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Explore. Build. Grow
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Our flexible three-stage framework to craft digital experiences.

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View our portfolio
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Explore our range of digital solutions.

Learn more
Industries
Our Approach to AI
Our Approach to AI

Keeping ourselves at the forefront of emerging technology is part of our DNA. But we recognise that ‘technology for technology’s sake’ is not the end goal – there is a balance to be struck.

Learn more
DXP
Headless
Cloud Platforms
Marketing Optimisation
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Vanguard Australia Service Design Project

As one of the world's largest investment management companies, Vanguard is known for its focus on long-term value and a client-first approach. Through its Australian business, Vanguard offers support to a growing community of financial advisers. Luminary was engaged to conduct a Service Design project to understand the needs of this audience, identify gaps in the current product  and service ecosystem, and develop a roadmap for a transformed adviser experience.

How We Helped:

Discovery , UX design

Who We Helped:

Financial services

What is Service Design?

Service Design is about planning, organising, and improving the delivery of services. It’s about understanding the needs and interactions between customers and employees so that the organisation can align its processes, resources and funding with the channels that drive the most value for both the business and its customers. For a more detailed explanation, check out this blog post, Behind the scenes of Service Design. 

Vanguard case study image 2

The challenge

Vanguard Australia’s applications serve multiple audiences – individual investors and financial advisers. The adviser experience, while critical to Vanguard’s service offering, was limited by its features, manual processes, and a lack of staff alignment.

Internally, teams had developed strong engagement tools and content for advisers, but these assets were scattered across disconnected environments and not always surfaced through the adviser website or custom web application. 

Having recognised a gap in the advice market, Vanguard had brought to market an initial MVP adviser solution. Vanguard had already recognised several key feature gaps, and it held a broader ambition to better support advisers in growing their practices – through tools, thought leadership and timely insights. So it engaged Luminary to uncover how its channels could better meet these goals and reflect its reputation as a trusted investment partner. 

Luminary was brought in to take a deeper look at the requirements of advisers and their support teams, ensuring that all critical requirements were known and could be aligned with Vanguard’s service capability. Furthermore, Luminary was tasked with mapping the current business processes and service delivery channels to identify gaps and opportunities for immediate and future improvements.

Vanguard recognised that improvements to its web application alone couldn’t solve its adviser channel challenge. It was for that reason that the scope was extended to understand and improve how the business can service advisers. 

Vanguard case study image 1

What we did

Working closely with Vanguard’s Australian CX, adviser and product teams, Luminary delivered a multi-stream discovery engagement focused on audience insight, digital strategy, service improvement and web application planning.

The engagement began with stakeholder workshops, alongside a review or over 30 strategic and market intel documents to align priorities and uncover existing pain points. These were followed by research planning and in-depth interviews with advisers and their support teams from across Australia, capturing real-world needs, digital behaviours and unmet expectations. 

Particular attention was paid to advisers’ current processes and experience with tools and applications across the market place. This included onboarding clients, aligning investment products with their needs and accessing key information. Understanding their workflow, without biasing the research with brand sentiment, was critical to uncovering the market-fit and features that were important to advisers and their teams.

The discovery phase also included Luminary being onboarded into the current adviser portal, so we could understand how it worked, including how advisers apply for access and onboard into the web app.

In parallel, Luminary conducted four interviews with key strategic leads to capture the history, vision and progress being made on the current strategy. Luminary also interviewed 10 internal departments, including Sales, Operations, Analytics, Technology, Design, Marketing and Support teams to uncover their current service delivery process.  

At the conclusion of the internal and external research, Luminary facilitated a walkthrough of research insights and the early mapping of the end-to-end experience with the Vanguard project team. Together, Luminary and Vanguard filled in gaps, pieced together role responsibilities and processes, and identified several focus areas for service and product improvement. This input was critical in aligning the team with both the research and the intended output – a Service Design Blueprint.

Over two sprints, Luminary shared iterations of the Blueprint with the project team, receiving rounds of feedback to align all parties on the narrative, look and feel, and finer details included within the artefact. Finally, the Blueprint was designed in two variants – a simplified three-metre-long customer journey map for presentation, and a complete, nine-metre-long Blueprint.  

Finally, all  findings were also consolidated into a second strategic document, a product backlog, prioritised using the ICE (Impact, Confidence, Ease) framework. This document provided a roadmap of prioritised features across web application design and team enablement, providing a clear and actionable path for Vanguard’s next phase of digital investment.

Vanguard case study image 4

The outcome

Vanguard Australia now has a clear, validated understanding of the adviser journey and a roadmap to create a digital experience that better reflects its values and long-standing commitment to practice support.

By capturing adviser needs first-hand and aligning them with business and technology requirements, the engagement has laid the foundation for a more unified and effective product and service ecosystem. This future state aims to provide clearer pathways to tools, onboarding, customer support and product information, while reducing internal complexity and empowering the Vanguard team to iterate and improve.

Service Design Blueprint

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Want more? Here are some other examples of our work that you might be interested in.

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