Unlocking digital team potential
I help clients design and deliver effective and successful digital practices. What do I mean by practice?
“…a practice is the entity to which the people in a team belong, e.g. the “design practice,” “research practice” or ‘product practice.’ The practice itself contains workflow, process, creates value, is measurable, accountable, has a cost, reputation, expectation, exists in physical or remote configurations, can be centralized, hybrid or distributed. A practice will have a maturity that influences and is influenced by the organization around it.“
As organizations ask more and more from their people and teams, I work closely with you to ensure your digital design, research or product practice is optimized or built to deliver success.
I have experience supporting organizations of varying sizes (start-up to enterprise) and with varying levels of maturity.
Things I do include:
- Assess team capability and maturity
- Reshape existing teams / build new ones
- Shape ways of working, structures and vision
- Help improve the end-to-end delivery process
Large UK financial services client
Cost reduction, increased engagement, decreased rework
A major U.K. bank was undergoing a major transformation. Having built an in-house research lab in their digital center, they wanted to explore developing an in-house research team to support their transformation efforts.
When I was brought in, I had one lab and one contract UX researcher at my disposal. Shortly after joining, recruitment was frozen. So what to do.
I used the time to conduct a cost-benefit analysis using external agencies. I looked at the average cost per study, what types of research were being conducted, and ran an analysis on the total cost of hiring a researcher and total number of studies they could reasonably conduct in a year. I factored in support costs and built a model to understand the true cost of external supplier use vs. in-house development of a research capability.
When the time came I delivered a business case that received funding. Over two years, I worked with this client to design an in-house research agency, and grew the team to 40 researchers, insight analysts and A/B testing specialists.
The team had extremely high employee engagement scores, was a desirable destination for others in the bank, helped reduce reliance on external suppliers, reduced overall cost per research activity, contributed to a reduction in developer rework, and improved customer engagement with the bank’s digital products and services.
Global B2B software company client
B2B software platforms – sometimes a pivot is a win
A large B2B global FS software platform company found itself in increasingly competitive spaces. Even in niche markets in which it operated, competitors were delivering better alternatives. They needed to enhance their products and offer.
I was engaged to explore building a new design practice. At the time, they had 2 designers and over 100 products. The vast majority of design was performed by BA’s and developers.
Working with an in-house client, who was a major design advocate, we set out to identify the needs of the organization and design a practice that had representative capabilities across visual design, user experience design, research, service design, and design operations.
We planned to create a central team to act as a catalyst for design, and establish principles and standards. After an acquisition, we helped build a product design team in that business unit while building a central team.
As happens, things changed. Leadership changed, support waned and the effort required a pivot. The initial goal however remained intact: introduce design to the business. Though central design’s focus changed, and the team became embedded on specific products, the seeds of design had been sown and continues to make headway in the business.
Sometimes you need to pivot to deliver change.
Client testimonials
“I love working for Brian. He is as passionate as he is caring and really puts his utmost into everything he does. Through his deep experience he has shown me how to problem solve creatively, push for positive change and encouraged me to evolve my skills over time.”
“Brian is a cool, calm and experienced Digital leader, it was a pleasure to work together. I welcomed his insight and challenge he became a trusted partner. I saw Brian create a world class research and design facility, which, paid for itself many times over in truly customer aligned design.”
“Brian brought far more than ‘just’ excellent UX and product management – certainly a keen business mind and very intuitive about the best decisions to take for a business. Highly Recommended.”
“Whilst working with Brian he has provided great leadership and showed initiative to drive continuous UX improvement across the team and organisation. He has exceptional client relationship skills. He has shown that he is able to deal with uncertainty and dislocation and I recommend him highly – he will not let you down!”
“Brian worked with us for more than a year developing and designing our platform following a funding round. He advanced our thinking greatly whilst delivering strong work to tight deadlines. Would definitely work with him again and have no issue in recommending elsewhere.”