The story of Future Bank’s Tellus offer

There once was a bank called Future Bank. Their size was pretty much normal and they had been around for a long time. From start it had been a Savings Bank for ordinary people, a strong tradition still serving as the base for the earnings. However as globalisation, regulations and high tech put an increasing pressure on almost all banks, Future Bank felt a declining market.

The CEO of Future Bank was a farsighted man who, together with the Management Team, had thoughts about renewing the bank’s business to better address the competition. “Sustainability is the area where I want us to stand out” the CEO argued and as always he added “and let us not forget we have customer out there!”

“Speaking about our customers!” The Savings Manager took the opportunity and continued: “For some time now I have tried to remind you about the new regulations forbidding us to charge private customers when giving them investment advice. By the end of this year this revenue stream will just disappear into the blue. We should have done something about it three years ago, when the new regulations were announced.”

“Speaking about our customers!” The Legal Director took the opportunity and continued: “For some time now I have tried to remind you about the new regulations forbidding us to charge private customers when giving them investment advice. By the end of this year this revenue stream will just disappear into the blue. We should have done something about it three years ago, when the new regulations were announced.”

“Calm down!” the CIO said addressing the Legal Director. “You know it has not been possible to rebuild the business model before all our IT-systems have been made compliant. I have been assured the project will be finalised any day now.”

The CEO looked despairingly on the CIO and took word: “That is simple not good enough, banking is about customers and finance, not just IT. We have to create new revenue streams before it’s too late.”

The Legal Director looked ingenious and said “I have actually done some thinking and reckon it would be possible to attract funds brookers.. And other And as you mentioned sustainability suddenly more pieces came in place.

So the debate continued and the Management Team finally concluded to run for

to expand the range of services. With additional services would be possible to offer end customers added value and that could increase their purchases of Future Bank's customers.

Focus

The management team considered that an expanded range of services was in line with Future Bank's vision and defined therefore a new focus:

Increase of additional services which Future Bank gets a share of sales generated
automatically measured in the system
Number of transactions generated from an additional service
today, we have no transactions
summer 2019 we want to have at least 1,000 transactions per month,
the summer of 2018 we want to have at least 100 transactions per
month,if we have not achieved more than 10 transactions in January 2018, we put all efforts

Business Initiative

said and done! After the holidays in 2017 chose Future Bank product management to start looking at a new business initiative called "Works Service Marketing Automation?". Because there was considerable uncertainty around the customer's view of additional services was the key success factor to the "Customers are willing to use an automated marketing service and think it's ok to Future Bank takes a percentage per transaction."

The CIO objected this kind of initiative needs to be analysed and planned rigorously there is for example a lot of security issues to handle.

No, cannot afford to do all this analysis any more, when all preparations are ready some else is already out on the market and we have missed an oppotunity.

In the ranking ended Initiative maximum. Even if goodwill had a one and time criticality of funds as was uncertainty reduced the huge stack. The teams said "Yes, there should not be that strange to find out," so work effort got a one. Other current business initiatives would require much greater effort.

Feature

Thus did the initiative fly further and product line created along the feature "Tip to the customer based on what others are buying," and with the assumption that customers will be in favor of a tip and happy to buy things other people have chosen. The formulated therefore hypothesis; "About 20% of customers who receive a tip make an extra purchase, customers are generally positive." On the same grounds as affärsinitivet ended the feature highly in the ranking.

Story

In the next 3 months planning took team Lego responsibility for the feature and created the story "The end customer can I gratefully received a tip from a cashier in the store what other customers, who have purchased the same product, have bought so that I do not miss to buy something valuable to me. "

The team's product owner prioritized story high and asked the developers to make an MVP. In the three-month period's first sprint hit the developers put their heads together and decided to contact five stores in Skärhamn who used Future Bank. With some simple special notches, Excel, and a lot of manual work would probably within a couple of days to get a specialinstruerad cashiers to give advice to their customers shop.

The delivery went extremely well, and by the team put great effort into systematically interviewing both cashiers and end customers so they learned a lot about the end user experience. Although only 10% of customers chose to make an extra purchase, based on tips, they were 5 store owners still very positive about the experiment. Shop owners said that if 20% of the margin on the additional sales went to Future Bank, it would be perfectly reasonable.

The most valuable and completely unexpected discovery was the information from end users who did not make any additional purchases. They said they had received tips in the store before they reached the checkout, they would probably have traded more. Team Legos product owners knew immediately that this information was important and took it for discussion in the product line.

Sprint Review

During the sprint examination shortly after the product line very satisfied. In just two weeks, they received confirmation that marketing can be perceived positively by Future Bank customers. To obtain this knowledge was also one of the 3-month objectives of maximum value. Thus did produktedningen that the initiative was clear and they immediately began to think about a new initiative for the next three-month period. Now felt product line much more confident in the design. Next initiatives would have a self to customers in the store while they shop.

Continued deliveries

spring 2018 had Future Bank, after a series of successful experiments, begun delivering customer terminals to all the shops in Skärhamn. Of course, with only a cost for store owners. On a client terminal, which was called "Psst, you forgot're not?", There was the option to scan an item and get information about what others bought. All purchases which could be coupled with a search on the customer terminal tagged as extraköp.

Only in Skärhamn created in May 80 transactions as a direct result of the tips that end customers have in store. Meanwhile, the Future Bank's staff to retrieve valuable information from end customers' experiences. A small, but in the long term important detail was that the logo "Powered by Future Bank" was perceived as more and more positive.

Operation

Although additional service ended up being something other than what förbättingsledningen wondered from the beginning, everyone was more than satisfied with the solution, after all, was in line with what we wanted to accomplish. The team also felt that they had been very useful to understand the focus area thoroughly. They gave frames combined with responsibility for the solution had been very inspiring.

When the team began developing the final solution had the great advantage of having been involved from the beginning when the initiative was only at the conceptual stage. To understand the end customer's needs in depth and to let this drive technological developments contributed greatly to reducing the workload and deliver the right functionality.

The story of a competitor

about the same time as the Future Bank started thinking about marketing automation so went ERP provider Retceps Mollosund the same ideas. (Lars Rosenhoff have full control of the company). They chose to make a more comprehensive roll-out to all its customers. The project, which lasted for over a year with an initially well-defined solution ended in a minor disaster with many annoyed end customers who felt exploited and monitored. Retceps management was very surprised that in spite of careful preparation, hired consultants and agile team could go so wrong.

Epilogue

This story is highly unlikely in the field events, but basically it shows how a company can work practically with their back log to ensure that what is most important gets done as soon as possible. All businesses need in one or another way to evaluate what is most important to focus on right now. To make the choice of the backlog is a way. Many other companies are choosing to instead move resources and create new organizations of their choice.

Of course there are other techniques to manage the backlog, which provides roughly the same effect. Understanding the principles are more important. This story has primarily focused on the principles:

stable co-located teams that only have a back log
All work is prioritized based on the maximum value
Back log contains development both for the existing business and any future business
decisions about the solution taken as late as possible to
accept the big uncertainty
Test early and to fail quickly