CHALLENGE AND SELECTION

Visualization has always been something I found useful right from a very early age. Back then, it was just  as a young dreamer who use it to activate the creativity in me. I create my toys, fix things that are broken  around the house and generally get around solving non-complex problems domestically. Fast forward to  my career life, visualization remains part of my greatest tools in use – Formally, this course has further re- iterated the importance of visualization as a tool for design thinking and put context to it as appropriate.

In my organisation, the quality of data continues to impede the ability to reach out to customers  proactively, know what product they prefer, products to design for which class/age or offer scale up  suggestion where appropriate. These and many more issues that are related to data inaccuracy which by  implication is affecting bottom line, customer service and by extended implication growth capacity is the  problem that requires focus and resolution. The organisation needed to know significantly more about its  customers to better serve them and make quality business decisions. The data head (Gender, Age, Title,  Occupation, Biometric Verification Number etc) as we refer to them offer greater insights into our  customers preferences. However, extracting actionable insights could only be possible if we had good  quality data from our customer and manually checking for data defects per customer would have been  time consuming and very much error prone. The need for an error-proof system to automatically identify  and notify stakeholders of customers with inaccurate/incomplete data fields for appropriate correction  becomes critical. The task is to improve on the Data Quality Index from 40% to 90% in 3 months.

Out of all the design thinking tools, visualization offers the uncommon peculiarity of seeing the end from  the beginning and envision how to get there by drawing visuals, using stories, and making map to envision  and carry stakeholders along on the task ahead and various roles and responsibilities.

APPLICATION

First thing was to give clarity on what accurate data would mean for the organisation. One on one sessions  with seniors / Team leads was done across the organisation with presentation working with the Data and  Analytics team. The video and graphics showed the desired state of data efficiency and shared examples  of organizations that have achieved this data dominance in their business model (NETFLIX, GOOGLE,  FACEBOOK etc) and are doing very well. The visuals had well cut out messages of benefits of clean data,  our current state, what to do to get there (road map). Additionally, virtual road shows and engagement  sessions ((due to COVID restrictions) were conducted across the organisation to get the desired buy in  especially from front line officers who are major stakeholders in the data capture process both at the  customer on-boarding and transactional stage. The engagements also had feedback sessions designed  specifically to get additional insights from stakeholders to factor into subsequent roadmap.

Digital dashboard prototype was also envisioned and technology was engaged to build a customized  platform that will fit into the main corporate application to sieve customers with missing data heads,  display for monitoring and regularization. The test prototype of the dashboard was very useful in getting  the buy in of critical stakeholders as they journeyed through the visualization session and envisioned the  desired results mentally. The process of data capture, correction of old data, documentation and tasks for  various stakeholders was appropriately identified in the visualization and mapped out accordingly.  Animated process flows were also developed to assist the appreciation of the process and the results to  be achieved. Hands on demo session were also held to demonstrate the workings of the digital dashboard  as it reflects changes in data captured/corrected.

APPROACH AND INSIGHTS

The visualization of the process flow clearly allows all stakeholders (the frontline officers, compliance  team, technology team and executive management) to see the result of the journey including the benefits.  A tool called “Customer Master Data Management (CMDM)” was built to enable us monitor the quality  of data available for our customers by automatically monitoring the accuracy and completeness of  customer data on the corporate application for both existing customers and newly onboarded ones. The  record from 45% to 90% in less than 3 months attested to the efficacy of visualization as a major and  preferred tool for this problem. Feedback and insights gathered from the various stakeholders will play  significant improvement input for subsequent related projects. Lessons learnt will also form major  assumptions in future improvement plan for the dashboard and subsequent stakeholders’ selection and  engagement sessions.

As data continues to gain relevance in business intelligence, determining the new data source to improve  on and focusing on how to achieve the improvement becomes very critical too. The results achieved using  the visualization tool becomes insightful and will continue to be a major tool for further improvement of  this concept. Lessons learnt in the deployment and achievements in the first successful phase of the Data  Quality Index project will be a great asset to be applied in improving data assets, people’s awareness of  the importance of data, their roles in data cleansing and responsibilities of ensuring clean data.

