FIDUCIARY TRUST INTERNATIONAL

CLIENT PORTAL REDESIGN

FIDUCIARY TRUST
INTERNATIONAL

CLIENT
PORTAL REDESIGN

Leading a team through a customer portal launch.

Fiduciary Trust International (FTI), a subsidiary of Franklin Templeton, is an investment and wealth manager for high net-worth individuals, family endowments, foundations and institutions.

In January of 2019, they were three months into developing a redesign of their client web portal with little progress to show. Both the business and remote development teams were not in sync and needed guidance to deliver the new client portal.

An aging customer-base driving a digital transformation

With a customer-base averaging 65 years old, a myriad of outdated internal systems, and a client portal about to hit its 16th anniversary, Fiduciary Trust International (FTI) undertook various initiatives to modernize their operations as well as their client-facing web portal.

I was initially brought in to make mobile friendly versions of the desktop designs produced by a previous consultant. I soon discovered that the designs needed a major overhaul and the business team needed guidance on the product management process.

My role during the project:

Create a design system and rules for a responsive framework for the new client portal.
Propose user experience (UX) improvements to existing architecture and page designs.
Guide the business team in product management and agile development principles.
Work closely with the remote development team to implement the design system and framework.
Map ecosystem and design new employee-facing support platform.

A frustrated business team with little progress to show

A big consulting company had been brought in as part of larger digital transformation project and had produced designs for a new customer web portal. The designs did not meet all the business requirements, and without a product designer the business team was not able to effectively communicate design changes.
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The web portal, which was meant to be responsive and work for all devices, was being hand coded by the development team without leveraging a responsive framework, common style guide, or reusable components.

There was a significant gap between the designs and the portal in-progress, and the project was already behind.

Original home page design from the previous consultant.

Original home page design inherited from a prior consultant engagement.

Understanding the key requirements and starting layout a product development plan

I reviewed designs and spoke to key stakeholders on the business and development teams. I quickly realized the two sides weren't talking the same language.

The development team lacked the design framework they needed to effectively build the portal, while the business team lacked enough product management experience to effectively guide them.
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A plan was needed to get development on track, so I started to put one together.

Gathering all major updates to the business requirements.
Establishing rules for a responsive design framework for the portal.
Creating a comprehensive list of reusable components that needed to be redesigned and built to create every page.
Updating that site architecture and navigation to be more user friendly.

I presented a plan to the business and development teams to first implement a responsive framework and then build reusable components to create each page within the portal.

A sample of pages from the development plan and component guide.

Revamping the design and improving the user experience

With a development plan in place, I took the new business requirements and started to redesign each page to work across all device breakpoints. I took the opportunity to learn more client personas and needs, and started to improve the user experience of key pages.

I documented the common styles and fonts so that each component (e.g. tables, filters, search) could be built in order of business priority. At the same time, I worked with the development team to overcome any hurdles in implementing the new design framework.

Comparison of the inherited holdings page design (left) and the final design (right) that were implemented.

I created lightweight personas to inform the user experience decisions I was making.

Comparison of the inherited holdings page design (left) and the final design (right) that were implemented.

Guiding the business team through product management principles

I leveraged my experience as a product manager to provide guidance on the product design and development cycle. I helped train the business team by stepping into the product management role and teaching them the basics.

Leading sessions with the business team to reorganize the feature backlog and delete old stories.
Training the business analyst on how to breakup Jira stories and write the necessary business requirements.
Running the sprint planning meetings and translating the technical issues for the business team.
Updating key management stakeholders to set expectations on the project's progress and timing.

Building out a new employee portal to support the customer experience.

While the customer portal development took off, discussions began to take shape around an employee admin portal to manage the customer experience. However, there was no clear understanding of what the employee portal needed to include.

Mapping out the current internal product ecosystem so the business team could comprehend the full scope of the project.
Working with the business and customer support teams to document the requirements.
Designing the employee portal utilizing the same design and technical framework as the customer portal to gain efficiency.

Example page from employee portal show digital vault (Box.com) integration page.

A successful launch and dramatic increase in online customer usage

After pushing back the launch date a few months to complete development, the new customer portal went live in November 2019. For the next 10 months we fixed bugs, added new features, and launched the companion iOS and Android mobile applications.

At the end of the fiscal year (September 2020) the results have been very positive and well-received by senior management both at Fiduciary Trust and parent company Franklin Templeton.