Overview

OpenExO is a business consultancy that accelerates innovation and emerging technology adaptation. They offer methodology certification and connect innovation consultants with client projects through a two-sided platform.

Innovation consultants wanted greater transparency and autonomy to apply directly to available client projects. Once they had applied, they wanted faster notification turnaround when they were not selected. This was especially critical for 10-week sprint projects in order to free up their calendars for other opportunities. However, OpenExO had outgrown legacy processes as the startup scaled. Placements and notifications were still being coordinated manually by the internal team, causing bottlenecks and long delays at peak moments.

Product

We developed a two-sided marketplace that allows clients to post jobs and interact directly with the innovation consultants they wish to hire. The solution included:

• integration of the marketplace with existing platform features (user profiles, client project work spaces for large teams, swarm session spaces, certification and badge merits)

• new interfaces for clients to post jobs, review candidates and select a team

• new interfaces for consultants to review jobs, apply, manage legal NDAs and other permissions

• new communication functions between job poster and candidates

• notification of selected and non-selected candidates

My Role on a 10+ Person Team

Content Team Lead and Content Designer

This was a cross-functional project collaborated on by the whole company. I worked with a product manager, developers, design, research, legal, delivery and operations.

I started this project as the sole writer on the product team and later brought on another content designer. I collaborated on the UX, interviewed users and crafted product copy including email acceptance and rejection notifications. At the start I developed voice and tone standards and created first-version content design systems, as well as standardized all repeating success/error notifications and empty states.

I also collaborated with the content and operations team to create Help Center article templates and style guides to empower anyone on the team to write help articles for the marketplace.

Outcome

We launched the OpenExO Marketplace inside the platform.

Consultant side user satisfaction increased. They were especially excited by the chat feature which allowed direct communication between the job poster and candidates. Non-selected candidate notifications became more empathetic and we reduced turnaround times from one month to one week. We maintained a CSAT of 4.5 out of 5 on sprint services even as demand grew.

This project saved the internal delivery team one full day of work on each sprint project, resulting in lower costs. Meanwhile, there was less demand for operations support as clients turned to the marketplace help articles for answers.