Apple’s Global Security tools team was under pressure to replace a critical third-party system that was being mothballed. They trusted us to drive the delivery of a new system, build consensus and augment their existing teams.

When Apple employees travel abroad, they are sent a safety briefing prior to travel. Up until now this has been provided by a third party supplier, International SOS. But the content of the briefings wasn’t meeting Apple’s need to provide safety information relevant to their organisation and the decision was made to end their arrangement at the end of the existing contract.

This created a pressing need to develop a more effective solution and presented a real challenge for the existing in-house tools team who were busy on other projects.

Our wave

We helped to bring together all stakeholders and build a consensus across multiple departments on the objectives, integration specification and timescales that were required for the new tool.

• We built a shared understanding of what needed to be done and when certain capabilities would be delivered by facilitating multiple story mapping workshops.
• We reduced a dependency risk by facilitating the API specification between two different teams.
• We were able to move at speed by collaborating with the Apple team on solutions during sketching sessions, pooling their experience and quickly reaching consensus on a desirable direction.
• We improved handover by embedding one of their developers within our team.

The end result was a new digital product for the Apple Crisis Management team, enabling them to curate bespoke travel briefings for employees when travelling abroad as well as providing timely updates when travelling to countries with heightened risk due to events such as natural disasters or political upheaval.

Our impact

The product was successfully rolled out in July and August in time for the planned mothballing of the International SOS service, saving Apple hundreds of thousands of pounds. Employees now receive safety briefings with more relevant information, tailored to Apple’s needs, helping to keep them safe when travelling for business.