At Micro we are dedicated to helping our clients solve problems in an ethical way. From International Telecoms Infrastructure Strategy to AI Product Development, from coding to communications, we believe in a better way to brilliant.
We bring together teams of brilliant people and we make magic happen. We believe that profit comes through product, that brilliant is better and that ethical is best.
When Micro came into being we knew that we wanted to work with teams in different locations to get hold of the best talent. But more travel means more C02, and relocation means damage to families and communities.
We backed ourselves and built the platform the entire world wishes it had during lockdown.
Our platform is used by our teams and now our clients to collaborate and to work wherever they are in the world. If you're good we'll let you take a look.
We believe in what we do. We think you will too.
Other communications specialists speak – we think its wiser to listen.
Our partners understand their industries better than anybody in the world – our job is to help them tell their story. We understand communication – the how, the why, the way to amplify – but we try to approach every conversation without ego.
We are proud to work with clients who are dedicated to making the world a better place. Our service is for sale, our ethics are not.
One of the greatest drawbacks of modern consultancies is that the consultants they hire often have little industry experience.
Micro started from the other direction. We understand complexity because we've lived it, not just learnt it. From multi-million pound advertising campaigns to global event installation, from international strategy planning to building platforms from the ground up, our team haven't just advised on it, they've done it.
In the past, profit often came at the expense of the workforce's mental health, of their wellbeing, it came at the expense of the environment and at the expense of communities. Maybe this short-termism increased Shareprice for a while, but it wasn't sustainable, or desirable.
It's not healthy. We think that by helping our clients build better products and services, we can give healthy long-term growth that will lift everyone together.
Time is finite. Budgets are cyclical.
Digital transformation never ends!
So, how does one prioritise what to do next?
Our client's issue was to have a massive, aging digital estate in a heavily technical industry. Not just a website but a vast knowledge base, a community, a team project hub, a software showcase, content concerning deeply technical subjects and on and on. They needed to know how and where to start without spending millions and waiting years to bear fruit.
How can it be done piece by piece? The answer is called, disconcertingly, Strangulation. This is the process of selecting individual elements, sections or parts of a large system and rebuilding them anew on modern technology with effective user experience and design. Then we use modern routing technologies to show users this new world when they are visiting that part of the whole. Every care taken to ensure new designs were not too jarring whilst transitioning between the old and new worlds whilst also making a significant improvement to the overall experience. A seed from which the rest will grow.
Output: Technical architecture, process flows and documentation.
We laid their entire digital catalogue out for them as a map. Thousands of pages, templates, reports, functions, repositories, systems, newsletters and content. From there we turned to data! Everything should be driven by data and this is the pinnacle of that need.
By combining analytics, expert ratings, business analysis and phased project planning; a Customer Experience (CX) Matrix was created by layering data onto each piece of their catalogue. The hard data was straight-forward, pulled from analytics. Things like page views and dwell time. This was combined with soft data created by our analysis and client review. User experience, design, technology and content were rated alongside user and business needs or KPIs.
Output: CX Matrix - Data backed analysis.
With all the data in hand, a custom algorithm unique to the client and data gives a rating of what needed attention first. Where time, effort and budget should be allocated to be most effective for everyone: current members, potential members, casual browsers, staff, business leads, EVERYONE.
The result is a roadmap of prioritised work that helps define the long-term, yearly and quarterly deadlines and budgets of the business.
Output: Priority ordered list, project plans to cover every element.
Once the route to success is visualised and priority projects are defined, the specifics of what needs doing comes next. Research defines the landscape here. Who is the audience for each piece of the puzzle? What are competitors doing? What are related or similar-but-unrelated industries doing? Who exactly are the "users"? What are the users going to be expecting? In what ways can we delight them? What pains do they have that we can alleviate?
But that is a story for another time.
Output: Audience and persona definitions, documentation of the business landscape, UX and design briefs.
