NAB

Problem

Business problem: The Trade Finance Online (TFO) platform was built on legacy software that was nearing end-of-support, and despite two previous attempts over several years, NAB had been unable to secure internal funding for an upgrade.

Customer problem: Customers experienced a fragmented and inefficient Trade Finance journey due to portal limitations, misaligned or missing features, and reliance on manual or offline processes.

The Hypothesis

How might we help NAB secure project funding by designing a future-state experience that boosts adoption, enhances customer retention, and drives financial performance?

The Approach

I set out to understand the Trade Finance landscape and how to best support NAB in strengthening its business case for additional funding. Through remote contextual inquiries and interviews with key SMEs, I explored staff and customer interactions across Trade Portal transactions. This research expanded beyond the initial scope—into onboarding and transaction processing—to break down organisational silos and spark cross-team discussions about future improvements.

I also facilitated co-design workshops with NAB and technical SMEs to map the end-to-end workflow and handoff points between customers, admins, and staff, revealing inefficiencies and redundant products and features. In addition, I conducted a comparative analysis of the legacy platform against the latest version to assess alignment with future-state requirements and provided recommendations to support NAB’s business case.

1. Project alignment

   • Agreed with NAB on key project outcomes.

     Identified SMEs across the end-to-end Trade Finance journey.

2. User research

   • Conducted interviews with 8 NAB SMEs to map key user journeys and uncover pain points and opportunities.

     • Help Desk SMEs

     • Onboarding SMEs

     • NAB TFO Product SMEs

3. Personas

   • Developed core personas representing users across the Trade Finance service experience.

4. User Journeys / Flows

   • Created key product flows, highlighting pain points and opportunities across scenarios such as:

     • Trade loans

     • Export collection

     • Shipping guarantees

     • Letter of Credit

5. Future-State Experience Principles

   • Developed and validated guiding principles for the future-state experience.

6. Service Blueprints

   • Produced current-state and future-state Service Blueprints for the Trade Finance experience.

7. Pain point matrix

   • Created and prioritised a comprehensive pain point matrix with SMEs.

8. Comparative analysis

   • Developed a comparison of platform versions and identified gaps against future-state requirements.

9. Recommendations

   • Delivered a high-level findings report and presented recommendations to key NAB SMEs to support their business case for additional funding.

Key insights

Key results
Data analytics and SME workshops revealed key insights that helped shape the future state experience to improve customer engagement and platform adoption.

1. Low product adoption: Key products like the Export Letter of Credit (ELOC) were underused due to missing file formats required by customers’ internal systems, leading to workarounds such as staff emailing files outside the portal.

2. Feature misalignment: Export-specific portal features did not meet customer needs, resulting in underutilisation.

3. Inconsistent guidance: Relationship Managers provided inaccurate information about portal capabilities, creating false customer expectations.

4. Underutilised platform functionality: Existing out-of-the-box features that could reduce offline communication were not being leveraged.

5. Manual processes and duplicated effort: Non-digital applications and delayed eligibility checks caused customers and staff to re-enter information and wait for approvals, creating inefficiencies.

6. Restricted self-service: Removal of customer admin functions increased workload for both staff and customers, reducing efficiency and satisfaction.

Why it Matters

The discovery phase was critical in helping NAB build a strong business case for funding the Trade Finance portal upgrade. The research uncovered redundant products and identified quick wins to better meet customer needs while improving ROI.