As a side project I saw that lots of teams were commissioning their own research on customer journeys and the overall experience of purchasing and using Invesco products. Rather inspired by Neri Oxman’s Krebs Cycle of Creativity I wanted to see if any common themes or ideas emerged.

One of stanford d.schools 8 core abilities is, ‘ Synthesize Information’. Which they define as…

‘This is the ability to make sense of information and find insight and opportunity within.

Data comes from multiple places and has many different forms, both qualitative and quantitative. This ability requires skills in developing frameworks, maps, and abductive thinking. Synthesis is hard for new students. It takes time and is interdependent with navigating ambiguity.’

I have always thought that compiling data visually allowed you to bring context and understanding to any problem. I think service design with its many tools and techniques taught me the importance of visual thinking.

Having reviewed all the various reports that I could find, I was surprised to learn how little involvement IFA’s actually had in choosing products for their clients. In fact in many cases the firm would outsource the selection of products to DFM’s. (A Discretionary Fund Manager who  builds and manages a portfolio of investments) This also has to reflect the firms CIP. (Cenrtralised Investment Proposition). I was surprised to realise how focused the IFA’s were just on client management, and how the rest of the work was outsourced to other people.

I turned out that Invesco already had a product to allow IFA’s to take existing pdfs and customise them for clients. A Summit Reporter tool. But it had only been developed to an MVP level, and was proving very hard to maintain.

‘Fact sheets that enable the IFA, paraplanner, DFM to feel confident about the Invesco fund and add it to their CIP and also simple enough to share with their end client.’

I think this work showed that rather than retiring the product there was an opportunity to build on it. Sadly I think as part of the recent CMS migration it is no longer live.