Strategic Vision

As part of its digital transformation efforts, the sales department of a Fortune 100 financial services company faced challenges delivering meaningful results due to the absence of a cohesive experience vision. The team often found itself working on isolated projects without clear alignment to broader business goals or user needs. To address this, a comprehensive initiative was launched to create an experience vision that would unify design and product efforts, enable strategic conversations, and guide future decision-making.

The Challenge
The Field Rewards team operated in a reactive mode, focusing on one-off project delivery without a clear understanding of how individual solutions fit into a larger experience. This lack of strategic context made it difficult to align cross-functional teams, prioritize efforts effectively, or demonstrate long-term value. Without a unified vision, the team struggled to articulate its goals and secure support from key stakeholders, limiting its impact and influence within the organization.

The Approach
To address these challenges, the team partnered with product leadership to propose the development of a comprehensive experience vision. Successfully securing funding for the initiative, the team embarked on a year-long journey to create a strategic framework that would align efforts across design, product, and business teams.

The process began with extensive user research, including interviews with over 20 users and the synthesis of more than 1,000 insights. These insights were distilled into actionable design principles and prioritized themes, forming the foundation for a unified experience vision. Key elements of the process included:

• System Design: Development of key components for the broader ecosystem, providing a roadmap for how solutions should interconnect.

• Vision Vignettes: Creation of detailed design vignettes that demonstrated the future vision through the perspective of a key persona, making the strategy tangible for stakeholders.

• Collaborative Alignment: Regular engagement with product and business leaders to ensure alignment and secure buy-in at every stage.

The final deliverable—a visually compelling and data-informed vision deck—was shared with business stakeholders and later presented to executive leadership.

The Outcome
The experience vision fundamentally transformed how the team operated and influenced the organization. In the short term, it provided immediate context for ongoing projects, helping the team align their current efforts with long-term goals. This alignment enabled design and product leadership to prioritize work more effectively and ensure that solutions addressed actual user needs while achieving business objectives.

In the long term, the vision became a critical input into the annual funding process, directly shaping the product roadmap and enabling the organization to plan strategically. The initiative also fostered stronger collaboration between design and product teams, building trust and creating an environment for more impactful cross-functional conversations.

The measurable results included improved stakeholder engagement, enhanced prioritization of user-centered projects, and a clear framework for achieving business outcomes through design.

Key Results

• Strategic Alignment: Unified design and product teams under a shared vision, ensuring efforts were directed toward impactful outcomes.

• Stakeholder Buy-In: Secured executive support for the vision, unlocking resources and influencing strategic planning processes.

• User-Centered Outcomes: Developed solutions that addressed real user needs, enhancing usability and driving long-term engagement

Lessons Learned
This initiative highlighted the transformative impact of having a cohesive experience vision to guide cross-functional teams. One of the key takeaways was the importance of involving stakeholders early and often, ensuring alignment and buy-in at every stage. The process also underscored the value of user research as a foundation for strategic decisions—grounding the vision in real-world insights created credibility and clarity. Additionally, crafting tangible artifacts like vision vignettes made abstract strategies more accessible and actionable for stakeholders. Ultimately, this effort demonstrated that aligning teams around a shared vision not only improves collaboration but also drives meaningful outcomes for both users and the business.