Great ideas can come from anywhere in a business, or life – from impromptu conversations in the office kitchen that make you go Eureka!, to global pandemics that spark mass digital innovation and accelerate digital transformation by several years. 

However, whether you are a global business with billions of pounds to invest, or a startup, SME or solo entrepreneur looking to crack a new market, turning the knowledge of a problem, and an idea for a solution, into a viable product is a discipline of its own.

This is a skill Calvium has refined while developing our Place Experience Platform (PEP) over the past two decades, which has gone from being a small seed of an idea in 2004 to a multi-award-winning, commercially viable product, recently winning Best Mobile Technology at the 2023 Go:Tech Awards.

I feel incredibly proud of how far PEP has come, and continues to grow. Reflecting on that journey, I wanted to share some of our learnings and best practice when developing platforms from concept to commercialised product – from key skills for idea-to-market product development to the process of building a platform.

Key skills for idea-to-market product development

With technology presenting us with myriad new and exciting opportunities all the time, it can be tempting to jump on the bandwagon and do something just because you can. In most cases, this is not going to lead you to create something that is meaningfully innovative; to do that, it is essential to first understand and explore the pain point that needs to be solved. This means going out to speak to people to see where the gaps and opportunities are. This is something we did when thinking about extending PEP into new market verticals, which led us to realise there might be an impactful role for PEP to play in the country house hotel experience.

As part of our research, we did an interview series with a range of hoteliers to confirm our insights so far: whether it looks like a viable market; to better understand what the opportunity could be for them; to test our business hypotheses and cement what needs to be true for this new business to work. 

The insights gained from this kind of research activity help to clarify the value of innovation to the business, for example the financial impact, reputation, benefits to the business/people/society. This is a key part of the commercialisation journey and can be used to build a Value Map, which will help you to see what the greatest benefits of the product/platform are and provide a solid foundation to develop your business model using the Business Model Canvas.

So for PEP, it is about giving placemakers greater control of the places they manage and enhancing people’s experience of places, which has been shown to boost tourism, reputation and the local economy.

For the likes of country house hotels, we believe Visit A Venue (VAV, as it will be known) could be a powerful asset to improve the overall guest experience, which may help to drive better profits for the venue.

Alongside good quality market research – and something we practice as much as we preach – building good relationships with clients and engaging with feedback is fundamental as it gives opportunities to constantly improve and evolve. So, too, is getting users involved at all stages of product innovation. This ensures the design is based on genuine user needs and, crucially, is inclusive and accessible.

Process of building a platform

Like with product development, client/user feedback should guide the platform-building process. This often surfaces pain points that might not have been identified in the first stages, and having that open dialogue means you can address such issues much quicker.

At Calvium, we believe the best way to work is to learn by doing and not be afraid to make mistakes, while also ensuring all innovation is carried out carefully. We think about the process in an ongoing way, like an iterative, continual review and improvement. The platform is never ‘complete’.

Where possible, we look for a way to rapidly prototype something. This is for two reasons: creating testable capabilities can de-risk decision-making processes; you can find out whether something is worth it before you spend an awful lot more in developing it. 

This kind of rapid experimentation has become increasingly important for PEP now it has a number of clients. While we have a lot of ideas for the platform, we also have ongoing support commitments to clients; it’s about marrying the desire to keep innovating and testing alongside a mature platform, and still being able to provide business-as-usual functionality for all users.

Digital innovation of legacy systems is an exciting challenge for any organisation and can be approached in a few ways, such as creating mock-ups that work in a test environment, or trialling integrations with other systems and finding a method to test and iterate before bringing into the main product stream. Again, we look for a way to rapidly do a technical architecture and technical investigation; then, we look at how to design and test it to address user needs efficiently, and finally how that is best delivered.

Measuring each stage of the experiment is also really important. First, we make sure we understand both the immediate needs of the client and the broader strategic needs of the organisation, so we can draw metrics from those. Then we think about metrics in the context of the project and what is really valuable to the client. All of these things will vary client by client, project by project, so it is useful to have these conversations early on to ensure you are working to the same goals. We have made analytics easy to access so clients can have oversight of their KPIs in real-time and adjust their app and campaigns accordingly.

PEP innovation and evolution

By its very nature, PEP is a platform in perpetual evolution. It is changing all the time, both in line with technological advancements and by responding to client needs and ideas. Once the product is live, there are always research activities running in parallel with steady state operations. 

Our PEP roadmap is a world away from the original idea I had back in 2004, before even the iPhone was launched. As the platform continues to scale and commercialise, we are naturally looking at ways to boost its safety and security – particularly building more sophisticated ways to help our clients manage increasingly large amounts of data, and restricting access to that data. For a district like Stroud, for example, which has multiple towns and parishes using its Discover Stroud Trails app, it is vital that contributors have different access levels so there is no risk of accidentally tampering with other users’ information.

We are testing a number of exciting new developments elsewhere, including kiosks in Ely to make wayfinding as easy as possible for all visitors, and enabling local events to be incorporated into digital placemaking experiences. Speaking to the importance of getting users involved at all stages of product development, the kiosks were co-designed with wheelchair users to ensure they are accessible in terms of reach and visibility.

Speaking to clients, they tell us that they are not only enjoying the creativity that PEP encourages, but also the increased footfall to their towns. In a recent interview we did with Stroud District Council’s Senior Economic Development Specialist Amy Beckett, and Tourism Officer Amy Helliwell, they explained how they are using the app to actively encourage footfall past tourism destinations, which feels even more critical amid the cost of living crisis. Preliminary research they have done shows a positive correlation between promoting the app on social media and an increase in footfall in towns.

Wiltshire Council’s Salisbury Trails app was one of PEP’s original apps in 2020, so we were excited when Wiltshire Council asked us to build a district-wide app for the county. The Explore Wiltshire app, which went live in June, supports healthy activities with local info and walking trails around seven country towns. With customers coming back to see how PEP can further support their placemaking strategies, and with our expansion into new market verticals, we look forward to seeing where the platform takes us next and how our clients shape its future direction.