International publisher, Centaur Media approached Channel Dynamics when they wanted to develop and market test a new product in the investment space called ‘Ideas for Investing’. They were aware that there was a market for this type of service, but needed to know the level of demand and likely sales process for decision tree based financial advice.

Centaur Media asked us to draw on our experience of new product and development to help them develop and test a new idea for the financial services market specifically for lump sum investors. They needed validation of the market demand before committing to a full product build and launching this to the market.

The main objectives of the project were to:

• Identify the initial likely customer personas for a lump sum investment product and their characteristics.
• Identify the preferred customer journey to purchase and map this out to use as the basis of the initial concept development.
• Produce a proof of concept to deliver to a targeted group of users for feedback.
• Develop the new product to final design before entering in to a full IT product build.

We wanted to assist Centaur with the initial phase of their new automated advice service design, which we called ‘Ideas For Investing’. This was an important stage in the validation process before selling the product in to the senior stakeholder team for development.

We saw Ideas For Investing as a boot camp for those individuals lucky enough to have a lump sum to invest at a difficult decision making time (retirement). The product needed to provide them with sufficient information to take action. The change in regulation governing adviser’s remuneration meant that many potential customers were potentially left to navigate the complex process alone unless they paid for advice.

Ideas For Investing needed to capture individuals at the start of their investment journey to help them get ready for the investment process.

We initially video interviewed the customer personas to obtain feedback and to identify their buying behaviours and preferences for making investment decisions. We found that the main questions were:

How do I get started?
What is my appetite for risk?
What is my investment strategy?
What funds and groups should I consider?
What are the benefits of advice and what do I need to know?
How do I pick a share platform?

This information was analysed with the team over a series of workshops and we developed customer journey maps and service blueprints.

We then developed this in to a proof of concept that we validated with new potential users to identify if the process made sense. Written in plain English with a logical step by step approach investors were given the knowledge and confidence to start their investment process.

The new proofs of concept were well received by potential customers and Centaur Media developed Ideas For Investing in to a live product that was launched to market.