How we created a seamless idea management process

Nathan Reed

Digital Origination Manager

We had a problem

The banking industry has changed significantly over the last 30 years. Customers want to open accounts and start banking within minutes. As an alternative bank, our mission is at the core of that change. We use digital technology to put our clients' needs first. This requires an open line of communication so we can understand what our clients need and respond quickly to feedback.

Previously, it was challenging to manage the intake and review of new requests. We received suggestions via email and stored them in multiple spreadsheets. This made it difficult to organize our product backlog and prioritize what to build next. We also struggled to keep customers informed of status updates. We wanted to create a seamless experience for submitting and tracking requests that aligns with our customer-first approach.

Aha! as a solution

We chose Aha! to help us manage the lifecycle of features from request through to delivery. Customers now submit requests via an ideas portal, giving us a centralized place to gather feedback. We now have a clear process for reviewing new requests and deciding which ones to promote onto our roadmap. Automatic email notifications make it easy to communicate the status of an idea to customers through the product development lifecycle.

Using an Aha! ideas portal is a perfect way to give every customer a voice. It also provides our product team with valuable insights into what our customers want so we can better enhance our products.

Aha! is driving a fundamental change in the way we operate. It brings a new level of transparency to our team, improving collaboration at every level. We can create any roadmap we need in minutes, from high-level portfolio roadmaps to detailed release plans. This has significantly reduced the time we spend collecting information and building reports. We also use the two-way integration between Aha! and Jira to stay in sync with our engineering team.

Life is good

Aha! serves the needs of every level in our organization. Executives have full visibility into our plans and can easily gauge how we are doing against our strategy. And the entire product team can instantly access the information we need to make decisions and deliver features quickly. This level of transparency is fundamental to continuously improving our products and creating an outstanding customer experience.

Aha! brings a new level of strategic oversight to our organization. Our executive team now has a 30,000 foot view of the entire business, helping them keep everyone focused on achieving our goals.

Aha! is core to our day-to-day business operations. Having a single source of truth has changed the way we work. It used to be challenging to find and access information. Now we can collaborate in real time to deliver our roadmap and bring joy to our customers — faster.