Enabling Product Innovation
It begins with understanding your customer’s needs.
| Challenge | A banking software company believed the Small Business market segment had both huge growth potential and critical need for tools and services to help them grow their businesses. |
| What’s wrong with that? | – Lack of intelligence around what specifically small businesses needed; what were their greatest obstacles to business growth? – Need of a structured approach enabling the generation of viable, innovative solution alternatives. – A desire to move quickly and be first to market with an offering to fill this perceived gap. |
| Innovation services delivered | The generation of multiple viable solution concepts, leading to the delivery of a new digital small business banking product. |
Context
Based on market research, a banking software development company identified that small businesses, both in their region and globally, seemed to all be struggling with similar challenges – a lack of support, services and tools that could streamline their operational burden and enable them to focus on growth. With this hypothesis in mind, the firm worked in partnership with changeUp to explore this opportunity and wanted to do so in a way that:
- could quickly affirm the validity of their early research
- would build a deeper understanding of how this perceived gap in the market could most effectively be addressed
- generated ideas that would benefit small business owners, while providing business value to both themselves and their banking clients
- achieved all of the above as quickly as possible, mitigating risks of costly development efforts that in the end did not provide value
Approach
ChangeUp was brought in as a partner to first strategize on the most effective approach, and then design, organize and facilitate its execution.
- Designed a 2-day event bringing together small business owners with those looking to understand and help them – a cross-functional group of banking representatives and technology specialists.
- Applied a Design Thinking methodology to provide structure, speed and efficiency while ensuring a customer centered approach, enabling creativity and collaboration.
- Layered in exercises to explore the desirability of small business owners, as well as the viability and technical feasibility of solution concepts.
- Created the environment (the space, event structure, agenda, materials, food … even the music) enabling participants to connect with their customers, immerse themselves in the problem and generate inspired ideas.
Impact
- Product Innovation: This forum and process led to the delivery of a new digital banking product designed to specifically meet the needs of a fast-growing, profitable market segment.
- Discovery and Insight: Through first-hand interactions with customers, participants gained valuable insights into their goals, needs, most pressing problems, behaviors and factors driving decision making.
- Efficiency: In the span of 2 days, 7 actionable solution prototypes were developed.
- Customer Engagement: An engaged client community, willing to partner on an ongoing basis in future efforts to co-create solutions, was formed. The foundation of a trusting partnership was in place.
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