Data Aggregation | Analytics | AI
Building a virtual Chief Operating Officer
From Proof of Concept to implemented product, this project addresses the challenges of small businesses and exploring how they might be met with new, innovative solutions from the bank.
Client: Canadian Western Bank
Role: UX Lead | Design Sprints | Videography | Motion Graphics
Location:
Edmonton, CA | London, UK
Source: Financal Times – Read the Article
The Goal
Reinventing Business Banking for small businesses and enabling the bank to become the bank for life by earning the trust of businesses from early stages of growth.
The Challenge
How might we envision a uniquely valuable COO experience to address the real world operational challenges of a growth focused SME, and become their most relevant, trusted business partner?
Project Background
In March 2020 the CWB Innovation Proof of Concept kicked off in Edmonton, Alberta. This project was dedicated to addressing the challenges of small businesses and exploring how they might be met with new, innovative solutions from the bank.
CWB is seeking to explore how Temenos can support them to design and build a market leading Virtual COO tool for SMEs*.
The project can be split into two chapters:
Developing a Proof of Concept – 2020
Productisation, Implementation and Launch – 2021-2022
*SME: Small and Medium Enterprise
From Concept to Product
Proof of an idea
Innovation that explores a new idea that solves an often unmet and unidentified need, whilst realising business value and is ultimately technically feasible
Proof of Transformation
Goal is to identify transformative use cases that go beyond incremental product change and product fixes. Explore new ground – new market opportunities and new product / services.
Proof of a method
Collaborate to create new capability proving customer desirability, business viability and technical feasibility thus reducing ‘go to market’ risk.
Methodology: Design Thinking + Agile
Using human-centred design to foster greater creativity and innovation, reduce go-to-market risk and focus decision-making.
Project Overview Video
Recorded and edited a video with motion graphics to capture the project and the design process (using Premiere Pro and After Effects). A professional voiceover was added to deliver a narrative.
PHASE ONE
Discover
Market Research and Competitive Analysis
Before the project kicked off we ran a general assessment of business customer needs, identified challenges faced by SMEs, the self-employed and gig economy workers, and analysed prominent Canadian bank offerings as well as distruptor and startup innovators in the industry in an 11 page Research and Analysis report.
The research also included posting questions on forums and Reddit to gather insights from existing users.
Stakeholder Interviews
Interviewed 10 bank Stakeholders collecting their input on goals, risks, strategy and what success of this effort means.
• Unpacked and synthesized the interview results
• Identified common themes and insights
• Defined Goals, Risks and Success
• Integrated Stakeholder direction into the project
User Interviews
Interviewed 18 small business owners representing various industries and business models (single proprietors, family businesses, multi portfolio owners, franchises) to gain an understanding of their operational challenges, motivations and visions for growth.
1. Unpacked and shared the results of each interview
2. Consolidated the results looking for both common themes and unique compelling outliers
3. Identified the key SME characteristics – daily pain points, systemic obstacles, success measures, motivations and technology savvy
4. Defined SME personas reflecting the predominant and compelling characteristics across all categories
5. Created a Problem Statement to drive our solution ideation and the vision
User Insights
My bank helped at the start and I’ll never leave them!
What I want is a single solution vs. many disparate technologies that I must learn and manually connect. My curren
SMEs need resources and
funding when starting out,
but Banks don’t care
Now grown to a stage that banks take interest, but it’s too late –“I don’t trust banks”
Still not meeting the bank’s criteria for help
Slowly growing, not recognized or helped by banks, they seek alternative sources for advice and funding
PHASE TWO
Define
The Problem
We found the SME sector is one that believes Banks are irrelevant to their early stage growth, that Banks really don’t understand nor care about their businesses. Small businesses feel banks are irrelevant BECAUSE small businesses are irrelevant to banks.
Time
I spend the majority of my time on operational administration – help me save time and manage risk
View
Lack of a cohesive view – Help me see the full picture of my cash flow and business operations
Support
Lack of real support from the bank. My bank doesn’t know enough about my business to help me run it.
Funding
Having access to sufficient funds when and how I need them, and knowing when and at what pace to invest in growth.
Care
The Banks just don’t care or understand us – be on our side. The bank that helps me from the start will be my bank for life.
Problem Statement
Gordon, a furniture design entrepreneur with loyal employees,
feels overwhelmed with admin, as well as unsure and intimidated about how to run his operation more efficiently to grow his products and business,
needs to gain business acumen, operational confidence, and help with strategic direction,
because if he grows too fast or the wrong way he will lose the quality in his products and risk sacrificing culture for the price of growth.
Persona
Crafted an SME persona that reflects those characteristics we found most prevalent in our target SME.
PHASE THREE
Ideate
Solution Ideation
Using the SME Problem Statement as inspiration, we initiated Solution Ideation in our virtual collaboration space. Over the course of 12 virtual sessions we:
Generated 272 solution ideas, forming the basis of our “Backlog of Ideas”
Evaluated the ideas and narrowed to 16 solution categories
Created a narrative description for each category
Prioritized the categories and defined a Virtual COO Experience Vision
Crafted a narrative of a single user journey for our SME Persona, Gordon, illustrating high value capabilities of the Vision
Detailed the SME journey step by step
Defined a set of Experience Design Principles to be applied to the IPOC design
Transitioned the SME Journey Narrative, step by step Journey details, and Design Principles to the Design Team to initiate the creation of a clickable prototype
How Might We?
Generated hundreds of How Might We statements which where then evaluated into solution categories through voting and prioritising.
Key Capabilities
Ideas narrowed down into solution categories, answering 3 SME foundational questions.
Design Principles
Defined the following principles to guide the design of the Innovation PoC solution experience.
Defining Key Capabilities
Smart Dashboard
A real time view of ‘business health’ aggregating and integrating multiple data sources to deliver a relevant, timely and complete picture of business operations.
Actionable Insights
Creating order and meaning from data to deliver a useful diagnosis of business activities helping business owners to understand what’s happened and why, and enabling the next best action.
Predictive Modeling
Engaging the collective power of machine and industry intelligence to educate business owners to various options for addressing opportunities, and prescribe a recommendation.
Simulation
Enabling human AI augmentation by allowing business owners to visualize alternate outcomes and perform ‘what if’ analysis off of the AI models presented, empowering them to make informed choices for their business.
Automation
Enabling the system to learn and run predictable, repetitive aspects of the operation such as funding decisions, with control parameters set by the owner freeing them to spend time growing their business instead of running it.
Track & Trigger
The automated monitoring of information and channels to identify and alert business owners to opportunities or risks for their timely attention, serving as a ‘real time business coach’.
Eco system Synergy
Exposing industry collaboration opportunities for the SME and bank.
Story & Customer Journey
From the SME Experience Vision a single narrative and journey was designed to illustrate in the key solution capabilities envisioned.
PHASE FOUR
Prototype
PRIMARY TOOLS
Figma | Sketch | Mural | InVision
MY ROLES
UX and Design Sprint Lead | UI Design | Project Management
THE TEAM
Core Team and Client | 5 Designers | Data Scientists (AI) | Developers
User Journeys and Scenarios
Sketches and Wireframes
The Prototype – Proof of Concept
This version was used for proving the concept and was validated with customers through user testing. I made this video to walk through the features and the screens.
PHASE FIVE
Validate
Testing the Concept
Both Figma and Mural were utilized to support design iterations and capture feedback. The completed Clickable Prototype was tested with SMEs during User Validation.
What did users say?
PRODUCT IMPLEMENTATION
The Final Product
Summary
Following the success of the Proof of Concept we started a 6 month long journey to implement the product into the bank’s system for beta testing and final release.
1200 ARTBOARDS
400 SCREENS DELIVERED
HUNDREDS OF CUPS OF COFFEE
100+ INTERNAL DISCUSSIONS
TOO MANY MEETINGS ABOUT DONUT CHARTS
210 USER TESTS
36 DESIGN REVIEWS
COUNTLESS CURSE WORDS FOR SKETCH BEING SLOW
Branding and Style Guide
Final Implemented Screens
Smart Dashboard Unbranded Example
Dashboard features
Landing Page
Introducing Virtual COO
Onboarding and Data Connection
Data Crunching
Business Health Score
Profile
Action Plans
Plan Preview
Automation
Knowledgebase
Learn