HX Applied: Delivering Power To The People

Apolinar’s dairy industry client wanted to offer their supplier farmers a better solution, one that would finally provide them with the freedom created by cash-flow certainty, and allow them a degree of self-determination over their decision making not previously possible.

Spare a moment for the New Zealand dairy farmer. Not only at the whims of the weather, they are also continually exposed to the volatilities of the international commodities market, where milk powder is sold. This in turn creates a lack of visibility and control over the most vital life-sign of any business - cash-flow. The knock on effect is to disempower dairy farmers over all kinds of business decision making, from plant and equipment investment, to herd sizes and accurate staffing needs. Apolinar’s dairy industry client wanted to offer their supplier farmers a better solution, one that would finally provide them with the freedom created by cash-flow certainty, and allow them a degree of self-determination over their decision making not previously possible.

The Process

Apolinar set out by conducting user research to discover the real needs of farmers and internal stakeholders. A 5-Day Co-Design Sprint with design-thinking workshops challenged the cross-functional team, including several customers, to imagine what the platform might look like. This innovative and effective methodology brought farmer suppliers together with subject matter experts and critical decision makers. This process facilitated the crystallisation of the best possible solution - a Fixed Milk Price Platform that works on any device - followed by lightning-speed prototyping, and high fidelity end-user testing. Within five days a working prototype had been designed and built, including a dashboard, farmer offers, customer offers, market insights, and other comprehensive, functional tooling. The power and clarity created by Apolinar’s HX methodology helped achieve absolute success in all the work streams that followed.

The Result

The HX process meant it took just 12 weeks for Apolinar to design and build a minimum viable product and commence user testing. The entire platform was custom designed and developed around the optimal Human Experience (HX) for farmer suppliers and internal users. The Fixed Milk Price Platform gives farmers the ability to have real-time control over milk price for the first time. It is the only free tool in New Zealand and maybe the world that collates and communicates the volume of data required for a farmer to make informed decisions about whether to fix a milk price, creating greater control and reducing risk. The business empowerment and self-determination outcomes around the platform are hugely valued by farmer milk suppliers. Responses are overwhelmingly positive, while the deliberately human-centric design means very little support was needed at go-live. 

The HX Difference

This world-first tool is a technological tour de force. Made possible by Apolinar’s HX processes and methodology, the benefits it creates for New Zealand dairy farm businesses help ensure their ongoing viability and commercial success. HX allowed the client to work from a factual position about where the value would be created, instead of working from an erroneous set of assumptions. Rapid prototyping and real-time feedback from the farmers meant the solution hit the ground running. Enormous time and expense was avoided, while a viable, working, truly transformative solution was brought online in a matter of weeks. That is the power of HX, applied. 

Apolinar has successfully applied HX to a wide range of industry sectors, organisations, and use-cases across New Zealand, Australia, Japan, and the UK. 

HX has been designed to achieve digital transformation, and as a methodology it works regardless of the size or scope of the problem, the territory or geography, the stakeholders, end-users, or customers involved. HX offers a critical, beneficial difference for organisations looking to effect digital transformation and drive competitive advantage.