Digital Consulting for an Innovative Biotechnology Company

Business challenge

Our client is a leading biological solutions company offering a sustainable method of controlling insect pests to protect crops and public health by installing their unique products. After years of research and numerous successful trials, the company aimed to evolve its business by offering easy-to-use deployment systems for non-expert end users.

Founded in one of the oldest and honorable UK university, the company had a strong team comprising world-class biologists and scientists. Yet they lacked expertise in building software products. This prompted our client to seek cooperation with a reliable technology and digital consulting company capable of covering the whole project development cycle.

Right from the start, our client was impressed by Intellias profound understanding of AgriTech business needs. With expertise in agriculture software development, competency in product discovery, and strong advisory skills, we earned our client’s trust and established a technological partnership.

Solution delivered

As our client’s technology partner, we took total ownership of solution development. Working closely with key stakeholders — public health and agricultural experts, biologists, and genetic scientists — the Intellias team of seasoned digital technology specialists conducted a discovery phase. As a result, we transformed our client’s idea into a custom software solution tailored to their business goals, market context, and specific technological needs.

Business analysis and design

Based on discovery workshop results, we suggested developing a website and mobile app that work in tandem to cover the customer’s journey from learning about a product to purchasing and utilizing it. Our team designed user flows and a UI/UX considering the needs of three major user groups: agriculture, public health, and the client’s CRM and ERP systems.

The website provides detailed information about our client’s product and the technology behind it. On the website, users can calculate the number of products needed to cover an area. To make an order, users have to create a personal account and download the app.

The key function of the app is to support end users with deploying of products. First, users define a target area on the map and then follow the instructions on their smartphone. Then, the app provides a deployment tutorial with exact spots for placing the products to ensure coverage of the entire area. When deployment is complete, users get various notifications from the app uncovering the science behind the product. After the product expires, the app instructs users on its disposal.

Cloud solution blueprint

Our client set a clear goal for scaling their project: from tens of thousands of users to millions of users in coming years. Therefore, we aimed to design a solution architecture that would be cost-effective while easily scalable and resilient under high loads. Drawing on our cloud development expertise, we designed a system to serve three million users through auto scaling.

As the mobile application requires offline maps for proper product deployment support, the Intellias team elaborated mapping prototypes to find the optimal map SDK.

To account for potential budget changes, we suggested three tech stacks and compared their performance, time to market, and cost of development. We also estimated the cost of infrastructure operations, CRM and ERP licenses, and map SDKs for the next three years.

Business outcome

The discovery phase run by Intellias experts was a launchpad for getting our client’s product to market. By applying industry best practices and considering insights gained throughout the experience, we created a solution vision based on the coordinated goals of different stakeholders, the user journey map, and market research.

During workshops, our team collaborated with the client’s stakeholders to define a generic business process flow that allowed for initiating a further and more complex understanding of the business processes. Our expertise in designing similar solutions allowed us to raise questions that led our client to change their initial request. For example, our client decided to roll out two product lines instead of one. Similarly, during user research, we discovered additional customer segments worth focusing on.

From our first contact with the client, we aimed to establish a fruitful long-term partnership. We continued our cooperation after the discovery phase and started developing the website and application. As sustainable agricultural technologies have been one of our focuses for many years, we are proud to be part of a project contributing to global agricultural productivity and food security.