Best of 2020: Reflecting on a Year of Change

Our focus has always been on using thoughtful engineering and design to create digital products that put the user’s needs front-and-center.

From improved interfaces, to new features that help us navigate the world better, our round-up summarises the achievements and innovations of the year.

Technology that helped us navigate 2020

We champion thoughtful engineering – this means we’re fans of technology that improves lives, not just looks good. This year, COVID-19 challenged the world and we relied on digital solutions to help us navigate our way through the pandemic:

First Bus’ Capacity Indicator

Future Platforms worked with First Bus to provide a solution that would lessen the burden on bus drivers and make it safer for passengers to get on-board. The revolutionary app updates include live seating and wheelchair capacity information for the number of passengers on most services. The bus route screen also displays the live location of each vehicle and its capacity.

The First Bus app

The innovative and necessary features were highly-commended by the Scottish Parliament, in particular MSP Alex Cole-Hamilton, who submitted a parliamentary motion commending the app’s innovation.

Additionally, the innovations were commended at the UK App Awards with the First Bus app winning Travel App of the year. The judges remarked: “the speed at which this was implemented was very impressive, especially considering the wider circumstances. It was a much-needed solution that improved the app on a huge scale.”

You can download the app on the App Store or Google Play.

Domino’s Pizza Delivery Innovations

Domino’s Pizza delivers 1M of orders a week. As one of the UK’s best-loved pizza delivery services, it had to ensure it could continue to deliver during a pandemic.

To provide customers with peace-of-mind by limiting physical contact, Domino’s Pizza was among the first to introduce “contact free delivery”. Consumers can pay view the eCommerce app and choose contactless delivery to ensure they have no contact with delivery drivers.

To improve this even further, we also implemented FlyBuy Pickup in the app for contactless curbside and in-store pickup. This means consumers can order in-app and choose to pick up the order in-store or in-car.

Using clever technology, the FlyBuy terminal gives updates to the store so they know exactly when to prepare the order and when to drop it off – all with no contact! This ensures a frictionless, seamless, and personalised experience for the consumer and those in-store.

Domino's Pizza app FlyBuy technology

The Domino’s Pizza app was awarded B2B App of the year at the 2020 UK App Awards. The app was chosen for its impressive results in improving efficiency, productivity, customer satisfaction, and business-wide operating costs.

Get the Domino's Pizza app on Google Play or the App Store today.

Keeping Fans Connected with the PSG Official App

This year, football fans were unable to cheer from the stands which meant that many felt disconnected from their favourite teams. The PSG app addressed this by providing a connected, personalised, and enhanced customer experience that has earned it an impressive 4.9 stars on the App Store.

The PSG Official app

The app allows fans to get directly involved with their club and ensures they don’t miss a beat with access to real-time match information, access to important live club events, and on-demand TV access. Even from afar, fans can stay connected to their team.

You can download the app on the App Store and Google Play.

Promoting diversity and equality in the industry

Racial inequality is a persistent issue and this year, the world addressed the reality of everyday bias. Businesses were urged to take action and Future Platforms took this time to strongly reaffirm our opposition to racism in all forms.

As a business, we recognised that there are steps we can take to fight inequality in the business world. To further improve diversity across our business, we have taken the following actions:

1. Implemented improved diversity-focused hiring policies and processes to ensure representation from a broad candidate base, while also continuing to remove unconscious bias from any decision-making processes.
2. Developed a best-in-class progression framework to advance minorities through the company at every level.
3. Researching new ways to support local schemes that promote minorities within the technology industry.
4. Furthering the diversity education of employees through research, resources, and training to ensure we are proactive in facing key issues.

We know that change will take time and this is why we are committed to making long-term improvements that foster inclusion and diversity, and support minorities to thrive in our business and industry.

Improving the client experience

This year, we focused greatly on improving our services and offerings by expanding our talented team so that we can better support clients. Because of this, we appointed several new members in the leadership team, including:

Simon Peck – CEO

Simon Peck, former Chief Client Officer of Engine Group, joined us as CEO earlier this year to help us build on our award-winning work and blue-chip client base. Peck has years of experience working in pivotal leadership roles and business development. He was a key part of the team that led Engine Group’s WCRS through its fastest growth phase in 35 years.

Greet Jans – Head of Experience

Greet Jans joined as Head of Experience to lead our existing UX & UI team. Jans has held several high-profile positions in the past and is now managing our successful team of creatives and our creative outputs. She is actively involved in diversity and inclusion initiatives within the Publicis Groupe and does regular mentoring for D&AD and SheSays, as well as speaking at events.

Remy Brooks – Head of Strategy

Remy Brooks has joined us to lead our strategy services and provide a wealth of knowledge from a decade of working across a diverse range of industries. In his most recent role, Brooks helped grow the agency by refining its proposition and offering, and supporting the development of a team of product owners and strategists. He is helping us transform our ways of working, client services, and offerings.

Fergus Adam – Managing Partner

We have recently appointed Fergus Adam as our Managing Partner to lead our client relationships. Adam has a wealth of experience transforming businesses from the ground up and has been integral to business innovations in his past roles. Adam has experience creating world-class agile processes, introducing new product developments, and improving user experiences.

Evolving from the Inside Out

You may have noticed that Future Platforms looks a bit different. Our team took this year as an opportunity to re-enforce where we are as a business and what we stand for. We realised we had evolved a lot, and we wanted our brand to catch up.

Our core beliefs have remained the same (we still believe that technology should make lives better) but we have updated our brand to better reflect this belief and our growth as a business. For more information about the thinking behind our identity, head here.

And that’s a wrap on 2020! Next year, we’ll keep focusing on growing and shaping Future Platforms and how we support businesses. Our skills are constantly evolving, and we are always striving to be better. We can’t wait to see what’s in store for 2021.