Case Studies

INTRODUCTION

Edward Jones hired consulting firms and came up with high level concepts that can grow the business, leaving ​the firm with pretty decks and no execution plan.

The firm want to bring the concept to life, and pilot a potential service experience within a short timeframe to ​gain confident before moving forward.

CHALLENGE

The firm did not have the conditions and expertise to conduct a pilot with real Clients, Financial Advisors and ​their Branch Team Members.

Solution

I led a cross-functional team in partnership with business partner, leveraging proven practices (mindset, ​skillset, and toolsets) to develop pilot strategy document, market research and analysis, proof of concept ​service experiences, implementation support, documentation and reporting, and post-pilot recommendations.

IMPLEMENTATION

The team kicked off cross-functional team in October 2021, and started the first round of pilot in mid-​January 2022.

The pilot included legal due-diligence, pilot strategic partner, service experience development, low-fidelity ​design materials, onboarding materials for branch team and pilot strategic partner, and signed pilot ​agreement with clients.

Jus Yong

Case Studies

Share context and ​objective; Create team ​agreement and plan for ​pilot; Understand ​current state, ideal ​state and competitor ​landscape.

Iterate to improve experience; ​Work with cross functional ​team on ‘how’ to deliver the ​experience; Work out kinks to ​deliver experience; Set up ​guardrails on learning objective, ​success criteria

Create conditions ​for a successful pilot ​- sign agreements; ​set expectations on ​pilot; provide ​materials for ​experience

Got feedback from ​round 1 of of pilot ​and made updates to ​the experience for ​round 2 pilot with 3 ​more financial ​advisors

Oct 2021

NOV 2021

Dec 2021

Jan 2022

FEB 2022

MAR 2022

Visualize and share ​concept for directional ​feedback; Hear from ​potential clients and ​branch teams

Play out service experience; ​Identify gaps to fill to create ​a better experience; Work ​with other functions to ​close those gaps

First pilot co-hort as ​benchmark to inform next ​steps - move forward/ ​pivot/ stop

Through multiple rounds ​of pilot, the team were ​able to gather more ​insights to inform user ​stories and criteria for ​features to be build

Jus Yong

Case Studies

RESULTS

First round of pilot made us realize there were additional kinks in the experience that we needed to smooth ​out before the next pilot.

Second and third round of pilot helped us challenge some of our hypothesis and validate others one key ​features we needed to get us to delivering MVP experience.

At the end of the pilot, the team was able to create user stories, capture features and requirements to build ​MVP, and gain confident from senior leaders to move forward with building out and delivering MVP ​experience.

Conclusion

The pilot was done in-house, with internal resources, with the right conditions to bring the pilot experience to ​life.

It resulted in minimal risk and cost way for the company to explore client’s appetite for this new service ​offering, and potential strategic partnership opportunities with others.

Jus Yong