Cash Management
Design Strategy • UX Research • UX Design
As a part of a small incubator team within Capital One, we were tasked with identifying new opportunity areas for Capital One to expand it’s small business product offerings. Through extensive market and customer research, my team of dedicated product managers and business analysts identified cash flow management as a critical pain point within our target small business customer segment. Together, we defined opportunities within the cash management space and built an iterative product by conducting small-scale tests in the market. As the design lead, I supported the team by conducting market and user research, offering design strategy for the initial product development, and creating the designs for our phased approach.
My Role:
• Design lead
• Market and customer research
• Align stakeholders with design goals & objectives
• Design strategy for 0 to 1 product development
• UX / UI design
Duration:
February 2023 - Present
We chose Cash Management as our problem space as it is central to performing a number of critical financial tasks
APPROACH
We believe helping small business manage their cash flow can deliver on our mission and drive revenue growth. Understanding cash position is central to managing and performing a number of tasks critical for the success of a small business. Through cash flow management solutions, we can introduce new revenue opportunities for Capital One, such as short term lending, cross selling and fees for advanced features and drive customer stickiness.
Through empathy interviews with 18 small business owners, we learned that getting visibility into cash flow is tedious, inaccurate or both
DISCOVER: Empathy Interviews
Through empathy interviews with 15 small business owners we seek to understand the behaviors of small business as it relates to working capital cycles.
Key Questions We Seek to Answer:
• How do companies currently manage their cash flow? and why they manage it this way?
• What pain points do companies experience during cash flow management?
• What are the drivers between cash flow shortfalls and how do companies handle them?
Key Insights:
• For small business owners, getting visibility into their cash flow is either tedious, inaccurate, or both, and small business owners have little financial expertise in performing these tasks
• Many small business owners, face a significant amount of pain when interpreting their financial standing in order to make decisions for their business.
• Credit cards and line of credits are top choices but they aren’t always a perfect solution.
There are 8 core problems inhibiting businesses from having their cash flow needs met
We decided to focus on these 4 problem spaces
DISCOVER: User Personas
Understanding customer’s cash flow needs
We identified two customer personas in the $1M-$10M revenue range, relying on different data sources and having unmet needs.
DISCOVER: Process Mapping
How do small business owners manage cash flow?
Leo’s current process of managing cash flow process is difficult and prone to errors
DEFINE: Feature Prioritization
We asked about the customer’s highest priority while managing their cash flow
Forecasting & scenario planning was selected as the highest priority when managing cash flow between participants.
Compiling data across accounts was selected by most Capital One customers, while it was one of the least selected priorities for non-customers.
DEFINE: Value Proposition Test
We tested our value propositions with customers to determine which features to focus on
Objective 1: We want to learn which value propositions resonate the most with customers and why, so that we can create a valuable solution that address unsolved needs in this space.
Objective 2: We want to learn customer appetite for adoption and data sharing so that we can develop a solution that will deepen relationships and increase stickiness.
Forecasting and Scenario Planning ranked the highest
10/21 Participants selected email C as their most liked feature
Participants were mostly compelled by the ability to plan scenarios and see how potential financial decisions impact their overall cash flow. They mentioned that they currently have a very manual process of simulating cash flow projections in Excel and how prone to error that can be, hence this tool would meaningfully improve their current process by saving them time and eliminating errors. Even though the forecasting feature was highly rated amongst the majority of participants, there were some concerns about the accuracy of projections and a demand for transparency in terms of how the projections are calculated.
We decided on a 3 phased approach to bring a cash flow management solution to market
IDEATE: Design Phased Approach
We prioritized building from the simplest to the most complex features, drawing insights from customer feedback and enhancing our user experience in subsequent phases.
Phase 1 focused on sharing the Cash Flow Report as a PDF
DESIGN: Phase 1, Cash Flow Insights Report
For the Phase 1 product, we focused on the existing Small Business Card customers who already shared their external financial institution data with Capital One. Utilizing their shared data, we created a PDF to offer them a historical cash flow analysis report.
EVALUATE: Phase 1, Cash Flow Insights Report Learnings
7 participants joined to test our pilot
We selected 7 customers within $500K to $12M annual business revenue range, varying in different industries to receive feedback on our cash flow report.
Key Questions to Answer:
• What metrics are useful to customers? Which are not? What are the metrics/insights customers look at today and would like to see included in our report?
• Are historical trends enough for the customers to find value?
• What time frame do customers look at while analyzing their cash flow?
Based on user feedback we feature ranked Metrics & Insights
Based on the survey responses gathered from 7 customers, we feature ranked the metrics & insights within the cash flow report.
Incorporating insights from Phase 1, we enhanced the cash flow experience while developing Phase 2
DESIGN: Phase 2, Cash Flow Insights Dashboard
We added trend comparisons for the month, quarter, and year time frames, simplified the cash flow activity chart, and reduced the insights section to include the most helpful metrics based on our learnings from Phase 1.
DESIGN: Cash Flow Insights Dashboard User Flows
Customers are introduced to “Cash Flow Insights” via a marketing tile on the landing page
We decided to run a targeted marketing campaign for our determined small business card customer segment within the landing page of our banking app to promote our product. We also aim to learn the customer :
• What percentage of customer of customers clicked on our campaign?
• What percentage of customers enter the experience?
• What percentage of customers connected their first account?
Onboarding flow
We want to provide customers with a holistic experience where they can perform multiple financial tasks in one platform
NORTH STAR
I collaborated with our product director to create designs for our long-term vision, aiming to align with the leadership team. Our goal is to establish a centralized business portal where business owners can manage their cash, process vendor payments, send invoices, and access financing all under one platform.
