Overview:
Introducing service design as a foundation to expose risk, complexity and opportunity across Real Assets operations.
Role:
Solo Designer
Team:
Product Lead, C-Suite SMEs.
00 / Before we begin
To comply with my non-disclosure agreement, I have omitted and obfuscated confidential information in this case study. Information has been modified and does not necessarily reflect the views of my employer.
01 / Establishing the direction
This project focused on introducing service design as a strategic capability within the Real Assets line of business at a major financial services organization. The goal was not to redesign a single tool or workflow, but to deeply understand how NAV delivery actually operates across people, processes, platforms and third-party dependencies, and to create a shared, system-level view of where risk, friction and opportunity existed. As design was a new concept within the organization, one of the primary challenges was securing buy-in from senior leadership. The following work includes items from presentations aimed at gaining this support, followed by the service maps developed once buy-in was achieved.
As the sole designer, I partnered closely with business-side subject matter experts to evaluate the existing service model and establish a foundation for intentional, evidence-led design decisions. Together, we clarified complex challenges and translated insight into actionable, scalable improvements across digital, human, and physical touchpoints, as well as organizational structures.
Why Service Design?
The organization was, and is operating within a highly complex, cross-regional service ecosystem, yet decisions were often made in isolation at the process, tool or team level.
At the highest level, service design provides;
Visualization of non-tangible services, unearthing hidden conflicts, dependencies and risks.
A shared and defined language to align stakeholders.
A framework that moves from reactive fixes to holistic experience thinking.
I considered buy in as a critical step in improving design maturity, reframing design as a strategic partner and not just a transactional delivery function.
02 / The Problems Worth Solving
NAV delivery within the Real Assets world was shaped by a combination of manual workarounds, platform limitations and cross-regional dependencies, all of which increased operational risk and reduced confidence in outputs. At a high level, we were made aware of key challenges that stemmed from discovery interviews, which included;
Cross-regional coordination
Time zone differences directly impacted the on-time delivery of NAV components and issue resolution.
Manual intervention in automated processes
High-priority fields often required manual inputs, increasing the risk of human error across calculations, consolidations and final NAV pack delivery.
Data dependencies on third parties
Delays in upstream data created downstream bottlenecks, affecting client deliverables.
Platform performance constraints
Internal tools required frequent patch fixes from EU-based teams, often impacting North American operations.
Lack of data trust
Manual Excel-based validations were used to verify automated outputs, signalling low confidence in the system.
03 / The Desired Outcomes
Client Lens - Designing from the Client’s Point of View
Improve the client experience.
Many client issues originate from internal breakdowns rather than interface-level problems. Service blueprinting exposes systemic dependencies and weak links, allowing teams to address root causes instead of isolated touchpoints.
Map the current service offering.
On an interface, we can quickly understand what may be wrong - a broken link or poor UI design, but determining the root cause of a systemic issue is much more difficult. Creating a visual map of the current service offering made interactions, resources, and processes tangible, revealing gaps and opportunities for improvement.
Design for scale.
By connecting people, processes, and platforms, service design transforms complexity into a manageable ecosystem. This approach enables the organization to evaluate whether the right foundations are in place to support future growth.
Internal Lens - Aligning People, Processes and Systems
Create a comprehensive, shared understanding.
Service blueprints reveal both visible and invisible elements of service delivery, providing strategic clarity across teams and functions.
Reduce silos and enable knowledge transfer.
In complex, long-standing processes, teams often lose sight of how their work impacts others. Blueprinting clarifies cross-functional interactions and improves collaboration.
Drive alignment around the current state.
A detailed view of the “as-is” service creates a single source of truth, enabling stakeholders to align before pursuing change.
Enable a client-centric mindset.
Service design humanizes services by grounding decisions in real client needs, ensuring products and processes are designed from their perspective.
Define the path from ‘as-is’ to ‘to-be’.
Mapping the current state surfaces gaps, constraints and risks. This foundation enables the organization to intentionally plan and transition toward a future-state service model with clear milestones.
04 / Obstacles to Navigate
Leadership buy-in
Skepticism may exist within leadership for multiple reasons, including that they already know who their users – eliminating the need for service design. There is no doubt that leadership know all of this, but service design is a strategic tool which creates alignment and provides a comprehensive understanding of the end-to-end service with huge output capabilities.
Organisation Culture
Lack of organizational understanding and support. Our organization culture is critical to innovation work and the investments made towards innovation. Current culture must allow new processes to come to fruition and support them in order to succeed. Service design supports the shift towards conditions that nurture innovation.
Impact of delivery
It may be difficult for management to visualise the impact without tangible deliverables. Service design blueprinting has the capability to provide a deep understanding of service offerings and stakeholders involved, allowing us to pinpoint any issues, such as gaps in services offerings, breakdowns of communication or redundant processes.
04 / Deliberate, Insight-Led Approach
Phase 1 - Today's Operating Model.
Map out the current as-is service offerings that exist today, broken down into three segments:
Core – Fund Administration, SPV Fund Administration, Transfer Agency/Investor Reporting
Semi-Core – Corporate Secretarial, Middle Office Services
Ancillary – Regulatory Reporting, Financial Statement Reporting, Tax
By mapping the current state, we can surface process breakdowns, risks, service gaps, redundancies, inefficiencies and silos across the ecosystem. Layering in how core clients interact with these services reveals discrepancies in experience both at an individual client level and across the client base. This comparison exposes inconsistencies and a lack of standardization, creating a clear foundation for improving alignment, efficiency and overall service quality.
Phase 2 - Reimagining the Service.
The as-is map is a current state model in today’s world. To advance our service offerings, enhance client experience and create internal improvements we will need to create a map of our future expectations. Once complete, we can compare the as-is map against the to-be map and can clearly visualize the requirements for transformation and growth.
Phase 3 - Translating Vision into Reality.
Analysing the gaps between as-is vs. to-be provides a tangible touchpoint of what is required to change, whether processes, data flows, applications, systems, interfaces or even stakeholders. Not only do we ideate solutions, but also it helps all stakeholders to align on future expectations and to plan ahead together.
By comparing the current day as-is against the future state to-be, the gaps that need bridging in order to make the to-be a reality will become a lot clearer. In order to reach the to-be stage, improve client experience, create internal improvements and advance our service offerings, we will ultimately have to tackle a high volume of requirements. This list of requirements is essentially a to-do list which is crucial in reaching the to-be phase.
05 / Emmerging Patterns
After establishing a framework and mapping key experiences across multiple funds, clear and repeatable patterns began to surface, many pointing to critical system-level issues. To uncover the root causes and where breakdowns occurred, I visualized the service across specific stages, using Lines of Interaction and Visibility to expose the roles involved at each point. The primary outputs featured front and backstage activities, system and user touchpoints, manual vs. automated steps and ownership/dependencies across regions.
This resulted in a tangible artefact that revealed issues at a more granular level and clearly showed how, when and why they impacted the end-to-end service lifecycle. Issues that were identified prior to mapping were validated, and overall, additional findings were discovered which included;
⚠️
Operational risk was often introduced upstream
Many operational risks originated early in the workflow, long before they surfaced for delivery teams. By the time issues became visible, downstream teams were already managing the consequences, creating reactive workflows and reducing confidence in the overall service.
🩹
Manual workarounds masked deeper platform and trust issues
Teams frequently relied on manual processes to bridge gaps in the system, which temporarily maintained service continuity. While these workarounds prevented immediate failures, they obscured underlying platform limitations and eroded trust in the tools, making systemic problems harder to detect and resolve. A very simple miss-click could cause very impactful issues.
🧩
Dependencies across regions and third parties were poorly understood but highly impactful
The service relied on complex interdependencies between teams in multiple regions and external partners. These connections were not fully mapped or understood, but disruptions in one area often had cascading effects, amplifying operational risk and making it difficult to anticipate the impact of changes.
🌍
Teams were locally optimized, but the service suffered globally
Organizational structures prioritized local efficiency, aligning teams for regional objectives. However, this created a misalignment across the broader service ecosystem, resulting in global inefficiencies, communication gaps and inconsistent experiences for users across regions.
07 / Impact
Shifting From Isolated Fixes to System-Level Decisions
The service maps and supporting artefacts became decision-making tools, enabling teams to move beyond isolated problem-solving toward a shared understanding of system-level constraints, dependencies and opportunities. This reframing helped stakeholders assess trade-offs more effectively and prioritize changes with the greatest downstream impact.
Reducing Rework Through Shared Understanding
By establishing a clear, end-to-end view of the service, the work helped reduce downstream rework by ~20–30%, improving delivery predictability and minimizing late-stage design and implementation changes. Teams were able to anticipate dependencies earlier and align on sequencing before work entered delivery.
Building Alignment and Design Maturity
The project achieved strong stakeholder buy-in across business, product, and technology teams, helping to:
Establish service design as a credible, strategic discipline rather than a purely exploratory activity
Create a shared reference point that supported ongoing initiatives and cross-team conversations
Inform subsequent product- and process-level design work, grounding future decisions in a common systems view
00 / Reflections
Scope matters, enough is enough..
When conducting research to understand various perspectives, it isn’t feasible, or necessary, to speak with every stakeholder. Instead, we know it’s time to stop gathering input when insights begin to repeat and clear patterns emerge, indicating we’ve reached sufficient understanding.
Deliverable cadence is important.
The pace of deliverables shape how insights are received and acted on. In this project, more frequent, lightweight outputs shared incrementally rather than as large, infrequent handoffs may have made insights easier for stakeholders to absorb, discuss and apply in real time.
It's a team sport, requiring multiple inputs.
I depended heavily on help and guidance from subject matter experts, of which their time was very limited due to prioritising financial deliverables. Future projects would benefit from committed SMEs with protected time, ensuring continuity and progress.
Service design is very much about influencing stakeholders, as it is about designing for change.
Service design is only the starting point. Creating real change requires influence, not force. Ignoring key stakeholders risks resistance and stalled progress, while bringing people along builds alignment and momentum. Successful service design depends on engaging the right senior sponsor, which I thankfully had.
These learnings directly influenced how I structure and lead complex, cross-functional initiatives today.