Case Study

Locavice

Streamlining the tourist experience

Tourism, Payment processing and Prepaid Solutions

The Challenge

Epay is New Zealand's leading innovator in electronic prepaid payments with a range of services including digital and physical gifts, prepaid mobile and utility activations, integrated POS services, and e-commerce solutions. They saw a gap in the market for a hospitality and tourism experience that streamlined bookings and payments. The sweet spot was leveraging their extensive retail sales network in New Zealand. They needed a team that could design and deliver the experience from the ground up. They also needed specific advice about how to create a seamless customer experience in a sector that suffers from technological fragmentation.

What we did

Digital strategy

Design and Development of Mobile App, Website, Digital Signage

Brand Design and Digital Marketing

Services

Digital Strategy, UX/UI Design, Digital Marketing

01

Key insights

Start by Immersing in Daily Life of Users

The project began with an in-depth discovery process, where we worked with the Epay team to define the scope of the project, including the core requirements, potential pitfalls and opportunities, and desired features. We immersed ourselves in the hospitality and tourism sectors, shadowing front-of-house in business restaurants in New Zealand and taking field trips to busy tourism information centres to truly understand their pain points.

From apps to ticketing services and payments, we observed how operators are struggling with fragmentation in their tech infrastructure. This fragmentation poses problems both for customers who find it difficult to effectively use the resources offered as well as operators dealing with different systems that don’t always integrate easily. The lack of standards in technology frameworks further exacerbates these issues and makes it difficult to develop consistent and innovative solutions that align with customer expectations.

Prototypes for the core discovery, ordering, and transaction flows were created for user testing with staff, operations teams, and customers. After validating the journey and value proposition, we completed the UI with an updated look and feel and a new brand designed by And Now.

02

Key Insights

Rightsizing the architecture

We developed an architecture that helped create better cohesion between the underlying technologies, helping to ensure tourism operators don’t fall behind in an increasingly competitive market. We leveraged CentraPass trust technology and allowed payments within the restaurants and hotels, connecting to the POS and DPS payment gateways. The architecture had to support operators with a wide range of technical capabilities and scale, from small family businesses to large corporations.

In the delivery phase, we provided front-end development, web development, QA testing, and product management capabilities. Our backend development team validated technical assumptions, developed features, and provided working source code as well as other software deliverables.

The final solution was a mobile app for iOS and Android, designed and delivered within 12 weeks. We supported Go to Market activities with content creation, sales toolkits, and participation in trade shows throughout New Zealand to assist the Epay team in building awareness amongst prospective customers.