Scaling Complex Government Services into Self-Service Experiences
Client: UK Department for Business & Trade, London
Sector: Public Services / Trade & Investment
Role: UX & Service Design Lead
Design Discipline: UX Design, Service Design, Human-Centered Research
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
UK Trade & Investment had an ambitious target: empower 100,000 new and returning exporters by 2020. But the service landscape was broken:
• Exporters faced fragmented information across multiple sites and logins.
• Investment workflows ran on a failing CRM with poor data integrity.
• Parliamentary accountability processes struggled with overload and inefficiency.
The systemic issue was the same one many enterprises face: siloed systems, inconsistent data, and a reliance on manual intervention that prevents scale.
THE UX CHALLENGE
Small and mid-sized businesses told us they were:
The design challenge was to turn an overloaded, advisor-dependent model into a simple, digital-first, self-service journey.
DESIGN APPROACH
Treating this as an enterprise-scale service design problem, four key stages shaped the strategic direction:
1. Discovery research: Contextual interviews, pop-up testing at Export Week, and analysis of CRM data revealed gaps and inefficiencies.
2. Mapping the end-to-end journey: From “want to export” through “deciding to export” to “successfully exporting”. This gave us the blueprint for where content, tools, and transactions should sit.
3. Proof-of-concept prototypes: Tested flows that let a user choose a country, filter by sector, then access tailored regulations, opportunities, events, and partners, all in one place.
4. Iteration and validation: Live testing with SMEs confirmed that consolidation, clarity, and trust (via GOV.UK branding) unlocked real value.
TARGETED IMPROVEMENTS
• Self-service content: Exporters could access 24/7 authoritative information on compliance, tax, duties, and IP, without waiting on an advisor.
• Decision-making tools: Market selection, tariff codes, and pricing calculators helped SMEs move from reactive to strategic exporters.
• Opportunities at their fingertips: Live events and tenders integrated into the journey, reducing the “hunt and gather” time.
• Data-driven backbone: A new Data Hub underpinned services with performance metrics and reusable data, building trust in reporting and outcomes.
BUSINESS IMPACT
• Reduced dependency on one-to-one advisors, enabling services to scale to tens of thousands of SMEs.
• Increased trust and uptake by consolidating fragmented services into a single GOV.UK-branded flow.
• Created a replicable model for transforming complex, policy-heavy services into streamlined, digital-first self-service experiences.
WHY IT MATTERS TO ENTERPRISES
This project demonstrates how large, complex organizations can scale by:
• Replacing human bottlenecks with self-service tools.
• Designing for clarity and speed in time-critical user journeys.
• Building a data foundation that enables continuous improvement.
Whether scaling SaaS onboarding, unifying fragmented enterprise systems, or streamlining compliance workflows, the lesson is the same: When you design for self-service and build trust into the experience, you unlock growth at scale.