Challenge: A major mutual fund and investment provider was known as a brand primarily marketed to Financial Advisors. As part of ongoing initiatives to serve this audience, the company wanted to develop and implement a range of tools designed to aid advisors in their sales and relationship-building efforts.

Objective: The company designed a new online tool for its financial advisor site, followed by a tablet application. Before deploying the app, they engaged Plan-it to better understand the user experience among financial advisors. Specifically, the study explored the user experience with the tool, its perceived overall value, and identified its key strengths that could be leveraged in communications efforts, and weaknesses were identified for refinement.

Solution: Usability interviews with financial advisors explored how advisors would use the tool/app, its ease of navigation and any potential improvements for optimizing usage and value.

Result: Plan-it provided recommendations for improvement of the application before launch. The tool’s iPad application received the 2011 MITX Interactive Award in the Financial Services category.