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Strategic Design believes in the power of human-centered design to uncover problems and create innovative solutions. We aim to help our clients become more agile, innovative and customer-centric to stay competitive in the ever-changing global landscape.
Our philosophy is rooted in a Human-centred design (HCD) approach – It’s a creative approach to problem-solving that begins with empathy for your end-users and ends with innovative solutions tailor-made to meet their needs.
Our client was a Mortgage aggregation business, whose clients – the Mortgage Brokers were undergoing the scrutiny of the Royal Commission for bad practises and putting both the customers and brokers business model as risk.
For years, the Australian mortgage broking industry has been run like cowboys, with the lenders (Banks) paying commission, the customers have experienced a second-class service and misguided which contributed towards to GFC (Great Financial Crisis).
The royal commission investigation and public hearing trials brought these findings to light and the final recommendations was a powerful catalyst towards change to ensure organisations become customer centric and put the customer at the heart of the business. The brokers lobbied and campaigned hard to save the business model, so the recommendations had been postponed by 3 years for a further view.
While that was a short lifeline, the organisation was forced to revisit their business model and understand how they can create business efficiency and truly become customer centric.
We started the agile transformation within the IT department that had received negative feedback from all the departments as being non-responsive with low productivity.
We used a scaled approach, started with 2 squads, and gradually converted teams to high performing squads. We then defined the IT/Business operation model and re-organsied the IT structure to be aligned to the 3 business lines.
As part of this process, we changed the culture, mindset and business show IT as a partner and not a servant. We increased the productivity by 500%.
The business also needed help. There were challenges left/right and centre. The problems were complex, in a volatile market with uncertainty and ambiguity. We introduced Customer experience as a anchor and competitive advantage and platform to guide discovery, design and delivery of high value solutions /offerings to both our brokers and end customers.
Amidst the VUCA conditions, it was not clear where to start. We chose our brokers and end customers as a starting point. Go back to business basics, why do we exist? What customer problem are we solving? How do we make this experience remarkable to build lifelong loyalty
We mapped out the current customer journey and identified the needs and pain points. We engaged the customers to identify moments that matter and prioritised the design and delivery of solutions that customers said delivered them the greatest value. The IT team was a partner, that proposed the latest technology to deliver this quicker and faster
By being open about the challenges of working together, we worked on leadership, mindset and behaviours. We used coaching techniques for meeting people where they are, doing the change with them not to them and orchestrating a partnership where both sides respect each other and hold themselves accountable.
While leaders have had hairy audacious goals and suggested technology ideas as silver button. We have seen this fail time and again and leave people burnt and disillusioned. We used the current customer journey and service design blueprint to find problems and opportunities, and used this as a bedrock to innovate not just for our customers for also for our internal staff. We co-created win, win win situations through collaboration and co-design, which maximised the adoption of the solution.
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Turn Complex Problems Into Strategic Opportunities