From Complexity to Clarity: Building a Scalable Energy Rebate Platform
Product: Home Energy Rebate Program by Everblue
Company: Everblue
Role: Product & UX Strategy Lead
Business Context
Everblue is well versed in development and creating software solutions for their clients. They noticed a big need with a government client that they looked to capitalize on - the energy rebate process for companies and indivdiuals that was very convoluted, complicated, difficult to monitor.
To capitalize on this need, leadership identified an opportunity to The Everblue Home Energy Rebate Program aimed at creating an easy to use tool to help users streamline applications, compliance and reporting.
This effort was driven by looking to boost revenue in an new niche.
What Existed Before
Everblue served (and continues to serve) a variety of clients and built custom products specifically for their clients.
The product assumed that cities and states from across the country would look to utilize this new product for a more transparent and simple process.
Currently this process was either a manual intake process or leveraged old software that woulnd't give them an end to end experience. These rebates were unaddressed or handled externally by users.
Before
The Strategic Question
The real question was not “What should we build?” but: How do we pivot this very complicated process with many moving pieces into a very simple, easy to use, efficiency increasing product for a range of user types
Key constraints included:
Quick to market to capitalize on the need
It must be intuitive for all user types
Show the value through timesaving and revenue increase to these new users
Before
Initial assumptions suggested users would quickly adopt this new product to help them be more efficient largely based on existing products and requests from government organizations.
Reframing the problem
Through examining the existing manual flow and multiple products that would have to be used by the user we uncovered that:
The current process is extremely complicated and difficult to monitor
There was a lot of wasted time with back-and-forth between multiple contributors
The Shift
This shifted the framing from building a specific product for one state to creating an intuitive platform that can be used by states across the country.
Strategic Direction
We aligned on a product strategy focused on streamlining the process through a new all-in-one solution, fostering collaboration among different types of users, and delivering an intuitive—even enjoyable—experience. This clarity defined what the product needed to be before any screens were designed.
The Result
The product streamlines applications, ensures compliance, and simplifies reporting while delivering an intuitive experience for users of any technical level, with design decisions made to support learning and scalability.
Outcome & Impact
As a result, beta users were able to get started quickly and complete more applications in less time, while internal teams gained clear strategic direction for core features and flows.
The product became a scalable solution that states can adopt to improve efficiency and rebate monitoring, creating a new revenue stream and strategic growth opportunity for Everblue.
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