projekt202

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a product manager at a third-party vendor that provides digital banking capabilities to financial institutions of all sizes. I handle online banking services as they relate to commercial customers. We’ve recently begun to focus on open API technology that enables financial institutions to customize their digital banking experience.

What challenge were you trying to address with projekt202?

We had recently redesigned our consumer platform but needed someone to help us conduct research and provide a more user-centric design of our commercial counterpart.

What was the scope of their involvement?

First, they did research (gap analysis, heuristic review, competitive evaluation, field work), talking to both our financial institution customers and their commercial clients. They used the results to create multiple designs for the commercial platform and produce a proof of concept (POC). Afterward, they went back into the field to validate the POC. They also assisted our organization with a web component library.

Their scheme for the commercial application has two main components. We went in desiring a new, user-centric commercial experience, but we realized we also had to fill an immediate need on our existing platform. This time constraint led them to develop what we a call a “tactical strike” design for the existing platform as well as a reimagined design for the new platform. The “tactical strike” design leveraged the learnings and associated overarching concepts for the reimagined design while incorporating into the current platform that had some restrictions.

What is the team composition?

There was a project manager, a senior/lead UI/UX designer, and two or three research resources. We then collaborated with their UI/UX resources to build the final design. In total, we worked with four UI/UX teammates, along with our project manager. There was also an architecture resource that understood our company very well and provided really help us identify early-on obstacles, challenges, and new technology that could impede our progress.

How did you come to work with projekt202?

Our IT manager was familiar with the company, and we had looked at their services on several occasions. The challenge was bringing in a new, somewhat smaller vendor into a large corporation like ours, which is a time-consuming process due to a rigorous due-diligence process. With this process, we also had to evaluate other vendors in the space, many of whom we had worked with in the past.

We loved projekt202’s approach, culture, and people. They fit with what we were looking for from a product perspective and kept all project resources on-shore. A lot of large consulting companies will off-shore certain components of their projects, but we felt like this particular project, being heavy in research and in-person interactions, needed to be handled domestically. projekt202 wasn’t the lowest cost vendor we evaluated, but they understood our vision the best, and we favored their approach.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from May 2017–September 2018.

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

We released Phase 1 of the redesign of our current platform in late October. Its improved usability, intuitive workflows, actionable next steps, transparent system feedback, and overall new look was positively received by our customer. We have also received very few support issues and/or questions regarding how to work within the platform’s new design. The intuitive nature of the platform makes it easy for business customers to manage their transactions on the platform and is easy for our financial institution customers to support.

On a qualitative level, projekt202 made us stretch our thinking and approach problems differently. We tend to be driven by payment platforms, banking mindset and overall industry jargon. projekt202 revealed through the research that most business customers, especially small and mid-sized business clients, are often confused by cumbersome cash management and payment technology. Their research and data analysis substantiated our own analysis and help shift us in the right direction of being less “banker” and more user-centric. The objectivity, data, and designs they provided were exactly what we needed. Due to the success of the initial engagement, we kept extending their contract in other areas of our company.

How did projekt202 perform from a project management standpoint?

They felt like an integral part of our team throughout all phases of the engagement. They weren’t just there to report on what they had learned and create designs, they actually got down in the weeds with us to unearth our concerns, push us to get out of “old” ways of thinking, understand our strategy, and balance it with our operating environment and its challenges. We had weekly status meetings, and their project manager ensured we stayed on course regarding both deadlines and budget. Because of their focus on project management, the various statement of work orders stayed right on time and on budget.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The employees we worked with went above and beyond compared to other vendors. They knew our environment, as well as some of the challenges we’d face along the way. Their ideas were unique and thought-provoking and centered around getting the product to market faster. They invested a significant number of their own resources (not necessarily part of the project) in solidifying our vision and plan of action.

We were concerned about keeping our product team and other key stakeholders focused on a single approach, but projekt202 was great in this regard. They broke the project down into chunks to make it easier to move through it and execute on it. Their insight into what end-users needed, and how to build a UI around that information, was invaluable.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, there are none that come to mind looking back on our engagements with them.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

There’s not a lot of room to negotiate their fees, but you get what you pay for: top quality work. All resources assigned to the various phases of this engagement were best of breed. Every single person, whether they were a short-term or long-term resource, performed with the same level of diligence and professionalism.