions are designed to actively engage stakeholders, using the customer experience map as a central tool to align perspectives, gather diverse input, and fully develop key opportunities. These sessions incorporate scenario planning and horizon scanning exercises to explore future possibilities and ensure a forward-looking approach. This process supports informed decision-making and helps define and prioritise the most impactful areas for action.

Customer experience strategy and roadmap

Consolidate and evaluate the many recommendations and opportunities – often hundreds – into a clear and action-orientated, prioritised set of programmes that will deliver customer experience transformation. Provide the supporting investment casing to determine the opportunity size and ensure the impact of change is realistic and achievable by highlighting key dependencies. Deliver the roadmap of short / medium and longer-term set of actions across the defined and prioritised programmes for implementation with an accompanying measurement and reporting framework. 

Testimonial

“Our vision is that when a customer comes to our website they are recognised and have a personalised, meaningful experience. We respond to abandoned baskets in a timely and relevant way. We present offers dynamically and consistently across all channels. When a customer breaks down at the roadside, we can access the right data fast to send communications and updates. We’re well on the way to achieving this vision, and we’re excited about the further, future potential of our new MarTech stack through our partnership with CACI.”   

Ian Ruffle

Data and CRM Strategy Leader, RAC

Experts in customer experience 

Leading companies choose us for a reason

Data-driven prioritisation

Our approach is routed in real customer data and aligns the customer needs to clear quantified business goals, ensuring we deliver maximum impact that is value-based and measurable.

Make the right changes

We drive strategic and tactical change, considering the organisation’s capacity and capability to deliver on our recommendations, which is how we’ve achieved a successful track record across sectors.

Secure transformation investment

We provide the insight, analysis and investment casing to secure buy-in and budget approval for long-term digital transformation, enabling technology capabilities that deliver meaningful transformation. 

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Bring your customer data together for a complete, accurate view. With Identity Resolution, you can personalise experiences, improve targeting, and stay compliant—effortlessly.

Awards & accreditations

Speak to one of our customer experience experts

We’re tried and trusted in this industry and have been supporting global brands to deliver exceptional customer experiences for over 10 years. At CACI, we want to support you in transforming your business through improved customer-centricity. 
 
If you want to book a consultation – we’re ready to help you cut the complexity out of customer experience. 

FAQs

Answers to common questions about customer experience consulting. 

We have several techniques we adopt, frequently this will involve a discovery process and aggregation of data/insight from across the business as well as consulting with stakeholders. We use customer experience mapping to bring together data, visualise the customer’s experience with the brand and in the category, allowing us to identify the key moments where the brand needs to focus to meet/exceed customer needs or resolve existing friction and ensuring we prioritise initiatives that deliver an improved experience and create customer and business value.

Our solutions are scalable and we can adapt our approach to the relevant size, scale and complexity of the brief. 

We can operate globally and have delivered projects in the UK, Europe, and Asia. We can work with existing segmentation or priority audience groups and have worked with retailers, investment banks, QSR, airlines/travel, entertainment brands, plus many others. 

Solutions

Strategy

Empowering your business to define and shape its future 

We drive transformational experiences by aligning strategy with real human needs. Combining expertise in customer experience, service design, UX, data and communication strategy, and accessibility, we help organisations define a clear vision and move forward with purpose. Our approach uncovers opportunities, prioritises what matters, and builds momentum for lasting change.​

Why CACI?

See value quickly

Our strategy services work together to accelerate your digital transformation, ensuring you realise value quickly. By aligning data, insights, and tailored strategies, we help you navigate change with confidence, delivering impactful results at every stage of your journey. 

Customer-centric personalisation 

We specialise in CX and UX, crafting cohesive, personalised journeys that resonate with customers, boosting engagement, satisfaction and loyalty. 

Seamless transitions 

Our expertise in service design, platform migration and data strategy allows you to adopt scalable solutions that grow with your business needs. 

Did you know?

86%

customers are willing to pay more for a better customer experience.

100x

On average, every $1 invested in UX brings $100 in return. That’s an ROI of 9,900%.

Speak to one of our strategy experts

We are a trusted end-to-end digital transformation partner, focused on driving early value realisation through data-driven strategies and seamless execution. If you’re looking for a demo, want to book a consultation, or both – we’re ready to help you cut the complexity out of strategy.  

How Estée Lauder harness the “beauty of data” to transform their customer experience

In this Article

At our annual Innovate & Accelerate conference, Daniel Lindsay, CRM, Data, Insights and Analytics Director at Estée Lauder, shared the business’ optimal pairing of data and magic behind beauty to enable their enterprise data transformation, taking the retailer from insight to instinct in order to personalise consumer experiences. This winning combination has contributed to the success of their brand value proposition, narrative and positioning through campaigns that struck a chord with consumers.

But how did Estée Lauder decide when the right time for data transformation was? What tools and strategies did they lean on to achieve this, and what were the results?

Why it was time for a big data transformation

Three years ago, Estée Lauder faced various evolutionary periods of marketing, from digital to connected media in terms of consumer interaction followed by the tailored messaging capabilities that came with leaning into data-led media and marketing , particularly first-party consumer data. The business was keen to ensure all their consumers were involved in their journey of change.

According to Daniel: “Our job as a leading beauty company in the UK is to evoke trust from the customer.” Consumers purchase from brands that they trust with their most personal spaces, so ensuring customers are at the root of the brand and understood as granularly as data personalisation allows for is vital. Estée Lauder quickly realised that connecting data to the personalised user experience would give them the competitive edge that they needed to remain an industry leader.

Happy woman doing routine skin care at home with beauty products. Woman sitting on bed at home and applying face cream.

Challenges experienced when working on data transformation & how they were mitigated

Three years down the line of their data transformation, Estée Lauder has faced its fair share of challenges:

  • Heavily investing in consumer data. The business quickly realised their initial consumer data investments were conducted on outdated infrastructure, which complicated their ability to locate their target customer and get a unified view of them.
  • Effectively delivering analytics or insights that would drive fast action and improve accessibility. They had also outgrown their campaign management system, sparking a new consideration of ensuring whatever was brought into the business would connect consumers across the channels.
  • Upskilling and bolstering their in-house capability. This would enable enhanced futureproofing and strategic planning while also upkeeping resources.

Implementing CDP & campaign management tools

Working with CACI enhanced the business’ understanding of how their consumers shop across their portfolio of brands. The resulting data was released into Braze, and has more recently been added into Google, Meta and TikTok to take their understanding of consumer data to a new level.

The business’ value realisation through Braze was being able to engage with consumers and make their CRM channels the fastest growing traffic channel across all their direct to consumer (D2C) channels so far. They were also able to increase their key loyalty metrics by 16% in repeat and retention rates across all brands. This was demonstrated through one brand, Aveda, that despite a complex route to market journey, proved that having the right infrastructure in place enabled the business to successfully understand and track consumer points through email or SMS, which has been transformational for the business.

Data transformation in real-time: MAC Cosmetics case studies

Creating Black Friday success for MAC Cosmetics

Elena Hughes, Customer Strategist at CACI, elaborated on CACI’s support with the design and implementation of Braze in Estée Lauder, and its impact on the business’ strategic communications plan ahead of their peak period, Black Friday. This was a commercially critical time in the business’ calendar with a predicted high revenue generation, meaning that the business’ strategy had to be airtight.

To execute this, Estée Lauder assessed the data with CACI to understand how customers behave during peak promotional periods. This resulted in the emergence of four key customer groups:

  • Gifters
  • Price-driven audience
  • Loyal
  • Lapsed (one-off)

The strategy needed to take a segmented approach to tailor the messaging to these specific audiences, which enabled newfound opportunities for creative enhancements as well. As a result, the business noticed a 23% increase in trading performance post-implementation of the strategy, proving the campaign’s effectiveness despite an obvious time crunch and key information presented for access in the most suitable way of actionable insight.

Activating a triggered lifecycle programme at MAC Cosmetics

Replenishment, automated trigger and cross-sale messaging were critical components of the business’ triggered lifecycle programme. Their Black Friday campaign success came from distilling a multitude of strategy-shaping data points.

Learning lessons towards achieving data transformation

Despite maintaining relatively stable sales around Black Friday, CACI’s Cost of Living and purchasing data proved to be crucial to Estée Lauder’s success. While the business noticed that some of the more luxury products like serums declined in sales, the resulting data showed that the “lipstick effect” prevailed and that customers still want to feel good about themselves no matter the economic circumstances, demonstrated in the purchasing of what consumers consider to be essential products.

The business is now equipped with the necessary data to enter peak shopping periods and continue developing efficiencies and creative assets that resonate with customers.

How CACI can help

If you or your business are looking to accelerate customer data or technology changes by connecting and activating your insight, please get in touch to discuss what strategies and solutions that our team of experts can help you deliver.

Requirement discovery – paving the way to project success

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Focussing on outcomes is essential to the success of any project. What does the project need to achieve? It sounds like an obvious question, but time and again we see vague notions of what the outcomes are.

Procuring a technology system isn’t the end of the process. It needs to be designed, structured, implemented and have a plan put in place for its ongoing success post go-live.

How will the people using the new system be trained? What, ultimately, will success look like? A robust requirement discovery phase of the project helps both parties to understand one another and outline the objectives of the project.

At CACI, we utilise our proprietary FUSION project delivery methodology with all of our customers and for our internal projects. This helps us to keep work on track, whilst further enabling us to continually learn from project implementation to continuously improve our own processes.

Spending that time early in the lifecycle of the project to fully understand what it is you need to achieve enables us to set clear goals and create a point of reference for the remainder of the project.

Here we can establish what success will look like, creating a baseline of requirements and their acceptance criteria for sign off.

Requirement discovery building knowledge and insight

The success of any project is underpinned by the people involved. Getting both teams together so that they can build knowledge and insight of how each other works is invaluable in putting in place the groundwork for a successful project.

The definition of success and acceptance criteria created during the requirement discovery phase of the project acts as a reference point for the rest of the project. The requirements laid out at this stage are designed to establish what you need from the project, not describe the solution. It is important, therefore, to prioritise your requirements, understand what you want to achieve and set out your acceptance criteria at this stage. Who needs to do what, by when? What will tick your boxes in order to advance the project?

The involvement of key roles such as the project sponsor are vital in ensuring buy-in from key personnel and following up on your requirements to ensure that they are appropriately managed.

This isn’t just about managing the change in technology that you’re experiencing, there’s the human element to consider, too. We covered this in our previous blog about change management, but it’s worth reiterating since the requirement discovery phase further enables discussion around the tangible impact to the people who are affected by the change. Getting buy-in from everyone early in the project is good practice and the discovery phase is vital in building that knowledge and insight that will facilitate a smoother change management process when the (agreed upon) time is right.

The importance of epics in requirement discovery

Epics are an important way of breaking down a larger body of work, such as a software implementation, into user stories that work towards the intended outcome of the overarching project. This helps both teams to break their work down whilst continually working towards the bigger picture.

CACI helps customers in creating these, since they enable us to focus on your outcomes, putting them front and centre of the project. We’re providing the solution, but your required outcomes are bespoke to you. Creating epics enables us to focus on this during the process of delivering your solution.

The creation of epics also enables us to come back to your requirements and how we intend to achieve them. With the overarching project broken down into smaller sprints of work, it enables us to focus on the delivery of key requirements across the project.

How CACI can help you deliver the outcomes you need

The purpose of the discovery phase is to build insight and understanding between our team and yours. Reading requirements on a tender is one thing, but how will they look in reality? We aim to embed our team within yours, which is why discovery is so important. This enables us to tailor the solution to your needs, with your required outcomes at the forefront of the project implementation.

We’ve seen all manner of projects in our time. Most have gone well, but we’ve also been involved in projects where shortcuts have been taken and the project has been executed without the involvement of those who will be most impacted by the project: that is to say, those who will be using the solution day in, day out.

Discovery is such an important step in the project. It enables us to create an agreed path forwards against set deliverables, acting as a point of reference as the project advances. The project lifecycle can be difficult to manage, but by breaking it down and understanding what you need the solution to deliver, it makes it easier to pinpoint where things are veering off course.

Our team of project managers have seen it all before, across a multitude of industries. Selecting a technology provider and their solution is one thing, but what happens next is so important to the solution being successful for you. We always strive to place your outcomes first, to ensure that the solution and the project work to deliver what you need.

Learn more about CACI’s requirement discovery, see our brochure here.

What is green information technology (Green IT) & why should businesses follow it?

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Climate change is an ever-growing problem, and the technology sector is unfortunately playing a substantial role in this. By 2040, this sector is set to account for 14% of the world’s carbon footprint, a massive uptake from the 1.5% it occupied in 2007. Understanding how businesses operating within the technology sector can analyse and reduce their carbon footprint and leverage green information technology (also known as green IT) practices is critical. So, what exactly is green IT and how will this shape the future of this sector’s carbon footprint?

This is the first part of a 4-blog series on Green IT. In future posts, we will discuss how businesses can use green IT to reduce their carbon footprint, choose the right cloud provider, and optimise algorithms for energy efficiency.

What is green information technology (Green IT)?

Green information technology (green IT) is the practice of using environmentally sustainable computing. It aims to minimise the effects of the technology space on global emissions to combat climate change. The concept originated from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 1992 through a project called “Energy Star”, which identified products that were superior in energy efficiency and helped organisations choose products that would cut costs and reduce their carbon footprint.

Why is green IT so important?

Green IT will have significant impacts in areas beyond climate change, including:

Compliance to achieve net zero carbon emissions

Recent updates made to the Green Finance Strategy from the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) will ensure businesses continue to meet their green finance ambitions and standards. Climate change has remained a prominent consideration within this. The FCA recognises the importance of business’ resilience in collective action to achieve net zero carbon emissions, therefore, businesses are being held increasingly accountable for any climate-related actions.

Competitive advantage through ESG scores

Businesses worldwide have increasingly focused on achieving environmental, social and governance (ESG) criteria to prove they have adopted good sustainability practices. ESG criteria assess a company’s environmental risks and potential harm to the environment. ESG scores are calculated for individual businesses based on relative performance within the company’s sector (for environmental and social) and country of incorporation (for governance). Businesses that receive a positive ESG score are ultimately more attractive to customers and investors.

What can your business do to follow Green IT best practices?

While the UK is considered the second most environmentally friendly country in the world according to the 2022 Environmental Performance Index (EPI), ongoing environmental challenges call all organisations to continue to innovate and act.

Businesses may be daunted by the fact that an eco-conscious development strategy is not easy, cheap, and will not happen overnight. Technology solutions can also be highly complex, with many parts to manage and design, which can also complicate the ability to determine the impact the solution may have on climate change. Setting policies and best practices for a business to follow is a good first step, and everyone in the business must bear some level of responsibility to help drive green IT, from the CTO to the engineers and architects.

There are several key takeaways that the wider business should consider to effectively implement and follow green IT best practices, most notably:

Demand for the information and technology sector is only going to increase, making it a massive contributing factor to climate change.

Embed green methodologies and practices into the software development lifecycle to set clear goals to help mitigate carbon footprints.

Make informed decisions on what tooling and infrastructure is going to be utilised.

More research and innovation need to happen, especially in cloud computing and analytical developmental tools.

This blog is part 1 of a 3-part blog series exploring the topic of Green IT. You can read the other 2 parts by following the below links:

To learn more about green IT and how your business can adopt these best practices, contact us today.