"Design thinking" for better and faster value delivery of digitization projects in financial sector

Financial sector - Present scenario

• Digital technology and big data / analytics are shaking up the financial services industry as predicted

• New fintech start-ups have become a significant force

• Traditional banks are still cautious and are forced to trigger off their digital projects and many of these initiatives are still in a defensive mode to catch up tith the disruptors

• Most are uncertain about how best to build on core strengths to create suatainable outcomes. They are still exploring their blue ocean strategies on a trial and error mode

Overall, everybody in the sector are forced to innovate products and services beyond their traditional core businesses and have ventured / venturing into areas like;

Need to release frequently

• Almost all digitization projects in the financial sector are customer facing, hence are user experience (UX) driven. User experience is very unpredictable. We will get to know about it post release only

• The cycle time to deliver is much shorter. The market is not going to wait for anybody. This drives the the need for delivering a minimum viable product (MVP) as fast as possible and then enhancing them continuously

• Shift from Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDCA) cycles to faster Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) cycles, becuase of the uncertainties

• Most of the digitization projects have lesser need for regulatory compliance than the core applications

Design thinking

• Empathetic Listening - The first and foremost aspect of design thinking is to focus sufficiently on the problem before jumping into the solution space. Every organization, function, team, role have their own challenges which are preventing them from moving forward in the rapidly changing business environment. Spend sufficient time to listen with empathy to all the challenges. (Brainstorming, Questionnaires, Interviews)

• Define the problems - Consolidate the data collected (SCAMPER)

• Ideate the solution - (TRIZ)

• Prototype the solution (Pilots)

• Testing