project story
Niagara Escarpment Commission
Digital Permit Service Design
Why does a permit feel harder than the project?
The Moment partnered with the Niagara Escarpment Commission (NEC) to turn prior discovery insights into a validated digital permitting experience. This Alpha project leveraged the Insight to Impact methodology to co-create and test future-state service models that set NEC up for implementation and digital transformation using Salesforce.
Challenge
NEC’s permitting process was highly manual, inconsistent, and difficult for both applicants and staff to navigate. Even small requests required extensive coordination and case-by-case interpretation. The existing service model was not scalable, and NEC needed confidence in what to build before committing to major technology investments.
Approach
To prepare for a major digital transformation, NEC needed more than research—they needed direction, clarity, and momentum. This Insights to Impact engagement helped NEC move from insight to implementation-ready solutions with confidence and user validation at every step.
- We aligned teams around shared goals and surfaced strategic focus areas by reviewing Discovery research, mapping jobs-to-be-done, and identifying core service challenges.
- Through additional discovery sessions with staff and applicants, we identified pain points and generated opportunity areas grounded in real user needs and service realities.
- We used rapid iterative testing and evaluation sessions to co-create and test customer-facing and staff-facing prototypes. These validated what the future service could look like—and how it could work.
- We defined MVP features, created a service blueprint, and produced implementation assets including user stories and a future release roadmap, setting NEC up for beta development with Salesforce.
Impact
This phase delivered tested, validated prototypes and a future-state service blueprint that reflect real user needs and organizational realities. NEC teams gained clarity on what matters most to applicants, where pain and value occur in the process, and how to prioritize features for implementation. With a feasible roadmap, aligned teams, and ready-to-build specifications, NEC is now well-positioned to deliver a modern permitting service that works better for everyone.