Data-Driven Innovation: Financial Services 1

Data-Driven Innovation: Financial Services

Case Study

Data-Driven Innovation: Financial Services 2

Data-Driven Innovation: Financial Services

54 West 40th Street New York, NY 10018

+1 (646) 851 0458 info@pelatum.co

At a glance

❖ A US market leader in financial services was losing money through increasing levels of late payments from customers.

❖ Across the leadership group, this issue was presenting financial risk, brand risk and degrading customer experience.

❖ Silos of insight prevented leaders inside the organization to unlock their collective intelligence.

❖ The limited perspectives of teams was a barrier to asking the right questions to analytics.

Simulation

Rapidly identify ingrained ways of working through a pressured Simulation

We selected a group of 20 leaders from the product team of +800 and ran a simulation to inspire them towards a new way of thinking.  Using motorsport to disruptive their way of thinking about data, we broke them up into competitive teams each with different areas of data responsibility and different ‘business missions’.  Using our technology, we deliberately exposed them to silos where they could only communicate through an in-built IM system and gave them access to an AI chatbot that could answer all the questions they had during the race relating to their strategy.

“They were confronted with issues ranging from trust to thinking of AI as a colleague”

Here, the team were exposed to real life behavioural challenges that they see each day.  Poor alignment of analytics to business priorities, weak questions to analytics that simply reinforced their plans and (in a fun way) exposed them to AI where they were confronted with issues ranging from trust to thinking of AI as a colleague.

Empowering the front lines to make analytics-driven decisions. The result was a clear set of behavioural gaps and ways of working friction points, that we were able to focus on during the next phase of the project; indeed most of the issues encountered in the Sim, were also issues that the leaders faced day to day at work too.

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Business Challenge

We selected a high value business challenge: late payments. This was a strategic issue to the executive team and was seen as a priority to solve and in doing so prove the value of what an effective data culture can do.  Whilst leaders knew what the problem was, they were unclear about how they could make analytics work hard towards increasing their understanding against it. This was all about formulating better questions.

Putting business value front and center We identified key themes to investigate and formulate questions against:

❖ Payments outside of the billing cycle

❖ Late payments across other channels

❖ User behaviour in terms of payment channel selection

❖ Billing shortages

❖ Notification preferences

Tackling the business problem - Late Payments

Cross functional agile teams We set up a cross functional group- people from different parts of the product team who didn’t typically work with each other everyday but close to the business challenges and importantly had the right level of domain knowledge.  Importantly, we included 2 members of the Enterprise Analytics Centre throughout the whole project. They were the custodians of the data and were to be set the challenge of answering the questions that we formulated.

We worked in short sprint cycles to keep momentum. This involved a 1-2 week sprint against each business area, during which the project team either joined a stand up call led by one of the team members or got together to run a short meeting exercise.

We supported through effective coaching around the ADAPT™ framework (see insert), providing performance support for the translators so that they could deploy at any stage when they got stuck.

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ADAPT Framework

Align Data Analysis Pivot Translate

Align - data to your business objective

Data - ask better questions to data

Analysis - joint with advanced analytics

Pivot - make a data driven decision

Translate - to the ecosystem

ObjectiveDevelop a shared mental model of a situation

Construct data question and corresponding data requirements

Challenge assumptions Re orientate the team to discover

Make a decision augmented by data and experience

Share insight with everyone who needs to know

Tone Alignment to Objective

Open inquiry External orientation

Test & Learn Challenge Good conflict

Inspire confidence in the decision

Connect, connect, connect

Leadership Traits Guide the team Curiosity, trust,

explore, discover

Empathy for others views Empower the team

Supportive discipline

Empower the network

PitfallsCommand and control approach Power to the leader

Group think “nodding heads” lack of shared understanding

Experience over data Conflicting information is often dismissed or ignored

Private promises Passive agreement Meaningless “yes” “what” without “why”

Silo thinking Internal politics

Helpful tips

Clarity, clarity, clarity

Explicit prioritization Simple language Design support

Let the techniques and data guide you Bring-in external views

Publically monitor decisions and promises

Build close trusted relationships with data translators

Killer Questions

What data would help us increase our understanding?

What would the impact of this be…? How might we…?

Do we have the right mix of people in the room?

What did you promise to do? What is stopping you? What is hindering you?

What did we expect to happen versus what actually happened?

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Faulty Logic

Reveal hidden connection between issues

For example, we ran a Key Assumptions check during the sprint that in a 60 minute meeting was to expose the team to faulty logic, identify some weak assumptions and as a result (most importantly) surface some high value questions:

Hypothesis Clients are unintentionally late on their payments

Weak assumptions, highlighting gaps in understanding ❖ Clients know they need to make a payment and

when that payment is due.

❖ Clients are receiving effective communication as to the status of their payment.

❖ Clients know their options for making a payment.

❖ These options are sufficient for making a payment how they want.

❖ Clients always have the funds available to cover the payment amount.

❖ Late payment notice, triggers action.

Better Questions ❖ Email vs Physically mailed bill notification. Which

one is more effective?

❖ What communications are clients receiving today about their bill status?

❖ Are clients that pay less frequently late most often?

Insight The method with which customers receive notices and pay their bills does impact the amount of late payments made monthly, and moving customers to electronic payments has increased the incidence of late payment by 50%

Making change stick

Rather than leaving the team with some powerpoint templates and fun memories, we provided them with a tool that they could then take back to their teams and deploy against other projects.  This for us really is the difference between sustaining success and scaling data culture change and just a one-off success.

Business value Modification of e-payment channels & late payment notifications

“This software really created a shift in our thought process… it was the missing piece to some of this work.”

“Every Project Manager wants to be more data-driven and this allowed us to be.” Senior Product Managers from the project

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Summary

Through inspiring a data culture with a project team, against a demanding business challenge, we were able to achieve value in the following ways:

❖ Build a capability of Translators to bridge the gap between business and analytics.

❖ Improve company wide demand for the services and resources of the Enterprise Analytics Centre by asking better questions.

❖ Demonstrate how working in a cross functional agile way stimulates alternative perspectives.

❖ Provide a scalable way of working for analytics and business team interactions.

❖ Drive  hypothesis-led thinking and provide structure to business and analytics collaboration.

Want to understand how you can build a data culture inside your organisation?Contact us: info@pelatum.co

Graham is our Founder and Managing Partner at Pelatum

Graham Hogg+1 (646) 851 0458

graham.hogg@pelatum.co

We are inspiring leaders towards a data culture. We are bringing people together to challenge their thinking and drive change. We are working with our clients to build the foundations that enable them to unlock value in analytics.

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