It is a fact of great product development that, even as your overarching goal remains the same, it changes. Technological and behavioral shifts lead the most successful companies to constantly reimagine and re-engage with their goals, and how they can be achieved.
Take BMW, which expresses its goal in the tagline: “The Ultimate Driving Machine”. Back in the day this reflected what now feels like quite a simple aim: To be the brand that delivered the best experience of manually driving a car.
Soon – having motored through multiple iterations of this goal taking in safety, comfort, assistance, and entertainment – the full re-imagining of the goal will be entirely autonomous vehicles. BMW’s Ultimate Driving Machine will reflect the firm’s aim to deliver the ultimate machine that drives, rather than the ultimate machine for being driven.
Through it all, though, BMW has always got the foundation right.
This rings true for us at Canvas, where delivering the best experiences for driving frontline worker productivity in sectors including BMW’s is a goal with which we are continually re-engaging – while always maintaining our focus on the foundation.
Canvas Envision started life as an application for creating digital work instructions. Our foundational elements were that we were model-based, visual-first, interactive in the frontline experience, and intuitive for content authors.
In the few years we have been in the market things have moved fast, and we have learned a lot.
While we still firmly believe that the frontline worker is the heart of any operation, we now see a wider need and opportunity to make their lives easier, more efficient, and more impactful in the workplace.
And so, Envision is evolving from a solution for delivering instructions to a platform for delivering multiple connected frontline worker experiences – remaining true to the foundational principles that put model-based interactivity at the core of those experiences.
We have developed a library of self-contained interactive components called ‘gadgets’ that can be dropped into Envision content and rapidly configured to drive a huge range of end user behaviors: Form-fills, live data feeds, parts ordering, compliance checklists, insight capture, and many more.
Gadgets allow authors to rapidly compose guided workflows for multiple scenarios, with work instructions just one of the use cases that platform can now be used to execute.
These aren’t just nice-to-haves; they’re essential to the smooth operation of any team. By integrating these features into the tools that workers are already using, we’re making it possible for them to do more than ever before; while also giving the enterprise the insights it needs to continuously improve operations and frontline worker productivity.
What began as a technical documentation application has now evolved into a model-based connected workflow platform, powered by the same foundational strengths we spent so long cementing in place.
Building great software takes time, but we believe the results are worth it. With a strong foundation, a focus on the long-term, and a commitment to continuous improvement, we’re excited to ensure Canvas continues to empower organizations and frontline workers to succeed for years to come.
This, ultimately, is what we’re driving.
