Overview

When a business experiences a life event such as a company acquisition, an audit by a regulator, or fraud, they often rely on Scotiabank to help them navigate through these challenges. One of the ways Scotiabank helps them is to reconcile and provide vendor account information to help clients recover and secure their assets and relationships.

Problem Statement

Call centre agents at Scotiabank have a way to provide vendor account information to clients using an onboarding application called Global Web Admin (GWA). However, there is a design limitation to export up to 500 accounts at any given time. The next step for the Scotiabank employees is to raise the request to another team with access to this information, which can take up to 2 weeks to process in some cases. With 3-5 requests sent per week, the backlog began to pile up leading to a downward trend in client sentiment (<51% net promoter score).

Goal Statement

Build a solution that would allow Scotiabank employees to export more than 500 rows and meet the market demand for vendor account information to help clients run their business and achieve their objectives.

Time

July 2025 - September 2025

Understanding the User

User Persona

Walter is a 25 year-old college graduate from Toronto, Canada who is aspiring to work in journalism. He is working as a contractor at Scotiabank to fulfill calls and build the skills to prepare his next career move.

Paola is a 40 year-old mother of two children who oversees a team of 10 people at the call centre. She often has to respond to client escalations to meet service level agreements and loves to volunteer on the side to help her community.

**User Persona**: Call Manager Perspective (Paola)

User Journey

I performed a discovery session to learn the steps leading to the information being sent to the client and figure out the underlying client motivations.

**Data Reconciliation**: Current State of the Business Process

I began to map out the new business process would look like and how Scotiabank employees can leverage an app in Customer 360 to fulfill the request more quickly. Customer 360 is a data platform powered by Microsoft technology that allows employees to access on-the-go market research information to make everyday decisions to reach their business objectives.

**Data Reconciliation**: Future State of the Business Process

I began to dive deeper into the steps and learn how employees arrive at work and access the Customer 360 data platform. Understanding the steps helped me figure out how to design the solution that intersects with their everyday activities in the workplace (e.g. logging into the Windows machine, attending to a client call, opening the Google Chrome browser, etc.).

**User Journey**: Map of the Future Steps to Fulfill Client Requests for Vendor Account Information

Designing the Solution

Based on the user research I conducted, I was able to piece together the necessary requirements to build the digital solution. I mapped out all the different products and permutations of how vendor account information is stored on ScotiaConnect. This mapping exercise will help me later on when I need to validate the app during user testing. I took into account what information is really needed from the client’s perspective and compared it to what employees currently provide today to figure out the data gaps (e.g. Recipients).

**ScotiaConnect Vendor Search**: Mind Map

Due to an existing web application (Global Web Admin) providing the same level of information and access to employees, designing the app was a matter of mirroring the existing functionality and laying out the components onto the canvas. I organized the buttons at the top using the mind map and added filters to search by company name, company ID or account status. For context, ScotiaConnect has the principle of recipients and templates to store vendor account information depending on the version the client was using (e.g. Simplified vs. Enhanced View).

**ScotiaConnect Vendor Search**: Landing Page with Options to View the Vendor Accounts by Banking Product (Recipient, EFT, Wire, ACH)

**ScotiaConnect Vendor Search**: Prompt to Select Export Format

Usability Study

Setting

5 employees invited to an unmoderated session to test the app

Findings

4 out of 5 employees (80%) were happy with ease of access and simplicity of the design layout. One employee suggested to provide the vendor address information along with the accounts due to the regulatory requirement by the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), a secure messaging network used by banks globally to send payment instructions and other financial messages. Nevertheless, the app met all the requirements to cover most of the use cases observed in earlier research.

Usage Metrics

At the launch of the app in September 2025, employees were accessing the app 3-5 times per business day (Monday-Friday). The employees consisted primarily of call centre managers and advanced (L2) technical support teams who rely on this app every day to meet client needs. Many employees expressed the app to be very valuable to help clients with internal audits, company acquisitions, and enterprise resource planning (ERP) software upgrades. In addition, the app served as a service backup in case the GWA application goes down unexpectedly and maintain business continuity.

ScotiaConnect Vendor Search