Fragmented Working
Users were moving between multiple systems, spreadsheets, documents and handoffs without a reliable single source of truth for progress, ownership or next actions.
Case Study // Wealth Management UX
Defining a Proprietary Front Office Experience for £10bn AUM Wealth Management Firm
How we helped a large independent wealth management firm define and validate a vendor-agnostic front-office experience across adviser, client and operational workflows.
Front-office UX strategyWorkflow designPractitioner-tested prototypes
Client
Independent Wealth Management Firm with 500 staff and £10bn Assets Under Management
Industry
Wealth Management / Financial Services
Duration
~3 months
Scope
Discovery, design sprints, prototyping, usability testing, UX principles, and vendor guidance
DISCOVERY & JOURNEY MAPPING
PROTOTYPE VALIDATION
02VENDOR-AGNOSTIC UX LAYER
The Challenge
01Fragmented front-office workflows were limiting visibility, consistency and scale
The organisation was operating across multiple propositions, roles and systems, with adviser, relationship management, operational and client-facing journeys spread across disconnected tools and manual handoffs.
Discovery identified recurring friction around fragmented systems, duplicated effort, limited workflow visibility, inconsistent data flow and the need for a more scalable operating model.
Manual Effort and Rework
High-click workflows, duplicated data entry and manual workarounds were creating avoidable delay, operational friction and increased risk of error.
Limited Process Visibility
Once work moved between teams, users often lacked clear visibility of status, responsibility, blockers and what needed to happen next.
Our Approach
02Defining a vendor-agnostic front-office experience across complex adviser, client and operational journeys
Rather than starting with a vendor platform or predefined technical solution, we worked from the organisation's operating model, user journeys and workflow needs.
The engagement combined discovery, collaborative sprint workshops, asynchronous UX design, interactive prototyping and practitioner testing to define a target experience that could sit across multiple business areas and underlying systems.
Phase 01
Understand The Operating Context
We used leadership and practitioner discovery to identify the sources of friction affecting adviser, client and operational journeys.
- Leadership and practitioner interviews
- Review of workflow fragmentation and manual effort
- Identification of shared themes across business areas
Phase 02
Map Priority Journeys
We worked with stakeholders to define the workflows, handoffs, roles and user outcomes that the target experience needed to support.
- Journey mapping across multiple propositions
- Identification of roles, responsibilities and dependencies
- Prioritisation of journeys for prototype validation
Phase 03
Prototype Target Experiences
We designed interactive prototypes showing how a more coherent front-office experience could support advisers, relationship managers, operational teams and clients.
- Vendor-agnostic wireframes
- Role-specific dashboards and workflow views
- Client-facing progress and action prompts
Phase 04
Test With Practitioners
Representative users completed realistic journeys without step-by-step guidance, allowing us to evaluate usability, terminology, navigation, workflow visibility and perceived value.
- Practitioner usability testing
- Scorecards across priority journeys
- Refinement of wireframes based on test feedback
Phase 05
Translate UX Into Delivery Guidance
We created UX principles and implementation guidance to help the organisation protect the target experience during vendor discussions, product definition and future delivery.
- Reusable UX principles
- Vendor and delivery guidance
- Recommendations for product ownership and design governance
Outcomes
03A validated direction for a proprietary front-office experience
The engagement gave the organisation a clearer target experience for how adviser, client and operational workflows could be brought together through a more coherent, vendor-agnostic front-office product.
Outcome
Cross-Business Target UX
The final outputs defined a more consistent experience across multiple business areas while still allowing for genuine differences in role, proposition and workflow.
Outcome
Practitioner-Tested Prototypes
Interactive prototypes were tested with representative users and refined to address recurring confusion, missing requirements and opportunities for simplification.
Outcome
Vendor-Agnostic Wireframes
The target experience was defined around the organisation's operating model rather than the default workflows of any single platform or vendor.
Outcome
UX Principles For Future Delivery
A set of principles was created to guide future design, vendor evaluation, product specification and implementation decisions.
Outcome
Clearer Product Ownership Model
The work highlighted the need for the organisation to retain ownership of product vision, roadmap priorities, UX standards and acceptance criteria during implementation.
Key Learnings
04What the engagement reinforced
Enterprise UX is operating-model design
In complex organisations, the interface cannot be separated from the workflow. Effective UX has to account for roles, handoffs, data quality, compliance and service model.
Vendor-agnostic does not mean anti-vendor
The strongest approach is often not to build everything or buy everything, but to own the experience layer while using third-party systems intelligently underneath.
Visibility is a strategic UX principle
For regulated, multi-role workflows, users need to understand progress, ownership, blockers and next actions without chasing across systems.
AI needs human accountability
AI can reduce administrative effort, but the experience must make outputs reviewable, editable, transparent and accountable before they affect clients or records.
Next Step
Need to define a complex enterprise workflow before committing to build?
We help teams map complex journeys, prototype target experiences, validate with real users and create the product direction needed for confident implementation.