Create

Enhancing YBS’s approach to digital delivery, talent and processes

“We’ve worked with a number of the local digital partners over the years here in Yorkshire and xDesign stands out above them all.”

62%

Increase in unique logins on the YBS app in a year

4.7

Apple App Store

Increase in team velocity and output

“xDesign left its ego at the door, integrated into our business, and helped steer us on the right path to bettering our digital channels. We’ve seen a four fold increase in the productivity in our teams and that’s down to xDesign.”

Janice Barber, Digital Savings Channel Lead

The story

Yorkshire Building Society (YBS) is the UK’s third largest building society with 150 years of experience in providing its three million members with mortgages, savings and retirement products.

Having built some mobile products only a couple of years before, YBS wanted to give its members access to even greater insight and transparency on the mortgage and savings products it offers. Getting the right digital supplier was vital - particularly given YBS’ long tradition of upholding mutuality with its members.

With a reputation for putting people at the heart of everything it does - xDesign was chosen to reignite two flagship digital products and support in redefining YBS’s digital vision, whilst helping to fine-tune its ability to deliver purpose-driven products.

What we created

Strategy

xDesign quickly set about finding out exactly what YBS - and its community of members - needed from digital products. A number of deep-dive discovery workshops were run which supported in proving YBS with a strategic ‘North Star’- a set of KPIs and better clarity of vision to bring greater cohesion between multiple development teams.

Delivery

xDesign embedded a number of iOS and Android engineers into the client’s existing team and set about enhancing some of the core features of its savings app. By unblocking a hefty delivery pipeline in record time (just three months) YBS launched a milestone release on its savings app - the first in nearly two years.

Migration

In addition, our work to define YBS’s rapid prototyping process has also seen us migrate the back-end of its mortgage platform to DXP. This unlocked a fully integrated and seamless digital experience for customers across channels and devices. It’s also supported YBS in enhancing the customer journey online and set its mortgage services up for success with new features to be delivered in the very near future.

Talent

Our work didn’t just stop at delivering product enhancements. We collaborated with YBS to get the right foundations in place in order to enhance its people and delivery processes. Firstly, we provided it with the talent acquisition skills and interview coaching it needed to attract the very best developer talent. In addition, we supercharged its workflow processes; provided its teams with Agile Coaching, and delivered product and backlog prioritisation training. We also recently kicked off a mentorship programme to help the client further develop its in-house talent, along with internal training on content design.

Key outcomes

- Helped YBS to engage with members through its app - a 62% increase in logins via the app in a year. - Supported YBS in integrating the strategy and new approaches needed to get new mobile products into the hands of members quickly. - Unlocked the building society’s ability to attract the very best developer talent - meaning it could truly unleash its digital aspirations going forward.

Learn more about Create

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Product Design and Engineering
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