Building App from Scratch for Leading European Asset Manager
A leading Slovenian asset manager turned to BCG Platinion for support, seeking to tap into digital onboarding opportunities by completely re-inventing their mobile app from the ground up. The company’s existing application lacked key digital capabilities such as onboarding, preventing them achieving a winning user experience (UX) and leading the market. The customer expressed an ambition to expand its operations across the Balkans, which would require them to seamlessly facilitate payments and execute key aspects of onboarding like KYC (Know Your Customer) and AML (Anti Money Laundering) checks. With the goal of building a tailored, innovative mobile application, a combined team of core BCG and Platinion experts handled both the design and delivery phases end-to-end.
The Approach
Vision
Creating a detailed vision for the app to inform the project’s scope was a crucial first step, enabling the client to identify the needs of their target customers and the business. Having pinpointed these key requirements, we devised a plan to deliver a truly bespoke solution.
Based on our findings and strategy, the capability that emerged as a top priority was an end-to-end digital onboarding process. We set out to deliver a seamless, fully digital, mobile-centric experience that would allow new prospects to become fully-vetted clients, with access to the whole suite of investor tools offered by the asset manager.
Our joint team of experts conducted an analysis of new system requirements, and developed a comprehensive solution backlog in collaboration with key business stakeholders. Working together closely ensured that user stories reflected the vision of the new mobile application defined initially.
We followed the agile principle of ‘early and continuous delivery’ to design clickable mock-ups of the app, testing them for usability with a focus group of target users. This enabled advantageous UX decisions to be made before the delivery phase was underway.
By utilizing agile principles, the BCG team significantly reduced the future project time that would need to be dedicated to laborious change requests, allowing resources to be allocated optimally to maximize impact for the client. As the design came together, it was time to pinpoint potential third-party payments and onboarding service providers.
Design Phase
In the first six-week design phase, the team also put project governance in place, ensuring that the app could be created from scratch in a timely, end-to-end way. This approach also ensured we would be in constant communication with all stakeholders throughout the recurring agile ceremonies, allowing everyone involved in the project to stay informed and ensure timely decision-making. This helped steer and focus the longer 20-week development and testing phase that followed.
Using the solution backlog we prepared initially, along with the functional requirements, non-functional requirements, and insights gathered while testing the clickable mockups, the team was able to prepare the app’s low-level design and schedule the associated sprints. The development leveraged resources from cloud providers like Azure and AWS Cloud, with best practice DevOps processes in place to ensure continuous delivery of the software.
After the solution was developed, the BCG team worked with testers from the client’s side to carry out SIT and UAT testing, ensuring that the application adhered to technical and business requirements. The double-platform deployment (separately on iOS and Android to assure bespoke user experience) included rollout, a comprehensive readiness assessment, and additional governance considerations.
Deployment was followed by a period of hypercare to closely monitor the live application, and to make any necessary adjustments. A post-launch roadmap was then provided to support future app enhancements, alongside manuals and technical documentation.
The Impact
The team successfully created and delivered the brand-new mobile application at pace, equipping the asset manager to seamlessly handle digital customer journeys end-to-end.
Offering an outstanding user experience, the app makes onboarding, investment portfolio management, and customer support functions intuitive and easy to use. The new mobile app empowers investors with greater ownership andcontrol, enabling informed, on-the-go decisions while still benefiting from theexpert guidance of asset management professionals. Additionally, the application offers a demo mode that allows new customers to familiarize themselves with the product without going through the full registration and investing their money.
Demonstrating the app’s effectiveness, approximately 50% of all users were successfully migrated to the new solution within the first month after going live. This engaged community of users are valuable evangelists when it comes to providing feedback and aiding continuous improvement.
From boosting sales efficiency and revenue generation, to serving as a source of useful customer data, the new mobile app has become a key competitive advantage for the client. Looking to the future, the app has the potential to increase the onboarding of new customers, bring new assets under management, and drive customer satisfaction metrics.
The co-operative project has established a strong, long-lasting relationship, and BCG is continuing to help enhance the onboarding process and meet our client’s business objectives. To find out more about BCG Platinion’s end-to-end design and delivery capabilities, get in touch with our experts!
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