Digitally Transforming Social Interactions: Introducing SEED
Increased efficiency, productivity, cost savings, improved customer experience and participation in digital business models. That is the value proposition of digital transformation. But what if it's not about monetary goals, but about social relationships, collaboration, help and mutual support?
The R3ASON team was inspired to explore this question by research we conducted on technology usage in social contexts. During our investigation, we realized that digital transformation poses particularly significant hurdles for the social sector.
Unfortunately, it has already caused much frustration and even defensive tendencies. It's not that the social sector has missed the opportunities of digital transformation; rather, the reverse is true.
Technical solutions have too often proven useless when it comes to empathy and human closeness. Simultaneously, many solutions focus on privatization, cost-cutting, and bureaucratization. It's unsurprising, then, that the social sector harbors a healthy skepticism. The high one-time and maintenance costs are additional deterrents. However, we only rarely encountered outright rejection.
The Social Sector's Need to Catch Up
Nevertheless, in our eyes, the social sector has a significant need to catch up. This applies to the use of modern technologies like AI, cloud computing, and process automation, but also to technological competence in leadership and among staff. Pilot projects still dominate, even though technology deployment has become established in non-social sectors. We've also observed much uncertainty regarding an independent innovation culture arising from the sector's unique characteristics.
On our end, we've learned a great deal about service work for people in social distress. This work is characterized by complexity due to the mandatory involvement of social service providers and public bodies in cost coverage (the so-called "social-legal triangular relationship"). Moreover, the resulting responsibility towards the recipient is different when they often have no or limited choice. People in social distress need a high degree of individual flexibility and empathy. For R3ASON, it's particularly important to support helpworker in their work with digital technology, rather than digitizing their relationship with their clients.
From Requirements to Solution.
From our research, we've gained valuable insights that we can now bring to our collaboration with social service providers, enabling them to benefit from a human digital transformation.
A Platform for Facilitating Social Interactions
We asked ourselves how we could design the initial steps of social interaction for people who depend on or prefer value-oriented or common-good-oriented joint action. How can we bring together people who need help with those who want to help? There are plenty of use cases for this question in today's world: aid organizations seek volunteers to support people in emergencies. Others try to integrate people with disabilities into the primary labor market. Those affected seek skilled helpers to repair damage after environmental disasters. Whenever social interaction is involved, more than just market mechanisms, efficiency, and scalability are needed. For this reason, existing matching platforms are unsuitable for this purpose. If they function at all, they're optimized to offer a quick and simple solution for high volumes of cases: seller offers bicycle – buyer needs bicycle; farmer seeks wife. The double-sided market principle is challenging in itself, but practically useless in social interaction scenarios due to low case numbers and the need to account for too much individual context. That's why we decided to think about a new system that meets the requirements: SEED is a new type of matching platform that connects people who are looking for help with people who can help. The platform makes it easier for people to precisely formulate their personal profile and their challenges. A cascading assistance system uses generative AI systems to support and guide the matching process. However, the system also enables the integration of specialists and case managers who help whenever individual skills are not sufficient. The system can be used in various scenarios and moderates different processes. It can help to find jobs, but also to recruit volunteers. It focuses on the process of bringing people together.
SEED's Innovative Features
Reason enough to pursue our own conceptual paths. We've considered generative AI, which can solve classic interface and participant support issues in these contexts, as well as support for case managers who can undoubtedly handle the actual matching better than a marketplace-like mechanism. The result is SEED, an innovative matching platform focused on social interaction.
AI Integration
The platform offers the integration of generative AI components to assist with operation (assistance) and communication for supervising case managers.
Chat
A chat function simplifies and debureaucratizes processes within the platform, enabling empathetic and human communication among participants.
Flexible Processes
Variable process models allow for flexibility to accommodate highly individualized application areas.
Customized Branding
Designed as a white-label version, the platform can be customized to your corporate design in seconds.