Pre-COVID, one of our Indonesian banking clients planned to launch a new digital business model focused on the MSME segment in Indonesia. The bank planned to empower ~816K SMEs and MSMEs through an integrated digital platform, addressing not only their financial needs but also catering to their day-to-day operations, all enabled by data.

Unfortunately, before the bank could gather insights via market research and customer testing, COVID put a halt to their plans, jeopardising the new launch. Due to the constraints enforced by the pandemic, the client team struggled to collaborate within themselves and failed to follow through on the conventional Understand -> Define -> Design -> Validate -> Pivot stages of the launch.

Greyamp was called in to “Design and Execute a Rapid Experiment in the New Norm”. To address this, we needed to work across and understand the following:

1) Identify a clear Target Segment across the MSME segment and understand pain points to define a Clear Value Proposition

2) Define and design the business capabilities to create value for the target segment

3) Conduct virtual Customer Validation approach

4) Collect and analyse the data for insights that would drive the next steps

Some of the key challenges we faced while designing this approach were:

• To collect information about customer pain-points in the new normal

• To effectively brainstorm with remote teams

• To effectively co-create and get meaningful feedback from our customers

‍

To overcome the above challenges and achieve the expected outcomes, we took the following steps:

1. Define a clear Value Proposition for the identified Target Segment

The conventional plan to conduct primary research and customer FGDs to understand customer pain points wasn’t feasible due to COVID restrictions. Instead, we planned the following:

Leverage Secondary Research and understand from the bank’s current customer base:

• Current business model & existing customer data of the client

• Secondary research on the SME business segment in Indonesia and,

• Competitor analysis

Design the DILO (Day In the Life Of) of the customer – and get validation if we clearly understood the customer’s current interactions and pain points. Here, we worked closely with the customer team to co-create the hypotheses based on the needs and wants of the SME customer segment. We further refined these hypotheses by creating the DILO that detailed the target persona’s day-to-day activities such as inventory management, book-keeping, order management, payments, etc. These hypotheses and visualisations enabled the participants to envision the lives of the SME customers and along with their own experience

Validation with Agents – Before initiating a feedback session directly with the customers, we recommended a Focus Group Discussion (FGD) with the agents to validate the DILO and better understand any key aspects of the customers that we may have missed out on. As agents frequently interact with the target customers, they could provide key insights partly making up for the lack of primary research. While they might be biased from an agent’s perspective, the idea here was to gather information and insights from as close to the ground as possible.

‍

2. Design for feedback on Capabilities and Experience

Using insights from the agents’ FGD, we further refined our hypotheses and DILOs. The team identified the capabilities and experience needed, which were then designed and built as a product prototype by Greyamp. The entire process of designing the FGDs, conducting the sessions with the agents, and finally refining the insights spanned over 30-40 days.

The prototype created was a click-through wireframe created using Invision, a tool for creating prototypes. Without any underlying code, the wireframe allowed the team to visualize the Capabilities, the Experience, and how Data would be the glue that brings it all together.

Post multiple iterations and discussions, challenged by a lack of any face-to-face interactions, we finalised the prototype.

‍

3. Co-create through customer FGDs

After finalising the prototype, we moved to the final leg of the exercise, the end-user testing. Here, we worked closely with the client team to define the:

• Structure of the user testing and design of the Questionnaire for the facilitators

• Script to be used during the interviews, given this was happening virtually

• Identify and train the client team on Collaboration tools needed to carry out the testing with the end-user.

• Feedback forms that provided a structured method for the facilitators and observers to record their findings throughout the session

Providing this structure and aligning the team members who were responsible for carrying out the exercise, ensure that:

• All aspects of the prototype discussion are covered & discussed to obtain holistic feedback & opinion

• Additional information about the prototype is obtained around the aspects that were not covered in the script and questionnaire

• First-hand information is gathered about the customer’s business which further allowed for hypotheses validation and also filled in gaps in understanding of the changes to the business model

• Roles and responsibilities of the facilitator and observer were defined along with assistance on the use of collaboration tools that were required for conducting the user-testing virtually

This process – post the agents’ feedback and designing of the prototype took ~45 days, from designing the structure for customer testing, incorporating all the changes in the prototype, and training the facilitators and moderators to conduct the customer testing.

‍

4. Synthesise the findings to draw out concrete conclusions

Post the user-testing, Greyamp assisted the client in data collation, analysis, and visualisation that enabled them to visualize the insights in an organised format and understand customer feedback on the identified capabilities, the flow of the platform, and how the platform could help them solve their business challenges.

Furthermore, Greyamp also facilitated the hypotheses validation based on the information received from end-users about their respective business models and provided recommendations on the most suitable roadmaps ahead.

These data points and discussions enabled the client team to finalise the features and capabilities for the first MVP, taking into account the business, regulatory, and IT limitations and requirements.

This virtual Rapid Experiment helped maintain the launch timelines despite COVID challenges, creating significant value for the client.

‍