The Skience Blueprint: Framework for Digital Transformation

Most wealth management firms have the want when it comes to making the digital transformation a strategic priority for their organization.

They want to elevate the client experience, and they want to introduce internal efficiencies. And they really, really want to make the change a success.

But then they get stuck, because they stop at the want and don’t think about what they need.

The absence of any cohesive strategy then results in siloed data, employee pushback, and disconnected systems. Instead of a digital transformation, they now have an expensive Frankenstein monster of a tech stack that never actually fully got implemented or adopted, and everyone is using their own process.

Yikes.

What firms need for a successful digital transformation is an engaged partner to ensure you get it right the first time.

Skience understands that need, because we have decades of experience in helping firms and teams of all sizes successfully implement industry-leading solutions. And as a result, we’ve developed our own digital transformation project framework called the Skience Blueprint.

The Skience Blueprint Process

During the Skience Blueprint process, our consultants will guide you through engaging workshops and planning exercises to ensure your digital transformation goals are realized.

The process is designed to help firms clearly articulate and unify their data, integration, and user experience strategy using three critical steps:

Step 1: Discover

During the discovery process, the Skience team will interview leadership to ensure alignment with your firm’s objectives and vision while engaging in dialogue and workshops with a broad cross-section of internal stakeholders to identify pain points. Also during this first step, we will review the current state of operations and systems while identifying opportunities to eliminate inefficiencies in your current data strategy, technology infrastructure, and workflows.

Step 2: Design

Leveraging our agile project management framework and 20-plus years of wealth management experience, we’ll help you design a future state where your data, systems, and user experience are transformed. Our recommendations can be provider-agnostic or tailored to incorporate features of the award-winning Skience platform.

Step 3: Deliver

Lastly, the Skience team of experts will deliver a roadmap that becomes the foundation for the future development of your tech stack and firm’s evolution. Our goal is to develop a detailed, multi-phase plan for your firm outlining the resources, schedule, and agile sprints needed to achieve the first step.

The First Step in a Digital Transformation Process

The Skience Blueprint framework is the first step in Skience’s hybrid approach that takes the best of both worlds from waterfall and agile project management. The Blueprint considers strategy, objectives, process and people, not just the technology. The goal is to have a defined scope, future state, design and a roadmap based on each firms’ unique digital transformation goals and requirements.

This strong upfront planning process leads to the ability to gather feedback and adjust as the project unfolds later. This allows our team to get to the heart of a firm’s needs, design an optimal solution, deliver a roadmap to success, and help you create a functionally-rich digital solution with predictability and repeatability.

What Do Firms Need for Blueprint Success?

Our Skience team will be your partners throughout the Blueprint process. But to execute a Blueprint, your firm needs to be committed to the change you want to see.

Thankfully, we’ve designed the Blueprint process to make getting buy-in about change management easy for your team to achieve by providing you with the organizational stakeholders that you’ll need to make your project a success. Having an expert, dedicated team by your side helps lay the groundwork for the necessary shift in mindset and for a smooth transition.

Our team at Skience provides you with senior, specialized resources to lead the Discover, Design, and Deliver multi-week processes with your team. Here’s a snapshot of the collaborative team support that we provide during a Blueprint project:

Program Management: Project Manager
Solutions Architecture: Solution Architect and Technical Architect
Business and Data Analysis: Data Architect and Business Analyst
Wealth Management: Wealth Management Subject Matter Expert

Get Started on Your Blueprint to Success

Skience Blueprint is a proven process that will take your digital transformation strategy logically from assessment and planning to configuration, training, and adoption.