ACCA
Digital transformation
The Client
ACCA is the global professional accounting body offering the Chartered Certified Accountant qualification. An educational institution and awarding body, with international recognition.
The project involved the redesign of the portal experience for B2B and B2C customers and enhancing the overall experience throughout their respective lifecycles. Strategic direction for the public-facing website (.com) was provided to ensure a consistent, relevant and impactful experience.
Digital Transformation Brief:
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Optimise Customer Relationship Management process
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Shift analogue communications to Digital methods
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Improve overall onboarding and routine User Experience
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Increase reusability of Front-End components
Business Needs
“Re-design ACCA’s customer portal experience with a goal to elevate the design and improve the overall user experience. Utilising a core component library to achieve a consistent portal user experience.”
“Consolidation of ACCA’s considerable portfolio of outdated technologies and applications in order to drive reliability, increase security and increase cost savings.”
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User experience
The current user journeys are not clearly defined and are dispersed. The customer is taken to multiple places to complete their journey.
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Technology & IT Services
Outdated technology is causing many issues such as security and issues with support and is costly to maintain.
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Front end design
Inconsistent use of components. Incoherent designs integrating with different 3rd party applications.
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Applications
Currently there are many legacy applications which are difficult and costly to maintain.
The Solution
Steps to clearly articulate a better user experience through:
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Improved portal architecture
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Design patterns
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Providing strategic leadership
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Content strategy
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Design briefs
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User testing
Timeline of tasks:
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Gather user tasks and core journeys
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Identify current pain points and areas for improvement
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Create a user centric site structure
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Craft user journeys
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Design screens
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Usability testing
Design - UI Components
A library of UI Components was created with a focus on consistency, elevating the user experience, and creating reusable designs.
Deliverables
The project was across 12 months which allowed us to create multiple journeys across B2B and B2C that elevated the digital transformation strategy for ACCA.
Key features and journeys:
Making all the complex processes below simpler in the portal and across the .com website
- Bulk Registration
- ODCBE
- Exchange
- Groups
- Partner Linking
- Prospect application
- Becoming an ACCA Approved Learning Partner
- Dashboard and notifications and navigation
Bulk Registration
This application allows the partners to upload multiple applicants and will allow them to have full control of each individual's data. (Below is a small selection of the screens)
Dashboard and navigation
Refresh the common masthead pattern across the MyACCA customer portals and the ACCAGlobal.com website with small variances based on context. Notifications were added to let users know they have an action to take or important information to read.
ODCBE
The exams are conducted at centres which are licensed by ACCA. The approval and registering process was a massive pain point the client needed to fix. The application we created allows the ability to register centres and provide relevant details for submission. This method allows users to easily update their information, and check on their status and provides a seamless ability to renew when needed. (Below is a small selection of the screens)
Exchange
The client's users did not feel in control and the client mainly used paper communication. This journey allows both B2C and B2B to manage their connections online. Students can accept or decline organisations and partners can add, remove or edit connections. Extra features such as status, adding multiple connections in bulk and the ability to search and filter are elements we added to elevate the user's experience. (Below is a small selection of the screens)
Groups
Acca partners manage multiple students and applicants, this can be difficult to manage and keep track of where each contact sits and their progress. To create the structure we created the ability to create groups and broke down the key information the user needed to see for each contact and group. (Below is a small selection of the screens)
The Result
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A more connected experience as there was consistent navigation between the portal and .com
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A streamlined design library to increase the reusability of front-end components
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A user-centric site structure was achieved and complex processes made simple
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Cost savings - By centralising finance applications onto a single platform, the organisation’s costs have been reduced by £470,000 per year, while also improving customer service
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All analogue communications were successfully shifted to digital methods