The project
The rise of digital banks such as Nubank and Revolut has accelerated the adoption of User Experience (UX) Design by traditional retail banks. However, the business branches have been much slower to catch up with this user-centric mindset.
This scenario started to change in 2018 when new digital banks started developing services to entrepreneurs and small companies (MEI and SIMPLES).
The race to enhance the user experience in the business segments has begun: this project is about providing a set of strategic recommendations to a business bank to improve its digital channels experience and services.
My role
Project manager – working with 3 UX designers.
* User research executed by another team.
We prepared a list of recommendations about what and how the bank’s digital channels should be improved.
Project
Map opportunities and challenges in business banking services.
Solution
An extensive list of recommendations and a POC Mobile Prototype.
Impact
Changes in the project pipeline for 2020
Context
In our long research and analysis process, we did an extensive analysis of the bank industry in Brazil and identified underlying operational and technological issues:
- Many Banks are organized in silos with limited data exchange between them.
- Legacy systems with old data structures blocks data integration.
- Present interfaces still mirror the old legacy data structure and bad UX.
- When acquiring new companies with different databases data exchange with the bank’s main system is problematic.
These factors have a significant influence on the overall User Experience (UX), including problematic heuristics and inconsistent interface design.
However, the biggest issue is that legacy systems and their data structure make is that it’s very difficult to use RPA/AI and data analytics to provide valuable and organized information to the end-user.
Bank apps present user data mostly in raw data, leaving the user to collect, organize and match inputs from multiple sources.
Since most small business owners and entrepreneurs have no understanding of financials and accounting, they have trouble making business decisions based on future cash flow (accounts receivable and accounts payable) and matching data from different payment sources.
“Cash is King”
If you have trouble mapping the cash flow, you may break your business.
We observed that several small business owners avoid checking their banking accounts because they struggle to understand what’s going on: are either scared of seeing that they have done some bad decision or that they don’t have cash.
We identified that most bad business decisions are due to misinterpreting the cash flow.
Our main challenge should be to help people to interpret the financial data presented by the bank.
How might we organize banking information to help users make better business decisions?
Solutions
Medium and Large corporations have resources – software, staff and a financial department – to handle large amounts of data points and make good decisions.
SME businesses have more trouble collecting and making sense of banking data because they don’t have enough resources or know-how.
What if the banking app could organize and analyse all data and provide alerts and recommendations?
We designed a mobile app concept that organizes small business owners most important financial data, from different data points and financial products, so they can make better decisions and take better care of their businesses.
All banking products numbers are centralized on a single interface and allow them to have a single high-level view of all their most important financials, accounts receivable and payable.
This allows the app to offer alerts about their decisions, future events – like a payment that is shortly due, or investment recommendations based on cash flow predictions.
Deliverables
- An extensive list of all usability issues, organized and prioritized.
- Comprehensive service and microservice list of all competitors.
- List of 10 areas of opportunity where the bank could become the segment leader.
In order to present our mobile app solution, we also identified a list of business-related issues that could hinder the Advance of Digital Transformation that is expected of Retail Banks.