15–35% of time in external collaboration is lost to human inefficiency: unclear responsibilities, ignored reminders, scattered documents. Alkmist was designed by a behavioral scientist to fix those patterns at the source.
Collaboration software handles file storage and task lists. What it ignores is why an external contact procrastinates on uploading documents, why a third reminder gets deleted unread, and why your team wastes 30 minutes searching for a file that was shared in the wrong thread.
The third "Reminder: item still open" email gets deleted without reading. Same format, same tone, same outcome: nothing. The message didn't fail technically. It failed psychologically.
A request list with 120+ rows, 8 columns, colour-coded by someone who left. External collaborators see the full list and freeze. Too many choices, too little clarity on what to do first.
People are wired to finish what they can see finishing. When completion sits at an invisible 67%, the drive to push through the last third disappears. There's no pull toward the finish line.
External contacts aren't difficult. They're confused. "Did I upload the right file? To the right place? Is this format OK?" Uncertainty breeds inaction, which your team reads as resistance.
Every feature in Alkmist maps to a behavioral lever. Mathias Celis (PhD Behavioral Psychology) designed the product logic so each interaction reduces friction, increases clarity, and keeps momentum alive across teams and their external collaborators.
The COM-B model says behavior only happens when someone has the ability, the environment, and the motivation to act. We mapped each of those levers to specific product decisions.
Progressive Revelation shows collaborators only what they need right now. Someone uploading 3 documents doesn't see the full 120-row request list.
Centralised file management and role-based access remove ambiguity. Every document has one place. Every person has one role. No guessing.
Visual progress tracking taps the Goal Gradient Effect. At 88% complete, the pull toward 100% is almost physical. We make that percentage visible.
BJ Fogg's research shows that behavior happens when three things align at the same moment. The trigger has to arrive when ability is high and motivation exists. Alkmist times its nudges accordingly.
We don't brainstorm features in a product meeting. We observe a behavior, map what's driving it, design a nudge, test it with real teams, then measure whether it changed the outcome.
Identify the specific action (or inaction) causing friction. Example: late document submissions in the final two weeks of an engagement.
What's driving the behavior? Unclear deadlines? Fear of uploading the wrong format? No visibility on what's already done?
Build a behaviorally informed solution. Visual deadline nudges. Progressive task lists. Culture-adapted reminder language.
Deploy with actual teams and their external contacts. Watch where people hesitate, where they abandon, where they speed up.
Track more than task counts. Measure response times, emotional ease, repeat usage. If people dread using it, the feature failed.
Mathias spent years studying why people do (and don't do) what's expected of them. His PhD research focused on behavioral change models, motivation frameworks, and the gap between intention and action.
When he saw how service firms communicated with external contacts, the patterns were textbook: unclear instructions trigger avoidance, generic reminders create habituation, and invisible progress kills motivation. Every finding from his research had a direct application.
Together with co-founder Toto De Brant (Computer Scientist), he built Alkmist around a simple conviction: if you understand the person, the software writes itself.
RSM Belgium rolled out Alkmist across their audit practice. The behavioral design principles showed up in the data within weeks. These numbers come from real engagements, not lab conditions.
We asked ourselves: how does this feel to use? Where might someone hesitate, overthink, or give up? Then we built accordingly, with nudges, visual progress, and no email chaos.
We walk through the exact flow your team would use, from setting up request lists through sign-off, and show where behavioral science changes the experience at every step.
