UXA2023 Sarah Heimeier - Digital transformation – A framework for success

How to deliver a design project that gets results.

Design can make or break a digital transformation project, so it's well worth getting right. Sarah Heimeier has led dozens of successful transformations for some of Australia’s largest financial institutions and leading FinTechs, and in this talk she'll share her winning framework. You'll leave with practical, actionable steps to deliver your project in a way that aligns with your business goals, enables new technology, and has the whole team celebrating.

Transcript

1. Note that this is an unedited transcript of a live event and therefore may contain errors. This transcript is the joint property of CaptionsLIVE and the authorised party responsible for payment and may not be copied or used by any other party without authorisation. www.captionslive.au | captionslive@outlook.com | 0447 904 255 UX Australia UX Australia 2023 Thursday, 24 August 2023 Captioned by: Bernadette McGoldrick & Kasey Allen
2. CaptionsLIVE Raw Transcript _____________________________________________________________________________________________________ Note that this is an unedited transcript of a live event and therefore may contain errors. This transcript is the joint property of CaptionsLIVE and the authorised party responsible for payment and may not be copied or used by any other party without authorisation. Page 81 STEVE BATY: Hello, everyone. Come in and take a seat, please. Let's get the afternoon session started. Could you take your seats, please? Please, take your seat. Alright. We begin the afternoon with a slight change of topic. (LAUGHTER) It wasn't that funny! (LAUGHTER) We've got a slight change of topic. We're going to welcome Sarah Heimeier to the stage to talk to us about digital transformation. So, if you're still coming inside, let's do it quietly, but take a seat. But please join me in welcoming Sarah to the stage. (APPLAUSE) SARAH HEIMEIER: Welcome. Thank you so much for coming. So, I'm Sarah. And I wanted to start off with a story. So, this is the view from the home that I grew up in. I had a pretty great childhood. I grew up on a rural property just outside Ballarat in Victoria. On a mountain top with views across the countryside, and in the middle of the family room, the roof had this great big dome in the middle of the plaster. And the light bowed in the middle as well. As a kid, I always thought that was a little bit strange, but, you know, that was just the family room. Over the years, it started to get bigger and bigger and bigger. Until, eventually, the plaster started to break away from the walls, and Mum decided that that was about time to get a builder in to have a bit of a look at it. When Jason, the builder, walked in, he was shocked, he was like, "Oh, my God. I have no idea how that hasn't collapsed." He refused to even walk into the family room. He was like... He basically just refused to even come into the room, and I would just think about all of the times my brother,
3. CaptionsLIVE Raw Transcript _____________________________________________________________________________________________________ Note that this is an unedited transcript of a live event and therefore may contain errors. This transcript is the joint property of CaptionsLIVE and the authorised party responsible for payment and may not be copied or used by any other party without authorisation. Page 82 Matthew, had slammed the front door and Mum had been like, "Don't do that, the roof will collapse!" (LAUGHTER) Because, literally, it could have. Or all the times my dad would get on, or in, the roof, and we would be laughing away, watching TV in the family room, not knowing at any moment in time the roof could have easily collapsed on top of us because he was basically putting pressure on the beams. And over the years, and then what ended up happening was Jason actually did walk into the family room and he put up a metal pole to help support the roof temporarily. And our roof is like a lot of digital transformation projects - the framework is technically there but it's moments away from collapsing because the foundations weren't laid properly. And so today I'm gonna talk you through how you can avoid this fate, how you can build a strong framework to help support your digital transformation project. But before we begin, what is digital transformation? Digital transformation is the use of digital technologies to create new or modified existing business processes, people, culture, technology and customer experiences to enable or modify, to allow us to meet whatever changing business requirements we have, and then also any other requirements that we have as a business. And so it's really about enabling that future vision and strategy that we have as an organisation. And so getting away from the dictionary, what does all that mean? How can we make meaningful change that will be good for the customer and good for business, and being able to align that? Which sounds pretty easy, like, right? Turns out it's easier said than done. In fact, the vast majority of digital transformation projects actually fail. Up to 95% of them fail. And that's quite a lot, considering most organisations go through a digital transformation at some point in time. I have been part of projects that haven't got across the line, and I'm sure you have too, and I've also been part of that 5% of projects that have been wildly successful. And in my 10
4. CaptionsLIVE Raw Transcript _____________________________________________________________________________________________________ Note that this is an unedited transcript of a live event and therefore may contain errors. This transcript is the joint property of CaptionsLIVE and the authorised party responsible for payment and may not be copied or used by any other party without authorisation. Page 83 years of design, I've seen exactly why certain projects fail and others flourish. And there are five main reasons as to why they may fail. Number one - being unprepared for setbacks. You need to be able to adjust and change and be agile for all of the unexpected things that might happen as part of a digital transformation. Number two - not having a clear vision and conflicting priorities. You need to have a vision and a strategy of where you're going as an organisation, and then be able to adjust and change based on that. Number three - resistance to change. And so this is where everyone has culture shock to the change, they don't want to adjust, they don't want to move, and they really don't see the value in the digital transformation. And then number four - doing too much, too fast, all at once. And so this is where everyone's basically working on things that don't have a solid business case to implement. And then, number five - lack of leadership. And so this is where leadership needs to be there, supporting the digital transformation, because transformations go for a really long time and you need to have support from executives and you need to have support from everyone across the organisation to be making that long-term commitment for it. And then there's one thing every failed digital transformation project has in common - poor foundations. The dodgy roof. And every successful digital transformation project has a strong framework that is functional and effective. Because when you have a strong framework, then you have the perfect blueprint to succeed with your digital transformation and you get in that top 5%. So, today, I'm gonna share with you the framework that I use. It's tried and tested, and there's only three letters - or letter - that you need to remember. D, D and D. So, the first one that we have is: Define. And so the first part of "define" is define your objectives. And so this is really around... (LAUGHS) ..getting everyone aligned! (LAUGHS)
5. CaptionsLIVE Raw Transcript _____________________________________________________________________________________________________ Note that this is an unedited transcript of a live event and therefore may contain errors. This transcript is the joint property of CaptionsLIVE and the authorised party responsible for payment and may not be copied or used by any other party without authorisation. Page 84 Sorry, the slides are hilarious! (LAUGHS) (LAUGHTER) If I do say so myself! It's really about getting everyone aligned and on the same page, and making sure that everyone knows what you're working on and what you're doing going forward. And so what I love to do - and what I did when we were working on a new loan management system - was basically bring everyone into the same room, get them on the same page, and really start to define all of these different components of our project, to make sure we all knew what we were doing and we were all together for the journey. And then the next part is around defining the ways of working. And so as part of that loan management system, what we were doing was understanding, "How do we work together? What's everyone's role? What are they doing as part of that?" And so what we were able to define as part of that was, "When are we meeting as a team?" We were working with a team that was international, and so what we did was, we had stand-ups in the afternoon to be able to meet and connect with each other. And then the other part around defining those project objectives is really about making sure that everything is aligned to your strategy as an organisation, and then your project is made a Big Rock, so everyone knows why it's important and why they are working on it. And then as part of that, making sure that you have a Steer Co, who's your executive team, who's giving feedback on those project objectives and bringing everyone together. And you're giving them updates constantly as well. Then you want to define your current experience. And so this is really about understanding everything about what's currently happening in your experience in detail. And so knowing what pain points exist, what are the opportunities that you have, and what are the positives? And then one of the parts that often is missed is really around defining the value and the differentiators of the current experience. Because if you don't understand that, then those can
6. CaptionsLIVE Raw Transcript _____________________________________________________________________________________________________ Note that this is an unedited transcript of a live event and therefore may contain errors. This transcript is the joint property of CaptionsLIVE and the authorised party responsible for payment and may not be copied or used by any other party without authorisation. Page 85 sometimes be the things that get thrown away, and they're sometimes part of your secret sauce as to why people come to you as an organisation. And so when working on a phone-based advice experience, where we were basically trying to understand that current experience, I spent time with a headset on, listening to calls, and then just sitting next to them and really observing that experience. And being able to see how they had three laptops set up to be able to - two screens and then a laptop, to be able to see what was happening, to be able to go through all of the different manual processes they had. One screen, they'd have an Excel file, email where they'd dial out to the customer, Salesforce, then they also had on their screens, like, everyone had taped all of their compliance requirements to make sure they said it. So, mapping that out so then we can really get into the detail of what are we doing and deeply understanding that current experience. Then you want to define your future experience. And so this is getting really clear on where are you heading as an organisation? What are you doing? And making sure that everyone who's part of the project knows what it is, and why, and what's gonna be part of that digital transformation and that journey you want to head towards. And it's making sure again that it's aligned to your strategy of what you want to do as an organisation too. And so when working on a new Treasury experience, what I did was I spent time observing the team to really deeply understand all of the different components of how you do trust management. And being able to understand what, like, when do they do selling, what are some of the manual work-arounds that they do, how does all of it work? So, then I could start to see all of the manual, fun activities they got to do in Excel. I didn't end up using Excel. They wouldn't let me touch their stuff!
7. CaptionsLIVE Raw Transcript _____________________________________________________________________________________________________ Note that this is an unedited transcript of a live event and therefore may contain errors. This transcript is the joint property of CaptionsLIVE and the authorised party responsible for payment and may not be copied or used by any other party without authorisation. Page 86 (LAUGHTER) (LAUGHS) And then as part of that, being able to then go through and define all of these different components as part of that future vision. And one of the key parts that we found as part of that project was to really deep-dive and define the roles that we were building for, and what were the needs of the team. Because what I found was that they didn't actually want to scale the team. Most teams want to scale, but they're like, "If we have to scale, there's probably an issue." And the reason they'd need to scale is because of all the manual activities they were doing. And so I spent time understanding, what do their roles look like in the future as part of this digital transformation? And really deeply understanding that they wanted to keep about three people in the team, they really wanted to spend more time with product, they wanted to spend more time with the operations team to basically spread the good word of Treasury - which, why would you want that?! And so being able to spend that time with everyone else meant that I could understand the type of tools that we needed to design for the organisation as part of the digital transformation. And so as part of that, defining all of these different components of how they relate to each other, around strategy, the benefit, the value that we're delivering, not just for the experience but for the people as well. Because all of it, as we've heard today, all of it's interconnected, and as we know. And then, now that you've done that, it's time to decide. So, this is where you decide on your selection criteria. So, this is where you're starting to look at new tools and figuring out which ones you want to go with. And so your selection criteria should be informed from your future experience, and using that to then put together a criteria that you're then able to use to go forward with, to assess different platforms. And so it's really about understanding what exists in market and then what is your vision and where is that overlap there? Like, is there an overlap? Have you gone, like, way too big? That
8. CaptionsLIVE Raw Transcript _____________________________________________________________________________________________________ Note that this is an unedited transcript of a live event and therefore may contain errors. This transcript is the joint property of CaptionsLIVE and the authorised party responsible for payment and may not be copied or used by any other party without authorisation. Page 87 you actually can't find anything in market, that you actually have to build something yourself. And being able to map that out and understand it. Like, "Do we have to build certain components ourselves?" And so what I did was, when deciding on a new decisioning platform, is that we went to market basically to understand, like, "Do we want to go to market? Do they have what we're looking for?" Because we had a lot of components we were looking for around machine learning, around being able to have our credit team do it all themselves. And we decided that certain parts would actually be built in-house, and then other components, we would be going out to market to select that tool with, which then brings us to... Decide on your technology. And so this is where you're going out to market, doing those assessments with different technology teams, technology companies, to understand what are they offering? Does this match your vision? And either, like, looking at their websites to refine that list because there are so many ones that exist in market, or getting them to do showcases for you. And so what we did for that decisioning platform was that we narrowed it down from 10 to 4 different options. And we spent time with them, doing detailed showcases with them, to really understand how did it come to life? Was it something that we could implement as part of our current ecosystem? And would it allow us to bring it to life, in alignment with our vision? And then once we did that, we were able to then narrow it down to two different options. And so this is where we had one option, which looked like it was built in the '90s and no-one updated it, ever. Surprisingly, it still had fancy tools, which I was shocked at. And then the other option that we had was like a start-up, where they spent a lot of time making the interface look really great, it was missing a few of the features, and then we were able to then basically do that comparison and that assessment of it to really figure out what's right for us, and what do we want to go forward with? And as part
9. CaptionsLIVE Raw Transcript _____________________________________________________________________________________________________ Note that this is an unedited transcript of a live event and therefore may contain errors. This transcript is the joint property of CaptionsLIVE and the authorised party responsible for payment and may not be copied or used by any other party without authorisation. Page 88 of that, doing those detailed case studies of giving them different artefacts to test it out for us. And so then, as part of that transformation project, what we did was we spent time putting together our recommendations of, "This is which one we recommend as a team, that we should go forward with." Thankfully, for my own soul and happiness, we went for the one that looked very pretty but it also still worked! Because the other one, yeah, it was basically a very fancy Excel document. And then the next part is to decide on your Minimum Loveable Experience. And so you have your technology, and now it's time to figure out, "What can you build in the time frames that you have?" So, this is really about that marrying of the value and the effort together to make sure that you're able to deliver within those time frames, and then also making sure that you're solving all of those pain points that you have identified in the first phases of the experience. And then what I did was, for another project where we were doing a transformation of how we deliver financial advice, and we were bringing in goals-based advice, where we were using people's current goals and aligning that to their finances. To test it out, what is our Minimum Loveable Experience? We spent time, basically we created a game board that we tested out with our customers and with our financial advisers to get them to start to tell us, like, what are they looking for? What level of, like, our goal achievability measure did they want? And what other features should we include as part of that? And what we found was, actually, that the goal achievability measure that we had, that measured how likely you were to achieve your goals, that was the key component. And so then we were able to then map out, on our timeline, this is what we're looking at delivering, and then make those adjustments to be able to bring that to life to go, "Well, actually, we should focus on these other pieces that we're gonna deliver more value with." Going back to another
10. CaptionsLIVE Raw Transcript _____________________________________________________________________________________________________ Note that this is an unedited transcript of a live event and therefore may contain errors. This transcript is the joint property of CaptionsLIVE and the authorised party responsible for payment and may not be copied or used by any other party without authorisation. Page 89 example that I have been talking about, around the loan management system, what we did was we spent time defining our Minimum Loveable Experience and then we spent time defining our experience, and defining as well, as part of that, "What are we gonna deliver in a week?" So, we had a 2-week sprint, where the first week was experience planning, the second week was delivery planning. Being able to map that out with all of our key team members, to be able to understand, "What are we looking for to deliver as part of the experience?" And then, "Can we actually deliver it?" So, going through and defining those stories to really understand whether it's gonna be something we can do as a team. And as part of that, we built out an end-to-end blueprint that basically brought that experience to life. And then used that to play back to teams to make sure that this is what we're looking to deliver - is it right? Is it gonna get us to where we think? And is it gonna solve those pain points that we've identified as part of our current state? And we really used it to basically get that alignment with each other so that we could all be on the same page. And then, with that blueprint, what we also did was we highlighted all of those different parts to highlight, "What are the parts that we're changing? And what are the parts that are gonna stay the same in the experience? That we're gonna rebuild on the platform that we've selected, so that we can then show team members that this part is gonna actually change and this part is gonna be new?" So, we can start to use that to communicate to the wider teams. And then we have Deliver. And so deliver is really about delivering your technology. So, you've selected it, you've defined your Minimum Loveable Experience, and now it's time to deliver all of it - surprisingly! And so this is making sure that you're able to implement the right thing and apply that continuous delivery mindset, where you're basically thinking about what you're doing, planning, doing, and then reviewing it.
11. CaptionsLIVE Raw Transcript _____________________________________________________________________________________________________ Note that this is an unedited transcript of a live event and therefore may contain errors. This transcript is the joint property of CaptionsLIVE and the authorised party responsible for payment and may not be copied or used by any other party without authorisation. Page 90 And so making sure you're iterating incremental. Just because it's a new technology stack, it doesn't mean that you've made all of the right choices during the discovery phase, and so making sure that you're constantly reviewing to ensure that you're gonna give the customers the best experience. And so one project that I observed was where we were delivering a tax calculator for financial advisers and customers, and what happened was, what was delivered ended up not being used by anyone. And so when we did, like, a bit of a post-mortem on the dead tool, we found out that there wasn't enough discovery done and there wasn't enough, like, continuous, iterative and incremental improvement that was made through it. And so what we found out was that they weren't using it because it didn't give them enough confidence and clarity. And so what then had to happen was there had to be a pause in the project, where we then went forward and did more discovery so we could then improve the experience going forward for the users, so that they actually used the tax calculations and it wasn't just something that just went in the bin. And going back to that example that I had around the loan management system, so to make sure that we didn't have that sadness of having to pause everything and then redo discovery, we spent time, after we had that 2-week inception, so we had that experience planning, then the delivery planning, then we spent two weeks afterwards to make sure we were set up for success, that we had everything we needed to be able to have a successful project. And so that included making sure that we had our delivery plan defined, and then also refining those designs to make sure that everyone knew what we were gonna be delivering was right, and then also that we had a plan to go forward to validate our assumptions so that we could make sure that we weren't gonna deliver something that was wrong. And then the next part is deliver on your
12. CaptionsLIVE Raw Transcript _____________________________________________________________________________________________________ Note that this is an unedited transcript of a live event and therefore may contain errors. This transcript is the joint property of CaptionsLIVE and the authorised party responsible for payment and may not be copied or used by any other party without authorisation. Page 91 change management. And so the key element of a project is making sure that people use it. Like that example I had before where no-one used it, you want to make sure that people use it. And so change management is more important than delivery. Because if people who are gonna use it don't understand the value, or it's not gonna be right for them, then there's no point in building it. And which is why change management is more important. It's not just comms, and it's about continuous stakeholder engagement and engaging with them constantly, and taking them on that journey of working with them closely, letting them know what you're doing, like, what is the "why" behind it, making sure that they align with the "why" that you've crafted together. And so to make sure that I have the right people involved in all of the sessions, what I will do is I'll map out all of the different stakeholders and highlight who are the key influencers and who are the key decision-makers. And then it allows you to then know who needs to be involved in what session and who's really essential to either have, like, one-on-one sessions constantly with, or to engage and make sure that they're always making those choices that are required. And so on that project around the advice creation, what we were doing was we were creating a new way for financial advisers to create financial advice. What I did was I mapped out that landscape of what all of our stakeholders, and I then figured out who was part of our core team, who were the people that were gonna be working on the project day-to-day, and who were part of our extended team? So, subject matter experts we were gonna be engaging with. And so what I was able to define as part of that project was we had our three Steves. We had Bondi Steve - he lived in Bondi! (LAUGHTER) He was very tan! (LAUGHS) Tannest of all the Steves. (LAUGHS) And so he was our project director. And then we had Tech Steve - not sure if you know where he works. And then we had Product
13. CaptionsLIVE Raw Transcript _____________________________________________________________________________________________________ Note that this is an unedited transcript of a live event and therefore may contain errors. This transcript is the joint property of CaptionsLIVE and the authorised party responsible for payment and may not be copied or used by any other party without authorisation. Page 92 Steve, so he was our product manager. And so being able to identify all of the Steves, and then myself, as part of that core team - who do we need to engage and work with across this project? - and then obviously define which Steve is which so we didn't get them confused. And then we had the... When I was working on an application experience, we were defining a new way to apply for a product. And so using a slightly different framework to make sure that we're defining who's gonna be involved in the end-to-end journey of the project. And so using the RACI formula to see who's responsible, accountable, and making sure we're really identifying all of those different people as part of the project. And so we're able to then define, once we started that project, who all of these different people are and who do we need to engage across all of these different sessions that we're having to start to define the experience that we want to deliver? And so as part of that project, we spent time mapping out, creating an engagement plan to identify all of the people who are gonna be involved at different points in time. And what we were able to then do was engage different team members to make better experiences as we needed it. And so, say, when working on, bringing the data team allowed us to then understand from them how we could use benchmarks to validate information, how we could make the application easier for customers so that we didn't have to ask as many questions, so they could get easily through the experience without us having to ask them 50 questions. Or how we could make sure all of our controls were embedded in the experience without having to not be compliant. And then we have deliver your North Star. And so this one is really about - so, you've delivered that Minimum Loveable Experience and now it's time to take it further. And so it's really about making sure that you have everyone engaged and involved as part of the project. And then
14. CaptionsLIVE Raw Transcript _____________________________________________________________________________________________________ Note that this is an unedited transcript of a live event and therefore may contain errors. This transcript is the joint property of CaptionsLIVE and the authorised party responsible for payment and may not be copied or used by any other party without authorisation. Page 93 evolving what you've delivered and testing it with people, and then doing continuous discovery with them to make sure that it's working for them and they're using it. And so one of the projects that I worked on was around the collections experience, and so what we were doing was we delivered a bit of the experience, and then we put together basically an end-to-end discovery plan of how we engaged them and how we would chat to them. Some of the questions we were asking were around whether there were any gaps in - trying to figure out if there were any gaps in our knowledge, and understanding what are the tools they were using. And so as part of that, doing an experience survey with them so we could use that with executives to be able to then play back how customers are finding the experience and what are some of the things that they really enjoy as part of it? Or what are some of the things that they aren't using that hasn't improved their ways of working? And still taking the same amount of time. And what we were able to then do was understand all of that, and then have some really good metrics that we could then play back to the executives, to let them know that people are actually using what we've delivered, and therefore we should probably, like, continue delivering more, but also get that buy-in from them that we've delivered something that's of all and is going to be used by the collections team. And so what we were then able to is highlight all of the different screens in a user flow, where we mapped it all out to show what are we gonna update in the next part of the project, so we were able to get everyone on the same page. So, there we have it: Define, decide, and deliver. So, the framework for a successful digital transformation. And every digital transformation also needs four critical factors embedded in it. So, we had the three Ds. Now we have the three Cs. Four Cs - I can't fucking count! (LAUGHTER) So, now that we have four Cs, the first one that we have is culture. So,
15. CaptionsLIVE Raw Transcript _____________________________________________________________________________________________________ Note that this is an unedited transcript of a live event and therefore may contain errors. This transcript is the joint property of CaptionsLIVE and the authorised party responsible for payment and may not be copied or used by any other party without authorisation. Page 94 this one is really around making sure that everyone is working closely together, they're engaged, and they have really good relationships with each other. And it's about bringing them on the same journey so that you're able to work effectively together. And it's also about making sure that everyone is committed to the plan and the vision that you have because if people don't know the value, then you're gonna have problems going forward in the project. And so an example that I have is when working on a decisioning platform to make decisions around how people apply for a product, the team was starting to get really frustrated and they were basically like this. And they were struggling to work together effectively. And what we needed to do was come together and spend time realigning all our values of who we are as a team, and making sure that everyone knew, "This is how we want to work together so we can give effective feedback to each other and also connect with each other, and also demonstrate all of these values within a team that's able to basically work as one." And also develop those relationships because all of the different values that we had were really around aligning us to have positive intent for each other, so not assuming the worst, and then also being able to have those open conversations with each other, so we're able to raise any issues that we have at any point in time. And as part of these open conversations, it allowed us to then have vulnerability with each other, and then also build how we were able to connect at different points in time. And so it meant that we weren't just yelling at each other, it meant that we were actually building a culture within our team that really worked well so we could deliver at speed. And so what I did on another project was we set up our ways of working and our cadences, where what we were doing was we had all of these different ways for us to engage, and then on Fridays we would have
16. CaptionsLIVE Raw Transcript _____________________________________________________________________________________________________ Note that this is an unedited transcript of a live event and therefore may contain errors. This transcript is the joint property of CaptionsLIVE and the authorised party responsible for payment and may not be copied or used by any other party without authorisation. Page 95 Friday Fun - obviously, Friday is the funnest - and we'd basically play different games with each other, where we'd do, like, drawing games, we'd do - try and figure out, like, where the different, like, Google Map location was. And being able to have those fun moments and celebrate what we delivered as part of that project. And then the next one is around communication. And so this is really around having those check-ins with your executive team, making sure that you're connecting with everyone, you're having your stakeholders engaged, and you're having check-ins with your subject matter experts. But it's also about having honest and transparent conversations with everyone. And making sure that they're all on the same page as well so that you're not getting to the end of the project and it's like, "Well, why did you deliver that?" It's like, "No, we're having that continuous engagement." And so on that same project, what I did was, we had our sharing cadences as well integrated into how we connected with each other and how we shared with others. And so one of the ones that we had was around the Steer Co. So, we'd come with specific questions that we would have to ask the team. And this would be part of our executive team members on the Steer Co. So, they'd be giving us direction as to where we're going as an organisation, and then also helping answer questions for us as well. And we'd come at them with any blockers that we had, or also just general questions about what we were gonna do next as well, to get input on. And then the other part is sharing at showcases. So, sharing to the wider organisation so that everyone has an update as to what we're doing and why. And so at All Hands, we would be sharing how we were going - so, are we green, amber or red? And letting them know why we were at that stage, and also if we delivered something, we were able to scale up the product and bring more users on, then we were able to share with them, "This is what we're doing," and
17. CaptionsLIVE Raw Transcript _____________________________________________________________________________________________________ Note that this is an unedited transcript of a live event and therefore may contain errors. This transcript is the joint property of CaptionsLIVE and the authorised party responsible for payment and may not be copied or used by any other party without authorisation. Page 96 celebrate that success together as well. And then the third C, which is cost. So, this is really about that marrying the value with the effort. So, for any digital transformation project that you have, you really need to make sure that everything is worth the effort. Because it's such a large project and it's gonna cost you a lot of money, and so you want to make sure that everything makes sense and that it has a solid business case. And so on a project that I was working on around an application experience, what we did was we put together, basically, like, opportunity areas, and used it as our business case by providing different metrics around how that part of the experience was going. And so it had our pain points of what wasn't working well. And so one of the things that we found was that the quality of customers that were coming through wasn't the best, because they weren't qualified, they weren't actually gonna be able to apply for the product, and so our agent time, our sales agent time, was being wasted, as well as the customers' time. Because they'd go through the whole process, wait ages, and then they wouldn't get the outcome they were looking for. And so mapping all of that out so we knew, as part of that transformation, "What do we need to do? Are we gonna get the value from it?" So, being able to highlight as part of that, "What is the activity base costing? How much does this cost us to do? Also, how much will it cost us to build as well? And is this worth it? Should we do something else? Should we prioritise another opportunity instead of this one?" And then we have change. So, everything should change. It's part of life, it's part of business, and it's also part of digital transformation projects. And it's the only key to success. And being able to get comfortable with that change and being able to flow and adjust based on that allows the project to evolve over time. And one of the key things to enable - to make sure that you're accepting of change is to make sure
18. CaptionsLIVE Raw Transcript _____________________________________________________________________________________________________ Note that this is an unedited transcript of a live event and therefore may contain errors. This transcript is the joint property of CaptionsLIVE and the authorised party responsible for payment and may not be copied or used by any other party without authorisation. Page 97 that... Is to make sure that you're measuring things, to make sure you're on track. Because if you don't have a direction of where you're going, then it's going to make it hard to measure as to whether you're still on track as you make all of those changes. And so around, when we were designing an application experience, we used the time spent by agents and how long it was taking them to get through applications, how long it was taking customers to apply for funds and get that money - we were using that to measure to see how we'd improve the experience and whether it had gotten better, or how it was going. And as part of that one as well, what we had - as part of designing a new loan management system and bringing that to life, what we also did was we do fortnightly retros, where we'd go through the good, the bad, and the opportunity. And so this would be really around understanding, "What do we need to improve and what are those changes?" We all know a good retro. So, what we found was that we needed to allocate five minutes at the end of each meeting to be able to spend time and allow other team members to ask questions and clarify, as we had people on the team that English was their second language, and so allowing them that time to ask those questions, so they didn't go away, and we made sure that everyone was on the same page. Or as part of that project as well, making sure that we had transition plans for people, so that each time we had someone leave, or a new person come on the project, that we had a really easy process to make sure that they were onboarded as part of it. And what we found was that having confluence pages set up meant we were able to have them get on board and we didn't need to do so many new ways of working sessions. They were able to know what was their role and what they needed to do as part of the project, and how they were gonna be involved.
19. CaptionsLIVE Raw Transcript _____________________________________________________________________________________________________ Note that this is an unedited transcript of a live event and therefore may contain errors. This transcript is the joint property of CaptionsLIVE and the authorised party responsible for payment and may not be copied or used by any other party without authorisation. Page 98 And then, as part of a project where again we were doing advice creation for financial advisers, what we decided to do when we were creating that system was we'd get up to 70% confidence. Because we knew things would change once we delivered it, and so not spending that time perfecting everything, and ensuring that we're spending the time on discovery but not all of our time on discovery, and refining the design so that everything is incredibly perfect. And what we found was, when we were doing this, that we were deep-diving on how we provided tasks for agents, for our financial advisers. And what they ended up doing was, how they said they were gonna use it ended up being slightly different. What we were able to then do was deliver it, test it, figure out what worked, what didn't work, and being able to adjust it as we went. And because we hadn't invested so much more time into perfecting it, it didn't feel like throw-away, and it meant we were able to easily make that change and move forward without having to worry about losing time because we'd spent an extra two weeks or so testing it. We were able to just deliver it and see how it worked. And then the other part of change is to be able to pivot easily. And so on that same experience of delivering a new financial advice experience for financial advisers, what we initially did was, we got customers to give us all of their details at the start, after our first conversation, where we explore their goals, and we'd gather all of their information. And then we would have a session where we would explore, like, "What are some of the actions you could take around your advice? And what could you do as a customer?" And then we would then basically give them a plan of how to achieve their goals. What we found, because we were measuring how we were going, we found that, actually, like, we didn't have any difference in conversion rate. What we decided to do, because it was such a big task for them to provide us all of their details,
20. CaptionsLIVE Raw Transcript _____________________________________________________________________________________________________ Note that this is an unedited transcript of a live event and therefore may contain errors. This transcript is the joint property of CaptionsLIVE and the authorised party responsible for payment and may not be copied or used by any other party without authorisation. Page 99 we decided to then pivot, adjust, and only collect a small amount of customers' details in between those two conversations. So, we'd explore their goals, collect minor, like, basic information - like name, address, salary - then we would have our next conversation, so they could see the value in engaging with financial advice. And then we would then have a final conversation, where we would collect all of those extra details that we were missing. And so let's recap. So, here we have it: Define, decide, and deliver. So, digital transformation projects aren't unlike other projects that you've done. They're just at a larger scale and potentially have a lot more people involved. And so, as part of your project, it's important to define your objectives, your current experience, and your future experience, then decide on your selection criteria, your technology, and your Minimum Loveable Experience. Then, finally, it's time to deliver your technology, deliver on your change management, and also on your North Star. And any project only works if these four things are in place, which are around culture, communication, cost, and change. And making sure that these elements are all embedded in your project as part of any digital transformation. And so you might be wondering what happened with the roof of my family home. (LAUGHTER) Did it survive?! So, it did - just. After months of having a metal pole in the middle of the family room roof, we finally got it fixed. But it took over four months and it ended up going into winter, which isn't the best time to change a roof of an existing home. (LAUGHS) And it cost tens of thousands of dollars and it caused a lot of stress. And this is what happens when your digital transformation project doesn't have the right structures in place. It's about getting clear on defining, deciding, and delivering. And just like a great roof will last you many years, your digital transformation project will have a lasting impact on the business.
21. CaptionsLIVE Raw Transcript _____________________________________________________________________________________________________ Note that this is an unedited transcript of a live event and therefore may contain errors. This transcript is the joint property of CaptionsLIVE and the authorised party responsible for payment and may not be copied or used by any other party without authorisation. Page 100 Thank you very much for coming along. (APPLAUSE) STEVE BATY: Thank you, Sarah. Questions for Sarah? We've got a few minutes for some questions. If you do, put your hand up. If you don't, I have one to ask myself. Alright. Before we let you go, so, somebody posted via Zoom, through the virtual channel, asking, like, as you go through that process, what was the specific role of the experience design in that process? So, you're talking about a team of people who were, like, from different areas. What was the experience designs contribution? The CX or UX contribution? SARAH HEIMEIER: How, as part of that process, I always find it's really around, like, guiding the process and making sure that you're collaborating with everyone. And I always like to take the role of basically bringing that collaboration together. So, running the workshops, bringing everyone on the same page, bringing the subject matter experts together, making sure that you're defining what you're gonna be doing with the product owner or manager, and making sure that you're all aligned. And so it's really around working with everyone else, designing that experience, putting together a blueprint, making sure that they're all, like, everyone is happy with it, doing playbacks, running showcases. So, I think it's the full end-to-end, involved in all of the steps. Especially, part of the selection criteria and assessing those platforms. Like, it's really essential to have design as part of that, because otherwise you'll end up with the '90s tool that just puts you back. Instead of going forward as an organisation. STEVE BATY: Awesome. Any other questions for Sarah? Please join me in thanking Sarah. Thank you so much!