SIMPLIFYING THE ADVISOR EXPERIENCE
– Morningstar Account Unification Research –
Account Unification was a significant update for Morningstar Advisors. It unified the paperwork and signature processes combining the proposal, account application and home office forms into a single packet. This new unified proposal will be positive for advisors who want to have everything signed at once by their clients as opposed to signing three different DocuSign packets.
THE CHALLENGE
TEST OUR ASSUMPTIONS AND VALIDATE THE NEW WORKFLOW
Morningstar advisors had been voicing frustration over an onerous workflow that requires them to sign multiple DocuSign packets when creating a new proposal and account. For this reason our sales team has been asking the design team to solution this for over a year.
Our high level goals were to:
- Evaluate the proposed changes in Proposal and Digital Account Opening signature ceremonies and tracking.
- Evaluate the effectiveness of our current Help Center and determine the best way to service our advisors when they need assistance.
MY ROLE
INITIATE AND MANAGE USER RESEARCH
I reached out to sixteen advisors to participate in our moderated research with seven responding. Once we scheduled the sessions I oversaw the research efforts and assisted in note taking and generating results that would ultimately influence our design.
Study Logistics
- Type of Study: Interview/Qualitative
- Sample Size: 7
- Participants: Morningstar TAMP Users
KEY FINDINGS & RECOMMENDATIONS
INITIATE AND MANAGE USER RESEARCH
The 7 advisors that were interviewed are long-time TAMP users, they create proposals and open accounts at least on a weekly basis and identified the TAMP as one of their primary work tools. 2 of the advisors are not familiar with the custodians’ paperwork for account application as they have assistants who complete this part of the process, the other 4 are experienced in the whole process. All the advisors work with a broker-dealer, so they need to go through the “home office review” workflow. 4 of the advisors complete paperwork almost exclusively with the e-signature option, with rare cases wherein they needed to do wet signatures; 1 advisor has the opposite case: mostly with wet signatures with rare cases of e-signatures. The remaining advisor works exclusively with wet signatures and paper forms.
Recommendations
- Make sure advisors know the Home Office Forms section is read-only, no action needed, forms are already included. This could be done by including pre-checked checkboxes and/or enhancing the description.
- Make the paper signature stand out slightly. Even though we are not encouraging that option, advisors still have some rare cases where they need to use it so it should be at least more visible.
- Although it is possible with the proposed changes, it should be more evident that the proposal is available right after it’s generated, and it can be downloaded for sending to clients before proceeding with any other work.
- There needs to be close collaboration with Marketing to communicate the changes to advisors before they’re launched. Even though they expressed their work won’t be significantly affected and rather enhanced, advisors should know what to expect with the new workflow.
The product is set to launch in October, 2023.