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Qatar Development Bank


“Project LEAP’s ambition is to digitally reinvent QDB by developing a digital vision that is aspirational and transformative in terms of customer experience. This is to help QDB become the digital lighthouse of the region, Leading the way for all future initiatives as the gold standard in digital experiences. “

Overview

Project Leap’s design chapter is a two part team that comprises discovery and action. The discovery team is to bring the customers voice at the heart of all that the organization does. The action team is to bring the best industry practices and simplify existing processes. Hence with close collaboration between the two independent teams we achieve the design chapters goal of creating solutions that solve the core challenges and help shape the future industries of Qatar.

Who is QDB?
Company: Qatar Development Bank
Industry: Banking and Finance
Headcount: 500-600

Qatar Development Bank provides financial services, loans, and banking support to boost Qatar's industrial, tourism, education, healthcare, agriculture, and fisheries sectors.

Our team

   Amna M: Project Lead    Deepak J: UX Design Lead    Rajat K: Service Design Consultant    Aisha Q: CX and Research   



The Challenge


Our biggest problem in this was simplifying complex banking processes, while in alignment with the internal teams that wanted all the existing processes in place although some were redundant. The stakeholders believed that in order to process any application all the existing complex processes are a requirement thus any simplification would cause a significant increase in the turn around time (TAT).

Adding to this the banks team although packed with talented and motivated people, their efforts to meet marketplace demand were hobbled by their process, software development life cycle (SDLC), organisational structure, tooling, funding models, lack of Continuous Delivery practices and other factors.

The Approach

Digital Transformation is a demanding process that requires time, effort, a strong will to improve, and skilled people with transformation experience. We performed a detailed baseline examination. We identified what was working and what was not. We pinpointed blockages, found areas in which best practices had broken down, and triaged with priority fixes and improvements.

The Solution
Our main goal to achieve a seamless transformation and successful product delivery was to change the culture, digital know how, technology usage and metrics based product implementation.

"The ability of an organization to adapt rapidly – to quickly flex and meet market, environmental or internal changes – is absolutely critical to the future of innovation"
Head of Digital
Qatar Development Bank

Cultural change and Digital Knowhow: This was the most difficult as the users themselves were used to traditional paper based methods which they deemed more secure, reliable due to the systems already in place. Converting anything into a digital format was seen as a threat in terms of cyber security, loss of jobs, employee digital knowledge and customer retention. Reasons included: Digital platforms will always be hacked, bank employees who are not digitally sound may loose their jobs/not be able to cope up and customers have no time to spend on their digital devices and rather come to the bank where they are served.


The teams soon started becoming Iterative, Adaptable, Customer-focused. By starting small, we were able to see widespread adoption of our core principles throughout the bank’s E2E group, which was comprised of business, strategic, and technological teams.

Metric based implementation: We believe in using data, metrics, and analysis to gain insight to a multitude of points and processes along the E2E SDLC. They aid us in accurately evaluating the project’s status and progress. There are several levels of metrics depending on the information and feedback needed.

By switching to this objective model, we eliminate the “gut feel” of older management systems, and begin shaping a transparent, data-driven organisation.

 A snippet of our journey blueprint

The Results Our success as a team was the wholistic transformation of the not only the digital banking, but process, ways in which teams worked, solution driven product development cycle and collaborative efforts to simplify the customers journey across the banks products as well as interaction with the banks team. Teams now work with a more digital innovative mindset that is more iterative, evolving and failing that helps finds solutions to real problems.



The launch: After months of planning, designing and building the portal was eventually launched as an MVP 6 months after we set out and by June of 2021, we released a robust and dynamic product that won over our valued customers.


You can find the live version here. View QDB Digital

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