1. Business design

Choosing the type of ecosystem. Before designing an ecosystem, we learn about the client’s business as much as possible. This is critical to define the right type of ecosystem—horizontal, vertical, or multidirectional. The choice depends on the client’s business goals and position in the market.

Researching customer journey. Knowing the ecosystem type, we proceed to customer research. This way, we define the customer needs and pick the ones that the future ecosystem can address.

Defining the set of services. The next step is to think through what services to include in the ecosystem and how to ensure their compatibility. When choosing services, we follow both business and customer logic—whether they would bring profit to the company and add value for the end users.

Setting a roadmap and functional requirements. Finally, we draft a roadmap of the digital ecosystem and gather functional requirements for the services. After this step, the client understands what the ecosystem will look like after one, three, or six iterations, and what users will be able to do with it.