MassMutual Labs
MassMutual Labs was established with the goal of building for the future by better understanding evolving customer needs and advancements in technology.
The team was asked to explore and operationalize innovative ways of doing business utilizing a test & learn approach with the intent of embedding new mindsets, approaches and tools, while building a more innovative culture across MassMutual’s IT organization.
We were positioned to defend against disruption from inside / outside of the industry and to establish a repeatable process for feeding a healthy pipeline of ideas, prototypes and pilots back into the org. to inform the future of the development roadmap.
The Labs team was responsible for creating the initial vision and strategy against business objectives, ideation and iteration, establishing value propositions, building out MVPs and informing/implementing development efforts. Below is a high-level example of our approach, moving from research & data driven insights through testing hypothesis with proof-of-concept prototypes & the ability to move projects into production. Our efforts often started at a systems-level approach where work could be broken-down into smaller components to aid in testing and rapid iteration.
The ASK; MassMutual wanted to understand how they might leverage digital tools to deliver on the promise of “financial well-being for all Americans”.
Research, Alignment & Consensus
We designed and conducted numerous quantitative & qualitative research exercises in order to assure we were solving the right problems and for the right users. The output allowed us to create a series of decision-making tools and processes to assure we were always making well-informed development decisions. Our findings allowed us to clearly articulate who we were building for, what pain-points they had, how their expectations should inform the final offering and of course, how all of this would map back to helping support both MassMutual’s vision and their business.
We often worked across silos, business units, as well as up and down a heavily matrixed organization. In order to stay nimble and reduce over-investing in any early directions our team would synthesize our learnings into easily sharable tools. This allowed us to easily convey our direction when collaborating with individuals and teams and build consensus around our vision and approach of how we might meet the needs of the customer.
Product Configuration
Moving from the high-level vision into the ideation phase often produces endless avenues to pursue and presents the opportunity for all-inclusive “franken-concepts”. Building large & highly complex solutions eliminates the potential to for the team to move quickly, rapidly iterate based on feedback and will most likely be too cumbersome to attract users.
We intentionally avoided adding unnecessary elements or burdening a single offering to meet the needs of all users. When complex solutions require in-depth tools it is often best to break them up into smaller offerings that can, if the user chooses, work in tandem based on their specific needs. This approach also allows us to prioritize work, inform work-streams and drives decisions around whether we should build, partner or acquire to meet the needs of the program.
Building a suite of tools to help you navigate your financial journey.
This system shows our approach to testing our hypothesis (informed by our in-depth research & ideation phases) by developing three offerings that can work independently or as a platform with multiple points of entry. Each one has benefits to, and informs, the others which means if a user chooses to move through the platform their experience becomes more rich and intuitive.
The Financial Planning app helps you get organized, set goals, track spending, find ways to set additional money aside and hopefully aid in behavioral changes as it relates to how you think about money. The Robo-Advisor allows you to easily invest existing and new-found savings toward your financial goals as defined in the Financial Planing app. The Claims app helps you keep all of you protection products organized and accessible as well as has the ability to make recommendations through gap analysis based on the data in the Financial Planing app.
Module 1 ; In-house Build
Financial Planning App
Solving a behavioral design problem, not just a product design problem
Through our research we found that the larger challenge we faced was changing the way Americans interact with, and think about, their finances. We developed a tool that helped reduce the effects of hyperbolic discounting by tying improvements in their spending and saving habits today to their quantified financial goals for the future. Offering the ability to organize their finances, set & share financial challenges and always providing customized “next steps” in the users financial journey.
Iterative Development
The team moved quickly in and out of phases across all 3 modules to assure we were taking advantage of connection points and leveraging relevant information between experiences. Whiteboard sessions, sticky-note taxonomies, journey mapping, user testing, and all the usual development activities were table-stakes. Our iterative and user-centered approach went so far as to include real-time edits to offerings through co-creation workshops with users that fit our research-informed demographics.
Ultimately these early phases would allow the team and stakeholders to better understand the final vision, make faster development decisions, informed recommendations on build, partner or buy options and assured each project would start in a position of advantage as we could more accurately identify resource needs, permissions, budgets, timelines, etc.
Proof of Concept
Concepts are further refined through user testing, co-creation sessions and meetings with compliance, legal and the development team to assure we’ve got the “all clear” to move forward with final prototyping. Some projects will get a fully developed prototype for real world release / testing. Others might remain at the low-fidelity mock-up phase or pivot to another medium such as- illustrations, white-pages, videos/animations, storyboards, etc. The end-stage is based on how best to convey our findings and illustrate opportunities for consideration. Ideas and efforts were not considered sacred. The degree in which an idea and hypothesis were pursued was based on our ability to capture and convey enough clarity to make an informed recommendation and craft a clear story around “go or no/go” to the department leaders.
Module 2; External Partnership
Robo-Advisor Service
Making it a little easier to work towards your financial goals.
While the financial planning aspect of the platform helped raise awareness and create a vision of your financial future, we knew we needed to provide a tool to allow users to take action. Introducing a robo-advisor to MassMutual was no small feat and required full-time care from our Product Owner. This momentous effort was worth it as it would allow us to move users from awareness to action within our offering and provided a tool to keep our advisors competitive in the field.
Integration & Service Model
While the need for a robo-advisor was identified as an essential part of our proposed platform, we elected to partner with an external vendor on this module as ground-up development would be a substantial investment of both time and resources.
As we were planning on leveraging an existing platform our efforts shifted to evaluating and identifying potential partners based on offering, primary delivery channel, alignment with MassMutual brand & offerings, internal stakeholders needs, customer experience, integration capabilities, etc. Upon selection of the external vendor we worked closely with them to assure customer experience and compatibility with the other elements was in line with expectations. We were heavily involved in building out the new brand, marketing assets as well as standing-up an entirely new team to support this program after launch.
Service Model
Even though we were leveraging an external partner for this offering we still had to figure out how best to integrate a robo-advisor into the MassMutual ecosystem. We worked with teams across the company to identify stakeholders, understand their needs & concerns, and developed an approach to integrating this offering into a complex business model.
We worked with teams to explore and test service models, business model concepts, experience flows, impact on Financial Advisors, etc.
Branding
Working with the Product Owner and against the MassMutual Brand Guides I worked with the vendor to build-out assets that fit into the MassMutual brand-system for use on the platform, marketing materials, communications, and more.
We also worked with the vendor to review marketing and training assets as well as providing feedback to assure alignment between offering and brand.
Module 3; In-House Build
Insurance Policy Manager
Making it easy to manage the products that protect your financial journey
Protection products (a.k.a. insurance) not only provide peace-of-mind but also assure that if something was to come up along your financial journey you could still pursue your financial goals. Our approach was to build a tool that made it easy for users to understand the ideal application (which products & how much) as well as making it easy to acquire and manage their protection products.
Process Enhancements
Last in the platform was a centralized location for all of a users insurance products. Creating the ability for users to learn, acquire, manage/maintain, and interact with protection products. It could also function as a “recommendation engine” based on the knowledge it’s pulling from your Financial Planning app (income, debts, obligations, dependencies, etc.). Communication between the tools would allow for a proactive ability to identify gaps, overages, & cost saving opportunities in order to make personal recommendations. If a gap was identified the platform could be used for many self-service protection products and provide the ability to shop, compare and buy protection products through the app.
Through our research we found that the ability to quickly and easily file claims was seen as highly desirable by our target demographic. A deep dive into this insight presented much more opportunity for exploration and this project broke-out from the pack and onto it’s own path. Working with internal teams involved in the claims process at MassMutual we were able to get a better understanding of steps, people and time involved in filing and fulfilling a claim on a policy. Working with these teams (through many sessions) we were able to illustrate how we may drastically reduce the claims cycle, improve the customer experience and even retain beneficiaries as new customers.
Building MVPs & Prototypes
Like the other modules in this platform we went through the usual wireframes, MVPs and prototypes for testing. Where this exercise differed was that the true value of this concept wasn’t as a direct offering to the user but the learnings we gathered and how they could impact internal processes within the business. Rather than force this into a digital tool we transitioned our learnings and concepts over to an internal partner in order to leverage for improving internal processes and enhancing customer experience.
