Client: XPO Exhibitions
Industry: Events & Trade Shows
Services: UX/UI Design, Front-End Dev, Server-Side Dev, QA Testing
Platforms: Web, iOS, Android
Our Role: End-to-end product design and engineering partner
What we built: Xpo Showtime — Exhibition Management Platform + Mobile & Kiosk Apps
Problem: Legacy Systems Becoming a Business Risk
Company Size: Enterprise
Product Type: Exhibition Management & Ticketing Platform
Frontend: Custom Web Application
Mobile: iOS & Android (Mobile & Kiosk Apps)
Backend: Custom Server-Side Systems
Integrations: Mobile check-in app · Kiosk scan app · Xpo Showtime management platform

#XPO#Events#TradeShows#ExhibitionManagement#UX/UI#WebApp#iOS#Android#Kiosk

Xpo Exhibitions are the parent company behind around 20 of NZ’s best known trade and consumer shows; The Boat Show, The Food Show, EMEX, BuildNZ, The Baby Show and many more.

With a truly unique set of business requirements, they had long been on the path of custom software development, however most of their IP had become stuck in old legacy systems that were becoming a risk to the business, and for which there was no viable path forwards.

Ultimately it was time to bite the bullet and rebuild everything; but, as is usually the case, this wasn’t about building like for like, but about reinventing the next generation of unique Xpo software, apps and tools.

Needless to say, Putti was up for the challenge and are proud to see new the mobile and kiosk apps, as well as the mothership that holds everything together, Xpo Showtime, all now in use at live shows.

“The true challenge was that, although in theory requirements were defined by what existed, reality is quite different. The old software was poorly structured and, in reinventing how it should work, it was challenging to translate all user requirements. As is often the case, business software unique to an organisation is also uniquely specific; every last nuance needs to match the business’s way of working.

It’s often said that users don’t actually know what they need. In the case of Xpo though, they really did know, but the inevitable edge cases and specificity between show types was still a huge challenge to work through.

For the customer facing apps, the magic is more do with catering to a wide range of users and different ways of thinking; making everything feel natural and approachable, in order to minimize the load on Xpo staff at exhibitions. And this is never a one-and-done thing; observation of what happens at a real show is key to the ongoing fine tuning of user experience.

Putti still believes in prototyping everything that comes out of the consulting phase; providing a highly visual and interactive mechanism for the rounds and rounds of feedback and fine-tuning that go into creating an excellent product, before committing anything to code.

This keeps the main product builds as linear as possible, however there’s still nothing like everyone using products to push their limits and expose where further iteration is needed.

What’s great to see at the end of a long, multi-product roadmap is seeing a suite of website, app and back-end software products, all cohesively working together to facilitate a highly complex business in a manner that feels natural to all parties, and that keeps everyone in sync.

At the time of writing all products are live and in the fine-tuning phase; results we expect from here include increasingly frictionless visitor and exhibitor experiences, with steadily reducing admin time; ultimately extending Xpo’s market advantage whilst delivering ongoing cost savings back to the business.

And the great thing about custom software is that, if anything in the business changes, their software can change too.