Lomi.agency - Vipps technology strategy

Vipps 
September 2019 - February 2020
Oslo

After merging Vipps, BankAxept and BankID into one company under the brand name Vipps, the new company needed to coordinate and focus its attention and deal with growing pains. With co-creation as a guiding principle, Lomi Agency led the process of developing the new technology strategy for Vipps. Everyone in Vipps’ Tech Department participated, and the end result was a strategy that everyone stood behind and referred back to for everyday decisions.

A technology strategy to foster speed and alignment after one of Norway’s biggest fintech mergers.

Challenge

‍Post-merger periods can be tumultuous times. It's a period filled with emotion and change for everyone in the company, and at the same time the business logic of the merger must materialise through direction and action. When the dust settles, you want the organisation to feel unified and rallied behind shared goals that everyone owns and believes in.

With so much going on, how do you identify the most important matters to discuss in order to achieve the business goals? How do you move the discussion forward to conclusion, setting the tone for a high-performing organisation? How do you keep people motivated and connected through such a period?

Process

Our approach with Vipps was rooted in co-creation methods and Vipps' employees were involved throughout all stages of the process. This enabled collective decision making about technology and innovation, as well as how to organise people and daily work.
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Identification of business goals, problems, strengths and opportunities

Mapping existing business reasoning and objectives
One-on-one interviews with the leadership team
Aggregate findings and sketch a path forward with the leadership team
All-hands kick-off workshop to identify key strategic topics

Team input and comparison to business goals

Workshop with the leadership team of the technology department
C-level feedback on and adjustment to the strategic topics

Investigation of challenges and opportunities within selected strategic topics

Work streams led by employees ("captains"), structured around key strategic topics
Weekly check-ins with work stream captains in order to identify gaps, overlaps and synergies
Delivery of recommended actions for each topic, with tentative KPIs and progress plans

Consolidation of the deliverables from the work streams

Prioritisation of results according to business value, strategic fit and execution realism
Unification of results in a cohesive strategy with input of leadership
Visualisation of overall strategy and presentation material

Release party and follow-up

Event with work stream presentations and presentation of the overall Vipps Technology Strategy by the CTO
Internal socialisation of the new technology strategy in the entire company
Delivery of actionable management system with proposal for task prioritisation and associated resource allocation, KPIs and management follow-up

Outcomes

A clear and actionable direction that everyone at Vipps believes in
Having developed the strategy with Vipps' C-suite, tech department leadership and employees, the result is a strategy that people feel ownership over. Everyone knows how their daily work is connected to the bigger picture. The structured management system and KPIs are connected to the technological, organisational and business goals to enable a structured execution of the strategy. In the process, the awesome Vipps story is spread both internally and externally.
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Read Vipps' CTO Jan Solhøy's blog post about the process here.
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