Caroline M Credit Union Case

Investment Product

The complete journey of a new investment product for one of the biggest credit unions in Brazil

Context

The client - one of the biggest credit unions in Brazil - identified the opportunity to offer a new investment product to its users, with the aim of having a greater volume of money entering the Union to offer as a credit to other associates.

In addition, they thought the project would be a great moment to learn about the innovation methodology and change the culture of projects within the company.

Target

Deliver the whole journey of the new product with all the interdependencies, for all the sales platforms and internal management, following the money until the user redeems it with the earnings.

Plan

We had 4 months to finalize the project with all the tested prototypes and user stories validated with stakeholders and the client's IT team.

Therefore, we decided to use one month for each phase of the project below: research, insights, ideology, and prototype/user testing.

Discovery

Define

Develop

Delivery

Rerearch 1 month

For the research phase, we mapped the project's strategic publics to help us define the profiles to be interviewed and we built the questionnaires for each one.

26 interviews were conducted with the internal public: Central Bank of Brazil, Outsourced Companies, and employees (CEO, CIO, IT, Branch Managers, Information Security, Product, Education, Marketing, Legal, Risk and Compliance, Accounting and Commercial).

+ 20 interviews with the users: from all corners of Brazil, personal and business account holders, urban and agro profiles, investors and non-investors, retirees…

During the immersion phase, we conducted mystery shopping in our client branches and in companies of the same role to understand how investment products are offered by other companies.

During the analysis phase, we also synthesized user interviews into 5 personas, to help us visualize the concerns, goals, motivations, and educational level of users about investment products.

We also described their behavior with the use of all platforms (digital and presential), their relationship with other credit unions/banks, and their satisfaction with our services.

26

Internal interviews *

20

User interviews *

5

Personas *

* Research numbers

Insights 1 month

In the second month of the project, we worked on debriefing the interviews.

The internal conversations helped us to build the blueprint of the service, flagging all software interdependencies, and areas involved from the project conception until the day-to-day routine with the product and attention points.

With the blueprint, we were able to visualize the need to develop a new software to manage the guarantees 💰, not expected at the beginningof the project.

The Blueprint was presented to the project stakeholders, IT team, and Central Bank of Brazil for discussion and validation.

Mobile Prototype

Starting with Mobile Application, when we built the first wireframes we saw an opportunity to improve the investment journey for the user (the client already had 2 other investment products).

In alignment with the development team, we understood that to develop this solution we would have significant changes in the architecture of the existing products, involving other external suppliers and increasing the cost and developing time of the project.

As we knew that these changes would bring significant value to the user, we presented the solution to the Product Director with all the negatives and positives for the user, business, and technology.

With the OK from the Business 🥂, we rebuilt the entire investment journey of the app, adding a new investment menu, with a dashboard to track the performance of all invested products (considering the limitations of the technology used).

To validate it, we tested the wireframes with 8 users: we presented some tasks for them to follow and measured success with questions at the end of each task and a SUS form completed after the session.

After the adjustments based on usability tests, we finalized the high-fidelity prototypes and delivered them to the development team, with all the user stories and requirements.Also, we kept following the front-end development, to ensure that it was following the prototypes.

ATM

For ATM screens, the functionalities are reduced, as the user can't do applications and redemptions.

Therefore only the balance checking journey was designed and tested, following the layout of existing products.

Internet Banking

For internet banking, the functions were the same, so we followed a similar journey as the app, therefore we also made architectural changes to the website.

All prototypes were validated in the same way we did for mobile

SGL (Guarantees Management System)

The last prototype designed was the new software for managing investment guarantees.

Also, this software was built to communicate directly with the Central Bank of Brazil, in order to provide daily reports and mandatory documents to enable the new investment product.

It was designed closely for developers, accounting, investment specialists, and central bank technicians.

COLMÉIA (Banking internal software)

When the user chooses to go to the Bank to make applications, the Bank managers use the internal software called "Colmeia" to manage the user's investments.

It is also at Colmeia where all the parameterization of product characteristics (field, grade period, minimum application, etc.) is managed by the Accounting team.

We designed the screens for all journeys of the new product for Colmeia Software, such as customer services.

All journeys were tested with Branch Managers and the Accounting team.

Conclusion

We finalized the innovation phase of the project with validated prototypes, requirements, and user stories for all five client platforms. We also delivered personas, a complete communication plan for the new product, a service blueprint, and product training for employees. Furthermore, as the client wanted to improve the company's project flow and disseminate the innovation culture in the company, during all phases of the project we involved the client, carried out sensitization of methodologies (design thinking and agile framework), and at the end of the project, we delivered a detailed suggestion of Project Framework for implementation in the company's next projects.

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