Corporate and B2B Platform: Discovery & Definition Strategy

In 2019, I led Discovery and Definition for Express Scripts, the largest pharmacy benefit manager (PBM) in the United States

The challenge: Express Scripts’ web platforms did not aid the B2B sales journey nor did they represent the recently-launched “Champions for Better” brand promise.

The objective: Create a world-class corporate and B2B experience befitting of a Fortune 25 company, one that positions Express Scripts as a force for good within healthcare while supporting prospect clients in their Buyer’s journey.

The solution: Lead a team to research and improve the Buyer journey. Design a new experience illustrative of this new journey. Run a series of client workshops to secure consensus toward a Corporate/B2B site “MVP”.

The result:

A focused scope of work including a prioritized Corporate and B2B feature set.

Other results included:

– 21 “potential solutions”
– 8 enriched “hero” features
– A first-pass information architecture (new sitemap and updated site structure)
– A prioritized list of features for the first “MVP” release

Project establishment:
Establish project goals and audiences

To kick things off, I distilled the brief down to a clear goal. Each part of the goal had a clear set of objectives. As a team, we understood that if we met each objective, we’d meet the overall goal of the project.

We tasked ourselves to meet each objective in order to meet the overarching project goal

I worked closely with the Express Scripts' leadership team to determine key details surrounding their core audiences. This included their needs and objectives, the relationship between each audience type within the broader PBM ecosystem, and who were central to the success of the project (primary) and were not (secondary).

Audience ecosystem and relationships diagram

Discovery

Part 1: Research

I directed and coordinated 3 teams on the Experience side of the R/GA house, each with their own stream of work: Experience Strategy, Experience Design, and Content Strategy.

The Experience team plan of attack – digitized

Experience Strategy: end-user interviews

Once the audience types were defined, we worked closely with our client to coordinate a panel of people representative of Express Scripts’ end-users. Where we were unable to set up interviews with end-users, we instead reverted to “Subject Matter Experts” (proxy end-users).

Stakeholder interviews: interview script

Experience Design: UX audit

For Experience Design, existing Express Scripts platforms were audited against a set of UX heuristics. A number of competitor platforms (CVS Health and others) were also audited to illustrate the competitor landscape within the PBM space. A number of non-PBM “best in class” websites were also reviewed to illustrate best practice.

Example recommendation from the UX audit

Content Strategy: content audit, content gap and migration plan

Over 200 pages (evergreen pages and published/article content) was inventoried. Each page was audited, given a score and ranked based on recency, relevancy and engagement. This formed the foundation for the gap analysis and migration plan that determined what content was to be retired, reused or repurposed on the new platform.

Example recommendation from the content audit

Part 2: Synthesis

Turning research findings into opportunities

Once each workstream was complete, the teams’ findings were synthesized into a set of insights, implications and early recommendations, which we called “Opportunities”. The output of the Discovery phase resulted in 21 Opportunities being created.

Turning opportunities into potential solutions

From the Opportunities, a number of early wireframes were created aimed at answering these opportunities. We called these wireframes “Potential Solutions”.

Mapping the Express Scripts’ Buyer journey

A further output of the project’s Discovery phase was the “Buyer” experience map. Informed by the majority of the teams’ research activities, this map plotted the journey of the Express Scripts’ Buyer audience across a marketing/sales funnel as well a a 36-month client lifecycle.

The final Express Scripts Buyer Experience Map

Workshop preparation

In preparation for the upcoming 2-day workshop, I curated a facilitation deck to take with us to St. Louis, Missouri. The final deck included check-ins, progress reports, energizers, as well as a healthy mix of divergent and convergent activities focused on definition, ideation and prioritization. A selection is shown below:

Definition

Part 3: Client workshop day 1

Understanding and “potential solution” prioritization

Stakeholders were taken through the experience map stage-by-stage. Each opportunity and potential solution was discussed. Any missing details were added along the way:

Prioritizing potential solutions

Potential solutions were then decided on using Dotmocracy, a form of silent voting:

The newly-prioritized potential solutions represented 8 opportunities of high-value and high-interest for our client. These 8 opportunities formed the foundation of the second day of the workshop:

Part 4: Client workshop day 2

Ideation

Using the 8 prioritized and high-value opportunities from day 1, the team ran 8 ideation and enrichment exercises. Through these exercises, ideas were fleshed-out, with some being turned into tangible concepts:

Ideation activities included iterations of Idea Speed Dating and Crazy Eights. Participants were encouraged to make ideas tangible, with each team having the opportunity to presented concepts to the wider group. By doing so, each idea or concept gained investment from a wide-variety of Express Scripts stakeholders:

Finally, winning concepts were again voted for using dotmocracy:

The result

Each “winning” enriched idea/concepts formed the foundation of the 8 “hero” features that would make their way in to the first-release “MVP” for the new Express Scripts Corporate and B2B platform.