Earlier this week I had the opportunity to attend Forrester's journey mapping workshop in their San Francisco office. It was a great mix of content and group exercises to give everyone hands-on experience mapping the journey of a customer. We had a pretty impressive journey map by the end of the afternoon!
But the topic that kept coming up during the breaks, was "how do we replicate this with our teams when we get back to the office?" The great thing about this workshop of the virtual meeting is that we were all in the same room and able to work together. And as you might expect if you've done journey mapping, all of the tools were analog. Sticky notes, printed journey maps, markers, flip charts, photos, printed personas... These tools all but mandate that everyone is in the same place to have a productive meeting; one where everyone can contribute. But the reality is that a lot of companies have remote workers, can't justify travel budgets for this type of project, or need to do the work over a longer period of time. Current tools make it difficult to get this important work off the ground.
Enter visual collaboration.
It's a new but growing software and hardware category, one that Prysm is in, that allows you to see and interact with multiple pieces of content at the same time, so you can digitize a lot of traditionally analog processes. Take journey mapping. To run a workshop, you simply need to upload a journey map background image and any supporting content that you would typically print so it is always visible for reference. Then, participants from any location can simultaneously add sticky notes containing steps, touch-points, emotions, etc. Easily move them around without worrying about them losing their "stick." Take a snapshot of the whole workspace to save a variation you might want to explore at another time, or snapshot your final map and email it to your exec team for review. Step by step through the process, Prysm's software has the tools needed to complete this work efficiently, effectively, and with input from everyone, not just those that are in the room.
The benefits of Prysm for a process like a journey mapping, are extensive, but here are a few: you can add endless sticky notes, whiteboards, and map variations without running out of room or stickies falling off; the content stays as you left it, so you can come back and review or iterate as needed; it can be accessed from any location and any device, so everyone can be an active participant; you can include co-browsers, so everyone can see websites and other live sources simultaneously; and it integrates with existing enterprise tools, for easier access to your existing systems.
Needless to say, I left the workshop extremely motivated to get started, and am thankful I have the tools to do it effectively with a distributed team, without a lot of logistical planning.
If you'd like to learn more about how you could use Prysm software for journey mapping, contact us or schedule a demo today.
