Background:
In July 2017, the oil and gas division of General Electric (GE Oil & Gas) merged with Baker Hughes, creating a new, integrated entity that offers a comprehensive suite of solutions for the petroleum industry. This merger brought together two industry leaders with complementary strengths in equipment supply, drilling services, and technology solutions.

Challenge:
Following the merger, the newly formed entity faces the challenge of streamlining operations and integrating the diverse product offerings and service capabilities of both companies. The goal is to create a unified and efficient organization that maximizes synergies, enhances customer value, and maintains market competitiveness.

Solution:

1. UX Research and Analysis:
Objective: Understand the needs, pain points, and preferences of employees and customers across the merged entity.
Approach: Conduct user interviews, surveys, and workshops to gather insights from employees and customers. Analyze existing data on product performance, customer feedback, and market trends.
Outcome: Identify common themes, areas of overlap, and potential opportunities for integration and improvement.

2. Design Thinking Workshop:
Objective: Foster collaboration and ideation among cross-functional teams to generate innovative solutions for streamlining operations.
Approach: Facilitate a design thinking workshop involving representatives from various departments, including product development, sales, marketing, and customer service. Use design thinking techniques such as empathy mapping, journey mapping, and brainstorming to explore challenges and opportunities.
Outcome: Generate actionable ideas and concepts for optimizing processes, enhancing product offerings, and improving the overall user experience.

3. Prototyping and Testing:
Objective: Validate the feasibility and effectiveness of proposed solutions through rapid prototyping and user testing.
Approach: Develop prototypes of new processes, tools, and interfaces based on the concepts generated during the design thinking workshop. Conduct usability testing with internal stakeholders and select customers to gather feedback and iterate on the prototypes.
Outcome: Refine the prototypes based on user feedback, ensuring that the final solutions meet the needs and expectations of the end-users.

4. Implementation and Continuous Improvement:
Objective: Implement the finalized solutions across the organization and establish mechanisms for ongoing monitoring and improvement.
Approach: Roll out the integrated processes, systems, and tools in a phased manner, providing training and support to employees as needed. Establish key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure the impact of the changes and gather feedback from stakeholders.
Outcome: Drive operational efficiencies, enhance collaboration, and deliver greater value to customers. Continuously monitor performance metrics and user feedback to identify areas for further optimization and refinement.

Benefits:
Improved Efficiency: Streamlined processes and integrated systems result in reduced duplication of efforts and optimized resource utilization.
Enhanced Collaboration: Cross-functional collaboration and communication are strengthened, fostering a culture of innovation and teamwork.
Greater Customer Value: By aligning products, services, and processes more closely with customer needs, the merged entity delivers enhanced value propositions and superior customer experiences.

Conclusion:
Through a user-centric approach to integration and optimization, the merged entity of GE Oil & Gas and Baker Hughes successfully navigates the complexities of the merger and emerges as a more agile, innovative, and customer-focused organization in the petroleum industry.

Summary:

This use case demonstrates how principles of UX design and user-centered thinking can be applied to address the challenges and opportunities arising from the merger of two industry giants like GE Oil & Gas and Baker Hughes.

A GE Oil & Gas has identified that they do not compete well in the oil & gas equipments and part sales. I bring the teams together to examine the opportunity. For this presentation, we will look at how the e commerce site gets designed.