Supercharge BlackRock's digital transformation agenda by demonstrating what a lean and agile customer-first way of working looks like – and delivers for IFAs
The people behind the brand, the fund managers with their expertise and analysis, helps create trust and facilitate relationship building
A Proof of Concept of the future IFA experience, a digital transformation roadmap and a new customer-first way of working
Sprint facilitation
Business discovery
Audience profiling
Audience insights
Experience principles
Ideation
Rapid prototyping
Audience testing
Proof of Concept
Transformation roadmap
BlackRock was building a new team to drive digital transformation. Our mission was to help the team become seen as the go-to internal digital consultancy through demonstrating how we could transform audience engagement by creating an industry leading, simple and seamless customer first digital experience.
BlackRock, despite being one of the world’s largest investment houses, couldn’t afford to rest on its laurels. New digitally savvy brands and services were fast entering the financial market and were disrupting the way business was done.
Direct competitors aside, people’s expectations were rapidly moving on thanks to brands like Amazon, Uber or AirBnB offering slick customer first digital experiences.
BlackRock knew it needed to up its game. But to do that, it needed Ogilvy to help re-imagine not just how the outward customer experience would look and feel like – but also how it was internally set up to deliver.
As such, our job wasn’t as simple as just bringing fresh audience insights to the table and creating a new shiny digital experience at the back of it. That would just be a band aid solution.
“In the game of customer experience, your competition isn’t just your competition. It’s often your customers’ last best experience.”
Anyone who has experience in facilitating digital transformation of a brand will quickly tell you how the softer things of people, process, culture and vision really matter. Technology and data are of course important elements – but without the human enablers in place, your digital transformation is likely to fail.
This is why I like to think of it as human-centric transformation rather than a digital transformation. It's not just about the latest tech – it's about people and the living, breathing organisational dynamics and ecosystems that should be designed around fulfilling your customers needs.
As we took a peak underneath BlackRock’s bonnet, we saw there were a range of cultural, process and people-based barriers the business had to overcome:
Projects were taking far too long and cost too much to get to market
There wasn’t an empowered team in the business that had the mandate or momentum to lead the charge
In the face of bureaucracy and lack of clarity internally, the customer and their needs were often the last thing on people’s minds
In the light of these internal barriers, an outward facing customer experience, however good, wasn’t going to cut it. We needed a smart way to kill two birds with one stone: to transform both the digital customer experience and BlackRock internally at the same time.
“I like to think of it as human-centric transformation rather than digital.”
Project kick off at our dedicated Mission Control room at BlackRock
The good news was that we had a great client who really got it. Our client, a new Head of Digital of BlackRock EMEA, was on a mission to bring more customer-first, collaborative and lean and agile ways of working to the business.
Our role was to play an outside-in galvanizing force in the process representing the customer. By creating a Proof of Concept of the ideal future digital customer experience to aim for, our job was to help create a tangible change artefact that would help drive the desired organisational change in the process.
It was leading by example. Not theory, but about making it happen in practice. It was an exciting vision to be part of with the right customer-first approach.
“By creating a Proof of Concept of the ideal future digital customer experience, our job was to help create a tangible change artefact”
Our epic project identity
Having helped set up the project, Ogilvy formed a multidisciplinary team made up of Strategy, User Experience (UX), Design and Consultancy. I was assigned as the ‘Sprint Lead’ for the project to help drive the day-to-day charge forward, whilst also leading on the strategy including the customer insights.
To help shake things up at BlackRock, I saw an opportunity to bring some distinctive personality and energy into the project. This inspired the epic branding of the project team as BlackRock Transformers, as inspired by the Transformers series. I even played a clip of the actual Transformers movie to make a point about being lean and agile.
We set up mission control and set ourselves into a dedicated room at BlackRock. We boarded our Transformers identity and had our Mission and Transformers’ Code on the wall (after we got clearance to move expensive paintings away from the room). We even developed a set of Transformers trump cards for each of the key project team members.
This probably wasn’t what BlackRock employees had been used to – but if you can make your thinking fun and engaging then all the better!
“If you can make your thinking fun and engaging then all the better.”
We designed a set of BlackRock Transformers trump cards for the project team
Digital customer experience for a business like BlackRock is a vast topic; we needed a more specific business ambition and an audience to focus on. BlackRock’s ambitions around its UK equity income product became our business focus area and UK based Independent Financial Advisors (IFAs) our target audience.
With the project kicking off to a flying start, it was time to hit the ground running. Working to a series of sprints, we started from the typical business and stakeholder discovery. This was soon followed by a rapid but in-depth audience discovery.
I went around London interviewing a range of IFAs. The interviews were facilitated by a dedicated audience research partner supporting us in the project. My job was to observe and analyse key insights.
An IFA talking us through typical paperwork produced as part of a client engagement
Our quick discovery revealed us that IFAs were a diverse audience, with different mindsets and behaviours. Some had greater flexibility to create bespoke investment solutions to their clients whereas others were operating within pre-existing investment parameters defined by the companies they represented.
There was a related distinction between how qualitative Vs. data-driven they were in their approach. We also heard younger IFAs having different expectations when it came to content online.
What nevertheless united all IFAs was how they saw BlackRock as a reputable company. Having easier access to the latest insights and advise from BlackRock was something all IFAs wanted.
But there was a personal, more human relationship at play: the role of BlackRock's fund managers played a key role in being the face of the company for IFAs. It was the profile, expertise and advise of BlackRock’s fund managers that made a difference also in establishing trust between IFAs and their own end clients, thus playing a key role in building personal relationships.
The role of what digital experience had to do for BlackRock was starting to take shape.
“Having easier access to BlackRock's fund managers and the latest insights and advise they were offering was something all IFAs wanted.”
Talking to a client next to our wall of insights in our Mission Control room
Having identified a set of customer engagement opportunities, principles and requirements for content, data, tools and the user interface design – we set off on a rapid prototyping sprint. Prototypes were tested with our audience in iterative cycles.
After a round of sessions, we had an audience validated Proof of Concept experience for IFAs. We bucketed our experience concepts into three workstreams and developed a digital transformation roadmap to drive BlackRock forward, factoring in the human enablers.
I was part of presenting the thinking to BlackRock’s UK CMO and Global Head of Digital, who had flown from New York to get a first hand glimpse into our innovative work.
We had excited the business, showcased a new customer-first, lean and agile way of working – and had an inspiring Proof of Concept experience the business could aim for. For Ogilvy, this helped also unlock further experience design sprints over the course of the following two years.
It was a mission accomplished.
“We bucketed our experience concepts into three workstreams and developed a digital transformation roadmap to drive BlackRock forward.”
User testing session back at the agency
“Antti is a consummate professional and consultant with solid UX expertise across the spectrum of user research, prototyping, strategy, design and testing. The man is a lightning-fast learner; picking up the nuances of our incredibly complex business very quickly and builds relationships flawlessly.”
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