PTG is a leading Australian business technology consultancy specialising in strategic planning, business process improvement, user experience, user interface design and application development. Our solutions work the right way, first time, to deliver superior business performance and a compelling customer experience.
Our unique capabilities in understanding and integrating people, work and technology include:
- A large team of industrial psychologists and social scientists who understand people and work and how to maximise performance and satisfaction while reducing error and variance
- Our high performance user interface design methodology, XPDesign provides a systematic approach to bridging the gap between requirements, user interface design and customer experience
- Our ability to create a clear line of sight between strategy, KPIs, application behaviour and people’s performance by wrapping the IT project within a business performance framework
- Our IT Blueprint that defines the requirements and design of the application with the fidelity and accuracy of an architect’s blueprint ensuring that everyone has a clear and consistent understanding of the end goal before a single line of code is written
- Our ability to prove an application will deliver benefits before it’s bought or built
- Our R&D team being at the cutting edge of user interface design and application development, with a spend of around 20% of revenue
Millions of people use our solutions every day, across enterprise productivity, ERP, CRM and workflow applications, websites, intranets, customer / employee self service applications, touch screen devices, mobile / handheld applications and IVR / speech recognition systems.
PTG is a member of the following panels:
- Department of Defence: Defence Materiel Organisation Support Services Panel (DMOSS) PANEL
- AGIMO: ICT Multi-Use List (ICT MUL)
- AGIMO: ICT Management Consultants Multi Use List (ICT MCL)
- Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet: Panel Arrangement for the Provision of Web Design and Development Services - SON63852
- NSW Government: ICT Services Approved Supplier Panel - Contract 2020
- Queensland Government - GITC Q-1597
- Australian Taxation Office: Panel for the provision of Communication and Related Services
- Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations: Business Improvement Panel
Our services
Our unique blend of expertise in strategic planning, business alignment, industrial / organisational psychology, business management and web / application development creates solutions with a clear line of sight between business KPIs, application behaviour and end-user performance. We are recognised for our ability to understand how users of technology interact with and are affected by technology tools and breaking down the barriers that restrict people and organisations from maximising the benefits of the technologies they use.
Our services include:
- Business strategy and performance improvement
- Requirements gathering and modelling
- User experience design
- Testing
Business Strategy and Performance Improvement
Our Strategy and Performance team create and implement great business solutions, not just great technical solutions.
Within Business Strategy and Performance Improvement, we provide:
- Strategic Planning: identify the vision and mission, set strategic and business goals, establish knowledge, process and collaboration strategies, determine change requirements and understand culture and values
- Performance Improvement: we consider every aspect that will impact sustainability including change readiness and risk analysis, stakeholder engagement, project communications, design and implement the change solution and transition strategy, change management training and coaching
Requirements gathering and modelling
Using strong psychological techniques and principles, we gather business and user requirements that reflect the true work, activity and experience requirements of people used to achieve their goals and objectives.
From the requirements, we create a set of visual, clear and precise core models that are used by all team members, including the executive, IT and end users. They allow stakeholders to sign off with confidence.
Our requirements gathering services include:
- Job analysis
- Business analysis
- Onsite observations / ethnographic research
- Workshops / focus groups
- Personas and scenarios
- Expert evaluations
- Competitive reviews, and
- Causal surveys
User experience design
Our high performance user interface design methodology, XP Design creates user interfaces that reduce typical screen count by 50 – 80%, are easier to learn and use, increase standardisation and compliance with policies and procedures, and deliver a competitive and compelling experience. Our user interface designs provide a rock-solid foundation for growth and scalability so new functionality for future releases can be incorporated without needing a fundamental redesign.
We start the collaborative design process with a conceptual vision that gives the executive, team members and end users a clear and visual representation of the application’s user interface and how it will deliver improved productivity and user satisfaction. The conceptual vision contributes to everyone having a shared understanding of the end goal and provides deliverables that can be tested early to confirm they represent the user’s performance and experience requirements.
Our user interface design services include:
- User interface design / wireframes
- Rapid prototyping
- Information architecture
- Graphic design, and
- Guidelines and styleguides
Testing and evaluation
Our team, comprising psychologists, Social scientists and technology experts, is expert in evaluating applications for their usability, experience and performance. Using our high performance user interface design methodology, XPDesign, we 'reverse engineer' the user interface to identify the root causes behind the observed performance problems.
We create a high level conceptual design of an ‘ideal’ solution and use this as a basis for comparison, as well as traditional heuristics. This approach standardises the process and ensures that different reviewers will come up with the same issues and same recommendations.
Our Certified Usable testing takes usability testing to a new level. Whether you're selling technology or using it to service staff or customers, Certified Usable is your guarantee that end users can use it quickly and easily, without error and with satisfaction. For vendors, Certified Usable allows you to genuinely make the claim that your technology is user friendly. Your customers are assured that it will do what they want and be easy to use, out of the box.
Our services include:
- Usability testing
- Accessibility testing
- Eyetracking
- Cognitive walkthroughs
- Expert / heuristic evaluation
- Paper prototype testing
- Time and motion testing
- Return on investment testing
- Program evaluation
- Competitive evaluation
- Onsite observations and testing, and
- Certified Usable
Our results
Millions of people use our solutions every day, across enterprise productivity, ERP, CRM and workflow applications, websites, intranets, customer / employee self service applications, touch screen devices, mobile / handheld applications and IVR / speech recognition systems.
Working collaboratively with our clients, we’ve delivered the following significant business results:
- 100% increase in online conversions, 500% increase in page views and a 5,000% increase in offline lead generation after redesigning a product acquisition website for Citi
- A 700% increase in traffic to Virgin Blue’s customer loyalty rewards program and packaged holiday website, resulting in increased loyalty uptake and sale of holidays
- $2,000,000 pa salary saving after redesigning the Federal Government’s Business Entry Point transaction service
- $10,000,000 pa increase in sales for Virgin Blue after redesigning the online booking interface
- 600% increase in online sales for Optus by simplifying the sales message and redemption process
- 20% increase in customer satisfaction, across almost 2,000,000 customers, following redesign of CBA’s internet banking service
- 1,000% increase in online self service for Hutchison 3, migrated away from the call centre
- Redesign of the CBA human resources intranet, used by around 38,000 people, resulting in a 50% reduction in the time taken to correctly find the required information
Nuix |  |
We engaged PTG to perform a design enhancement to our ediscovery product, Nuix, to deliver a superior product to the market and help us compete more effectively. What we didn’t expect was just how fundamental and compelling their redesign would be.
They’ve reduced the screen count from around 5 – 15 screens down to one screen, used a design metaphor that will make it much easier for novice users to learn and use, and helped us better expose and manage the complex functionality in a significantly simpler way, without losing any of the richness. They also did a total ‘makeover’ of our look and feel, creating a more modern and professional graphic design for Nuix.
The new design is so good, we’ve decided to release the new version of Nuix as 3.0 instead of an incremental ‘point’ release, reflecting just how much of an improvement it is for us and our customers. The PTG team has helped us achieve an outstanding result.
Eddie Sheehy, Managing Director, Nuix
Citi |  |
PTG worked with us to improve one of our key customer acquisition sites. And again, they've made a significant contribution to our success. The redesign returned a 100% increase in online conversions, a 500% increase in page views and a 50 fold increase in lead generation. These are outstanding results, helping us differentiate and deliver an excellent experience for our customers.
Michael Weeding, Online Marketing Manager - eBusiness, Citi
CBA |  |
With 1 in 20 Australians using NetBank, its redevelopment was a big responsibility. With more and more Australians turning to internet banking, it was essential that we got it right — first time...PTG Global have helped to ensure that NetBank continues to offer customers a very satisfying online experience.
Drew Unsworth, Executive Manager NetBank, CBA
Zurich |  |
PTG listened to what we were trying to achieve and worked within our budget and delivered on time. Their professionalism, knowledge and regular follow-ups made our dealings with PTG an enjoyable experience.
The usability evaluation report and supporting documentation was insightful. PTG have assisted us to implement improvements in the accessibility and usability of our websites.
Zurich Financial Services Australia
Strategy and Change
Change Management - What on earth is it?
Change Management is a much used and much misused phrase. This article by Malcolm Anderson explores what is really means, what is it useful for and the basis of how to do it. Change Management is a complex matter over complicated further by some authors, but it does need careful thought and application to deliver the benefits the leaders envision. And that means treating a change program as an holistic venture requiring some integrated thinking since an organisation functions like an organic system and cannot be treated in its isolated elements without some effect on the others.
Download as PDF (0.1MB)Managing Change Risks
Risk management is much misunderstood, and managing risk in relation to change management is complicated by the problem that much of change is intangible. In this article by Malcolm Anderson the concept of change risk is explored and explained. The options for change risk management are outlined and there follows a rich checklist of the key risks to sustainable change. The real value in the checklist for change managers is as a basis for comprehensive change planning. It isn’t size that matters in organisational change – it is commitment to sound process and the preparedness to lead through adversity.
Download as PDF (0.1MB)The Role of Culture in Change
The challenges of organisational culture are often spoken of by managers as an excuse for poor performance. But what exactly is it? And is it the culprit or is it merely a scapegoat? The article by Malcolm Anderson provides an overview of the nature of culture, its impact on organisations, and outlines approaches to making changes for the better. He also tackles the problems of culture surveys and provides some guidelines for selection of tools that help solve the problem rather than simply telling you in obscure language what you already know!
Download as PDF (0.1MB)So who is your Guru? - Parts One & Two
During his career Malcolm Anderson has often been asked this question and these articles set out to explain the fact that he doesn’t have one – he has many. So here he provides a tour around a variety of writers who have shed light on what is required to drive change and raise performance.
Download Part 1 as PDF (0.25MB)Download Part 2 as PDF (0.19MB)Does your NPS survey tell you exactly how to improve loyalty and referrals?
In this paper, Craig discusses the strengths and weaknesses of the Net Promoter Score. Its strength is in moving beyond satisfaction to loyalty and referrals. Its weakness is that like nearly all surveys he sees, it provides no explanatory or predictive power. That is, you can have a good score or a poor score and not know why. Without this insight, you don’t know what to do more of, less of or differently. This paper is Part 1 of 3 and starts with a discussion about the NPS and surveying, followed by Part 2, where he’ll show you how to design a rigorous causal survey. In Part 3, Craig will take you through how to quickly and simply analyse a causal survey using multivariate statistics.
Download as PDF (0.32MB)Should you really let your ERP vendor dictate how you run your business?
Over the last few months, I’ve been talking with a range of major organisations about their ERP initiatives. Not one of them has described their ERP as an unqualified success. Whether they’re implementing their first ERP, a replacement ERP or an upgrade of their existing ERP, they’ve all experienced significant issues and are being ‘forced’ into ‘vanilla’ solutions to avoid cost and upgrade issues. But if you’re taking a vanilla solution and so are your competitors, what does it mean for your competiveness, differentiation and brand relevance? Read on for some insights and approaches on finding out if your ERP is directly supporting your competitiveness and relevance and what to do about it.
Download as PDF (0.22MB)A new approach to vendor engagement
In this article, Craig discusses how to manage the risks of buying enterprise application technology and engaging System Integrators. It's a guide for private enterprise and Government and will help you avoid that sinking feeling you get when you realise that your vendor and integration partner can't actually deliver what you asked for.
Download as PDF (0.34MB)Management by Objectives and IT projects
Management by Objectives is used by many managers to monitor and manage people's activity. However, this method requires that the outcomes of the activities are measurable on an ongoing basis, which isn't true in the case of many IT projects. Craig Errey explains how Management by Objectives can be applied to IT projects.
Download as PDF (0.35MB)Death by software
One of the biggest mistakes organizations make is to engage the technology vendor too early, on the premise that they will help them with their business processes. When implementing major enterprise software, it is important to pick a vendor that matches your business model and never, ever, neglect the user interface.
Download as PDF (0.29MB)Buy not Build - a fallacy in IT procurement
Despite the claims of how well applications work out-of-the-box, our experience has shown that buying an out-of-the-box solution is not delivering on the promise. This white paper discusses how the real solution to the 'buy not build' mantra involves the strategic outline of business requirements.
Download as PDF (0.27MB)Enterprise wide user interfaces - taking control of your end to end customer management processes
This article discusses the nature of enterprise wide UIs, how to justify them and how to build them. Most importantly, it is about getting it right the first time.
Download as PDF (0.35MB)Socio-technical systems - there's more to performance than new technology
Socio-technical systems (STS) is a diagnostic approach to uncovering the causal chain of events that drive performance and return on investment. It demonstrates that the interrelationship between people, processes and technology and predicts the success of IT implementation. Just putting in a new piece of technology is not enough to get the results you want.
Download as PDF (0.27MB)Measuring IT performance - what really matters
IT will always remain an integral part of the business, and with billions of dollars spent globally, its return on investment must be quantified. The traditional approach to measuring IT performance using statistics, such as transactions per hour fail to account for factors crucial to business decision making. Like any other expenditure in business, IT performance can be more accurately measured using the Balanced Scorecard.
Download as PDF (0.24MB)Requirements
The Psychologist as business analyst
Craig Errey explains how Business Analysts need all the skills of a psychologist to correctly capture and document business requirements, concluding that it would be better to employ a psychologist as a BA...and the play on 'analyst' was not lost on him either!
Download as PDF (0.26MB)Getting requirements right the first time (Part 1)
If I had a dollar for every time I hear people say ' you can never know your all of requirements up front'. In this paper, I expand on the myth I covered in an earlier paper and show how it is possible to know your requirements up front. Part 1 outlines why traditional requirements gathering methods are flawed and necessarily lead to the actuality of constantly changing requirements and continuous change requests post launch. In part 2, I show how the humble job description and job analytic methods can be used to define requirements.
Download as PDF (0.28MB)Getting requirements right the first time – Using job analysis (Part 2)
Part 1 of this paper showed how current requirements methods are flawed. In part 2, I outline how job analysis is a strong technique to capture user requirements. After all, if the application you are building is supposed to help people get their jobs done better, then that's the best place to start. many jobs don't really change that much over time (think of customer service, sales, management). it's easy to get stuck on the superficial characteristics of people's jobs, rather than examine the underlying constants. The core aspects of people's jobs can be used to make your requirements stable over time.
Download as PDF (0.31MB)Better interviewing for better requirements
The interviewing process is about understanding people, demonstrating this understanding, empathising, and determining the most appropriate course of action. However, the interview shouldn't turn into a counselling session, write Craig Errey and Zoe Soon.
Download as PDF (0.31MB)User interface design
Aligning people, business and technology: Getting the requirements and user interface right to deliver technology that works for people and the business
In this article, Craig gives a practical introduction to how XPDesign works. He takes you through an example of applying XPDesign to commercial lending, starting off with an object (entity) model, workflow and then the design of a user interface for the commercial lender’s dashboard.
Download as PDF (0.59MB)Most usability professionals know when something is usable, they just don't know how to systematically do it
The ISO 9241 (part 11) and ISO 13407:1999 standards give us a definition and measurement framework for determining whether something is usable, but does not tell us how to make something usable. The usability and user interface design profession suffers from a lack of a consistent operationalisation of usability. Guidelines are often ambiguous, being descriptive, not prescriptive. All of this means too much variability between designers, too much iteration to get it right the first time and no robust teaching framework.
Download as PDF (0.28MB)Accessibility and user interface design
Designing for accessibility is neither hard, expensive nor boring. You can easily have a feature-rich, attractive website that works for people with special needs. To make something accessible to those people, you need to correctly code your site, using the appropriate HTML tags and other features. There are plenty of resources to design a website with accessibility in mind but you need to engage expert consultants to assist in the process.
Download as PDF (0.26MB)Development
Visual and natural programming for non-programmers - a false hope?
This paper will provide a crash course of the basic concepts behind programming in order to show that it is a non-trivial activity and, that in order to programme, you need to think in a certain way to successfully describe what you want to do so the computer can carry out your instructions. Is visual programming a false hope? Perhaps, but we're looking at it from a very different perspective.
Download as PDF (0.45MB)Debunking the myths of IT development
A number of myths have emerged from the forty odd years of IT applications development. Technologists and management alike have come to accept that software iteration is a good thing and expect that offshore outsourcing will solve the cost of IT problems. There are however, alternatives to these misconceptions and solutions to avoid repeating these troubles.
Download as PDF (0.28MB)The pattern perspective
Systems Engineer Jalal Radwan explains what a pattern is, how they are useful for UI design, and how patterns allow you to create predictable applications that really work for users.
Download as PDF (0.17MB)Designing and building reliable software
This article introduces the software design tool, Alloy, and the necessity behind rigorously testing and modelling software even before code is written. This approach, coupled with PTG Global's XPDesign methodology, should allow for software that is both reliable and easy to use.
Download as PDF (0.26MB)Rethinking the software development lifecycle
It's generally accepted that around 50 - 80% of all major IT projects fail - over budget, late, missing requirements or poor user acceptance. Failures are often blamed on insufficient time or money, bad requirements, bad technology, not enough testing, stupid users or management without any vision. The solution has been to throw more and more time, money and technology at it all to no avail. These issues are merely symptoms, not the real problems. Why? Let's take a look at the way traditional IT development is handled.
Download as PDF (0.29MB)Psychology / Social
Does your NPS survey tell you exactly how to improve loyalty and referrals?
In this paper, Craig discusses the strengths and weaknesses of the Net Promoter Score. Its strength is in moving beyond satisfaction to loyalty and referrals. Its weakness is that like nearly all surveys he sees, it provides no explanatory or predictive power. That is, you can have a good score or a poor score and not know why. Without this insight, you don’t know what to do more of, less of or differently. This paper is Part 1 of 3 and starts with a discussion about the NPS and surveying, followed by Part 2, where he’ll show you how to design a rigorous causal survey. In Part 3, Craig will take you through how to quickly and simply analyse a causal survey using multivariate statistics.
Download as PDF (0.32MB)Building online social communities: Helping your members cross the observer / participant barrier
In this article, we discuss what you need to do to foster and promote the necessary user behaviours within online communities to create a sustainable active community. We build on our ‘Observer / participant barrier’ model from our earlier paper to show you how to successfully manage your members as they start the process of engaging with your online community. We use strong social psychology models as a basis for the recommendations on how to work with your community and include a checklist of dos and don’ts.
Download as PDF (0.29MB)Long time listener, first time caller – Why people do and don’t engage in a community
In this paper, we discuss the psychology of why people simply (and passively) observe a community while others actually participate and contribute. We discuss the process and decisions people go through when locating a community, choosing to sign up and participate in activities (e.g., sharing of information), through to becoming a ‘long time member’, or in some cases a leader (or super user) in a community. We present our ‘Observer / Participant Barrier’ model illustrating the critical leap people make to become active members in a community.
Download as PDF (0.30MB)Self managing teams - feasible or fantasy?
The idea of a self managing team (SMT) is appealing to most managers and organisations, but they turn out to be quite hard to set up and sustain. There is considerable research on the topic, but such teams mostly appear in 'ideal' situations and for short periods of time. Not very helpful for the 'normal' business. Craig and Erin discuss the theory and practice of self managing teams and recent PTG experiences - Self managing teams don't have to be a fantasy.
Download as PDF (0.28MB)Cognitive load theory and user interface design: Making software easy to learn and use (Part 1)
How do you make things easy to learn? PTG Global's white paper Cognitive Load Theory shows us how to reduce the load caused by poor design of learning materials. Discover how we process information and the role our memory has to play in learning. This paper provides an overview to cognitive load theory and its role in guiding user interface design.
Download as PDF (0.3MB)Why people do what they do
How do we interpret and attribute reasons behind people's behaviors? What are the impacts of misattributing a colleague's behavior as lack of ability when in fact they did not receive the right support? Craig Errey, Psychologist and Managing Director of PTG Global discuss useful methods in diagnosing why people do what they do.
Download as PDF (0.32MB)
With close to 30 staff, and growing rapidly, PTG is one of Australia’s largest specialist change / UX and technology firms. Our team comprises a mix of business management consultants psychologists, designers, marketers, business analysts and technologists, which provides a holistic team that ensures all aspects contributing to business performance and the customer experience are covered off.
PTG is led by Craig Errey who has over 15 years in user experience, user interface design and change management, and holds a Masters qualification in organisational psychology. Craig runs the R&D function, having produced a number of world firsts including XPDesign – the first systematic methodology for user interface design and Certified Usable – the first guarantee for usability and user experience. Craig has been the primary architect behind many of Australia’s most popular websites including CBA, Virgin Blue and ASIC and works on cutting edge technologies such as touch, medical and special-purpose applications.
Our Business Strategy and Performance team is led by Mal Anderson, an experienced change practitioner of nearly 35 years. Mal has delivered real and sustained change in industries such as Defence, logistics, banking and finance, law enforcement, international trade and IT in Australian and European contexts. Mal’s qualifications include an MBA, Accounting and finance, business, organisational development and education.
Our Design and Development team is led by Beata Brodowska an industrial psychologist with nearly ten years of experience in UI design and individual development and performance. Her focus is on effective information and productivity systems.
Our senior and principal consultants all have at least 5 years’ experience and are degree qualified, with most having a Masters or PhD, as well as Prince 2 certification. Our consultants are similarly qualified and have a wealth and breadth of experience among them. They are coached and mentored by our senior staff on all their projects to meet the exacting standards expected of our customers.