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Meet Ordnance Survey 📍
With a rich history spanning more than 230 years, and a strong appetite for innovative success, we sit down with Kevin Sheldrake, Product Enablement Lead at Ordnance Survey to understand how they are transforming their products with edison365.
Ordnance Survey is Great Britain’s national mapping service. Fully owned by the UK Government, Ordnance Survey has developed a wide range of sophisticated geospatial products for a long list of customers across Government departments and agencies including defence and emergency services, UK and international businesses, and consumers.
From geospatial insights to critical infrastructure to property boundaries, this renowned mapping agency plays a pivotal role to “help everyone see a better place”. So, what made the innovation team at Ordnance Survey choose edison365?
We’ll learn why edison365 was a key solution to tackle an inconsistent approach to innovation, and how detailed, bespoke reporting (and fewer Excel spreadsheets!) was the answer for sustainable progress for Ordnance Survey.
Summary
Challenge
With complex processes and systems, Ordnance Survey wanted a better approach to securely and collaboratively assess and develop new ideas across its Government, commercial and consumer priorities.
Solution
edison365 enabled Ordnance Survey to manage its end-to-end process for product innovation, from prioritizing incoming new ideas, to evaluating and validating, and real-time reporting of progress to stakeholders. All this while working within Ordnance Survey’s tight cyber security requirements, providing top levels of user support, and maintaining competitive pricing and value.
Results
The new system and the processes it has supported, has opened up over 100 new product and capability ideas since launch, leading to new levels of innovation engagement and awareness.
Product Innovation Beginnings 💡
Product innovation takes time. It’s an exciting challenge that requires two things. The right tools, and the right approach. Using edison365, Ordnance Survey has been able to streamline processes and systems.
edison365 gives Ordnance Survey an end-to-end environment that enables teams to securely and collaboratively assess, develop and launch new ideas without the limitations of their existing toolset.
We asked Ordnance Survey what challenges they experienced prior, with their Product Enablement Lead explaining the following…
“We had some challenges around tracking what we did. Using multiple spreadsheets, people would overwrite things, and reporting would be very difficult. Security was another concern for us. I’m always nervous about having multiple, casual users going into the database, which is why Power BI works well for us in edison365!”
Prior to selecting a solution, Ordnance Survey spent time documenting requirements and understanding where they could improve, resulting in a strict set of tender criteria that potential suppliers would have to meet. From cyber-security needs to collaborative functions, having a centralized location to plan, ideate and execute with the best level of support was paramount.
“We had some really good demos alongside edison365, and after evaluating them all, edison365 came out on top and were very accommodating.”
Innovation Through Evidence 🔎
Introducing edison365 meant working on a new approach for managing innovation projects. This involved reimagining processes and systems to help lead innovation with evidence.
Ordnance Survey’s Product Enablement Lead said, “We’ve merged different approaches together, and this has helped us invest in innovation that adds value”.
Now, product innovation moves along a sophisticated journey. From articulating an idea to validating it with an MVP. By hanging this process from edison365, Ordnance Survey are able to manage every stage effectively, and in turn make decision-making much easier.
Radical Reporting, Revolutionary Products 📈
When it comes to transformative change, reporting is essential — a non-negotiable, in fact. It’s not just about gathering the right data, but acting on it, and Ordnance Survey is a great example of this.
With tailored reporting dashboards, they have been able to uphold governance, and prevent micromanagement. Now, teams have a single source of truth for innovation projects and the progress they’re making.
“The reporting we produce is impressive and allows us to track progress. Power BI has given us a lot of versatility.”
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Transparency and Communication
We wanted to understand how edison365 had been received by the wider team at Ordnance Survey. What comments they had, and what qualities they unlocked. The three characteristics highlighted were as follows:
Transparency. Communication. Visibility.
edison365 had opened the conversation. It helped guide teams, increased collaboration and upheld visibility on the projects and priorities at-hand.
Seamless collaboration cannot happen without communication and transparency. For many companies, this requires a stack of expensive tools to make this happen. So, hearing this was a big win for the whole team at edison365!
Ready for Innovation success! ⭐
It’s safe to say Ordnance Survey is heading in a great direction. The systems and processes in place help as they continue to strive for commercial success backed by innovation.
“The tool works really well for us, allowing us to transform our innovation consistently. We got everything we wanted. We’ve got the outcomes we wanted and that’s the most important thing.”
Through edison365, more than 100 ideas have been created and analyzed, giving Ordnance Survey an optimized flow for new ideas. Before wrapping things up, we spoke about the near future.
“We’re always looking for ways to introduce edison365 across other areas and departments within the business.” It’s clear that Ordnance Survey are using edison365 as a driving force for transformative change and understand the impact the tools can make for different teams with different goals.
We’re just as excited to watch Ordnance Survey thrive, and we look forward to reporting on their next big win soon! We’d like to take this opportunity to thank their Product Enablement Lead for helping us put this incredible story together!
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