St James's Place

Digital Transformation of Partner Network Sites and Admin Tools

  • Date: 18 Apr 2022
  • Category: digital
  • Client: St James's Place
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Introduction

The client, St. James’s Place (SJP), is a financial services organisation with a network of 3,000+ financial advisers (partners) in the UK and Asia, each with a centrally managed website. Our mission was to migrate the existing partner network from the incumbent agency to a new tech ecosystem.

There were many reasons the client wished to move away from their incumbent agency, including but not limited to four key pain points:

  • Cost - ~£300k per month to manage and maintain with the incumbent
  • Efficiency - Existing stack was old and inefficient meaning change was cumbersome, expensive, and the technical debt was mountainous
  • Compliance Risk - Given the cost and inefficiency of the existing stack the risk of non-compliance with FCA regulations was a growing concern, and some minor breaches had the client nervous
  • Adaptivity - The aforementioned challenges created an inert inability for SJP to respond and adapt to market changes, user needs and service requirements of partners.

SJP Mobile Experience Image

The Challenge

Part of the requirements for migration was that the vast quantity of data that powered the partner websites also needed to be migrated and be available for the client-side Websites Team to manage.

This challenge quickly became more dynamic given the following conditions. Firstly, through Discovery, we knew the client was planning a migration to, and expansion of, Salesforce from which this data could be managed. However, this was at least 5 years away so we needed to create an interim solution that both mitigated the aforementioned challenges and effectively bridged the gap to the Salesforce migration.

Secondly, due to contractual limitations between the client and the incumbent, notice was given to the incumbent which gave us a hard cut-off date.

The Solution

My role straight from Discovery was to understand the requirements through workshops and working closely with the client to find the right method of handling, maintaining and future-proofing how the client handles their data that not only met the combined ongoing needs of the client and user, needs of the partner network and ensured FCA regulatory requirements.

The solution I created was a secure suite of admin functions which allowed the client to manage partner data, site data and publishing capabilities. The suite was to complement the CMS via custom API’s so that the eventual migration to Salesforce could be as smooth as possible. I needed to find and utilise an ‘Out Of The Box’ service to be able to improve our time to live but also aligned with the existing skills within the project team so that those ‘Out Of The Box’ services could be easily integrated and extended without a steep learning curve or introducing a skills gap. For this, I worked with the development team to select REACT Admin.

The next stage for myself was to design and define a solution that allowed us to firstly migrate the existing data and, secondly, allowed the client to manage data while maintaining regulatory compliance. Additionally, I needed to adjust our workflow and processes to account for this additional workload alongside the definition and build of the CMS.

The Result

A new digital ecosystem was developed to support St. James’s Place’s rapidly growing adviser network, addressing key challenges that were identified during Discovery. The redesigned digital framework ensures the longevity of the Partnership programme, with a strategic focus on scaling up Partners alongside the growth ambitions of the SJP core business.

This project was recognised for its excellence, winning the 2021 UK Dev Awards for Best Deployment of a CMS.