digital transformation

This is the fourth instalment of a 6 part series that explores the Jobs to be Done (JTBD) for US SMBs that we identified in our recent research. Each blog post dives into one of the jobs and how we examined it with a JTBD canvas. If you missed the first post that explains JTBD and the canvas, check it out before reading this.

Sports people make better business people. There, I said it. I’ve said it before so you shouldn't be too surprised at this point but I honestly believe in this statement.

I love the Showtime drama series Billions. It gets two big thumbs up from me and I highly recommend binge-watching the series. You'll thank me later.I recently finished season 3 of the program and I actually burst out laughing during the beginning of the show. Real-life celebrities and billionaires are a constant staple of the series. Past guests have included Mark Cuban, Maria Sharapova, and even my beloved Metallica. But what made me chuckle was the brief appearance of Sara Blakely playing, well, herself.And why not? She's a self-made billionaire and founder of Spanx as I detailed in my first blog post on the commonalities between the Spanx product and the digitization of financial services. Seeing her pop up on my screen while watching the season finale prompted me to sit down and write part 2 of this blog post.

Over the last two years we have kept coming back to one diagram, the 11:FS Banking Battlefield. We use this to explain the changes we see in the financial services industry. In fact, one particular workshop we did in Australia last year had us talking through this diagram for the entire day! Seriously. It also featured in three bank board packs in the last 6 months which is also a pretty good indication we’re onto something.

This year we’ve made a true commitment to double down on our D&I efforts across 11:FS, starting with a company-wide discovery phase led by Elysian, looking into the current makeup of the business and piloting a survey to dive deeper into the thoughts and opinions of our Elevens. 💭

This crazy time of being locked away has got me reflecting on how lucky we are to be digitally connected and how I've seen this community in action.

“Digital is a small team sport” is a phrase we often use at 11:FS: you’ll hear us say it in keynotes, in pitches and on the podcast. But what do we really mean?

In this Q&A with Jimmy Williams, CEO and co-founder of Urban Jungle we discuss using technology to enhance transparency in home and contents insurance.

Of course, these are our top 3 blogs of 2018. We took a look at the data, talked amongst ourselves about which ones we liked best and came up with the best blogs we’ve put out this year.

In her latest column for Forbes, 11:FS Head of Research Sarah Kocianski examines the new set of authentication procedures and how they are being implemented by UK banks.

As a designer, it’s an all too familiar scenario: you’re about to undertake work on an exciting new digital product or service. It has the potential to have it all, only for you to be handed what all product designers dread - the existing constraints of a rigid and outdated brand playbook. It can certainly feel like a crushing blow. But approached in the correct manner, these constraints can be transformed into an opportunity to take both the product and the brand to the next level.

Digital Banking is only 1% Finished. That’s our motto at 11:FS. You can see it plastered across everything we do, we talk about it at events, and it’s in all of our client work. Taking a paper statement to the telephone, to a website and then a mobile app isn’t where digital banking ends; it’s where it begins. Digital Banking having 99% to go is a statement of optimism, of opportunity and its how you differentiate, as consumer expectations will only grow in the coming years.

One of the first questions you’re almost always asked when you change jobs is “Why are you leaving?”, especially when you walk away from a comfortable role like I just have. The second is “So what will you be doing now?”. Or, as my good friend Matteo Rizzi put it when he found out I was joining 11:FS “Great, now you can explain to me WTF they actually do.”

This week I had the super-smart Mariano Belinky tell me that the current crop of challenger banks are really just ‘better mousetraps’.

At 11:FS we like to say that digital banking is 1% finished, well the same is true of Open Banking. The unknown potential of the regulation far outstrips what is being done right now. And that potential has caught the imagination of foreign regulators.