Being a Digital Leader - the Good, Bad AND Ugly of Digital Transformation
Join us as we dive deep into the world of digital transformation with real-life stories of breakthroughs and challenges from the front lines. In each episode, we'll sit down with industry experts, AND Digital consultants, and other influential figures in the technology space to hear about their personal experiences of leading digital transformation initiatives.
We'll explore what worked, what didn't, and the lessons learned along the way.
Being a Digital Leader - the Good, Bad AND Ugly of Digital Transformation
Next-Gen Customer Journeys with Alex Allen, Digital Product Leader at Aviva
Join us as Alex Allen, a Digital Product Leader at Aviva, shares his journey from tech consultant to leading mobile products.
Discover how seizing internal opportunities led to significant projects like re-platforming the MyAviva app. Alex talks about balancing innovation and responsibility in finance, transforming company culture, and exploring global opportunities.
We also discuss Aviva’s "One Aviva" initiative for holistic customer experience, and the importance of collaboration and storytelling in successful digital transformations.
Tune in for insights into thriving in tech and digital transformation.
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We all hear a lot about digital transformation, but unless you've been there and done it, it's easy to feel that transformation is a significant challenge that might seem difficult to conquer. That is why we've launched the Good, bad and Ugly podcast series. Each episode, we talk to people who've been at the heart of transformation and we get under the skin not just of what they did and how they did it, but how it felt to be at the center of it. Welcome to our podcast being a Digital Leader the Good, the Bad and the Ugly of Digital Transformation.
Speaker 1:On today's podcast, I am absolutely thrilled to welcome Alex Allen, a Distinguished Digital Product Leader at Aviva. Alex joins us to share his inspiring journey into the world of tech, and you've obviously had a very prolific career and pathway to the role that you are currently playing at Aviva, alex. So really looking forward to talking to you about your journey, as you have joined Aviva as a communications and tech consultant in 2010 and find yourself in obviously a very pivotal role within the business today as a mobile product lead. So, without any further ado, I am, rather than me, introduce you, alex. I thought you can do a far better job at introducing yourself and then we'll get going.
Speaker 2:Oh, thanks, wendy. Well, thanks for having me. Great to be on the podcast, listened a lot. Great to be on it. Yes, I lead what we call next-gen products within Aviva, mostly focusing at the moment on replatforming our flagship MyAviva app, which is used by millions of customers, and working in partnership with Andigital and some other providers as well to deliver a brand new experience for customers, which we expect to kind of be our flagship direct-to-consumer channel over the next few years. We've been working that together for the last couple of years now.
Speaker 1:Brilliant. Thank you, alex, for that. So, as I said, as I alluded to, you've had a fantastic career whilst you've been at Aviva. It'd be brilliant if you could just talk us through how that has evolved from when you first joined and how you've landed up playing the role that you have today.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, I graduated in summer 2008, which was just before the big market crash. It was the worst time to graduate. It was really hard to break into lots of different careers, lots of different grad schemes, and also I didn't really know what I wanted to do as well. I thought I wanted to maybe do advertising or do something like that, and, like a lot of people, I took a job at Aviva to kind of pay the bills in the short term. I started working in motor claims, handling motor claims. I was a very bad motor claims handler.
Speaker 1:It's a very difficult job.
Speaker 2:It's a very bad motor claims handler and, like a lot of jobs that don't go on the board, I kind of managed to work myself into a job taking tech and digital and trying to improve claim services and claims operational processes using technology. And that was really my first in into the industry and into everything that I'm doing now, and it all started from an operational role. So I was really lucky that people took a chance on me at the time when it wasn't easy to do and digital wasn't as big a thing, and I found a route into Aviva and digital doing that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, brilliant, and I suppose there's something really interesting about you started in the business at the Cold place, actually understanding the products and helping to service customers in terms of their use of the product, which probably gave you some really good insight into the core business of.
Speaker 2:Aviva? Oh yeah, definitely, because you can't go back and have those experiences later on. We try and go back and listen to calls and spend time in operational areas now, but it's not the same as doing the role firsthand, and that's why so many of the best product owners in Aviva and business analysts and other digital roles come from those operational roles where you've been genuinely close to the customer. You understand the problem. You're not just dealing with it through quantitative research in a lab somewhere. You've actually experienced it. I do think it makes you more grounded and it leads you to create better products. So I'm really glad for now I've got that experience, although I probably wasn't so glad when I was doing it at the time.
Speaker 1:And what was your? Because I think for a lot of people listening who might be at a similar point in their careers maybe just about to graduate from uni or finish A-levels, et cetera you went and you did that first role. What did that evolution look like for you? Was that a role you saw advertised internally? Did you get a tap on the shoulder?
Speaker 2:I think most of the best roles I've had have never been on the board. Right, I think you have to have a good vision for where you want to be, what you want to do, what you're about, and then think about who can help you get there. Which people in the organization do you need to have on slide, who do you need to speak to, what are their needs, what are they trying to achieve? And work out how you can align yourself with that. And I found over time it's quite easy to craft roles for yourself and opportunities if you know where you want to go and you can help get people on slide to get you there. If you wait for jobs to come up on the boards, you'll have quite a limited progression path. I've never found for me that's worked particularly well. I've always managed to carve opportunities out like this one, like the one I'm working on now on the app, and I think I'd always try and advocate that as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that's probably. I mean I would think and I know because we have worked together, it's a large, substantial, very high profile program of work within the business. Um, oh, would that be a highlight so far for you being being on that?
Speaker 2:oh yeah, because I mean there's a core of us in aviva probably about 20 25 people, who've worked on apps since the very beginning, and in the beginning there were 10 000 people using this app a month and there were debates annually about whether we'd fund it at all, even to keep the lights on, and the idea that I would present to the group exec on how it was going, or present to a thousand people on how it was going, or be on this podcast talking about the app, would have seemed a world away. So to see that growth and to see it turn into what it's become has been an incredible moment. It feels like the culmination of not just two years of work, but for a lot of us five, six, seven years of work, and it's amazing to see how it's evolved and how it's grown and the importance it now has in the organization.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's fantastic and obviously I'm an avid fan and looking forward to my next gen experience as well next gen experience as well? Yeah, definitely. So I mean, uh, what are the what? What stands out for you as the moments that have really shaped you along your journey, your career journey.
Speaker 2:um, I think I've always, I've always felt quite different out of eva. I'm not an underwriter, I'm not an actuary, I'm not an accountant. I don't naturally love numbers. I'm really creative, disruptive, hopefully in a good way. I have lots of ideas. I like to think big picture, think about the vision and so on, and I think sometimes that makes me stand out in Aviva in a good way, but also in a way where you have to build trust and people are kind of nervous and hesitant about that kind of person.
Speaker 2:So I think it's been challenging. It's led to some really interesting experiences and I've always tried to prioritize that over standard progression up the ladder. I've always tried to prioritize finding the most interesting experience and get a really broad range of those, rather than just trying to think about what's the next step, what's the promotion look like all the time. And yeah, I've had an opportunity to work in different countries. I've had an opportunity to work in different countries. I've had an opportunity to work with lots of different third parties, with different consultancies, with startups, with incubators, accelerators. So I think I've had a really broad range of experiences and I think that's probably shaped me into where I am now, because I think that's how you get to be a good leader. You've got to have a good, really diverse range of experiences you can draw from to help solve problems and help inspire and motivate people as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's really interesting and you use the word trust and I think there is something you are working on, an app that has such great impact in the market. There probably has to be that real sense of trust within the organization in terms of you understand the business, you understand the core of the business. You've been on that journey with Aviva and so probably in many ways, I would see you as being a very natural person to be grabbing hold of the reins and taking it through to the next gen, from an experience perspective.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and in previous instances where we tried this digital transformation at Aviva, we were in that kind of culture of move fast and break things and fake it till you make it and all that kind of stuff, and we hired lots of people like that from startups and other smaller organizations and it didn't fit and it was really obvious it didn't fit really quickly.
Speaker 2:We hired lots of people like that from startups and other smaller organizations and it didn't fit and it was really obvious it didn't fit really quickly and it came across as reckless and careless and that we didn't care about governance, we didn't care about the customers properly and they just weren't a good fit for the values of the organization.
Speaker 2:And I think what we're trying to do on the app is balance the need to disrupt and to go faster and deliver something that's fit for the future, while managing all those things really carefully, taking care of customers, taking care of risk and governance and so on, and making sure that businesses have confidence in the solution that we're delivering for them, because they're putting their customers and their P&L in our hands when we build this for them. If we don't deliver the right level of service or the right experience for their customers. Everybody will suffer as a result of it. So I think you have to balance both those things really carefully and I think that's what we've got really good at over the last few years. And my learning from working with those startups and organizations is often what not to do and how to tailor the approach for a bigger organization where you can't just bet the house the whole time on something working or just, you know, not getting things signed off, not doing things the way you'd expect. So, yeah, that's my big learning.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's fascinating to reflect on that because I think, taking some radical, it's not a startup organization, it's highly regulated. You are being entrusted with people's pension funds. There's a very serious eye to what you do. So, getting the balance right between how you innovate in a responsible so it's more of a responsible, sustainable type of innovation culture, it sounds like you've struck the right balance in that regard.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's what a lot of customers pay us to do is to take the risk and the responsibility seriously. We invest heavily in security features. You know, multi-factor authentication and selfie verification and all the other things that come along with making a great product robust and sustainable and secure. And we do those things because a lot of customers see that as our differentiator. They know if they take out a product with Aviva, they can rely on us to get the big things right. So we know we need to change our culture. We need to transform, like a lot of big organizations do, but we've also matured in our approach to how we do that. And yeah, that's something you really get to see. Once you've been an organization for a long time, you can see how the culture's evolved and how the approach changes over the years.
Speaker 1:Yeah, really interesting. I think we're going to touch on customer experience and the role of providing superb customer experience in a regulated industry in a bit. I'm looking forward to unpacking that with you. But particularly in a digital context, 14 years is a long time to be in any organization. I think you've touched on maybe some of the reasons why, but if you could maybe elaborate on why you think you found such a good home that's given you career longevity in Aviva, what are the core tenets of that?
Speaker 2:Well, I'm in my late 30s, so-.
Speaker 1:Young, alex, very young of that.
Speaker 2:um well, I mean, I'm in my late 30s, so young alex yeah, he's still young, well, I think. But you get to a point where you've got quite a nuanced set of things that are are important. Um, so you want to be fulfilled, you want to work on something that really motivates you and you feel driven by the mission on, and you want to have the platform to have a real impact. Um, and I've always felt at aviva that you know you can build products for millions of customers. You have a really big impact on a really really wide range of people, and financial services will always be important. Money will always be important to people. It's always going to be a critical factor in people's lives that you can have a positive impact on. And it's really diverse and really really broad as well.
Speaker 2:You know, over the time I've been at Aviva, I've worked, obviously, obviously in mobile. I've worked with startup accelerators. I worked with Founders Factory, which is Brent Hovman's startup incubation accelerator. I've worked in Canada. I've got to work in Singapore. I've now got to do this work on the app.
Speaker 2:So, although it's been 14 years, it's never felt like 14 years in the same place and they really look after people as well, and that's something I really, really admire. I've had a year off of paid paternity leave when my two kids were born, and I've even did that before most other organisations started to do that for men. They are really passionate about sustainability, about pride and the LGBT community as well, and that's something that's really important to me too. Um and I just I feel like they get the big things right in terms of looking after their people. Um, and combine that with the breadth and the opportunity to do great things, it's always felt like a great place to be. Um, never expected to be there forever. Um, still maybe don't want to be there forever, but, um, it's been a great place to grow and learn. I've never really felt like I was stagnant doing it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it sounds great. It sounds like you've had multiple careers and different opportunities that are really so diverse in what they've given you and how you've been able to grow whilst being there. Thank you for sharing that, alex. And maybe, if we rewind a little to pre-transformation and look at things from a customer experience perspective, how would you describe that world in terms of where was Aviva at that point?
Speaker 2:Well, one of the big challenges that we have is that we're a composite insurer, which just means that we cover everything. We do savings, pensions, investments, motor home, travel. We do all of it. And the challenge is it's really broad and it's really hard to create a really cohesive, holistic experience where everything shows up together, looks and feels consistent, looks and feels like it's all from one organization. So you'd have lots of good things happening in different places, but they weren't necessarily all connected. So you'd have lots of different apps happening in different places, but they weren't necessarily all connected. So you'd have lots of different apps on the store, lots of different login credentials, different branding, different tone of voice and, as a customer, if you say search for Aviva on the app store, you won't necessarily know what to download or how to use it or how they were tied together.
Speaker 2:We wouldn't give you the maximum amount of value that we could from using one service and say, well, hey, we do all these other things as well. Why don't you try this? And I think with the introduction of customer marketing, which is the function that I work in, we now have board level representation to focus on the customer holistically and think about those needs holistically, and so they call the different business KPIs and the things we're trying to drive towards, but also unify them into one experience that looks and feels consistent across the piece, and we've never had that before. We've had attempts to try and centralize it before, but never to actually have someone with board level representation to actually make the case for the customer always. And I would never say that the businesses don't care about customers. Of course they do.
Speaker 1:It's just about having that oversight of the customer as a whole entity that we probably haven't had in the past, and I think that's what's different it's fascinating, rather than one's one of the lines of business representing themselves, and I think certainly from a lot of what I've seen in the media, when you hear Amanda Blunk, your CEO, speak about the one of either strategy. That definitely amplifies what you've just said about a holistic customer experience that you're seeking to create across the portfolio.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, that's the big play, that one of either customer strategy, that we believe that it makes sense to have all these things together so that we can think about customers holistically rather than just covering bits and pieces in different areas, which is what our competitors do. So to make that work, you need to have a one Aviva strategy that works. You need to have assets that deliver against it. Obviously, my Aviva is our entry point into that, which is what we've been building in the app. It's our one flagship place where all our propositions and products come together and, um, yeah, to deliver that, I think you need to have a centralized team looking across all areas and bringing that experience into one place, and that's what we're trying to do yeah, and I think you know like whilst you're describing that, I'm thinking about all the change.
Speaker 1:You know aviva is is a well-established business. The landscape and the sector has seen a lot of change. You've got insured tech companies spinning up who don't have any of the legacy that can sometimes constrain from a tech perspective and consumer expectation. Just more generally, consumers are used to being able to do everything online and I suppose we bring those expectations to whichever ever institutions and organizations we're interfacing into. So you kind of, I suppose. At the same time, I would imagine in the organization there's a huge awareness of what's happening in the big wide world in terms of consumer expectation and what they're bringing to Aviva when they come to you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there is, but I think the transformation this time is a lot more mature and less shiny and less glamorous than last time, but a lot more valuable than last time. We're digitizing as many of our journeys as we can, where it makes sense. So we see high volumes of usage. We see high volumes of usage. We see high commercial value in doing it. We're trying to digitize those journeys as quickly as we can and deliver great experiences for customers that are consistent and accessible and well-researched, and we're trying to do those things.
Speaker 2:The first time we looked at this, probably about 10 years ago now, we had lots of people present to us. You know you don't want to be Blockbuster. You don't want to end up being the Blockbuster where you get left behind, you don't work quickly enough and you want to be Netflix and you know you want to move really quickly. And look at all these startups that are coming. Look at Lemonade. Look at all these stuff. They're going to come and get you, they're going to come and take you over and 10 years later it hasn't really happened. In the same way. You see quite a few distribution plays, so people who will be underwritten by a big insurer and they would then try and distribute insurance in a different way to a different audience, different kind of categories of customers. That was interesting. We saw kind of interesting prevention devices where people would try and prevent accidents from happening in the first place through things like detecting leaking pipes and that kind of thing.
Speaker 2:We saw a lot of stuff on autonomous vehicles. The motor market is going to go, guys, because you know cars are going to drive themselves and you know these things may still happen eventually. But it's a lot slower burn than people probably probably expect it. Um, right now, what customers fundamentally want is for their journeys to work the way that they expect to online. They want to be able to contact us at any time on any channel and get a great experience and not have to call us unless they actually want to and they need to when it's a sort of complex or sensitive issue and they want us to get the basics right and do a really good job on those. And then you kind of earn the right to do more than that and deliver new propositions on top of it. But before we were trying to build that kind of shiny layer without really getting the basics right. I think that's the big learning that we've got right.
Speaker 1:This time we're really focused on the things that matter first yeah, absolutely, and you know all those things that you describe are. You know I'm sat here nodding um. You know that is exactly what you want from your insurance company and and to take some of the complexity out of the process but also understanding the policies themselves and what you're covered for and what you're not covered for and I think we were chatting whilst we were getting ready for this morning. You know, I think there's a hugely emotive part of insurance as well when it comes to buying protection, and that could be for your child who's got their first car, or could be for your medical insurance. There's a very serious and emotional aspect to that and wanting real assurance that the organization that you're interfacing with is going to do what it says on the tin and be really clear and open about that as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think what surprises me about working for Aviva is how much people actually care about customers and actually just doing a good job and doing their best. It's not perfect Big companies aren't perfect. They're kind of knobbly and messy and difficult sometimes, but the culture is so far away from how I see insurance companies portrayed in the media and in forums and on social media and so on. There's just a genuine love for trying to do the right thing and trying to take that responsibility seriously. Um, and yeah, like you say, it's significant. You understand that really well if you work in operations which is where I started and you listen to people's claims and you understand the products that you're providing digitally are really being used by real people with real problems, with real issues. And sometimes you can get quite detached from that working in digital because you see the MI, you see the analytics dashboard, you know these people are there but you can't see them and touch them and speak to them.
Speaker 1:And then when you sort of hear from them in operations, you realize actually having a direct impact on people's lives in a very meaningful way yeah, absolutely, and probably at some of the most stressful time of people's lives, whether that's when they've been burgled or you know they've, they've been involved in an automotive accident, um, or need private medical insurance, um, that you you provide as well. So there's, there's a real humanity around that, and I suppose I've sensed that interfacing into the organization as a partner as well. But it's good to hear you calling that out as well, especially for those who might be thinking about careers in insurance as well. I think it's good to demystify culturally how insurance organizations operate. I think you've done a great job so far, alex, of also potentially selling a career in the sector as well and what that can afford you as well, we've touched on the.
Speaker 1:Definitely and we've touched on the regulatory aspects of working in insurance. You're a highly regulated sector bring to the role that you play, versus you being sat in an organization that doesn't have any of that well, any journey that we we make just to kind of help people understand that the process will go through research.
Speaker 2:So we'll do qualitative, quantitative research. We'll interview customers, we'll do it in a lab environment, we'll create prototypes for mock-up, we'll test them, we'll build them. But before anything can go out we put it through a process where it gets stamped off by every individual part of the approval process and you've got legal in there, you've got compliance, you've also got financial promotions so you can't make a promise in the product that you then don't deliver in the in the outcome. And all those things have to be signed off and stamped off before any journey can go live. There are some things that we can do to work with those teams to try to get the balance right between the experience and making sure that the pages aren't full of wording that customers don't understand. So, as an example, we put some copy behind tooltips so you can click on if you want to find the information. We don't clutter the experience by including it all, but we listen to the teams, we make the changes and make sure we're compliant as we need to be, and it changes quite often as well. Consumer duty is brand new. That only came in, I think last year. We started to look at how we made changes to comply with that. So it's never finished. So you've constantly got to reevaluate your experience, make sure it's fit for purpose, make sure it complies, and obviously there are quite serious penalties for getting it wrong as well. So whenever we have to make a decision between the experience or making sure that we're compliant, we'll always pick being compliant.
Speaker 2:And I think once you understand that and you know that's the culture and the prioritization, you can work those teams. You can bring them in earlier in the journey, you can make sure they're there from the beginning. In the prototyping sessions. They can say up front this is, this is never going to be able to to be released, we can't do it this way, um, but we are going to need to do it.
Speaker 2:And I think that's, as I was saying earlier, one of the things we learned from the last transformation attempts, where people thought you could just bypass that and we're just not going to do that, we're just going to break things, just not do it. Just see what happens. And those products never went live, we never put, we never did anything like that, and those people just struggle to fit into the organization's culture, and it's completely different this time. Completely different because you have to find a way to be innovative while still doing those things. That's the hard bit. Anybody could just not do them. The hard bit is actually finding a way to be compliant, treat customers fairly, do the things that you're supposed to be doing, but also find ways to make an engaging experience at the same time yeah, it's really refreshing the way you describe it because actually, having spent some time reading the fca documentation, a lot of it is very consumer.
Speaker 1:Well, it's very consumer focused and friendly, um, and and does make sense. So I suppose it's being ahead of that, understanding it and then designing within the realms of what is being defined as best practice, versus constantly feeling that you need to challenge it. It's there for a reason.
Speaker 2:Yeah, these teams aren't the enemy. They're not coming into work trying to find reasons not to put stuff live. Everybody thinks they're doing the right thing for the customer. And I remember this, this quote, everyone's. It might have been the steve jobs quote. We were saying that teams are a bit like where you put lots of rocks in a rock polishing machine and they kind of bash against each other and, you know, argue and disagree and something, but at the end you get these really nice polished rocks out of the top. And we have a lot of disagreements between teams within Aviva when we're building stuff. But I always respect the role. I understand why they're coming to me with the challenge or the criticism, whatever it is, and you sort of know that eventually you'll get all these different kind of compromises and work through different problems together and come out with something that should be the best of all, all worlds, all intents.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's quite interesting and I love the analogy of the pebbles, I suppose. When do you decide how and when do you decide what to challenge during that process?
Speaker 2:I think so. When we put the journeys through this process, they come back with lots of feedback. So it's all annotated and you think, well, is that a fair challenge? Um, because a lot of these, these regulations that open to interpretation, um, it's not like it's not black or white. You know, you have to understand what's the intent behind the regulation. Are we meeting it? Is there any room for interpretation or room for us to, you know, adopt a different way of solving that problem? And, yeah, I think often, as long as we can show a clearly considered process around, this is how we're meeting the requirement. This is an alternative way to do that. I think often there are different ways through that. Not always, but yeah, often you can find a way that suits both parties if you work through it together.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and what you're describing works in so many different situations coming together, everyone having different perspectives, but coming out with a much stronger solution off the back of everybody having helped to shape and evolve it. And something else you talk about the kind of structure of the organization. You do have lines of business and you have functional areas that are servicing and supporting those businesses, those individual teams. But in all of that, something else that comes with being in a large and very well-established business is the fact that you've got a lot of people to bring on a journey with you. When you're going through a transformation, such as the one you've recently traversed, how do you take the team and the leadership on that journey with you?
Speaker 2:I think it's probably one of the strengths I think I probably bring to Aviva doing that. When I was in my early 20s I was absolutely obsessed with Steve Jobs' keynotes absolutely obsessed with them, like I must've watched them hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of times and I was probably more into the storytelling of how he used to sell products before I was really into the tech behind it and I spent a long time kind of reverse engineering those and trying to work out how he did it and what were the mechanics of one of those keynotes and what are the devices that you use to get people on site, how do you create great visual content and so on. And I still find that one of the most effective tools to get things done in the business, even now no-transcript the business case. But sometimes they they need things to click in their own heads. They need to understand where you're trying to get to and from. You can then start to create the small steps that drives you to that main vision.
Speaker 2:But stakeholder management, great content and being good at selling into the business is key to getting stuff done, and a huge amount of that happens to make the app possible Stuff that the team's building it day to day. Fortunately don't realize is happening behind the scenes, but it's key to making sure you get the support, because a lot of conversations that involve you which you're not in the room for, so you have to make the best case you can to influence so that when decisions around funding and you know all sorts of stuff come along, you know that you've got the right people pushing for you and in the corner for you yeah, there's certainly a lot that goes on in in background, both from a governance perspective, but also I think what you've done is a great job of also showcasing and talking about it like sharing the narrative around what you're doing internally, and I think that's where we've obviously, from an Andan and Aviva perspective, work quite closely together.
Speaker 1:I don't know, rather, I think that's where we've obviously, from an and and a Viva perspective, worked quite closely together. I don't know, rather than me describe that, you know what is. What, from your perspective, is the role that we've played in that respect alongside you?
Speaker 2:I mean, I've been involved in almost all of it in one guise or another, but I think that the things that come to my mind particularly are you share my love of storytelling, obviously including things like today, but I see it everywhere and things like sprint reviews and demos to stakeholders, and we've got an event tomorrow that we're preparing together as well, and I think that we're really aligned on the importance of doing that. And whenever I start new projects, I'm always thinking well, what's this? What's the story? You know, why are we solving this problem? Who, who's, who cares? Who wants to know? How do we make it exciting? How do we make it vision and engaging? And and have been brilliant at bringing that, that skill set, to the table in a really, really strong way. Um, so I see that a lot as well. Um, the equip value I see constantly. Um, I mean the most.
Speaker 2:The key thing that we've obviously done together is um we've retrained all of our developers who were working on the old code base in the app to the new one and have been integral in managing that transformation and helping our team, that have been there for a long time and have the business knowledge but then are set up to actually do the development on the new app for the next five years 10 years, however long it's going to be and that's been huge. That transformation that's been so significant because it's not just about bringing new people in, it's about transforming what we were doing. People who are brilliant, with great skills and great knowledge of the business now have the skills they need to manage this new asset, which is huge for them and huge for us as well. I think it's also having a really diverse range of experiences. I mean, I work across so many different sectors.
Speaker 2:They can bring knowledge in from other partners, other people they've worked with and for a lot of us in Aviva who've worked for Aviva for a long time, that's our main way of getting new ideas and new blood and new you know, new energy into the delivery. But the thing that strikes me the most is the level of care and investment in Aviva as an organization from and it really does feel like one team and that's the sort of thing that you say at the end of a project, but I really, really mean it. You'd never know who's an Aviva employee and who's an and employee. Everyone is so invested. You can see that people are emotional at the end of the delivery, they feel attached to Aviva, they feel attached to the outcome, and I think that's what really sets and apart from some other others that I've worked with that you really feel like you've got a true team around you, um, and that's been really valuable to me.
Speaker 1:I'll really miss it when it's when it's oh well, I know the team will really appreciate your kind words, but there has been a tremendous sense of um teaming and you know, often you walk in a room and you don't know who is from and who's from Aviva. There's a real shared pride in what has been accomplished and lots of fun along the way with, I know, payday pizzas and constant flow of snacks I know it's very important to both of our teams to have at hand at all times.
Speaker 1:So yeah, I think the team have had tremendous fun and you know really to see people who picked up new development skills go from a standing start to being really active. You know high performing members of all the squads has been phenomenal to watch.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, we did a launch event for a different app last year. It's hard to explain, but we delivered in phases and we delivered the first app with some of the capability last year and we did a presentation and I kind of talked to her and someone came to me at the launch event afterwards and was saying I thought it was a bit weird that we had someone from Andigital doing the main presentation. I was like I'm not from Andigital.
Speaker 1:I'm from.
Speaker 2:Aviva, I've been there for 15 years. I quite liked it because it just shows that there's no distinction between the different organizations.
Speaker 1:That's brilliant. I didn't know that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's been really nice. What's been really impressive is we've actually now we've got now two different consultancies working on the app this year and it could have been a problem, but actually we've fused the whole thing together and created one brilliant culture where everybody it kind of brings the best of all the different organizations and the things that make them special. And, yeah, I think Hans' approach has really really stood out for me in that.
Speaker 1:Thanks, alex, and you know in terms of where you are now and you talk about this impending event, and I know the baby that we've all loved and nurtured is about to be set out into the world. World um. You know from your perspective, what is this transformation enabled, both for you and your, in terms of your role that you play um, but for the organization as well, what, what difference um will it make?
Speaker 2:well, I think my aviva has always been the great um unrealized opportunity in aviva. Ever since I've been there, it's grown and it's become bigger and bigger, but to me it's always been the way you unlock that one Aviva opportunity. Ever since I've been there, we've always had this idea that it's a composite. It works well together. We should keep everything together, think about customers needs holistically, and to achieve that there has to be somewhere for those things to happen and it's always been my Aviva. But MyViva has always been very transactional, kind of siloed. It doesn't really bring things together in a meaningful way. It's just lots of different journeys bundled up into one big ball.
Speaker 2:And I think what the new app will allow us to do is really deliver against that ambition. We can consolidate our app estate. We can reduce our offering down. You search for Aviva on the app store. There's one. There's one login you need to remember. It's accessible, it's secure, you've got multi-factor authentication. You can unlock with a selfie, you can self-serve. But it also brings in all of our kind of iconic propositions and things we're going to build together and I think that's what it gives us. It doesn't give us all of it on day one, but it gives you the platform on a new technology, new code base, with the right you know, backing behind it, to actually really go and turn that into the my Viva that I think we've always had the opportunity to deliver but until now haven't quite got there with. And I think this is, this is that product I know the next few years I think we'll really realize that potential.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so the start of lots more exciting things to come in that regard. And you know it, you know it's. It's um like with most journeys of this type, um, they're not easy programs of work. Um. Were there any particular surprises for you along the way, good or bad?
Speaker 2:um, I think when I look at what we've achieved, it's it's like it's the outcome of solving like a thousand really small problems, and every week there's been something that felt like it was going to break the projects and mean that we couldn't deliver it. Some weeks it was a system wasn't working or we hadn't got access or something was crashing, or we had a new requirement that had come through, or governance told us we couldn't release it in a certain way and we had people running around like, oh my God, this is going to kill the whole project, we can't do it. And the team always came together and solved the problem and after a while you kind of knew that the team would solve a problem and I didn't worry too much. I don't want to be flippant about it, but I didn't worry too much about what's the backup plan.
Speaker 2:How am I going to go and tell people this isn't going to happen? Because I knew that we'd get there and I knew that we had complete confidence in the team. We had stars in every position and I knew that we'd find a way through it. And it's when you get to the end and it's not like a big broad stroke of the app, it's actually just loads of really small, tiny details that have all come together week by week, meeting by meeting, problem by problem, that really make me proud of it and the people who built it. And yeah, that's what I'll probably take away from it no, that's great um and a really good summary.
Speaker 1:Are there any watch outs that you'd highlight to others who are about to go on a similar journey?
Speaker 2:well, re-platforming is really, really difficult. Um, we spoke to quite a few people before we started, from different organizations who'd done it in the past, and we got a range of different advice. So some people said don't try and lift and shift everything. Just start with the bare minimum that people actually want to use the most and then just build it up in an agile way, piece by piece, until you've got the whole thing there. People said that. Some people said don't introduce anything new to the experience because you're just making it more complex than it needs to be. Just focus on exactly what you've got and try and put what you've got there over here in exactly the same place and then build on top of it.
Speaker 2:And other people said well, why would you go and rebuild all those old journeys and old design systems and so on? Why wouldn't you take the opportunity to build a brand new app and do it in a new way and make those journeys fit for purpose? So what I took from that is there are lots of ways that you can do this. There's no right way to do it, and we picked the way we did, which was effectively to move it across exactly as it was, but make some improvements.
Speaker 2:So we imagined the homepage and we also introduced some new products, new wealth products for pension savers and investments customers, and we also measure customer satisfaction now as a group board metric. So we also had to manage the constraint that we can't let services slip for customers because we're building a new app, we can't put a broken version out or one that's missing functionality and let customers experience that poor service. So we picked the route that we did, but I think you have to try and understand there are trade-offs with all of them. But I think you have to try and understand there are trade-offs with all of them and I think I probably would have done it the same way again, but it was challenging to manage that transition.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, that's good and really good to hear about how you set out, just to find out about the options.
Speaker 2:Yeah Is probably a really important thing part of the process to go through um before you jump in.
Speaker 2:Yeah, especially for something like this where there is no tried and tested obvious way to go and do it if it's all yeah um, and obviously you know you can bring some consultants in and they'll do a nice deck and say this is what you should do. But when you get into it and you start experiencing these problems firsthand and I mean I could do two hours of podcasts just on some of the challenges that we've had to overcome like a really small one well, one that feels small. Recently we had to overcome was we weren't sure if you could move customers biometric preferences from the old app through to the new app, um, and something like you know, 90 of customers now log in with face id or Touch ID. Most people haven't used their login credentials for months, years, whatever it is, and we were really concerned that customers would open the app for the first time. They wouldn't know how to log in because they wouldn't have their login details and we'd overwhelm operations with people requesting password resets and these are the sort of small things that don't come up in the planning stage.
Speaker 2:You don't think it'll ask that question when you first, when you first start. But, as always, the devil's really in the detail and it's how you can get on top of those problems quickly. Try and shake as many of them out as you can. Um, we've run things in the past called pre-mortems, where we try and work out all the things that could go wrong. Yeah, try and preempt it. You don't catch all of them, but you'll catch a good, a good chunk of them, and that then minimizes the amount of running around panic that you have later on.
Speaker 1:Um, but yeah, stuff I think there's a book in there for you, alex yeah, I'm definitely sensing a book, um and I know this is rather a personal question, so I hope you don't mind asking it um, but we are all fascinated to know what, what. Where does this take you in terms of your own journey, in terms of next steps?
Speaker 2:I, I don't know. I think, um, like I said earlier, I always try and prioritize interesting experiences over very sort of formulaic progression. Um, I like experiencing new things. I like experiencing different cultures. Um, I like experiencing different cultures. Um, I like experiencing different problems and different products. Um, I feel like I've I've been on the app for a long time and this does feel like kind of the culmination of a journey getting it to this stage. There's obviously more to do. I mean, I don't know if you've ever heard this before, but you kind of have pioneers, I think settlers and town planners, those sort of three categories of people, and I've always definitely been the pioneer in that.
Speaker 2:I like it when it's new. I like it when there's a new problem to solve and you haven't got all the answers yet and you've got to try and work out what it is, and then, once it becomes really established and really sort of fully formed, it needs to be industrialized. I always think that's better left to other people who are better at that kind of thing. And I remember the CEO of Monzo, is it? I think it's Tom, is it Tom Bloomfield Bloomfield?
Speaker 2:Yeah, he left Monzo after, I think, they got to a million customers for the same reason he said getting to a million customers is completely different to getting to 10 million customers and he's not the right person for that. So it doesn't mean that I want to move away from Aviva at all, but I think it means that I need a different problem to go and solve something, to look at from scratch and be that person on again. Um, but yeah, I'm really proud to have got to this point on the app because it does feel like a long journey and it feels like a big milestone to a free that point, absolutely a really momentous milestone for the organization.
Speaker 1:Thank you for sharing, um sharing and allowing us to ask you that and you know you've worked with us for a long time. Alex, we all have our Antitles and it'd be lovely if you could share with us, if you were an Andy and you kind of are by proximity and how long we've worked together what would your Antitle be?
Speaker 2:I haven't prepared for this question, by the way, but I think it would definitely be slide wizard. I, I, I, I'm. I'm definitely knowing within aviva, for better, for worse, as being the king of slides for good reason good reason, maybe, and, um, I, I love to tell a story.
Speaker 2:I love to tell a story. That's it's the bit of the job that I enjoy the most, and creating the content that goes along with it is, um, yeah, probably, probably the most excited I get being at work. Um, and then maybe, maybe it sounds weird to other people, but, um, that's always the bit that I uh, yeah, I central, I center on I love that. Thank you for sharing that I came up with that in the moment. By the way, I do. I love that and you.
Speaker 1:You're gonna get to um live that that tomorrow at the big event, so I'll be there watching you. That's everything I know. That is an hour gone so quickly with you, alex, and I did say I very rarely get to get Alex Allen all on my own for an hour, so I've thoroughly enjoyed our conversation. That is everything for this edition of the Good, the Bad and the Ugly of Digital Transformation. Thank you so much for joining us, alex. It's been an absolute delight to have you with us. For those who have watched and enjoyed it, please do follow or subscribe so you can always know when there is a new episode for you to watch.
Speaker 1:But that is all for today, thank you alex, if you've enjoyed this episode, please do remember to follow or subscribe so you'll always know when there's a new episode to enjoy. And digital is on a mission to help close the world's digital skills gap. One of the ways we're doing this is by helping organisations deliver digital transformation more successfully through upskilling and reskilling.
