The Oshkosh Corporation was founded in 1917, driven by a breakthrough four-wheel-drive system that gave people the courage and confidence to go places they never thought they would. Today, more than 15,000 Oshkosh team members are putting over 850 active patented technologies to work serving, developing, and connecting communities around the world.
Asking the right people the right questions
When the company wanted to deliver its employees a better mobile service experience, they started by asking the people and teams who would rely on the solution what they needed and what was missing in the legacy solution. How did they use the existing app in their everyday tasks? If they didn’t use it, why not? What was the user experience like and how could it improve? What was on their wish list for new capabilities?
Oshkosh’s end users and facilities teams are constantly on the move. But the company knew that if it could make the mobile service experience better for users such as fulfillers, it would be a win for the business and ultimately the customers.
Zeroing in on user needs
What the company found wasn’t surprising, but it highlighted the specific capabilities users wanted—capabilities that were missing with the existing solution. Put simply, users wanted to see what they need to see when they need to see it. They need quick access to the right data. They need the tools to take action and make edits on the fly. And they wanted the ability to manage tickets effectively. These were shortcomings of the legacy app and its clunky UI.
An iterative development cycle
To deliver a better UI and overall user experience, Oshkosh did rapid prototyping using mockups based on a framework of the ServiceNow Agent app, including prototypes of the landing page, list view, and individual tickets. They then presented the mockups to the fulfillers for their feedback. The Oshkosh team then created user stories using ServiceNow Agile Development 2.0 for iterative development and rapid releases of the tool. By framing the process around ServiceNow Incident Management, the team was able to make rapid updates and move additional features into production and begin a similar process to develop a task application.
No-code really means no-code
As development continued, Oshkosh’s developers had to shift to other projects and the team faced a dilemma: either put the Agent app project on hold or have analysts continue development. Oshkosh found that the ServiceNow Mobile studio gave analysts the ability to do the needed configurations in a no-code environment. The team still ropes in developers to intervene in specific areas, but analysts continue to handle the majority of development.
The takeaways
How does Oshkosh summarize its key lessons from the project? First, the company found that low no-code really does mean low no-code. Using the Mobile studio, analysts were able to perform the majority of configurations without involving developers. Also, Oshkosh discovered that a better mobile experience is much more than a nice-to-have. The new Agent app delivers some impressive productivity gains because it was developed and configured based on end-user input. Tasks such as managing tickets went from five minutes of work to 30 seconds, and because users have a better experience tuned to their needs, they’re delivering faster and customers are receiving better service.
Finally, using the Now Platform and the Agile development methodology gave Oshkosh the ability to identify obstacles quickly and overcome them because they followed an iterative process that accommodated ongoing changes. The company plans to refine and improve the Agent app, but it is also exploring a similar approach with other use cases such as a manager and onboarding app.
View an on-demand session of Oshkosh presenting this success story at Knowledge 2020. Lastly, check out and subscribe to our Mobile Apps & Platform Community Forum for all of your mobile implementation guides, resources, and updates.
