Evolution Design
These initiatives supported advisors, branch staff, and operations teams by reducing complexity, improving operational efficiency, and modernizing legacy systems across the United States and Canada.
The Challenge
Internal teams including Human Resources, Client Transitions, Branch Audit, Branch Registration, Branch Real Estate, Compliance, and Field Supervision needed a centralized way to access financial advisor information throughout the advisor lifecycle.
At the time, advisor information was primarily accessed through a legacy CICS mainframe system that required users to memorize commands and navigate multiple screens to locate career information.
The process was difficult to learn, time-consuming, and created operational inefficiencies across multiple business areas.
Research
Research included contextual interviews, field studies, user journey mapping, jobs-to-be-done exercises, persona development, and How Might We workshops.
These activities helped uncover workflow pain points, identify critical tasks, and better understand how different teams accessed and used advisor information.
The Solution
Designed and architected a responsive React Progressive Web Application (PWA) that provided a centralized search experience for financial advisor career data.
The new experience reduced reliance on legacy command-based workflows while providing internal teams with a faster and more intuitive way to access critical information.
The Impact
The modernized experience improved operational efficiency by reducing workflow complexity and providing internal teams with a centralized view of advisor lifecycle data.
The platform reduced reliance on legacy command-based workflows and improved access to advisor lifecycle information across multiple business areas.
Financial Advisor Teaming
The Challenge
To support the firm’s new teaming model, internal business partners needed a better understanding of advisor relationships, team structures, and branch operations. Departments including Branch Audit, Field Supervision, and Branch Real Estate needed visibility into:
This information was difficult to access because existing systems were designed around the traditional one-advisor branch model and did not support the firm’s evolving team-based structure.
Research
To better understand the information needs of internal users, I conducted contextual interviews, field studies, jobs-to-be-done exercises, and user journey mapping.
These insights helped identify the information and visibility gaps created by the firm’s transition to advisor teaming structures.
The Solution
Designed and developed the Practice Details module within the FA LCM Progressive Web Application to provide a centralized view of advisor practice and team information.
The Practice Details experience expanded the advisor profile beyond individual career information and provided greater visibility into team structures and practice operations.
The Impact
The Practice Details experience established the foundation for the future Create New FA Team capability by providing the visibility, relationships, and practice data needed to support team creation workflows.
The Challenge
The Practice Details experience provided visibility into advisor team relationships and practice structures. However, the actual creation and management of advisor teams still occurred outside the application.
Team creation relied on legacy CICS mainframe screens, spreadsheets, branch registration processes, and manual data gathering across multiple systems.
The legacy process only supported two advisor names and did not align with the firm’s evolving team-based operating model, which allowed multiple advisors to share a book of business.
As a result, users often relied on spreadsheets, data exports, advisor directories, and multiple legacy systems to create and manage advisor teams.
Research
Research activities included contextual interviews, field studies, user journey mapping, stakeholder interviews, and data mapping exercises to better understand how advisor teams were created and maintained.
While Practice Details uncovered visibility gaps, this research focused on understanding the operational challenges created by legacy systems and fragmented workflows.
This work required collaboration with branch registration teams, business partners, and data stewards across multiple departments to understand data ownership and support the firm’s future team-based operating model.
The findings revealed that team information existed throughout the organization, but the creation process remained fragmented across legacy systems, spreadsheets, and manual workflows.
The Solution
Designed the Create New FA Team experience within FA Lifecycle Management to extend the visibility provided by Practice Details into a centralized team creation workflow.
The experience leveraged branch registration data, book of business information, and enterprise data sources to support modern advisor team structures.
The new experience transformed a fragmented process into a centralized workflow that aligned with the firm’s evolving advisor teaming model.
The Impact
The Create New FA Team experience operationalized the firm’s advisor teaming strategy by providing a centralized workflow for creating and managing advisor teams.
The Challenge
Tailored Branch Support (TBS) teams provide critical operational coverage for branch offices during periods of transition and staffing changes. TBS associates help stabilize branch operations when:
The existing scheduling process had significant workflow and usability limitations that made it difficult to coordinate coverage across branches, teams, and time zones.
Users relied heavily on spreadsheets, emails, Microsoft Teams messages, and manual tracking methods to manage branch coverage assignments.
As a result, TBS users struggled to efficiently coordinate branch coverage and maintain operational support across the organization.
Research
To better understand scheduling workflows and operational challenges, I conducted field studies, contextual interviews, jobs-to-be-done exercises, user journey mapping, and persona development.
These findings identified opportunities to centralize scheduling information, improve visibility, and reduce reliance on manual coordination methods.
The Solution
Designed and developed a React-based Resource Management Tool (RMT) that modernized coverage scheduling and workforce coordination for Tailored Branch Support teams.
The new experience reduced reliance on spreadsheets, emails, and manual tracking while providing TBS teams with a more efficient way to coordinate branch coverage activities.
The Impact
The Resource Management Tool modernized workforce coordination and introduced new scheduling capabilities that improved operational visibility for Tailored Branch Support teams.
