Ep. 186: Sergio Tavares – What accountants need to know about Design Thinking

Connect with Sergio:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/lutav/


Full Episode Transcript:Neha (00:05):



Welcome to Count Me In. I'm Neha Lagoo Ratnakar. And today I'm
speaking with Sérgio Tavares about design thinking and why it's
crucial for leaders and management accountants to understand the
basics of design thinking in a digital-first business world.
Sérgio is a design leader at Frog where he researches humans,
culture and society to create digital solutions that better meet
consumer needs. This is a very interesting conversation as we
discuss how management accountants can help shape the metrics and
what data designers should be focusing on to alleviate pressure
points and deliver better digital solutions. So let's get started
with Sérgio.


Neha (00:53):



Welcome Sérgio. It's such a pleasure to have you on the show. Now
let's start with the basics for people who might be new to design
thinking. Can you give us a simple definition of design thinking?


Sérgio (01:05):



Hi, Neha. Thanks for having me on the show. I think design
thinking is a term that came about already in the sixties and it
talks a lot about what is the customer need, the end customer
need? I think we came from an era of advertising and marketing
that we're more trying to persuade the people to want certain
things, to consume certain products and design thinking,
subverted that by looking into what they really need the things
they know they need, but also the things that they don't know yet
that they need and supplying these needs.


Neha (01:45):



Wow. Okay. I love that. And I'm totally going to steal that in my
next conversation.


Sérgio (01:49):



Great.


Neha (01:51):



All right. So I like how design thinking it keeps customers in
the center and what are the challenges that companies these days
are facing when it comes to this customer centricity?


Sérgio (02:04):



Yes, that's, that's an excellent point. I think many companies
are finding a lot of challenge to compete with the startup scene.
I think the startup scene is going through a change now. We're a
little bit past the move fast break things time. So we are seeing
the downfall of the first unicorns we had. We crash Zuckerberg
had so many problems with democracy and then the whole thing with
the fake news. And there's, there's all the ups and downs with
Elon Musk going to Twitter. So there's a lot that is telling us
that this first wave or this wave was over and companies are now
need to compete in a different way with startups. I think that
the challenge that companies are facing is also that startups,
they have very well understood that they need to look into the
customer needs.


Sérgio (03:07):



And it's very simple for them to do that. They just get out of
the building as the jargon says and run interviews fast
prototypes and then create their product or improve their
product. And then when you come to AB corporation, this is very
difficult because there's so much procurement hierarchy and it
becomes very difficult to just move very fast. So when it comes
to customer centricity, I think that is where startups have an
advantage and companies have problem because they need to output
the results. They need to push harder, their marketing efforts,
their existing efforts, and rethinking their products around the
customer is something quite demanding.


Neha (03:53):



Right. Wow. That, that was very insightful. And when you talk
about being customer centric, how does that translate to being
customer centric within the organization? For example, how does
your work at Frog apply this customer centricity internally?


Sérgio (04:10):



Yes. I think the first thing that we come as a Frog consultant,
for example, we come to a customer is like, tell me where the
research room is. And that usually means that there is no room.
And so that means that we need to structure that. So we need to
ask first let's run a round of questions, a survey out there to
your target customers or to a specific segment you want to work
with. And that means also that this research that you order it'll
fall into an empty drawer. So you need to create the drawer. You
need to create a structure that will catalog and categorize
research and put it into use in product development or marketing
or on the operations. So I think that's the first thing.


Neha (05:05):



So building the airplane as you fly it.


Sérgio (05:10):



Yes, yes, exactly. That just gives us a bit of speed and it's
easier to show that we are getting insights about the customers.
We're getting ideas on how to make our product more desirable,
viable, usable for customers. And that's usually a good way to
start because in corporations, you need to start convincing like
the whole hierarchy. So it starts to connect with the KPIs and it
starts to need to connect to the financial numbers.


Neha (05:43):



Right.


Sérgio (05:44):



So it's not very easy to sell, like, okay, in 10 years this idea
will pay off, but you can start by saying, let's discover what we
can do to change things right now, and how a better experience,
for example, of a digital service will mean less time that people
take to let's say, use our product. And that means faster
onboarding, and that means more revenue, right? So when you start
to create this connection, that's when design thinking connects
with financial departments management consultants and so forth.
These connections are quite new designers. They were often seen
as the creative side, and they are usually with high fly ideas.
That won't be very sustainable. But when we start to work with
business consultants that that's started to change.


Neha (06:42):



And you're right, the perspective on design is changing
everywhere. I've also heard people talk about customer journey
maps and our listeners who are many of them are from accounting
and finance world, would like to understand how that helps
clients with the accounting, most importantly, but also their
KPIs, OKRs, metrics and operations, the hard facts of a business.


Sérgio (07:09):



Yes. So the customer journey is basically a map of all the
interactions that the end customer goes through when interacting
with your product or service. So that may seem very far fetched
from accountants, but I would think it's not, for example, in a
model that I have developed with the client during this year we
have throughout the journey, all the pain points and highlights
through the experience. So let's think of a, let's say a bank or
an insurance company or any service, really. So you have a person
that is first deciding if they're going to buy it, then they
let's say in case of an insurance, then you have the time that a
person's gonna make a decision. If they're gonna get a more
premium account. And then they have another part of their journey
where they're actually making a claim.


Sérgio (08:05):



So all these the customer goes through all these, what happens
often is that the designers or the people taking care of the
product are looking a lot on the customer pains. And they are
telling for example, the company customers need to be able to
claim very fast for where they have some, a broken, broken device
at home. So we need to make this very easy. And then on the other
side, you have the accountants, for example, that are saying,
look if we make this just immediate, we're gonna have more fraud.
So I developed this model where we add to the customer journey,
the pressure points that are internal to the company, pressuring
the solution stores customers. And then we can have a real...