How to develop tech for service delivery

Many charities offer a range of digital services to help meet a particular need or to plug a gap in existing services that aren’t fit for purpose. While many of these digital services can be delivered using out-of-the-box technology, many need something more bespoke to meet their unique needs.

 

Here are five steps to developing your own technology for service delivery.

 

 

Establish your user needs

 

Before developing your technology, it’s crucial that it actually meets a user need. What pain point are you trying to solve? Is it something that your audience needs and what research have you got to validate your idea? 

 

The Period Symptom Checker by Wellbeing of Women is an online tool to help women see if their period symptoms are something they should contact their healthcare professional about.

 

It came about through their “Just a Period” campaign where survey results, social media listening data, and search data showed that period pain and heavy bleeding were the two symptoms most commonly searched, discussed, and experienced by women. 

 

Beth Granter, Digital Consultant, said: “The Wellbeing of Women team invited women with personal experience of menstrual health conditions, GPs, gynaecologists and menstrual health researchers to a co-creation workshop. We gathered needs from all parties, deeply discussing what would be helpful, what would make women feel heard and what information was essential to GPs to streamline their subsequent conversations with patients.”

 

After the workshop, the suggestions that were technically possible to implement were built into Typeform, checked by GPs as well as tested by women. In the first eight weeks of launch, The Period Symptom Checker had 16,000 users – proving it to be a valuable tool that meets a need.

 

 

Research technology solutions

 

Once you’ve established your user’s needs, you need to find a technology solution that will deliver what you’re looking for. It may be that you need to invest in new technology solutions, such as AI, or that you simply need to tailor your existing technology.

 

Factors to consider include the cost, the potential return on investment (this may just be time saved), the ease of use by both service users and staff, how secure the technology is, the customer support on offer by the vendor, and compatibility with your other technology solutions.

 

Another key factor to consider is any ongoing costs. For example, if you’re considering an app as a technology solution, you need to factor in the ongoing costs of maintaining an app. These include hosting costs, maintenance and updates, app store fees, security features and more.

 

 

Consider tailoring your existing tech

 

It can be tempting to invest in new technology solutions. But all you might need is to enhance your current tech or find a way to integrate it with another tech solution.

 

FitzRoy, the charity that provides life-changing support for people with autism, learning disabilities, and mental health issues, worked with staffing and workforce management company Neuven to integrate their technology with the charity’s own roster system.

 

When the charity commissioned Neuven to take on sourcing their agency staff across the country, Neuven proposed a process which required Fitzroy’s managers to duplicate work by manually interacting with the Neuven booking system. This was time consuming and prone to human error. 

 

Craig Richards, Digital Transformation Director at Fitzroy explains that their IT team worked alongside the Planday and the Neuven team to develop a solution that fully met their needs. “The solution is now fully autonomous in identifying needs, sourcing, and suggesting options, provisionally booking, confirming attendance, and invoicing post completion. Neuven has since gone on to now use this same solution as a standard with other customers.”

 

 

Fit the tech in with your digital ecosystem

 

Through an increase in calls to their helpline, ERIC, the Children’s Bowel & Bladder Charity identified inconsistency in how early years practitioners were supporting children through effective potty training. 

 

They undertook stakeholder research and surveys with early years practitioners and discovered that they struggled to make time for in-person training. Using this knowledge, they developed a new e-learning course using LearnDash – an out-of-the-box solution – that has been adapted to become a bespoke platform through its integrations with other technology solutions. 

 

Joe Evans, Operations Director at ERIC, explains: “LearnDash is deeply integrated with the rest of our digital systems to create a fully automated, self-service system. We stitched it together so that LearnDash, Gravity Forms, Salesforce, QuickBooks and Zapier all talk to each other to create a fully automated system. This means that people can order, pay for, and take the course without any human involvement at our end. And the user and course data are captured on Salesforce, which gives us evaluation data to track the effectiveness of the course.”

 

The e-learning course was co-created with Bristol City Council as part of an innovative pilot scheme, and it’s been successfully rolled out to early years settings across Bristol to support child development outcomes and readiness for starting reception. The charity is now rolling it out nationally and looking to expand the offering to other sectors. It’s transformed the revenue model for the charity.

 

 

Speak to tech experts

 

Whether you’re purchasing new technology or adapting existing tech, it’s an investment — in resource, time and money. And making the wrong decision can be costly. Consider speaking with a tech expert about your needs and the potential solutions you’ve come up with. Digital Candle offers one hour of free digital advice to charities with a range of digital experts, such as service designers, developers, SEO consultants and much more. Simply fill in their form and they will match you with the right digital expert.

 

 

Find out more

 

Our 2025 Reimagining Service Delivery Summit unlocked new perspectives on service delivery and how charities can maximise value to service users. Click here to watch the session recordings for free.

 

Our Reimagining Services Hub features regular articles, podcasts, and webinars to support charities in delivering services. Click here to learn more.