A catering company in Santa Barbara, CA needed to be able to take and receive orders online, and better manage their whole operation using Square.com. The intention was to use Square’s complete package of hardware and software to enable online ordering for customers, back of the house ticketing in the kitchen and general business operations such as accurate tax rates, accounting, and connections to their invoicing systems. the configurations within the Square system were mostly aligned the strategic approach and where customizations were needed, they were relatively straightforward to include.
MY ROLE: I partnered with the owners and chefs who had a few websites and several social accounts between them. I knew I would be acting as both strategic advisor and implementation manager. Much of the strategy involved helping them stay focused on the bigger picture, their overall business needs while recognizing that the details would also need significant considering.
To ensure all of their online connections to Square could be put into place quickly – our timeline was less than two months to get the system working – I would need to get access to (and temporarily own) all digital properties. Those would ultimately be about a half dozen inbound points of connection to Square. All the customization necessary to funnel customers from those locations smoothly so they could place their orders online via Square would be my responsibility.
PROCESS: I needed to zoom out to get my own clear sense for their business and take a close look at all aspects of their digital footprint. Scanning the landscape is natural for me. I am a big nerd when it comes to businesses and organizations and tech and how it all comes together and impacts all the people involved in delivering a happy customer at the end of every event.
To be continued once you get the password. Just email me.
No matter what you call it – service design, customer experience design, change or product or product management, content design, digital transformation, delivery management – there is a common denominator: wherever humans are involved, technology work within organizations forces people to look at things from many different angles and that’s easier said than done.
To create the exposure and ecommerce connectivity they needed to grow their business in an incredibly competitive market I handled the implementation, customization, integration to their websites and connectivity to the kitchen. I also provided training and support so they could become self-sufficient whever possible…