With organisations around New Zealand increasingly recognising the imperative of digital transformation, principles underpinning success are becoming clearer. Through its work with multiple at-scale transformations, Assurity Consulting’s Russell Ewart shares what the company believes to be the biggest principle of all: Customer centricity.
But putting the customer first is easier said than done. With software at the heart of every organisation, technical change drives an internally biased view. While getting technical details right is important, transformations are instead about understanding the ‘outside-in’ customer view.
This is challenging because the systems upon which organisations depend are often far removed from the customers they serve. By the time business problems get to software developers, perceptions of what customers want or even who they are, are largely based on internal bias.
That’s why Assurity Consulting uses customer engagement and rapid prototyping to discover what good looks like for customers.
Through rapid, iterative API design cycles, Assurity embeds the voice of the Customer from conception to delivery and production. The outcome is Customer Centric delivery, reducing total cost of API ownership.
Demonstrable results are what matters. When Inland Revenue took a customer-centric approach to its business transformation, Assurity Consulting provided customer-focused extensive, exhaustive, and continuous testing of new systems and processes as they rolled out.
Join Russell Ewart as he guides you on how putting customers first and at the centre of testing underpins stellar results.
Head of Digital Delivery, Assurity Consulting
Russell Ewart is an experienced Senior IT Delivery Lead specialising in delivering quality change on large-scale transformation programmes – experience that has spanned assignments across Europe and New Zealand in the banking, financial services, telecommunication and government arenas.
As Head of Digital Delivery at Assurity, Russell is accountable for developing market offerings that enable our clients to accelerate delivery through innovation. These products and services harness Assurity’s market-leading expertise in Design and Innovation, Digital Delivery, Business Optimisation and Partnered Services. Russell’s depth of experience in IT delivery, account management and stakeholder relationship management enables his strategic focus to effect innovative change during delivery.
For the last four years, he has been part of the biggest IT programme in the Southern Hemisphere – Inland Revenue's successful business transformation journey. As Digital Portfolio Test Manager, Russell delivered cloud-based quality assurance to enable Inland Revenue to protect its border while delivering continuous change to its core systems.