Reflection - Learning Launch

Challenge  As a child born in the world of technology and internet, information of the amazing things that  were happening outside of my country was pretty easy to find and easy to understand, but when  you live in a third world country is hard to change the mind of a society that hardly ever looks  forward and to make people see why we need to change some old ways to make space for new  and simple things that can improve all of our lives, sometimes even in very simple things that for  someone who comes from a developing country will be surprising, like the lack of formalisation  and the fear of owning a bank account that people have. Formalisation is very lacking in my  country and people still rely on keeping their money at home all in cash. Many times this was  proven to be a problem because people steal, lose their money or when presenting their income  and expenses for their taxes.  When I worked at a well known international company that  produces mass consumption products in the Trade Marketing sector, we were brainstorming  ideas for market programmes, to incentive the regular customers (family owned stores) to buy  more products, and if they reached their monthly goal they get benefits and prizes like vouchers,  home appliances, etc. This big project required a great deal of formalisation (because we need  the records of everything) and a great deal of coaching from our part.     Selection  I chose learning launch because here we were in for a wild ride. To teach and instruct more  than 3000 customers on why should they seek to keep their money more formalised was going  to be a challenge and also a learning experience for us. Some of my peers were not into it  because it required assistance to each and every customer who did not own a bank account to  talk to them, teach them and lead them to the path of formalisation to which then they will be all  checked in to participate in our market programme. Two of my peers and myself were really  excited for this idea because we could see that this was not only about the current market  programme, it was about encouraging the formalization in our country, the security of the money  of these humble family businesses and to facilitate new future businesses that would be given in  a simpler way thanks to this project. We were sure that if we succeeded, this will have a  tremendous positive outcome for both sides: company and customers.     Application   After long meetings of convincing the team, we started out with visiting each and every  customer in our list to talk about our ideas of arranging meetings and capacitations where we  would talk about why is important to keep money in a formalised way and how much money  they can save by simply having all the records and tracks of their income and expenses (mainly  tax purposes) then we organised a fair where we invited several banks to put up their stands so  the customers can attend and listen to all the different offers, branches they have available all  over the country, etc. So far the response was generally good, but some of them were still  skeptical and scared about giving their money to banks. These customers required an individual

attention in assistance, explaining again and again and making them realise why they should  own a bank account.           Insight and Approach  After two and a half long months of working we finally got all the bank data from our newly  registered customers and we could finally begin with our market programme and they were all  very excited to participate. Thanks to this formality and easiness to have records of every  expense the market had it made our job of reporting results and keeping records way easier  than before and we helped out more than 3000 small family businesses to understand better  that they should not be afraid of banks or institutions, how something that in other countries is  unthinkable here is still an innovation. This made me realise that  companies want to put the  least amount of effort in their customers but expect a lot from them and then wonder why things  don’t work out. How is important to think about the greater good and that greater good is better  for everyone. With this project we not only we facilitate future business or market programmes,  but we saw an issue which was keeping us from thriving and keeping them thriving and focused  on the bigger picture: helping out our society, as it is one of the major roles of every company.

