It's time for me to get back into it.

ACH Money Transfer

This was a high-risk project for me; I took a very unpopular postion and it felt like I was betting my job. But it paid off. 

As part of a larger company initiative to upgrade our brokerage and cash management platform, a project led by another group was kicked off to create the online ability for clients to set up ACH money transfers into their accounts rather than having to call their advisor or a CSR.  About 3 weeks after the project kicked off I was assigned to assess the UI/UX, and I was told by my leader that post launch, I would be the business owner accountable for driving results.

The first week on the team I was told they had already done some mock-ups for the UI and that I was welcome to review and make minor modifications, but that the timeline and budget were rigid.  After asking lots of questions I let them know that I would be mocking up some alternatives to consider for the next week.

I went home that Friday and started working on a completely different approach.  Their concept had been to build the functionality as a stand alone application as they assumed it would be the fastest and cheapest approach.  Over the weekend, I created a flow chart and mock ups of all the pages redesigning the functionality to be fully integrated into the main client account application (which I also designed and was near launch).   I felt their approach was not just sub-optimal, it was a genuinely poor customer experience and would lead to low usage and high dissatisfaction due to numerous failure points. 

The following Monday I shared my proposed alternate design explaining my rationale for the changes.  To say my recommended design met with resistance would be a gross understatement.  I was accused of overstepping my bounds, failing to respect the demands for speed and cost containment, and not being a good team player.  I politely persisted in asking that my option be analyzed to evaluate the time/cost impact. 

This situation quickly escalated and I found myself meeting with the head of my department asking how important this was to me because there was a lot of heat over this.  I basically said this is a “bet my job” kind of moment; their design was that bad, and mine was that much better.  I did not want to be the product owner of their design.

Reluctantly the project team conducted the analysis, and surprisingly found that with no API changes needed there would only be a minor impact on costs and timing provided I would yield on one small point (which I did).  A couple of months later and the system launched 98% as I designed it. 

When it launched, it did not just exceed expectations – it blew them away.  Almost 10% of my first month’s goal was met in the first 6 hours it was live, which was between 1am and 7 am.  Before any announcement or promotion, clients were finding the integrated links and transferring money in.  Cash rolled in, my goals kept getting multiplied, and I kept exceeding them.  And as icing on the cake, our online CSR’s reported getting almost no calls requiring assistance with the process because it was so easy to use.