I was asked to join a team and lead the design of a new project for a private company (one of the big four), 100% remotely. Above all, they wanted to optimize their process, because they had been doing everything in excel for years.
The biggest challenge for me was to face an unknown world, finance and deep knowledge of excel data tables.
Specialized financial advisory in distribution and acquisition processes is a special service that companies have been offering for more than 60 years.
In order for the entities involved to make the best decisions and be clear about the process, advisors have been able to create rich databases, calculations and fund flows in Excel. The current challenge is that this way of working is difficult to scale and maintain consistently, so it was necessary to develop a digital product.
Understand the fundamentals of Investment process, its underlying rationale and the expectations surrounding it.
Understand the end-to-end process of how users actually perform the Investment process.
Learn what are the main roadblocks, issues and frustrations that advisors face when trying to prepare an Investment process.
Spending time together, watching the process, reviewing examples, asking questions, testing ideas, defining and re-asking questions
Stakeholders
Users
Business team
Develop team
Design team
How do YOU build an investment Model?
… and we started deeper workshops with Users + Stakeholders to identify the gaps within the tool we already had and iterate as much as possible.
Main questions were answered:
What is your current process for building a model?
How do you do it?
Why do you do it that way?
Do you think there is a better way to do it?
What is the most difficult part of building a model?
How might we eliminate the stress from Modelers of having to do the investment process manually on different places and Excel models so that they will have more time and energy and focus on analyze and propose the bests ways to model an investment.
Key takeaways:
A tool to guide
We are more than a Memo output
We start from a diagram
We need a higher level as starting point
And focusing in the most important one for the MVP
We defined Diagrams and a journey map with an overview
If we do a great job delivering the capability to enter the data involved in an acquisition/distribution process, calculating the specific allocations, and defining executable steps, we eliminate the stress of having to do this manually on different places and excel models so that they will have more time and energy to focus on analyze and propose the bests ways to model the investment.
A system that guides the user through the creation, configuration and definition of structuring, steps, review and reporting of a company's acquisition / distribution process.
Our Values
Consistency: High Quality Product
Efficiency: Better process - Reduce costs
Transparency: Access - Control - Deeper interaction
Security: Access control - Double Check
Key Takeaways:
The modeling phase is key in any Fund Flow process
To have detailed reports is important to the business but can wait for a next release
A initial MVP was defined to start working with the main features and to be tested as soon as possible.
A continuous work with the stakeholders and users, understanding the process, the business and UX/Brand, clarifying the user's needs and the implications of automating processes, has allowed "step by step" to propose improvements in navigation, the use of more suitable components and the continuous exploration of possible improvements of the experience.
Always starting from the question of how we could improve the life of Investment users, we explored initiatives to be tested directly with the users and which, if validated, could continue to improve the product, not only for the benefit of the users, but also for the benefit of the product as a whole.
There is a tendency to think that a product with many hours of work, dedication and large investments of money, should result in a complex product full of data, when what this generates is more cognitive load, less time and more frustration for our users.
Simplicity is not easy to achieve, but a process, no matter how much technical knowledge it requires, is executed by humans and should be designed to simplify their lives and not complicate them.
Being close to the user, spending quality time with him, and understanding him to offer creative solutions and validate them is the only way to build products that give him value.
